Patrick Bade
Cultural History of Prague
Patrick Bade - Cultural History of Prague
- Well, I think everybody would agree that Prague is one of the most beautiful, stunningly beautiful cities in the world. So it’s, it’s a almost a miracle and certainly a great blessing to the whole of humanity that somehow Prague managed to remain intact all through the terrible vicissitudes of 20th century history. Now, the Czechs, it’s quite a small nation, even today. It’s, it’s barely 10 million people, but they’ve always punched beyond their weight from a cultural point of view. Czechs have contributed so much joy and pleasure and beauty to the world in terms of art, architecture, music, of course, very much, and literature. But in the 20th century, the Czechs had the misfortunes to have the neighbours from hell being sandwiched between the Germans and the Russians was not a comfortable position to be in. Now, the Czechs like to say about themselves that they’re like grass. You roll over them from one side, and then they just pop up back again, and then you roll over them from the other side and the same things happen. Prague as a city, has had several golden ages with dark periods of oppression in between. And the three most obvious golden ages of Prague are the reign of the emperor Charles the fourth in the 14th century, the reign of Rudolph the second in the late 16th century, and the reign of Franz Joseph, in the second half of the 19th century. I’m just going to roll through some images of this extraordinary city, which, as I said, escaped - one of the very, very few major cities in mainland Europe - that escaped serious damage in the two world wars. This is the Charles Bridge named after the emperor, Charles the Fourth, holy Roman emperor, and his reign, as I said, was the first golden age of Prague, and he laid the foundation stone of this bridge in 1357, and it was completed in the early 16th century.
The statues on it are Baroque Of course they date from about 1700. He also founded one of Europe’s first universities, the Charles University, the same year, 1357. On the right, you can see a 19th century statue, to Charles the fourth, who still very celebrated figure with the Czechs. He also initiated the building of the Cathedral of St. Vitus, which is one of the most beautiful and also one of the most innovatory Gothic cathedrals in Europe. And it was begun by a French master mason called Matthias of Arras. So he began it in 1344, and he died in 1356. And a German master mason called Peter Parler took over and he is, I think, responsible for the most innovatory and the most interesting aspects of this church. That is his portrait, possibly a self-portrait on the right hand side. And on the left, we’re looking up into these extraordinary rib volts in the choir. And these were his innovation. And you can say that this is the starting point for late Gothic in central Europe and Germany. Here’s another view of the choir of the Cathedral of St. Vitus. So the Middle Ages, also by and large, a very good period for the Jewish population of Prague, which was always substantial. And this is the so-called new old synagogue that goes back to 1270, and it’s also a gothic building Inside, you can see again, you’ve got somewhat simpler rib vaults. And this is the famous cemetery of the new old synagogue. An extraordinary sight really, showing you just how cramped this, the space was inside the Prague ghetto.
And this, as you probably know, is the setting where according to the protocols of the elders of Zion, the members of the world Jewish conspiracy, are supposed to meet at midnight in this cemetery. Of course, it was revealed actually, I think as early as the 1920s, that this was a fiction that had been put together by the Russian secret police in 1903. So they were already at their business of disseminating fake news and false information under the Czars. Moving forward, a big check, oh, sorry about the pun, A big setback for Bohemia was the martyrdom of Jan Hus. Jan Hus was a predecessor of Martin Luther, and he was a man who denounced the corruption of the Catholic church, particularly selling of indulgences, an outrageously corrupt practise. That was, of course, also one of the reasons why Martin Luther a century later rebelled against the Catholic Church. I think he was a genuinely holy man, and his fate was a terrible one. He was lured to an ecclesiastical conference in Constance in 1415, and he was then arrested and he was burned alive as you see in this illustration on the left hand side, he was a kind of proto Protestant he laid the foundations for later Protestantism. Now at the next golden age in Prague was when the Holy Roman emperor Rudolph the second, Hapsburg, holy Roman Emperor, he decided to move the capital of the Hapsburg empire from Vienna to Prague. And he’s a very fascinating character. He was a great patron of the arts. He enticed artists from all over Europe, from Italy, for instance, to Prague. One of his court artists was Arcimboldo. And this is his portrait. This is what later came to be known as the Arcimboldo Effect much admired by surrealists. You know, Salvador Dali, for instance, uses this technique, used it in the, in the 20th century. And so it was a boom period for Prague.
This is what Prague looked like in 16th century. And he was attracting writers, intellectuals, he was very interested in the occult; he was interested in astrology, astronomy, alchemy, and so every sort of wacky pseudo scientist in Europe was attracted to Prague in his time. But amongst them - oh, oh, this also, it was once again, I would say a good period for the Jews of Prague. In fact, I think one can say that the golden ages in Prague were also always golden ages for the Jewish population. There was a happy symbiosis of Christian and Jews in the more open and the more prosperous periods in Prague history. This is the Maisel Synagogue, which was founded in 1590 with the permission and encouragement of the Emperor Rudolph the second. Didn’t originally look like this. It has been rebuilt a couple of times. And it, this is now, as you can see, largely a 19th century neo gothic building but when it was first built, it was built in a Renaissance style. And so Rudolph the second, very cultured, as I said, inviting Italian artists and interested in the innovations and the culture of the Italian Renaissance, as you see in this palace building on the left and this very beautiful Italianate fountain and another court artist, actually a German, this is Bartholomeus Spranger, but he was Italian trained. He was actually a young artist in Rome in the 1560s. At the same time that El Greco was there, and there are some interesting stylistic parallels actually between their work with sort of very elongated figures. And they’re rather chalky colours. There’s another painting, very, rather kinky, rather perverse eroticism in these paintings by Bartholomeus Spranger.
And Prague was also the great centre for metalwork and craftsmanship and again, great craftsman were attracted from Italy, Germany, Holland, and this crown was made for Rudolph the second by Jan Vermeyen in 1603 and on the right you can see a very splendid monstrance for holding the host. But there were also, as I said, very serious scientists like Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, who you see here, and also Johannes Kepler, who researched and established the laws of planetary motion. So they weren’t all quacks, the people who were surrounding Rudolph the second. So this was, as I said, a golden age but it comes to a very brutal end as a result of religious wars. The nobility, the Czech nobility had been, had converted to Protestantism. But the Holy Roman emperor, who after the death of Rudolph the second, went back to being at the centre of the Habsburg empire went back to Vienna and he tried to suppress Protestantism. And the local Protestant Czech nobles resented this. And they expressed their resentment by throwing the ambassadors of the Holy Roman emperor out of a window in Prague Castle. This took place in 1618. It’s the famous defenestration of Prague, which triggered the 30 years war, which was certainly the most destructive, most appalling war in Europe before the 20th century. Now, it’s always been a great matter of debate who was responsible for the 30 years war? I remember when I did A level history in my boarding school, we had to, we, that was one of the questions that we had to answer. Nobody really knows who can really assign, we can say what triggered it. We can’t really, the cause, it’s like the first world war. It’s extremely complicated.
I remember the girls in my class were so puzzled by this that they held a seance in their dormitory in the middle of the night and they asked somebody on the other side to tell them who was responsible for the 30 years war. And our history teacher was rather amazed at the unanimity of all the girls in the class. Now at the, this famous defenestration and when you go to Prague castle and you’re taken around by the guides, they proudly show you the window from which the ambassadors were thrown. Well, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. This is is one of the top windows here. I don’t know if it’s the very top or the one underneath where they were thrown out. But luckily there for them, perhaps, there was a huge pile of horse shit under the window. So they fell, it was undignified rather than fatal when they were thrown out of the window. So then at the Czech nobility, they say, right, we’re going to invite a Protestant to come, a prince to come in and be king of Bohemia. And they invite Frederick of the Palatinate that was a little princedom on the river Rhine, and he was married to an English Princess, Elizabeth, who was the daughter of King James the first. And they come to Prague in 1619 and they’re always referred to as the winter king and queen, ‘cos they only reigned for the winter of 1619 to 1620 and the Holy Roman emperor, he rallies his Catholic troops and they invade - God, nothing new is there. I mean, it’s terrible pre echoes of what’s happening now. And there was a big battle called the Battle of the White Mountain. And the Protestants were defeated. And that triggered this terrible war. We just have to hope that present situation doesn’t evolve in the same kind of way. So Bohemia had to be re-catholicized. And there was a big sort of propaganda campaign - I mean the word propaganda, of course, actually derives from this time from the time of the counter reformation, the Catholic church to, re catholicize those parts of Europe that had gone Protestant. And Bohemia was frontline in all of this.
And this building is called the Prague Loreto. As you can see, it’s a handsome Baroque building. It was started in 1626. And in the courtyard we have a Holy House of Loreto. There were certain doctrines that were promoted in the counter reformation to win people back from Protestantism. One was this story of the Holy House that in the 1290s when the Saracen Muslims invaded the Holy Land, God sent a hit squid of angels to airlift the house where the Virgin had spent her childhood across the Mediterranean. This is what you can see happening in this painting by Tiepolo on the right hand side, the angels lifting the house, it has a stop over in Zagreb And then it lands in Loreto in northern Italy where it’s encased in this sort of elaborate carved, stone carved surface. And so this is, I mean, it’s such an amazing story. Isn’t that fantastic? Of course, that’s going to win you over to to Catholicism. Wow. If God can do that, and Catholic church can do that. And so reproductions of the Holy House were built all over Europe. There’s one that I see every year when I go to Parma for the Verde Festival that’s inside a huge church. It looks just like this. It’s really quite weird. But in Bohemia, I don’t know how many survive, but up to 50 of these structures were built across Bohemia in an attempt to impress the local population and bring them back to Catholicism. So we move into the 18th century. This is the, the Church of St. Nicholas just at the foot of the Royal Castle. Very beautiful, typical middle European, flamboyant, theatrical Baroque style. Very gorgeous, very operatic. And there are parts of Prague, which have really barely changed since the 18th century.
This street, for instance, leading up to the church of St. Nicholas, where you see all this very pretty Rococo, late baroque facades all in lovely sweetie colours, you know, looking like they’re made out of icing sugar. A big stylistic change in the late 18th century when you move from late Baroque Rococo to Neoclassicism. And the first important neoclassical building in Prague is the Estates theatre. And this was opened in 1783 and soon after Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, which had had a moderate success in Vienna, was put on in Prague where it had a huge success. The Czechs absolutely loved it. And he always really enjoyed going to Prague where he felt properly appreciated. And they loved it so much that they commissioned, they wanted their own Mozart opera. And so they commissioned what some people think is the greatest opera ever written, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. And that was premiered - Isn’t that, isn’t this beautiful? This is the interior of the Estates theatre, lovely cool colours and of course a rather sober style compared to the flamboyance of the Baroque and the Rococo. And we know that, well it was a tiny orchestra actually for the premiere, really almost like a chamber orchestra. But he, Mozart must have had very good singers. We know he had a very good tenor, had a tenor with incredible breath control because the tenor aria that he wrote for the Prague version, Il Mio Tesoro, has these endless runs that very, very few tenors can actually sing without stopping to take a breath in the middle. So there’s Mozart on the right hand side. And then we move on to what I think is a, another golden age for Prague, which is under the benign rule of Franz Joseph. Now Franz Joseph took over after the abdication of his father.
So he took over as emperor, Austro-Hungarian emperor, in 1848, really with a programme of repression trying to suppress revolutionary movements and nationalist movements. You’ve got this vast multi-ethnic empire, which is coming apart at the seams because of all these various nationalisms. And he, I think he’s an extraordinary man because he starts off very repressive, very reactionary. But he evolves and he turns into a liberal and he tries, as far as he can, to accommodate the various nationalisms. Of course we’ve already heard about 1867 and the creation of the dual monarchy. One problem with that was that the Hungarians didn’t, they were thrilled with their privileges, but they weren’t very keen on any of the other ethnic groups in the Austro-Hungarian empire getting the same kind of privilege. So that, I think rather restricted how far Franz Josef could go in accommodating the Czech desire for nationhood. These are photographs taken in the late 19th century of an official visit of Franz Joseph to Prague. So I’m going to be talking actually in two lectures coming up, one specifically about Czech opera and one I’m going to talk about nationalism and music. And every aspiring nation in the 19th century wanted to have its national opera house and it wanted to have its national operas and this splendid building, it’s called the National Theatre. And it was specifically constructed with a view to promoting Czech opera, opera in the Czech language.
And the foundation stone was laid in 1868. It took a long time to construct. It wasn’t finished till 1881. For the foundation stone, Smetana wrote his opera for the laying of the stone, he wrote his opera Dalibor that I’ll be talking more about next week. But unfortunately, having finished this splendid building, it almost immediately burnt down and they had to start again. But the second time around it was completed much more quickly, that’s the same building and inside you can see how splendid it was. And here is Smetana with his wife on the right hand side. And this is Dalibor and that’s the premier on the left and a famous cast from around 1900 with Karl Burian and . So that way he, as we shall see when I talk more about it, Smetana intended Dalibor to be the great national Opera. But, and it’s, I don’t know if Czechs still think of it that way. It’s not done all that often, I don’t think, even in Prague for as far as most of the world’s concerned the great Czech opera, the one by Smetana anyway, is the much lighter, more cheerful Bartered Bride. But again, I’ll be talking about that coming up. And tonight, I’m not talking, I’m not going to play you any opera, but I’m going to play you some symphonic music. And Smetana’s patriotism, his aspiration for nationhood for the Czechs also found expression in a very beautiful, popular symphonic poem in six movements called Ma Vlast; My Country. And the most famous movement, of course is the Vltava or the Moldau, and I’m going to play you the opening of that. And I know it’s going to, well, it’ll be, I’m sure it’s very familiar to most of you anyway, but it’ll be particularly familiar to anybody listening in Israel, because rather strangely, I’ve always thought the Israeli national anthem is actually borrowed from this piece.
The tune of it anyway. Opens to this wonderful evocation of rippling water, of a little stream, that gradually becomes a river. The other great Czech national composer of the mid to late 19th century is Antonin Dvorak. I’m going to give him his proper name because he always deeply resented that the German publishers who put out his work refused to put his name in a Czech version. They Germanized it to Anton Dvorak. He actually, he broke through to fame with these Slavonic dances, which were originally conceived for piano duet. Middle class houses all had pianos and people made their own music. So there was a big demand for four hand piano music. And it was Brahms who first spotted Dvorak’s talent and recommended him to his publisher. And it proved to be a great publishing sensation. And it made Dvorak’s worldwide reputation. Now he’s, I cannot praise Dvorak enough. He’s just a composer who constantly astonishes me. I think of him really as the Czech Mozart, there’s a never-ending flow of gorgeous melody and inventiveness, fresh, gorgeous invention. He’s such a, he’s one of those rare, rare composers I feel he, in maybe in later times, you could say Gershwin in America, somebody who just, the music pours out of him with such ease. And there’s something so life enhancing about it. A happy composer. And he’s a feel good composer.
He always makes me feel better about being alive. And I can’t leave Dvorak without playing you his most famous song, Songs My Mother Taught Me is the title sung here by the exquisite Czech soprano Jarmila Novotná. Smetana and Dvorak of course the big names but there is an incredible wealth of talent. In fact, there always was in Bohemia going right back to the 18th century and earlier, and I’m going to play you a little bit of a very lovely piece by a composer who may be less familiar to you, Josef Suk, he was actually the favourite, he was the protege, the favourite pupil, and the son-in-law of Dvorak he had a tendency to melancholia. Most of his music is very, is quite dark and quite melancholic. And he wrote this piece, the Serenade, I think Dvorak said to him, can’t you just cheer up a bit and give us something that will make us feel a bit more happy? So this is Prague in the, at the end of the 19th century. And like other cities, very much like Vienna, like Budapest, it’s a boom time. It’s what the Germans call the Gründungszeit, The founding time, the industrial revolution. The Czechs really take to it, it becomes one of the most industrialised nations. And it becomes a very prosperous nation. And like all the other big cities in Europe towards the end of 19th century thought, yeah, we’ve got to have our great exhibition, we’ve got to have our Exposition Universelle, like the British, like the French, I’ve already mentioned, Vienna had theirs in 1873. Budapest had theirs in 1885. So Prague had to get in on it again in 1891, even had its own mini Eiffel Tower, as you can see on the right. And joyful, I mean there’s something tremendously good humoured and joyful about a lot of Czech culture. I find it in the art, I find it in the music, and I find it in the architecture.
These are very delightful buildings that were made for that 1891 exhibition. But of course another side of Prague was the ghetto. This was not light and joyful. This was dark and cramped. It was, it was very famous, famously mysterious; but menacing. It was, and of course very, very unhealthy with all the epidemics in the 19th century, cholera and typhoid and so on. This was a dense, mediaeval section of Prague. And it was totally demolished. Apart from the synagogues in the 1890s and early 1900’s. You might say, oh, was this antisemitic? No, I don’t think it was at all. I think most Jews heartily welcomed it. They wanted to put the ghetto behind them. They wanted to be fully assimilated, integrated. I’ve got photographs. This is a model to show you how it looked. And very picturesque of course. And I imagine it was very smelly and very overcrowded and extremely unhealthy. And so when that was gone, again, this is a very good period I would say for Jews and Jewish in assimilation, the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. And so the Jewish population of Prague got its wonderful, shiny, colourful new synagogue in the then very fashionable orientalist style. This is how it looks inside. Again, I would say this is a very joyful, a joyful building. And so this is the central railway station and in other cities I’ve talked about Vienna, Budapest, Paris, I’ve talked about how Art Nouveau arrived and how in each place it mutated and became something local and typical. We saw that in Vienna and Budapest and we see it also in Prague here. This is inside the railway station. This is the, the, what’s this building called? It’s ugh, it’s the municipal house.
This is called the Municipal House. And it was started in 1905. It’s actually a vast arts complex that contains various restaurants. And here is the facade, this is the Smetana Hall, which is inside the municipal building. This, looking actually rather Viennese here, this is the American bar. So you could have a cocktail in the American bar or you could have your knodel or whatever you wanted your local food, in the Czech restaurant, which is decorated with these delightful ceramic murals. And so Prague is one of the great Art Nouveau cities. This is the Grand Hotel Europa. When I first went to Prague in the 1990s, this was really down at heel and seedy and bit sinister actually, but has been done up since and is looking very splendid, this is the interior of the Europa Hotel. And all around Prague, there are a very beautiful, gorgeous, colourful Art Nouveau facades. And then moving on from Art Nouveau, we’ve got a style which is sort of related to Vienna secession, but actually moving into art deco. And we also get a very extraordinary and special kind of modernism, which is, it’s a style which is really only found in the Czech Republic. It’s not found anywhere else. And it, they call it cubist architecture. And it’s marked by all these angular planes. Actually I’d say the relationship to Cubist painting, I think is a relatively superficial one. This is the most famous building by an architect called Jan Gocar It’s the Black Madonna building that’s in the centre of Prague.
And also there is, in inverted commas, cubist furniture with similar planes that are often designed by the same architects. Now this of course I have to mention Mucha, but I’m, I’m only going to mention to you in passing today cause I’m going to talk, so there’s somebody at my door. I’m just going to ignore them, it’s the, I’ve got a whole lecture devoted to him on Sunday. So I’m just going to mention his importance. The other very significant Czech artist in this period is Frantisek Kupka who starts off as a symbolist artist, as you can see here, he was very into mysticism and all the, the kind of weird mystical ideas that are floating around in Europe and the . But he becomes one, a pioneer of abstraction, a very distinctive, quite unlike anything else, he moves to Paris and actually is based, largely Paris based from this time onwards. But it’s a highly individual distinctive version of cubism that is really unlike anything else. This is also by Kupka. Literature: So Prague is a very important literary centre. It’s bilingual of course, because there’s a Czech literary tradition and there is a German one. But I suppose the really significant international figures are the German speakers on the left is Max Brod. And I’m sure that Trudy has talked a lot about him. He’s an interesting guy. They said that he spoke Czech like a German and German like a Czech. But he was, he was a very important intermediary between Czech culture and German culture. And he was the great promoter of two, of maybe the two greatest Czech geniuses of this period. Franz Kafka, who you see on the right hand side. In fact, without Brod we wouldn’t have Kafka. Cos you know, that when Kafka was dying, he stipulated that all his work should be destroyed. And it was Brod who, who took the momentous decision to ignore that and published Kafka’s works.
But he was also a great promoter of Janacek and again, I’ll talk more about that next week and other literary figures - you know, as I, you have these moments. I, the other day, suddenly in the middle of the night I thought, shit! I told them that Werfel was Hungarian. Of course he’s not Hungarian he’s Czech, I’m surprised that nobody rapped me over the knuckles for that. But here he is, the young Werfel who was a protege of Rainer Maria Rilke, who you see on the left hand side. Both of them at this time around 1900 highly regarded as poets. And this is Meyrink, Gustav Meyrink And he wrote, in 1915, he wrote the novel The Golem, which is based on an ancient Jewish legend, a sort Frankenstein legend and of course that was then turned into a famous German horror movie in the 1920s. So now we come 1918 - of course Czechoslovakia is in a very difficult position during the First World War because in some ways as Slavs they identify with the Russians and they’re longing for their independence. So actually the the Versailles Treaty for the Czechs was something to celebrate and not to mourn. And here are the Czechs in Prague celebrating the creation of a Czech nation. This is the greatest musical genius Czech musical genius of the early 20th century. This is Janacek and he was already middle-aged by 1918, but he’s one of those people that, it always encourages me cos he just got better and better. I mean, he’s, the great flowering of his genius was when he was in his sixties and his seventies.
And in fact, if it weren’t for the little boy you see in, in the picture on the left hand side, he might have gone well into his eighties and written even more wonderful music. But there were three things that really stimulated him in this and triggered the great flowering, the late flowering of Janacek’s music. First of all, there was the independence of his country that excited him very much. Secondly, his international reputation took off, particularly with the performance of his opera Jenufa in Vienna, and then throughout German cities and even in New York just after, in 1921. And thirdly, he fell in love with this rather beautiful, moody looking young woman called, she is called Camille Stosslova. And I don’t think it was a relationship that was ever consummated but certainly a lot of his late music was inspired by his love for her. And as I said, it was unfortunate right at the, the little boy went for a walk one day in the forest and got lost and the mother was distraught and the elderly Janacek went into the woods to search for the little boy and he got a chill and he died of pneumonia. But, so I want to play the opening of perhaps his most famous piece of orchestral music. And it, it was a fanfare that was originally conceived for the opening of a gymnastic festival. So the Czech, Czechoslovakia as it then was, was a tremendous success story throughout the interwar period. It was a really functioning democracy at a time when democracies in other European countries were undermined and under threat., and it was also a tremendous success story economically and industrially, high, no, cutting edge technology in the production of vehicles. And also, I have to say of weapons, which was of course one of the things that made Czechoslovakia so attractive to the Germans.
Taking over Czech industry was an incredible boost to Hitler just before the Second World War. The Tatra cars, they’re very beautiful. These cars from this period, they’re extraordinary works of art. There’s one in the Museum of Modern Art, in Munich actually, and I’m always fascinated by it. And you can see inside it, it’s such a, a beautiful streamlined object. And these cars were famous for having the fastest acceleration of any cars on the planet. And it was a joke in the second World War that they were actually the Czech secret weapon of resistance cos all the cars, of course, the Nazis, when they came into Czechoslovakia, they stole these cars they confiscated them and apparently quite a number, they couldn’t really control them. The rapid acceleration was very dangerous. And a large number of Nazi officer managed to bump themselves off by driving into walls. Literature This is Jaroslav Hasek on the left, the Good Soldier Schweik, which was an anti-war novel that came out between 1921 and 1923 and was a huge international success. It is apparently the most read book written in the Czech language and has been translated into 50 other languages. Also huge international reputation were the Capek Brothers, Josef and Karel Capek and their play. The Insect Play that was, I have a vague, vague memory of it. Oh, this is a text that we read in school, I must reread it. But that was another huge international success. And of course they invented the term robot with the other great success Rossum’s Universal Robot.
And film industry Czech film industry was also very important and they produced their own local stars. These are probably the two most famous and glamorous Czech film stars Lida Baarova and Annie - In fact, she became known as Annie Andre, outside of the Czech Republic. Lida Baarova most notorious for her affair with Goebbels, which actually then really ended her international career. And the most famous movie to come out of the Czech Republic was Ecstasy. Very controversial movie. It launched the career of Hedy Lamarr. I mean, she was, she’s a fascinating character. Somebody should really make a movie about her. She was a nice Jewish girl from Vienna whose name was Kessler. She married a Nazi arms manufacturer. And while sitting there at dinner, she, she listened to the conversation. She was extraordinarily bright and intelligent. She decided to, she managed to escape from her husband. She managed, she sort of secreted all her jewels in her handbag and fled to Paris and then to America became a big Hollywood film star. And I’m sure you know that with the composer George Antheil the two of them actually they came up with various brilliant scientific innovations that were used for a anti-submarine warfare and also the technology - don’t ask me how - that is behind mobile phones. The film was controversial, not only for the nudity, but it, apparently, it’s a long time since I’ve seen it, I must watch it again, it was also famous for the first onscreen depiction of a female orgasm. 1938. A terrible moment of shame for Europe. We do hope it’s not going to be repeated. This is the Munich conference. Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini the big four Count Ciano on the right hand side Mussolini’s son-in-law and Chamberlain coming back to London with that worthless scrap of paper saying peace in our time.
And Czechoslovakia was sacrificed. These are maps that show all the areas around the dark areas were the German speaking areas, Sudetenland and so on, that were handed over to the Germans. But of course it left Czechoslovakia completely defenceless. And so it was, it, just breaking all his promises then Hitler just moves in and takes over the rest of the country in March, 1939 here, that this is the Nazis Hitler in Prague in March, 1939. And a couple of months later in June with the Nazis now in control there was a concert given by the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by their great conductor, Vaclav Talich, who you see here, and in fact there were two concerts and they played all Czech music and they played the, Dvorak’s Slavonic dances and they played Ma Vlast, my country by Smetana and these concerts were broadcast around the world and they were intended by the Nazis to show that cultural life was continuing in Prague and everything was hunky dory and so on. It didn’t turn out quite as they intended because at the end of the concert, after Ma Vlast, there is the most incredible response from the audience. And they all burst spontaneously into the Czech National anthem, which must have been a very uncomfortable moment for the Nazis. And just a few years ago, a transcript of this concert was discovered in the archives of Oslo Radio. So I’m just going to play you this moment.
It’s a very, for me, very, very moving moment where the, in the applause, at the end of Ma Vlast, the audience starts singing their national anthem. If I can actually get this thing to… Actually, I must tell you another story about Talich, in 1942, the Nazis ordered him to conduct a celebratory performance of Lohengrin at the Czech Opera for Hitler’s birthday. And he really didn’t want to do this, but you couldn’t say no to the Nazis. So he actually took himself to hospital and he said, open me up and operate on me. And he had a completely unnecessary operation in order to avoid conducting a concert to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. Now this is the, a famous moment, or two famous moments, actually. This is Reinhard Heydrich, who I’m sure you know about. He’s often thought to be the chief planner of the Holocaust. And this photograph is taken on the evening of the 26th of May, 1942. He’s coming out of a concert and he’s just been listening to string quartets chamber music written by his father who was quite a reputed composer. I must admit, I have a sort of slightly morbid desire to to know what music… this man is one of the most evil men in the history of the world. What a chamber and what a string quartet could sound by… written by his father could possibly sound like… the next day on the way to work he was ambushed and shot, do you see on the right hand side. And he died of his wounds. And the retribution was unbelievably terrible. It’s estimated that 1200 Czechs were murdered in reprisal and particularly the village of Lidice, which had hide, apparently some of the killers had been hidden in the village or supported by people in the village, or, in fact there’s no very definite evidence, but that’s what the Nazis claimed.
And so they, they massacred the entire population of the village. You can see the, the mattress on the wall to prevent bullets ricochet off the wall. And they, they boasted about this. This was not a crime that was done in secret. This was the news of this was spread around the world. And in the middle of the war it caused a reaction of unbelievable horror. And in New York, the exiled Czech politician Jan Masaryk and Jarmila Novotna, they recorded a set of Czech folk songs, which they called Songs of Lidice to commemorate the victims of the massacres and I’m going to play you a tiny bit of this. Now, I want to finish on a happier note, and I’m going to finish by giving you a cooking lesson actually. Now I’m sure you never thought that lockdown university would land up giving you cooking lessons but I want to tell you how to make this. This is a Czech specialty. In Czech It’s called Meruňkové Knedlíky in German it’s Marillenknödel and it’s a very, I think it’s a very delicious, hearty dish. You make a dough, you boil potatoes and you grate them. And then you make a dough out of the grated potatoes, break an egg into them and you can put cream cheese in it too into the mixture. And then you wrap the dough round an apricot and it’s the size of a golf ball. And then you drop that into simmering water and after a few minutes the golf ball grows to the size of a tennis ball and it rises to the top of the simmering water. And then you take it out and you roll it in melted butter and breadcrumbs, Semmelbrösel, and then you eat it with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on the top. So very simple, nice hearty Czech dish to finish with tonight. Now let’s see what questions we have.
Q&A and Comments:
Yes, I’m back in Paris. Thank you Henry from sunny Florida, not so sunny in Paris today. Yes.
Where Thomas Mazurek was present. Yes. I mean I think that sad, sadly brutally brought to an end. Charles Bridge was for centuries called only the Stone Bridge. Yes.
St. Vitus dance. I did know that once, but I can’t think off the top of my head.
Somebody privileged to return services in the old new schul.
Yeah, the Protestants hats are very similar to those worn by Cromwells. Yeah, well I suppose they might be a connection or they’re probably just fashionable hats of the period, I suppose. The lower window.
Thank you Howard, is the one where the nobles were thrown out. Yes. It was quite a, it was a co-ed boarding school.
Do I know anything about the building which was supposed to be used as a… ;
I’m dying, I’ve got the movie, the, the 1920s movie. Wonderful German Expressionist movie. I need to find out more about that.
Q: What was the main language used by the nobility in Prague?
A: I’m not sure about the nobility. I think probably also German. I once had a very interesting conversation with a gentleman at the London Jewish Cultural Centre I might repeat this story next week. He was a Mr. Anshel and he was a cousin of the great conductor Carl Anshel And he told me, sotto voce, that he was rather embarrassed, but he said to me, well of course, you know, we spoke German. We only ever spoke Czech with the servants. So I think the bourgeoisie, especially the Jewish bourgeoisie, they were speaking German.
The Estate theatre closed for many years. Lucky you to see Don Giovanni there. Franz Josef crowned in Olomouc Cathedral in view of the riots in Vienna. It’s the Moldau or Vltava, the river. Lovely piano solo polkas by Smetana; Vltava… did the theme of the Vltava Well yes, he borrowed it, but I’ve read somewhere or other that it was actually originally an Italian folk tune before it was a Czech folk tune.
Q: Can I define Bohemia?
A: It’s a geographical area and it’s not the whole of the Czech Republic 'cause, it’s the larger part of the Czech Republic. Czech Airlines uses or used the opening bars of my Ma Vlast onboard its flights when landing. A nice alternative to Lakme, I suppose.
Hatikva, yes, is based on Ma Vlast No, the Maldau, it’s the river Maldau.
Smetana’s music, you are right. Yes. It is the same theme as the Israeli national anthem. The church where Dvorak married is the in Newtown. Lovely small church. Thank you. Not a question, but a comment, Smetana acknowledged that he borrowed the theme of Vltava from a theme which originated in Spain or Portugal centuries earlier and has been adapted by various countries. I think that’s probably true. The Moldau music of Smetana, yeah, yep. Yeah, we’ve done that.
This is Margaret, first time I heard Songs My Mother Taught Me sung I was introduced to this play by Yehudi Menuhin. Yes. It’s often done as a, violin solo piece.
I agree with you Helen. I find Dvorak’s music incredibly poignant. It’s happy and poignant at the same time. In the Smetana museum on Charles Bridge is able to stand on a rostrum holding a baton which could be pointed to various corners of room. I pointed to the corner where there were recordings of various pieces; I conducted Vltava. Well done.
So were all the Jews… yes, I suppose they must have been. I think probably, you know, the Jews were really glad to get out of the ghetto, it was not, probably a very pleasant place to live. Strangely in the ghetto, the roofs of the Jews houses had to use black tiles, not red ones. Ghetto clearance was not antisemitic. That’s true. It was slum clearance. That is, that’s true. I hope I made that point. And in fact, it wasn’t just the ghetto. There were, it was a larger area of Prague that actually included the ghetto.
An article by Shlomo Maital gives a very interesting historical background to the Hatikva, Smetana, et cetera. Thank you.
Municipal house. Yes. Yes. It replaced a mediaeval palace. That is true.
Q: What are the most significant art museums to find Czech art?
A: Well, I suppose you just have to go… you’re not going to find a lot of it outside of Prague, I suppose.
Esther went to Prague many years ago. Reminds you how you enjoyed the visit. That’s good.
Yeah. It’s a wonderful city. I don’t know it that well. I only been there I think three times and I would like to go back to it as well.
Don’t ask me about Czech. I know just, I just only, I can only, only know two words in Czech. One is for the the apricot knurdle, knedlíky; And the other one is which means abracadabra - very useful.
The little boy, yes, Camille was married to somebody else he wasn’t Janacek’s child. The little boy was found.
Oh, oh so sweet Arlene. That that you, you worry about it after all this time.
This is somebody respectfully disagreeing, Hatikva’s melody did not come from Smetana’s… Yeah, I know, I know all of that. Yeah. Proms in 1968 when the famous Russian cellist Rostropovich played the, yes, I remember that. I remember that. It was just at the time I came to London. You have a cut glass dish… of course they had a very famous glass industry; Yes. Czech Glass is very well known that Ruby Glass is very popular of course. Not going to, I think we’ve done the Israeli national anthem.
Yes. I think Thomas Mazurek, he was a great human being and of course came to a sad end. Oh, there is a movie about Hedy Lamarr called Bombshell. Thank you. Thank you.
Somebody else saying that lots about Hedy Lamarr and a documentary about her. Well I must look that one up. Thank you very much. Chapek. Thank you. Yes, I know it. And as Peter thank you so much. I should have, I should have consulted you before I did this lecture to try and get the Czech the pronunciations right. Why? I don’t know. I mean cause the, there was a very, Czechoslovakia had already split in the Nazi period with Slovakia actually allying themselves to the Nazis. But I’m sure Trudy’s going to tell you all about that. Or has told you all about that. More about Hedy Lamarr…
Lidice… this is interesting. Lidice had had nothing to do with the paratroopers. It was an excuse. Yes. I believe that is correct. It’s a terrible, terrible, terrible story. Those knedlíky are not a dessert. They’re main course they, well, I’m not surprised cause they’re pretty heavy. They’re, and they’re really, it’s kind of cold weather food.
Q: Can I print the recipe?
A: I could, I could write it down and see if Judy could send it to you. Marillenknödel. Yeah. Yes. You well you couldn’t, that’s, you can either put a sugar cube in the middle or you can put a little bit of marzipan in the middle of the apricot. But I don’t actually always do that. And I’m afraid I cheat because I use dried apricots. I soak them because, for one, It’s easier and then you don’t really need the sugar cube or the… Judith has seen Don Giovanni in the Estate Theatre lousy singing. Yes. I can imagine.
Yeah. I suppose there’s a lot of stuff done for the tourists. What happens between, that’s another lecture and it’s probably not for me to do about the later period.
Yeah. They’re also made, Marillenknödel are also made with zwetschge Those little sharp plums. That’s true. I haven’t read those novels I’m sorry to say the name of the song is Songs My mother Taught Me many, many beautiful versions of that song.
This is Abigail who went to, during the Communist Times around 1968. No one spoke in English or French. I suppose people spoke German but they might not be very keen to do so.
This is a telling us what Saint Vita’s dance is. Survival of the Czech language in the mid 19th century is a fascinating story very much connected to cooking and women sharing Czech recipes and reading and sharing the menus. That’s lovely. Thank you so much.
Ooh, some years ago on a tour given of Prague by an Such a wonderful experience. We also visited Kafka family graves. Cemeteries. Yes. Thank you for your kind comments.
I think I better come to an end cause this seems to be going on for quite a bit.
Tom Stoppard’s father was a doctor for the Bata shoe factory. That’s interesting.
No, it was Jan Mazarek. That’s right. His son who was thrown out the window. Another, it seems to be there are, I believe there are three different defenestrations in Prague It’s obviously a local custom.
Right. Thank you all very much. Hary, Hary Janos No, that’s Kodaly. And that’s Hungarian.
Anyway, thank you very much and I will talk to you again about Mucha on Sunday.