Originally published on Twitter on 13 October 2022.
Náměstí Jiřího z Lobkovic was built in 1910. It underwent a pointless name change to Lobkovické náměstí (1940-5).
It was then called Náměstí V.I. Čapajeva until 1990. Vasily Chapayev (1887-1919) was a Red Army commander. Soviet propaganda hailed him as a war hero; he also had bugger all to do with Czechoslovakia.
An urban settlement in Kharkiv was named after him until 2006; it’s now called Slobozhanske.
Hope everyone there is as well as they can be. Слава Україні.
Jiří Kristián z Lobkowicz, meanwhile, was born in Vienna in 1835, into one of the oldest Bohemian noble families.
He studied law at the then Charles-Ferdinand University in the 1850s, and became an actuary, although he quit in 1862 in protest against the Austrian government’s centralisation policy.
In 1865, he became mayor of Mělník district, and was elected to the Czech Regional Assembly, a position he would hold until 1872, and again from 1883 to 1907.
As a conservative patriot, he favoured federalisation of the Habsburg Empire, and wished for Bohemia to regain its historic privileges; on the other hand, he was sceptical of ethnic nationalism and insisted on using both Czech and German in his work and correspondence.
In 1871, he took part in the negotiations concerning the Fundamental Articles, which aimed to give the Czech Lands a less subordinate status in the Empire (though still more subordinate than Hungary). The project was never adopted.
In 1879, Lobokowicz was elected as a deputy to the Austrian Parliament (Reichsrat), where he continued to lobby for language and education rights in Bohemia. He became a hereditary member of the House of Lords (Herrenhaus) in 1883.
He died in Prague in 1908. Research indicates that he inherited a heck of a lot of properties, had relatives with more surnames than some of us have letters in our own names, and also had twelve children.
Properties owned by the family include the Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle, Mělník Castle, and Nelahozeves Castle, which I always see on signs just outside of Prague and which always confuses me because it looks so much like Hungarian.
Notable contemporary Lobkowiczes include politicians Jiří and Michal, the latter of whom was briefly Czech Defence Minister at the tender age of 34, back in 1998.
As well as the late bishop of Ostrava-Opava, who died in 2022.
And who requires an additional tweet, as his full name was Franz von Assisi Karl Friedrich Klemens Jaroslav Alois Leopold Gerhard Telesphorus Odilius Johann Bosco Paul Marie, Prince von Lobkowicz.
There’s also the unsolved murder of Prince Edouard-Xavier de Lobkowicz, aged 23 at the time of his killing in Paris in 1984. This article is from the time, but the case remains unsolved.
What's in a Prague street name 
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