romanticized Slavic struggle against the German non-democratic social order. Palacký's historical accounts of Bohemia based on the manuscripts also bolstered the Czechs' exclusive claims on Bohemia. The debate over the authenticity and authorship of these manuscripts has occupied Czech politics for more than a century, and voices claiming the poems to be genuine were not silenced even into World War II. Václav Hanka, the discoverer of the first manuscript, and his friend and roommate Josef Linda are generally regarded to have been the forgers of the poetry, but they never confessed to writing them, and there has not been any irrefutable proof that they were the authors. See also Ossian Vestiarium Scoticum Explanatory notes References Sources Primary Secondary External links Literary forgeries Political forgery Hoaxes in the Czech Republic Forged epic poems