What's in a Prague street name

Psohlavců was built in 1933.

‘Psohlavci’ would translate as ‘dog-heads’, which may have you hoping that I’m going to write about a film from 1994 or thereabouts which has some of the lowest ratings possible on Rotten Tomatoes, ČSFD, etc., but which you loved when you were ten years old.

In which case, sorry to disappoint you – Psohlavci is another novel by Alois Jirásek, published in 1884.

It turns out that psohlavec is a derogatory term to describe a Chod. In short, the Chods / Chodové were free peasants in current-day Western Bohemia, most famous for a full-scale uprising against Habsburg rule in the 1690s.

For more on the Chods, take a look at https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/01/30/prague-2-day-25-chodska/. There’s a picture of their leader, Jan Kozina, on that page – he was executed in 1695, and is also the main character in Psohlavci.

Psohlavci, unsurprisingly, touched a nerve in a land that wouldn’t be under Austrian control all that much longer; unauthorised adaptations for the stage arose in the 1880s (including one in the US), and an opera version premiered at the National Theatre (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/14/prague-1-day-105-divadelni/) in 1898.

It’s also been adapted as a film twice (1931 and 1955), and once as a made-for-television opera (1985). Here’s the 1955 version.