What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on X on 9 March 2023.

Svobodova was built in 1884. Czech Wikipedia’s disambiguation page lists 17 different Jan Svobodas. So please give me a minute.

Jan ’10 of 17’ Svoboda was born in 1800 or 1803 in Hořepník, near Pelhřimov.

He studied at the seminary in Klagenfurt, which I’m mentioning mainly because I lived near there as part of my studies exactly 20 years ago, and always find the rare occasions on which Carinthia gets mentioned quite exciting.

Moving to Prague instead of getting ordained, he taught at the Týn School. He was a good enough teacher to get sent to Germany to learn more about the education system there, with a view to setting something similar up in Bohemia.

On his return, he opened a primary school on Na Hrádku (coming up) in 1832, with the educational premise being ‘mens sana in corpore sano‘ and all that. *resists temptation to sing ‘biti zdrava’ in public*

His experiment was so successful that it ended up getting put into a book.

In 1842, he moved to a teaching role at a different school, in Malá Strana, but died of tuberculosis two years later.

The school in Na Hrádku lasted a few decades, until a larger school was opened to cater better to the local children’s needs: https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/08/26/prague-2-day-117-na-dekance/.