Czechs in History | All stories

It would be hard to meet a Czech whose childhood was not touched (perhaps unconsciously) by the art of Jiri Trnka, a painter, puppeteer, illustrator and above all, the founding father of Czech animated film. His poetic drawings brought immortality to books that would otherwise be long forgotten. And his animated films bestowed dozens of puppets and drawings with life.

Karel Kryl, singer, songwriter and poet, was the most prominent Czech folk musician of the last fifty years. His well-known songs are to this day sung in pubs and around campfires, even by those of the younger generation of Czechs who grew up after his death. Born in Kromeriz in 1944, he began writing and performing after graduating from secondary school, and was later expelled from army service for performing songs deemed to be anti-socialist. He was exiled from Czechoslovakia in 1970, but continued to write, produce and perform until his return

Karolina Svetla is most famous for her novels and short stories about life around Jested, in the North Bohemian hills. Her work has been translated into English in the past, but is hard to come by, so for a taster, from her story Prisla do rozumu, here you are:

Compared to other Arab and Oriental scholars like TE Lawrence, the Czech Arabist Alois Musil is not so well known in the English-speaking world, mainly because most of his seminal works were initially published in German. Nevertheless, he is regarded by many as a crucial figure who contributed enormously to the West's understanding of Islam at a time when the study of the Arab world was in its infancy.

It is quite possible that you will not have heard of the great 17th century artist Vaclav Hollar, or Wenceslaus Hollar as he is known internationally. But it is very likely that you will have seen some of his wonderful images of Prague or London, the city with which he is most closely associated. Indeed, Hollar was - as one book about the artist puts it - "The Man Who Drew London".

In this edition of Czechs in History, we reflect on the life and work of Emil Kolben. He was born on November 1, 1862, to a Jewish family in the little village of Strancice near Prague and became one of the most important electrical engineers, inventors, and industrial giants in Czechoslovakia.

In this week's Czechs in History, we look at an unsolved mystery in Klement Gottwald's past as this Wednesday marks the 54th anniversary of the death of Czechoslovakia's first communist president.

There is an old framed photograph in my parents' house, which I have known since childhood. In the foreground, you can see the back of the head of Edvard Benes, the second President of Czechoslovakia. And bowing forward to shake the president's hand is a distinguished-looking man with shiny matinee-idol hair and a neatly-folded kerchief in his pocket. That's Otakar Machotka, my grandfather.

The inter-war years are generally seen as a golden age by many Czechs. The first Czechoslovak Republic, which was established in 1918, was one of the world's most successful democracies until its annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938. While the contributions of brilliant statesmen like Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and industrialists like Tomas Bata to the success of the First Republic are well documented, it is not so well known that Czechoslovakia at that time had a vibrant free press, which also did much to nurture the country's democratic system. One

The nineteenth-century Czech physician and natural scientist Jan Evangelista Purkyne is perhaps best known to people today for identifying the unique nature of individual fingerprints, a discovery which has played a vital role in countless criminal investigations. Nevertheless, this is just one of many discoveries by Purkyne, who was responsible for a number of epoch-making contributions to different scientific disciplines. He was also a key figure in the Czech national revival.