Post by pieter on Jun 16, 2019 12:34:28 GMT -7
Dear friends,
When I think about the Czech republic strange enough I don't think immediately about the country itself, but about it's Czech Diaspora. In the Netherlands we have Martin Simek, Richard Krajicek en Eva Jinek. Dutch people with a Czech background, due to immigration or Czech parents who immigrated, like Eva Jinek's Czech parents. But when I think about Czechia I also think about Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, Václav Havel, Jaroslav Hašek (author of the novel The Good Soldier Švejk), Art Noveau artist Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939), Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926), Edvard Beneš (1884 – 1948), Miloš Forman (from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and he People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)), Madeleine Albright, Louis D. Brandeis, Mika Brzezinski (the daughter of Emilie Anna Benešová, who is the grandniece of Czechoslovakia's former president Edvard Beneš), economist Friedrich Hayek, actress Sissy Spacek, philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), and the Slovak Alexander Dubcek, who opposed the breakup of Czechoslovakia in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Also Ivana Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have Czech roots.
When I think back about Prague I remember romantic, old, magnificent city with a lot of brigdes over the Vltava river, a large fortress on the hills opposite to the Prague city centre on the other side of the river bank. I remember of course the Wenceslaus square, the narrow Prague streets, boulevards and other squares. I remember the Prague Opera, the Prague Art Academy I visited in 1994 with a group of Art Academy students. We were a week in Prague in an art historical , general historical and back then present day impression of a Prague which was in transformation. Already Western, but with some old preserved communist era and some pre-war elements you felt that were present there, some old Bohemian, Austrian and other influences. That made and makes Prague exiting and in the same time a very Czech (Bohemian) and a very international city. I heard Asian languages, Russian, German, English, French, Italian next to Czech on the streets. It was already very touristic back then in 1994. I also saw the city in the evening and at night (early in the morning), because I wondered around in the city. We went to the Opera, and that was an amazing building with a quite impressive interiour and a great Opera musical performance inside.
I also visited the Franz Kafka museum, and I visited Josefov, formerly the Jewish ghetto of the town, which is completely surrounded by the Old Town. Nex to Prague I spent one holiday in Southern Bohemia with some Dutch friends in a Dacha like house at a small lake near the Southern-Bohemian towns of Český Krumlov and České Budějovice. It was a wonderful idyllic summer holiday in an environment with still old style infrastructure, charming little villages with old fashionate farms, and magnificent old towns with layers of history and architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroc, claccisist and Bohemian-Czech style. Prague I saw 2 times in 1994 and 1997. I will always have good memories about Prague like I have about Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Berlin and Vienna. But there was something that made me feel at home and connected there. Maybe because the brother of my grandfather had studied there in the early 20th century, maybe because my parents had been there too? Maybe, because it felt close to Poland with it's Western-Slavic culture and Bohemian history.
I read about the fact that the Czechs were the first victims of Nazi aggression when first in 1938 Sudetenland was annexed. The Sudetenland was assigned to Germany between 1 October and 10 October 1938. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequently invaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovak part declared its independence from Czechoslovakia, becoming the Slovak Republic (Slovak State), a satellite state and ally of Germany. (The Ruthenian part – Subcarpathian Rus – made also an attempt to declare its sovereignty as Carpatho-Ukraine but only with ephemeral success. This area was annexed by Hungary.). The communist regime in Czechoslovakia was very harsh and under the direct control of the SovjetUnion. When my parents wanted to go to Czechoslovakia from Poland in the eighties they were refused entry on the Polish Czechoslovak border, by Sovjet border guards with red stars on their military hats.
Czechs are the closest Western-Slavic people to Western-Europe. It borders Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia.
Cheers,
Pieter
When I think about the Czech republic strange enough I don't think immediately about the country itself, but about it's Czech Diaspora. In the Netherlands we have Martin Simek, Richard Krajicek en Eva Jinek. Dutch people with a Czech background, due to immigration or Czech parents who immigrated, like Eva Jinek's Czech parents. But when I think about Czechia I also think about Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, Václav Havel, Jaroslav Hašek (author of the novel The Good Soldier Švejk), Art Noveau artist Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939), Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926), Edvard Beneš (1884 – 1948), Miloš Forman (from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and he People vs. Larry Flynt (1996)), Madeleine Albright, Louis D. Brandeis, Mika Brzezinski (the daughter of Emilie Anna Benešová, who is the grandniece of Czechoslovakia's former president Edvard Beneš), economist Friedrich Hayek, actress Sissy Spacek, philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), and the Slovak Alexander Dubcek, who opposed the breakup of Czechoslovakia in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Also Ivana Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have Czech roots.
When I think back about Prague I remember romantic, old, magnificent city with a lot of brigdes over the Vltava river, a large fortress on the hills opposite to the Prague city centre on the other side of the river bank. I remember of course the Wenceslaus square, the narrow Prague streets, boulevards and other squares. I remember the Prague Opera, the Prague Art Academy I visited in 1994 with a group of Art Academy students. We were a week in Prague in an art historical , general historical and back then present day impression of a Prague which was in transformation. Already Western, but with some old preserved communist era and some pre-war elements you felt that were present there, some old Bohemian, Austrian and other influences. That made and makes Prague exiting and in the same time a very Czech (Bohemian) and a very international city. I heard Asian languages, Russian, German, English, French, Italian next to Czech on the streets. It was already very touristic back then in 1994. I also saw the city in the evening and at night (early in the morning), because I wondered around in the city. We went to the Opera, and that was an amazing building with a quite impressive interiour and a great Opera musical performance inside.
I also visited the Franz Kafka museum, and I visited Josefov, formerly the Jewish ghetto of the town, which is completely surrounded by the Old Town. Nex to Prague I spent one holiday in Southern Bohemia with some Dutch friends in a Dacha like house at a small lake near the Southern-Bohemian towns of Český Krumlov and České Budějovice. It was a wonderful idyllic summer holiday in an environment with still old style infrastructure, charming little villages with old fashionate farms, and magnificent old towns with layers of history and architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroc, claccisist and Bohemian-Czech style. Prague I saw 2 times in 1994 and 1997. I will always have good memories about Prague like I have about Warsaw, Krakow, Budapest, Berlin and Vienna. But there was something that made me feel at home and connected there. Maybe because the brother of my grandfather had studied there in the early 20th century, maybe because my parents had been there too? Maybe, because it felt close to Poland with it's Western-Slavic culture and Bohemian history.
I read about the fact that the Czechs were the first victims of Nazi aggression when first in 1938 Sudetenland was annexed. The Sudetenland was assigned to Germany between 1 October and 10 October 1938. The Czech part of Czechoslovakia was subsequently invaded by Germany in March 1939, with a portion being annexed and the remainder turned into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovak part declared its independence from Czechoslovakia, becoming the Slovak Republic (Slovak State), a satellite state and ally of Germany. (The Ruthenian part – Subcarpathian Rus – made also an attempt to declare its sovereignty as Carpatho-Ukraine but only with ephemeral success. This area was annexed by Hungary.). The communist regime in Czechoslovakia was very harsh and under the direct control of the SovjetUnion. When my parents wanted to go to Czechoslovakia from Poland in the eighties they were refused entry on the Polish Czechoslovak border, by Sovjet border guards with red stars on their military hats.
Czechs are the closest Western-Slavic people to Western-Europe. It borders Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia.
Cheers,
Pieter