Learning & enlightenment
University, libraries, scholars, scientists, Mozart, theatre, opera, music. Court of astronomers and alchemists.
Part of Prague's story
10 moments in this segment.
- — Charles IV founds the University. The Karolinum, seat of Charles University, the first university north of the Alps and east of Paris. Place: Karolinum, Old Town Figures: Charles IV, King of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperor · Arnošt of Pardubice, first archbishop of Prague Charles IV is raised at the French court, educated by the future Pope Clement VI, crowned King of the Romans at Bonn in 1346, and King of Bohemia at home a year later. He speaks five languages. He has decided that his hereditary kingdom shall be the heart of his empire, not a province of it. Prague will become its capital, its theological seat, and its school. On April 7, 1348, with papal bull and royal charter in hand, he founds the studium generale at Prague: four faculties (arts, theology, law, medicine), four nations (Bohemian, Bavarian, Polish, Saxon), and the right to confer degrees recognized across Christendom. It is the first university north of the Alps and east of the Rhine.
- — The Four Articles of Prague. Satan sells indulgences: the Jena Codex satirises the Roman abuses that the Four Articles of Prague set out to abolish. Place: Prague, drafted in council during the siege Figures: Masters of Charles University (Utraquist) · the priests of Tábor (radical) · Jakoubek of Stříbro, theorist of the lay chalice By the summer of 1420 the Hussite movement is two movements. The Prague masters, schooled at the university Charles IV founded, want a reformed Bohemian church inside Latin Christendom. The Taborites, gathered around Žižka and the priest Mikuláš of Pelhřimov in their hilltop fortress in southern Bohemia, want the Bible alone, no purgatory, no saints, no images, and a return any day now of Christ in person. The two wings need a single platform if the crusade outside the walls is to be answered. They produce one. The Four Articles of Prague are issued in July 1420, drafted by Jakoubek of Stříbro and the university circle, accepted (with reservations) by the Taborite preachers. They are short enough to copy onto a wall. They will be the negotiating position of the Czech reformers for the next sixteen years.
- — The Death of Tycho Brahe. Tycho Brahe's tomb in the Týn Church on Old Town Square, where he was buried with imperial honours by Rudolf II eleven days after his death. Place: The Curtius house, Hradčany; buried at the Týn Church Figures: Tycho Brahe · Johannes Kepler, present at the deathbed · Peter Vok of Rožmberk, at whose banquet Tycho fell ill On 13 October 1601 Tycho dines at the house of Peter Vok of Rožmberk in Hradčany. He drinks generously. He is fifty-four and does not, by the etiquette of the imperial court, rise from the table before his host. By the time the meal ends his bladder will not empty. He is carried home in pain. Eleven days of agony follow. Kepler is at the bedside and keeps notes. Modern forensics, including a 2010 exhumation at the Týn Church, finds elevated mercury in the moustache hair. Whether self-administered (Tycho practiced iatrochemistry on himself), accidental (his apothecary supplies were not clean), or poisoned by an enemy (the literature has nominated several, including Kepler) is still argued. Probably the first.
- — The Dissolution of the Monasteries. Strahov Monastery on Hradčany, viewed from Úvoz street. The Premonstratensian house survived Joseph II's Aufhebung by reclassifying itself as a teaching foundation; hundreds of contemplative cloisters in Bohemia and Moravia did not, and their libraries flowed down to the Klementinum. Place: Bohemia and Moravia; the Klementinum, the Strahov, the Servite house at Na Slupi, hundreds of provincial cloisters Figures: Joseph II · Gottfried van Swieten, presiding over the Klementinum library reform · the abbots and abbesses of the contemplative orders Joseph II distinguishes between religious houses that teach, heal, or preach (which he keeps) and contemplative houses (which he closes as unproductive). The criterion is utility, measured against the welfare of the state. By the decree of January 1782, the Carthusians, the Camaldolese, the Capuchin nuns, the Poor Clares, and most Benedictine and Cistercian houses fall within the dissolved category. In Bohemia, roughly half of all religious houses are suppressed within five years. About six hundred buildings change use. The proceeds, in theory, fund a Religion Fund for parish stipends and new parishes. In practice they fund the army and the civil service. The Strahov Premonstratensian abbey above Hradčany survives by reinventing itself as a scholarly institution within weeks of the decree, transferring valuable manuscripts from suppressed houses into its library and emphasizing teaching.
- — The Bouda Theatre. Václav Thám, dramatist and director of the Vlastenské divadlo. In July 1786 he opened a wooden booth (bouda) on the Horse Market, the first stage in Prague to perform in Czech for paying audiences. The structure stood five years. Place: Horse Market (now Wenceslas Square), Prague New Town Figures: Václav Thám, dramatist and director · Karel Hynek Thám, his brother, philologist · the journeyman actors of the Vlastenské divadlo company The Patriotic Theatre, Vlastenské divadlo, opens in July 1786 in a hastily timbered building on what is then the Horse Market (Koňský trh), at the foot of the long sloping square that will be renamed for Saint Wenceslas in 1848. Prague calls it Bouda, the Shed. The walls are pine, the roof is leaky, the auditorium holds about nine hundred at a press. It is the first permanent stage in Bohemia to play in Czech. Václav Thám, a twenty-one-year-old playwright who has been agitating for Czech-language theatre since his student days at the Klementinum, is the driving force. The repertoire is mixed: translations of Schiller and Shakespeare, original Czech historical plays (Thám's own Břetislav a Jitka), German comedies in alternation. On Czech evenings the audience is bricklayers, journeymen, women from the Vinohrady villages who would not be seated in the Nostitz house, and a thin layer of patriots from the university.
- — Smetana returns from Gothenburg. Bedřich Smetana, studio portrait, Library of Congress copy Place: Prague, returning from Gothenburg, Sweden Figures: Bedřich Smetana, composer · the audience of a city in which Czech opera is suddenly possible Smetana leaves Prague for Gothenburg in 1856, conducting choirs and giving piano recitals in a Hanseatic town that pays him properly and asks no political questions. The October Diploma of 1860 and the February Patent of 1861 begin to thaw the Bach absolutism that drove him out. The empire concedes constitutional life. Czech-language theatre, Czech-language music, Czech-language publishing all become things that can be done in public again. He returns in May 1861. He is thirty-seven. He has been writing piano études and tone poems. He has not yet written an opera.
- — The Bartered Bride premieres. Prodaná nevěsta, piano score cover, 1909 edition Place: Provisional Theatre, Vltava embankment Figures: Bedřich Smetana, conducting · Karel Sabina, librettist · the audience, half of which will be Prussian soldiers within the month Smetana finishes the first version of Prodaná nevěsta in early 1866. It is short, in two acts, with spoken dialogue rather than recitative. Karel Sabina's libretto is a village comedy: a girl is sold by her father in advance to the wealthy Mícha family; she loves a stranger named Jeník; the stranger turns out to be the older Mícha son, returned in disguise; the contract was binding only in its strict letter, and he is the man named in it. Everyone is satisfied. The premiere on May 30, 1866 is received politely. The house is not full. Four days later, on June 3, Austria declares war on Prussia. Within a fortnight Prussian forces are advancing through Bohemia. The opera plays twice, then closes.
- — Dvořák returns from America. Antonín Dvořák, photographic portrait, 1901 Place: Returning to Prague from New York City via Hamburg Figures: Antonín Dvořák, composer · Jeannette Thurber, founder of the National Conservatory in New York (loses him) · the Prague Conservatoire (gets him back) Jeannette Thurber, philanthropist and founder of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, recruits Dvořák in 1891 with a salary of fifteen thousand dollars, twenty-five times his Prague pay. He arrives at the conservatory at 126–128 East 17th Street in September 1892. He teaches Black and women students alongside white and male, which is the institution's policy and a condition Dvořák accepts without comment. He writes the Ninth Symphony (From the New World), the F major String Quartet (the American), and most of the Cello Concerto in B minor. He spends two summers in the Czech-speaking village of Spillville, Iowa. He learns about the Hiawatha legend. He listens to spirituals sung by his student Harry T. Burleigh. His program note on the Ninth Symphony says the work draws on the spirit, not the literal melodies, of African-American and Native American music. The premiere at Carnegie Hall in December 1893 is a sensation.
- — The Badeni language riots. The Badeni riots in Prague, 1897, contemporary illustration Place: Wenceslas Square, Old Town, the German Casino on Příkopy, the Jewish quarter Figures: Count Kazimierz Badeni, Austrian prime minister · German students of the Charles-Ferdinand University (rioting) · Czech counter-rioters · Field Marshal-Lieutenant Eduard Klobus, declaring martial law In April 1897 Count Badeni issues language ordinances for Bohemia and Moravia: from 1901, every civil servant in the Bohemian crown lands must be competent in both Czech and German. In practice this advantages Czechs, who are mostly bilingual already, over German speakers, who often are not. Bohemian Germans take the ordinances as the moment the empire stopped being theirs. Protests in Graz, Vienna, and the Sudeten towns escalate through the autumn. The Reichsrat is paralyzed. On November 28, Emperor Franz Joseph dismisses Badeni. The decision reaches Prague that evening. Within hours, German students celebrating in the German Casino on Příkopy are met by Czech counter-demonstrators.
- — The Liberated Theatre. Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich, the comic dyad whose Osvobozené divadlo defined Prague's interwar political cabaret. Place: Umělecká beseda hall, Vodičkova street · later Adria Palace Figures: Jiří Voskovec · Jan Werich · Jaroslav Ježek, composer (from 1929) · Jindřich Honzl, director Voskovec is 21, just back from a lycée in Dijon. Werich is 21, his classmate at the Prague law faculty. They write a sketch revue called Vest Pocket Revue in 1926; they perform it themselves in the spring of 1927 in a hall borrowed from the Umělecká beseda artists' society on Vodičkova street. The hall holds three hundred. The reviews are extraordinary. By autumn they have a name (Osvobozené divadlo, the Liberated Theatre, lifted from the Soviet avant-garde directors but emptied of doctrine) and a permanent company under the directorship of Jindřich Honzl. By 1929 they have Jaroslav Ježek at the piano, a 23-year-old jazz composer trained at the conservatory, half-deaf and nearly blind, who will write more than sixty songs for them in ten years. This photograph dates from 1938.
