What's in a Prague street name

Halasova was built in 1962.

František Halas was born in Brno-Husovice in 1901. His parents were textile workers; his father had been imprisoned for his communist beliefs, and his mother died in 1908. These experiences would greatly influence his career as a poet.

When WW1 started, Halas’s father was called up to the front, where the Russians took him prisoner. Meanwhile, František finished his education, trained as a bookseller, and then worked as a clerk for an insurance company from 1922 to 1924.

He also joined a communist youth organisation, and from, 1921, worked for the communist press as well as avant-garde magazines. The nature of his poetry varied, with time, from proletarian verses to poetic (but melancholic) verses to existential poetry.

After his military service (1923 to 1925), he moved to Prague and got a job at the Orbis publishing house.

In 1936, Halas travelled to Spain during the Civil War, an experience that he would write several poems about.

During World War Two, he wrote for the (then underground) Rudé právo, and joined the Revolutionary Committee of Writers. He is pictured below in 1943.

After the war, Halas worked as head of the publishing department at the Ministry of Information (1945 to 1949); he also sat in the Provisional National Assembly, for the Communists, from 1945 to 1946, and became a member of the Society for Cultural and Economic Relations with the USSR (1945 to 1948).

After visits to Poland and the USSR in 1947, Halas remained a communist, but developed second thoughts about whether the Communists in Czechoslovakia were really up to the job. However, he still supported the February 1948 coup.

As well as his poetry, he was known for his translation of works from ‘fellow’ communist states – he translated Hungarian, Polish and Russian literature.

Halas died of heart failure in Prague in 1949. His sons were also renowned – František Xaver Halas (1937-2023) was the Czechoslovak (and then Czech) ambassador to the Holy See from 1990 to 1999, and Jan Halas (1945-2010) was a journalist who worked for Český rozhlas.