Czechs in History | All stories

In the last edition of our programme we looked at one of the most defining moments in the history of the Czech lands - the Battle of White Mountain. The culmination of a three year long Protestant Uprising that saw Ferdinand II deposed and Frederick the Winter King installed, albeit only for a short while: the battle of White Mountain was poorly lost by Protestant forces. Their defeat culminated in an exodus of thousands, including such figures as the scholar Jan Komensky, or Comenius as he is more widely known, who fled to the Netherlands. Those

In today's edition of Czechs in History Radio Prague looks at the historical significance and fallout of the Battle of White Mountain, one of the most famous events in Czech history every student here at one time has learned by heart. The date of the battle was November 8th, 1620. The setting: a small, normally quiet hillside, just outside of Prague. But, the day would see a disappointingly one-sided affair, a battle that took less than two hours to lose by the Czech nobility. Defeated were the Protestants of the Bohemian Estates' army, vanquished

Today's edition of Czechs in History is dedicated to beer lovers. Historically Bohemia has a long tradition of brewing beer, and one hundred years ago there were dozens of small brewing houses throughout the country, the majority of which no longer exist. But there's one that continues even today, a renowned pub and brewery called U Fleku, where you can get a taste of days gone by. In existence since 1499, it is safe to say this pub is a must for any visitor to the Czech capital, and for any beer drinker worth his salt. And if brewing beer for

In early 1991 the Prague-based book publisher Paseka, run by Ladislav Horacek, acquired an old house going to ruin in the north Moravian town of Litomysl, with one intention in mind: to save the magnificent wall paintings within, which had been completed by the great Czech graphic artist Josef Vachal almost seventy years before. Rare wall paintings that were once brilliant in expressive colour, displaying an array of mystical characters and motifs which had been the artist's life-long obsession, now crumbling beyond recognition, threatening to

Tour guides on the way through the city will tell you it's one of the most unusual villas in Prague, found at the cross-roads of Mickiewiczova street and Chodkovy sady, where the city's old ramparts used to stand, an ambitious structure completed in 1911. Surrounded by tall trees, evergreens, a wide garden, it was designed by the famous Czech Art Nouveau Symbolist sculptor Frantisek Bilek, whose life we look at in this edition of Czechs in History.

'How I Came to Know Fish' - for years I glimpsed this elegant volume of short stories in Prague's English-language bookstores, at times wondering over its greenish cover featuring a fish on a hook. I wondered blankly over the name of its author, without, I admit, inquiring further. Ota Pavel. The name, though known to most Czechs, said nothing to me then, at most I had an inkling the author had been a sports journalist for Czech Radio in the 1950s. Then I caught a glimpse of his photo somewhere - Ota Pavel, writer - the author in his youth, a black

He was a man who never lived, yet who went further in defining the Czechs in the 20th century than perhaps anyone else: the most famous of Czech literary characters, the Good Soldier Svejk. Created by the true bohemian - as well as anarchist - writer Jaroslav Hasek, Svejk is often impenetrable but ultimately irreverent beneath a simple child-like smile most often mistaken for foolishness. He makes a mockery of his "betters" within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ultimately seeing through the hypocrisies of his day. Almost unintentionally he sabotages

It is the year 1923. The fifth year of the existence of the young Czechoslovak Republic, a year in which regular radio broadcasts started in Czechoslovakia and the first passenger planes began flying between Prague and Bratislava on a regular basis. In the previous autumn, Alois Rasin had become Czechoslovak Minister of Finance for the second time since the founding of the state in 1918.

In this week's Czechs in History, we return to the second half of the nineteenth century, to the time when the Czech nation was still only dreaming about its own statehood. But its aspirations in the fields of art and science were then already taking on a more concrete form - represented, for example, by the construction of the magnificent buildings of the National Theatre and the National Museum in Prague. One of the personalities who left a distinctive mark on this period was painter Vaclav Brozik, the best-known representative of the style of

Welcome to Czechs in History - in today's edition: Part Two of the story of Jan Welzl, one of the most interesting Czech adventurers of the late 19th, early 20th century. Born in 1868 in Moravia when it was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Welzl became a locksmith's apprentice as a young man, but was soon drawn away from his village of Zabreh nad Moravou by the promise of a much wider world. Italy, the Balkans, America, Welzl saw something from all of them in the early years. Still, none promised the mystery, the mystique, the unparalleled