What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 25 September 2022.

Baranova was built in 1885.

It was named Vratislavova until 1940 and again from 1945 to 1947, after Vratislav II, who is in this bumper here’s-all-the-Přemyslids-thread from a few days back: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/02/26/prague-3-day-152-premyslovska/.

It was then called Habánská from 1940 to 1945, after the Habaners, the Hutterites (that’s a branch of Anabaptists) who moved to Slovakia in the 16th century.

These days, almost all Hutterites live in Western Canada and the Great Plains.

Kurt Baran was born in 1899 to a Jewish, German-speaking family in Brno. He met his wife-to-be, Marie Baranová, during a strike against Sunday work.

In 1921, Baran became a paid functionary of the Communist party. He married Marie in 1925, and the couple moved to current-day Radhošťská (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2023/02/26/prague-3-day-149-radhostska/).

After the communist party was banned, Baran went to work for an advertising agency which was actually a front for communist activity.

The Nazi occupiers arrested the illegal communist leadership in February 1940. Kurt and Marie were among those betrayed to the authorities.

Baran was sent to Terezín, then Dachau, then Mauthausen, where he died, supposedly of heart failure, on 28 October 1941. He was 42.

His daughter Vlasta suffered a similar fate in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, succumbing to meningitis at the age of 19.

Marie survived WW2, and worked for the communist party afterwards before being expelled from it in the 1970s.

Kurt Baran is the most obscure person I’ve written about so far. This doesn’t feel entirely right.

This post is based on the recollections of Elly Jouzová, the Barans’ other daughter, who is still resident in Žižkov today. A great read: https://www.pametnaroda.cz/cs/magazin/pribehy/naciste-ji-vzali-nejblizsi-po-otci-pojmenovali-ulici-pribeh-elly-jouzove.

The main picture in that link is a photo of the family on what was presumably their last holiday together in 1939.