The Czech Few

This week a number of ceremonies are taking place to celebrate the contribution of the 2500 Czechs who flew with the RAF against the Nazis. A fifth of these men made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of Europe and their homeland. Those who came back were first greeted as heroes, but then as enemies when the Communists took control. Independently-minded defenders of freedom had no place in the Communist future.  Some fled the country once more. The former pilots that remained were imprisoned. After prison their lives continued to be ruined by their spell in the RAF - they remained under suspicion and supervision and they and their families were persecuted, denied access to good jobs and education.

Last year this memorial to their bravery and sacrifice was erected on a small park opposite the Malostranska Metro Station. The statue was funded by contributions from the British community in the Czech and Slovak Republics. A formal memorial was unveiled this week at Prague's castle. Sadly only one former Czech RAF pilot survived long enough to attend the event.

The Destruction of the Golem

 Statue of Rabbi Loew, Prague

In a previous post I told of the Golem's creation, but the story does not end there.

For a while the Golem performed his duty well, patrolling the Jewish ghetto and protecting its inhabitants from attack. And then something changed - the different versions of the story vary as to why Rabbi Loew destroyed his creation. In one version it is said that the Golem ran amok because of unrequited love. In another the Rabbi fails or forgets to neutralize the Golem on the Sabbath as instructed. Or simply the danger was passed and that the Golem was no longer required. But the time had come for the Rabbi to undo what he had made. There are two ways of disabling a golem - the first is to remove the paper from the golem's mouth, thus taking away the gift of the true name of God, and the second is to change the word that is written in the clay of the golem's forehead, “emet” truth, deleting the first letter to form the hebrew word for death, “met”.

It is said that the Golem lies in the attic of Prague's Old New Synagogue, waiting a time when another holy man will place the true name of God into his mouth. At such a time he will rise and become once more the protector of the oppressed. There is even an Indiana Jones-style tale that Nazi soldiers broke into the attic and were destroyed. But therein lies the true sadness of the story. When the Jewish community of Prague faced its greatest danger, the Golem did not rise.

I have no doubt that the Golem has a similar appeal to the Czech psyche. For any nation that has been oppressed as the Czechs have been, the legend of a superhuman being rising to defeat your enemies is bound to appeal. The Golem has the added value of being a superhuman underdog. The Golem is there alongside King Wenceslas waiting in a hollow hill with his sleeping knights or the drum made of Jan Zizka's skin. All three are symbols of the Czech nation’s hope for freedom.

Pickpockets

I was talking to a British tourist the other day, who told me how the family of a friend of hers had been unlucky enough to have experienced the dubious attention of Prague's pickpockets not once but three times! And it reminded me that I had drafted but never posted this, partly because I like to be positive about this country.

Prague is a relatively safe city to visit, but there is a problem with pickpockets. They tend to target tourists and so it is a good idea not to look like one. If you're visiting the city,  I'd advise you to leave most of your money in the hotel safe and bury what you do take into your bags. Choose a bag that allows you to make it impossible for a thief to get things in one go. Keep your hand on top of your handbag if you are a woman and don't leave your wallet in your back pocket if you are a man. Or vice versa.

I  have had someone attempt to steal from me three times. The first time I was on the metro to the airport and someone managed to open the pockets on the outside of my bag. But I don't put valuables in the exterior pockets, instead burying them in my bag, so all they would have got was a pair of dirty knickers! The second time I was trying to get some leaflets from a rack in the Anděl Transport Information Centre. There was a couple supposedly embracing in the middle of the room, and I was forced to to squeeze past them. This time they tried to get into my handbag, but again anything of value was well hidden.

The third time (actually chronologically it was the first time but that would rather spoil the build-up) they succeeded. It was my first visit to Prague in 1990 and I was very naive. Not only were westerners flooding into the newly opened city, but so were crooks from all over the former Soviet bloc. I was buying some coffees and turned with the cups in both hands to find my way barred by a group of Romanian gypsies who had appeared out of nowhere. I fought my way back to the table, managing to not spill any coffee but losing my purse in the process.

I was furious with myself. As a Londoner I was no stranger to the wiles of pickpockets and had broken my normal security rules. I was staying in the house of a lovely couple, old collegues of my friend, and they were mortified by what had happened to me.  Of course the sum of money I lost seemed relatively modest to me and enormous to them. They would not accept my assurances that it was okay. It was a matter of national honour. They fussed over me and presented me that evening with a supper of cold meats, which my friend told me were the product of the former family pig and a great honour. I felt fully recompensed and resolved to learn from the experience.

I hope by sharing this post with you, you can learn from my experience too.

Sgraffito

You can find sgraffito on the walls of old buildings throughout the Czech Republic. It is a form of wall decoration created by applying two layers of plaster with different consistencies and colour and then the careful scraping away (the word comes from the Italian verb to scratch) of some of the top layer to reveal the other thus creating a design. The designs can be simple but effective, as in the video above, creating the impression of stonework and sometimes depth. My husband and I came upon these two men restoring a building next to the Romanesque church in Trebic and I took this short video.

But sgraffito can also be used to create complex pictures. Here are some from Litomysl and Prachatice:

In some cases colour is added, as here on a building in Prachatice. 

The Legend of the Golem

 

Ales print of Rabbi Loew

Previously I talked in general about golems. In this post I want to tell you the legend of the Golem of Prague. Whether I do or not is another matter: it is so easy to get side-tracked when talking about the Golem.

There are several versions of the story but all place at the story's heart the historical figure of Rabbi Loew, who lived at the time of Rudolph II. Under Rudolph Prague enjoyed an esoteric heyday: alchemists were drawn to his court, astronomers and other thinkers thronged the city. In some ways the brilliant Rabbi Loew was part of that world. But like all Jews he was also apart. Belief in the blood libel, that Jews murdered Christian children before Passover, would regularly flare into murderous attacks on the Jewish communities, and it was the threat of such an attack that spurred the good rabbi into creating the Prague Golem.

In 1580 a particularly nasty priest was whipping up anti-Semitic feeling in the city and the rabbi sought an answer from heaven, asking in a dream for a way to defend his people from the coming pogrom. The answer he got back was “Make a Golem of clay and you will destroy the entire Jew-baiting company”. Now this was and is a major deal. In order to do this the Rabi was required the use of the true name of God, which if done without the Lord's blessing or due care would have resulted in the Rabi's destruction. But blessed with divine approval Loew went one night to the banks of the River Vltava together with two chosen companions and there formed a giant figure in the clay. One companion walked seven times around the figure reciting holy words and the Golem glowed fiery red in the dark night. The other walked seven times round the figure in the opposite direction and water replaced the fire. Last of all the Rabbi walked once round the body and placed a piece of paper on which was written the true name of God into the mouth of the Golem. Then he bowed to all points of the compass and the three men recited the words from Genesis: “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” With those words the Golem opened his eyes.

In the Footsteps of Franz Kafka

This post is a contribution towards the Magic Realism Bloghop 2015 I am organizing on Magic Realism Book Blog. About twenty blogs are taking part and you can find a list of these at the bottom of this post. 

Last weekend I was travelling back from my home in South Bohemia to my other home in England, when I stopped in Prague overnight. Prague - the city of Kafka's birth and life - is very different now from the one he knew, loved and hated. And yet it is possible to retrace his steps in the city and perhaps get a feel for what made the young Kafka one of the world's greatest magic realist writers. 

My first stop was the Franz Kafka Museum in Mala Strana on the west bank of the Vltava. The place was very busy and it was hard at times to concentrate on the exhibits. I suggest you go on a weekday. To be honest there is not much of Kafka to see there, except his writings, photographs of Kafka, his family and sweethearts, and photographs and videos of Prague at the time. The exhibition text and images are reprinted in the short book The City of K: Franz Kafka and Prague which you can buy in the museum shop. But the book and the exhibition set the scene well and helped inform my subsequent explorations. 

Kafka's childhood was restricted to a small area in the Old Town of Prague across the river from Mala Strana. He was born at what is now Namesti Franze Kafky 3, on the edge of the old Jewish ghetto. Only the doorway remains of the original house. The majority of his childhood years were spent at Dum U Minuty, a late Gothic house with Renaissance frescoes on the Old Town Square. He recounts the dread he felt in his journey from his home across the square, through Tynska Street to Masna Street and the German elementary school there. The little boy would cling to shop doorways and pillars on the way, with the family's Czech cook threatening him and abusing him. In 1893 a ten-year old Franz Kafka graduated to the Grammar School which was located in the Kinsky Palace on the Old Town Square - it is now part of the National Gallery. 

Other buildings in the Old Town Square featured in Kafka's life. His father had a haberdashery shop there. At number 16 Kafka had one of his first jobs, whilst next door was home of the Fanta family, which hosted intellectual gatherings that Kafka attended. Then there are a number of sites in the vicinity of the Square: on Ovocny trh Kafka studied law from 1901 to 1906 and he stayed for nine years in an apartment in Celetna 3 (U Tri Kealu) - it was there that he first experimented with writing. 

Kafka's Prague had three distinct ethnic groups - the Czechs, the Germans and the Jews. Kafka was a German-speaking Jew. The old ghetto may have been torn down and replaced with new impressive Art Nouveau buildings, but as Kafka said, "In us all it [the old Jewish ghetto] still lives - the dark corners, the secret alleys, shuttered windows, squalid courtyards, rowdy pubs, and sinister inns... The unhealthy old Jewish town within us is far more real than the new hygienic town around us. With our eyes open we walk through a dream: ourselves only a ghost of a vanished age." (Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch). For a while Kafka lived in the area at Parizska 26, sadly now demolished, and it was there that he wrote The Metamorphosis. Close by on the junction of Dusni and Vezenska Streets, you will find the 2003 sculpture (shown above) by Jaroslav Rona.The small Kafka on the shoulders of a headless giant is an image from the story Description of a Struggle but the giant is walking on a cobble mosaic depicting a beetle or cockroach. Also on Vezenska (no. 11) you will find the former Cafe Savoy, where Kafka attended the performances of Yiddish theatre that were very influentual on his writing, most notably on The Metamorphosis. 

For other influences you can walk to 19 Wenceslas Square (the offices of Assicurazioni Generali) or Na Porici 7 (Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia) in Mala Strana to see the buildings where Kafka worked as a bureaucrat and lawyer. He wrote in a letter: "Writing and the office cannot be reconciled" and yet he could not escape the den of bureaucrats. His work at Workers' Accident took a particular toll but fed into his writings - he saw at first hand the consequences of dehumanizing mechanization and bureaucracy in the terrible industrial accidents that proliferated at this time.

The final spot on any Kafka trail is in the suburb of Zizkov. It is his grave in the New Jewish Cemetery. He died on June 3 1924. The cemetery is a strange spot much removed from the bustle of central Prague where Kafka lived. The cemetery has a poignant air. As you walk to the grave, which is signposted from the entrance, you pass plaques on the wall to  those who died in the concentration camps. Among the Nazis' victims were Kafka's sisters and many of his friends. Had Kafka not died of TB he would probably have been another name on the list of writers killed in the camps on the wall a few metres from his grave. Kafka's Prague only survived him by fifteen years.

Bird Lake

As the Student Agency bus crosses Ceske Budejovice's city boundary, you probably aren't paying much attention to the glimpse of water beyond a curtain of trees. Within seconds the coach has passed by and the view changes to large out-of-town shopping centres and brightly painted blocks of flats. But the complex of five small lakes is worth a visit. The 25 minute tram ride from Ceske Budejovice's main train station takes you to a very special place.

The lakes may be within a stone's throw of human activity, but they are an amazing reserve for nature, especially but not exclusively for birds. Indeed the noise of the throngs of gulls and terns that inhabit the lakes' small islands can even drown out the sound of traffic on the main road to Pisek and Prague. Although they are the loudest inhabitants of the lake, the gulls and terns are not the rarest (gulls are common even in this country in Central Europe). In among them my husband and I spotted common pochards, the rarer red-crested pochard, little grebes, great crested grebes and black-necked grebes. A pied flycatcher flitted between the branches of the oaks that line the lake's banks. On the opposite bank of the lake farthest away from the road there was a large herony with not only grey herons but also night herons. In total 191 bird species have been seen on the lakes and I can well believe it.

It is an easy walk through the lakes – level and not too long but packed with animals and plants of interest. There are even plenty of information boards to tell us what to look for. The nature reserve is quite simply an amazing place and one for which I am seriously thinking of buying some binoculars. It is enough to make anyone a keen birdwatcher.