traveldk.com

Although he wrote in German and almost none of his work was published in his lifetime, Franz Kafka is Prague. Many of his disturbing novels seem to foresee the Communist years. His peripatetic wanderings across this city, brooding features and death by tuberculosis all add to the mystique.

Almost completely unknown outside Austria, Meyrink is nevertheless responsible for one of the city’s most marketable notions: the Golem. He penned the story of the clay monster, that was supposedly locked up in the Old-New Synagogue, in 1914 and attributed its creation to the real Rabbi Loew (see The Golem).

This Czech writer is best known for his science fiction and psychologically penetrating novels. With his 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum Universal Robots) he gave the world a word for an automaton, based on a Czech word for “forced labour”.

A notorious joker and the author of the celebrated dig at the Austrian army, The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk , Hašek was also the creator of the satirical Party for Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law.

Prague and Vienna continue to duel over the musical genius’s legacy, with the Czechs always claiming that Mozart loved them better. The composer premiered his opera Don Giovanni in Prague’s Estates Theatre (see Stavovské divadlo) and Prague residents mourned spectacularly upon his death in 1791. Regular Mozart concerts are held in the city.

The composer wrote his opera Libuše , based on the legendary princess, for the reopening of Prague’s National Theatre in 1883. Smetana vies with Antonin Dvořák for the title of best-loved Czech composer; the former’s ode to beer in The Bartered Bride gives him a certain advantage.

Dvořák’s works, such as his Slavonic Dances , regularly incorporate folk music. He composed his final symphony From the New World while he was director of the National Conservatory in New York City.

The poetic author used to sit in the Old Town pub U Zlatého tygra, taking down the stories he heard there. He died falling from his hospital-room window in 1997.

The Czech president was known as a playwright before he became a civil rights activist protesting the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968 (see Prague Spring). His absurdist works and his fame helped draw international attention to his country’s struggles.

Czechs have a love-hate relationship with their best-known contemporary author. Since his emigration to Canada, Kundera has had little to do with his native country, even writing his novels in French. His works convey a comic skepticism.