Václav Rabas was born in Krušovice (near Rakovník, and as in the beer) in 1885. After completing his military service, he started studying at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts.
This all went well enough until 1909, when a critical article he wrote about the Academy was published. Rabas’s studies were put on hold as a result.
From 1911 to 1913, he was tutored by Max Švabinský. He was called up to fight in WWI in mid-1914, but was injured on the Eastern Front in September of the same year and never fought again.
In 1946, Rabas signed the ‘May Message of Cultural Workers to the Czech People!’, a pro-Communist manifesto. He also signed ‘Forward, not a step back!’, which supported the Communist coup of February 1948, and became a favourite of the regime.
Rabas died of a heart attack in 1954, having received the Klement Gottwald State Prize a year earlier, and is buried in Krušovice, where there is also a gallery dedicated to his work.
Karel Poláček was born in Rychnov nad Kněžnou in 1892; his father was a Jewish merchant. He also went to school there, but was expelled from grammar school for behaving badly and getting poor grades.
Poláček then studied law at Charles University, while running a student puppet theatre in Rychnov. Struggling to find employment in Prague, he joined the army when WW1 started; he served on the Italian and Russian fronts, and also escaped captivity in Serbia.
After the war, he worked at the export and import commission, an experience which influenced his first short story, Kolotoč (Carousel). He also started writing for two satirical magazines, which brought him into contact with the Čapek brothers (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/01/30/prague-2-day-24-sady-bratri-capku/).
It was actually Karel Čapek who took this picture of Poláček.
His novels were often humorous portrayals of people shaped by their professions or hobbies, and have been compared to the works of Chekov. Poláček also wrote short stories, including about the Jewish faith, and a collection titled Židovské anekdoty (Jewish Anecdotes, 1933).
Although he and his partner, Dora Vaňková, managed to get his daughter from a previous marriage, Jiřina, to England, Poláček and Dora were deported to Terezín in July 1943, and were sent to Auschwitz in October 1944.
Until the 1990s, it was assumed that Poláček died at the gas chambers in Auschwitz, but an eye-witness, Klára Baumöhlová, confirmed that he was transported to a camp at Hindenburg (current-day Zabrze), where one his plays as performed (and Baumöhlová played a role).
In January 1945, Poláček participated in a march from Hindenburg to the Gleiwitz camp (located in current-day Gliwice); he did not survive this.
In 1995, fifty years after his death, Poláček was posthumously awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.
A year earlier, Poláček’s last novel, Bylo nás pět (There were five of us), which he had written shortly before being sent to Terezín, had been made into a television series.
This tribute to the five main characters, in Poláček’s native Rychnov, is one that I find incredibly touching (photo from Wikimedia Commons, by Krvesaj).
Budějovická was given its named in 1925, having formerly been part of the road from Prague to… well, read on.
In the early 1200s, a settlement was founded in South Bohemia, and was named Budivojovice, named after Budivoje ze Železnice, a courtier of King Přemysl Otakar I, and the most important judge in Bohemia.
The area was important due to its location on the trade route from Prague to Linz. The Vítkovci, owners of one of the local settlements, Stradonice, wanted to found a proper town in the region, which set off alarm bells with the Czech royals, who sensed a threat to their power.
Therefore, in March 1265, Přemysl Otakar II (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2025/01/06/prague-4-day-6-otakarova/) founded České Budějovice. Budivoje’s son was obliged to exchange the settlement with Otakar, but he got some other territories in return, and the new town maintained his father’s name.
The Vítkovci didn’t react well to the founding of the town, or the thwarting of their plans to increase their power – in 1278, they burned it down.
King Wenceslas II managed to reduce the tensions by giving the town its first regent, Klaric; the regency would pass down through the Klaric family until the 15th century.
Budějovice’s leading position as a centre of trade was severely tested during the Hussite Wars in the 1420s and 1430s; notably, it also remained Catholic and was never invaded. Similarly, when the Bohemian Revolt, against the Catholic Habsburgs, took place in 1619, Budějovice didn’t join in.
Budějovice acted as capital of Bohemia for almost two years in the 1630s, due to the effect on Prague of the Thirty Years’ War, but also endured a huge fire in 1641. The glory days were effectively over.
That said, in the 1700s, the town gained some of its most distinctive features, including the Water Tower (1724), the Samson Fountain (1727) and the Town Hall (1727-30).
(Side note: I spent a lovely long weekend in ČB in 2018, and took pictures of all of these, but they seem to be lost to me after my first Instagram account disappeared with no trace or explanation in 2021. Back your data up, people)
ČB also became a place of pilgrimage – an image of Virgin Mary of Budějovice, located in the Church of the Sacrifice of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was attributed with miraculous powers, and copies of it were placed all over the city.
The 1700s also saw occupation by Bavarian troops during the First Silesian War, nearby battles between Austrian and Prussian troops during the Second Silesian War, and increased significance for the city when it became the seat of the region (1751) and then a diocese (1785).
ČB was occupied yet again in the early 1800s – by the French (1805) and the Bavarians (1805-6). It was still pretty small at this time, with about 5,000 inhabitants, but a little invention called the railway would eventually change this state of affairs.
In 1827, a horse-drawn railway to Linz was inaugurated – the first in mainland Europe. By 1871, the connection would go all the way to Vienna, and, in 1874, ČB was connected to Prague (the horses were obviously not in use by this point).
The city benefited from industrial development, too; production by Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth, one of the world’s oldest stationery companies, was moved there in 1848.
A quick note that you might have been past some of Koh-i-Noor’s stores. This picture is from Brno, and ‘one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen’ doesn’t do it justice.
Another company you might have heard of – Český akciový pivovar, later Budweiser Budvar Brewery – was founded in 1895.
Industrialisation also attracted Czech-speakers from the rest of Bohemia – and, in 1890, meant that, for the first time, Czech speakers outnumbered the German speakers, who had long enjoyed a privileged position.
By this time, the city’s population was definitively dominated by Czech speakers, who occupied all key positions until the Nazis occupied Bohemia and Moravia from 1939 to 1945.
At the end of WW2, the city also suffered the effects of US air raids. It was then liberated by the Soviets on 9 May 1945; its remaining German population (of about 7,500) was forcibly removed shortly afterwards.
Soviet troops would be much less welcome when they arrived again on 21 August 1968, occupying the city (where the locals put a sign saying ‘Kindergarten’ on the Czech Radio station, knowing this would make the troops struggle to find and occupy it), and shooting dead one resident, 24-year-old Václav Baloun.
In 1968, Czech Radio operators broadcast illegally from the South Bohemian Theatre; in 1989, the actors and students of the same theatre would kick-start the local events of the Velvet Revolution.
One of the organisers, Vladimír Špidla, would be Prime Minister from 2002 to 2004.
In 1991, Budějovice gained its own university (having previously hosted branches of Prague’s Charles University).
There is so, so much more to say about České Budějovice, even after all of the above. I can’t show you my photos, as previously mentioned, but I can guarantee that it’s a lovely place with a great main square. With 97,000 inhabitants, it is the country’s seventh-largest city, and very deserving of your time.
But, to end, I need to bring up the well-known slogan, ‘V Českých Budějovicích by chtěl žít každý’ (‘Everyone would like to live in České Budějovice’). This comes from Záskok (‘Substitute’; 1994), a play by Žižkov’s Jára Cimrman Theatre (Jára Cimrman surely needs his own post or twenty ASAP).
It sometimes gets forgotten that that phrase, in the play, is followed by ‘kromě mě teda’ / ‘except for me, then’, which playwright and general legend Zdeněk Svěrák wants you to know is not in any way a disparaging comment about the city, and nor should it be.
‘Květnových bojů’ translates as (street) ‘of the May battles’, and commemorates the fact that Krč had a particularly hard time of it during the Prague Uprising of 1945.
Bystřice is a town of 4,700 people in Central Bohemia, about six kilometres south of Benešov. The earliest written mention that we know of is from about 1350. It developed due to its location on a trade route.
In 1943, the western part of Bystřice became part of SS-Truppenübungsplatz Böhmen, an SS military training ground, and its inhabitants were forcibly removed on 31 December of that year.
Bystřice also had the misfortune to host a concentration camp for people who were married to Jews and unwilling to divorce them. Those who passed through the camp included actor Oldřich Nový (1899-1983), painter and propagator of rugby Ondřej Sekora (1899-1967), actor Miloš Kopecký (1922-1996) and film director Ladislav Rychman (1922-2007).
Its second street sign, meanwhile, is one I won’t forget in a hurry.
Krchleby is a village in Central Bohemia, six kilometres north of Nymburk, and about a sixty-kilometre drive to the northeast from Prague.
The origins of Krchleby’s name have never quite been agreed on. ‘Krch’ means ‘left’ in Old Czech, and ‘leb’ means ‘skull’, or ‘head’. And so there have been theories that the residents walked leaning to the left, bowed their heads to the left, or were left-handed.
Other theories suggest it’s derived from ‘kirles’, meaning ‘old church’, or that Krchleby initially had an S at the start, and that ‘Skrchleby’ denoted people who would save (skrbit) bread (chléb).
In any case, Krchleby was first mentioned in writing (that we know of) in 1323, has a population of 814, and shares its name with at least six other settlements in the country, and, no, nobody is certain why they’re called Krchleby either.
Neveklov is a town of 2,800 people in Central Bohemia, about 12 km east of Benešov and, therefore, about 30 km north of Prague.
The earliest written mention we know of dates from 1285, and we assume it was once the court of somebody called Nevykl or similar. That written mention concerns the sale of the settlement to the Zderaz Monastery in Prague’s New Town (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/09/01/prague-2-day-159-na-zderaze/).
Neveklov was promoted to market town status in 1563; its subsequent history follows a familiar pattern for Bohemian towns (confiscated from Hussites and given to Catholics in the 1620s / badly damaged by fires in 1752, 1790 and 1814; ravaged by plague in 1772).
In September 1942, Neveklov and its surrounding villages were evacuated so that the SS could set up ‘SS Training Area Bohemia’. Returning residents in 1945 found a town in disrepair, and with unexploded mines.
These days, Neveklov offers fine views of the Vltava, as well as cultural monuments including the church of St. Havel, a rectory, a chapel from 1700, a synagogue and the Jewish cemetery.
Jankov is a village in South Bohemia, about 13 kilometres of České Budějovice. It has a population of about 390.
The earliest mention we know of is in a Land Register from 1379; Its name indicates that it was once the estate of someone called Janek.
In 1964, a neighbouring municipality, Holašovice, was annexed to Jankov; prior to 1945, Holašovice had been entirely German-speaking, whereas Jankov had been ethnically Czech.
However, rather than being repopulated after the German residents were removed, Holašovice remained uninhabited until 1990; eight years later, it became a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Humpolecká was built in 1941, and this is one case where highlighting roads in red doesn’t work very well.
Humpolec is a town in the Vysočina Region, about 23 km northwest of Jihlava, with approximately 12,000 residents.
The first verified written mention is from 1233, when the Order of Teutonic Knights sold some local property to the Želiv Monastery (remember that name).
A Hussite outpost in the Hussite Wars (1419 to 1434), Humpolec was, like so many places, confiscated after the Battle of Bílá Hora in 1620, and given to Catholic families.
Becoming a town in 1807, Humpolec developed a thriving cloth guild, and became known as the Bohemian Manchester. Nowadays, the town is best known for the Family Brewery Bernard (https://www.bernard.cz/).
It’s also known for being pretty much the midpoint between Prague and Brno on the D1 motorway.
But Humpolec really does quite well when it comes to people of note. Aleš Hrdlička (1869-1943) became the first curator of physical anthropology of the Smithsonian Museum in 1904.
Continuing the transatlantic migrant theme, Josef Stránský (1872-1936) conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1911 to 1923.
Anna Sychravová (born 1873) was one of the first women elected to the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies, where she served until her early death in 1925.
While Anděla Kozáková-Jírová (1897-1986) was the first woman in Czechoslovakia to be awarded a university law degree (this picture is from the day of her graduation in 1922).
That longer red line on the map above indicates that, yes, the C line of the metro runs underground near here; the ‘no crossing here’ signs a bit to the north-west indicate that, once these building works are over, the D line will run around here too.
‘Nové domy’ are ‘new buildings’ or ‘new houses’. In 1935, the houses around here were indeed new – they had been built by the Ústřední sociální pojišťovna / Central Social Insurance Agency.
That ‘I’ in the name is a sign that I’m going to get quite an easy weekend of it, and probably lose a follower or two in the process.
Miloslav Barták was born in Pisnice (nowadays in Prague 12, south of here) in 1906. He worked as a teacher and lived on Neveklovská, which is coming up in a few days.
On 31 December 1941, Barták was tortured to death at Mauthausen, a concentration camp about 20 kilometres east of Linz, Austria.
About 90,000 people would die at Mauthausen; it was the last concentration camp to liberated by the Allies in May 1945.
Some time before 1720, an inn was built, south of Pankrác (then a village) and near the road that led from Prague to České Budějovice. It had a green fox – a zelená liška – painted on its gable.
The fox then gave its name to the inn, which was a popular stopover for travellers (and their horses). Apparently, in the 19th century, bands and theatre groups played here, and it was much frequented by famous personalities. This cartoon is from 1860.
Around the turn of the century, it was bought by a company called Saxl, who turned it into a shoe factory; this ad proves it was still functioning as a restaurant in 1899.
In 1922, it was purchased by František Janeček, an engineer and entrepreneur.
He used it as a factory for the production of machine guns and hand grenades (pictured in 1930).
In 1929, Janeček would found the motorcycle producer JAWA (JA = Janeček; WA = Wanderer, the German bike producer that Janeček purchased in the same year).
In 1953, the JAWA factory was given the decidedly more communist name of Závody 9. května (‘9th of May Enterprises’) and became a semiconductor plant.
In the 1930s, a housing estate was built round here; it too was called Zelená liška – and all our recent posts have dealt with this area. It didn’t have to undergo any 9th May renaming nonsense under the Communists.
Senožaty (German: Heumahd) is another village in the Vysočina Region, located about ten kilometres from Humpolec.
It was probably founded by Želiv Monastery (yes, also nearby) around 1300, and the earliest written mention we have is from 1352.
In 1678, an abbott called Strobl, together with an apothecary from Jihlava called Kauzmann, discovered a local spring whose water had healing properties. Baths were set up, and, a year later, Bohuslav Balbín (https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/01/26/prague-2-day-12-balbinova/) wrote very positively about them.
The good times didn’t last – Senožaty suffered major fires in 1749, 1772 and 1814 (the last two both destroyed more than 40 residences and both managed to ruin the local church and rectory).
In the 1960s, the Švihov Dam was built, submerging the scenic local valley into a reservoir (opened in 1976). A garrison also existed in the village from 1952 to 1994. And the water from the spring is now used solely for irrigation.
Dudín is a village near Humpolec (which will probably be the subject of tomorrow’s post) in the Vysočina Region. It has a population of 198.
The oldest written mention we have is from 1226; the name means that it belonged to someone named Duda, a surname in several Slavic languages, believed to be derived from ‘duda’ (bagpipes).
Stallichova was named in 1952, but built before then.
Antonín Stallich was born in Vinohrady in 1887. In 1921, he married Anna Hronová, the younger sister of Antonín Hron, a World War I veteran who was active in the anti-Nazi Resistance and ultimately died of exhaustion at Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1945.
Antonín (Stallich) and Anna had probably met while teaching at a school in Hostivař – what purports to be a yearbook with his name in it from 1915/1916 is available online – and also taught together at a school in Nusle, where they lived.
In 1934, Antonín S was best man at Antonín H’s wedding. The Stallichs, with their daughter, Bohumila, moved to Pod rovinou in Krč (post coming up).
As well as his teaching career, Stallich published textbooks and children’s books in a variety of languages – some, dated between 1935 and 1941, are on sale on https://www.antikavion.cz/autor/antonin-stallich.
So, I’m going to complete the series I’ve been doing these last few days where I tell the story of the Prague Uprising, day by day. Today, we’re on May 9.
The larger German left in the very early hours of the morning; then, at about 04:00, the first Soviet tanks arrived in the city. The only German forces remaining in Prague were those who refused to leave, or who somehow hadn’t been given the order to do so.
Facing minimal resistance, Marshal Konev reported that Prague had been completely liberated by about 09:00. Of course, the Soviets would take all the credit for this, despite having been around for approximately 4% of the entire Prague Uprising.
They had also lost about 30 men. The other death tolls have never been agreed on, but go up to 2,898 for Czech insurgents, 2,000 for Czech civilians, and maybe about 3,000 Germans.
Whoever got the credit at the time, it’s not surprising that there are several streets whose names commemorate the Prague Uprising.
There are others, of course, and, now that I’m actively looking for someone who is better at web design than me and can show me how to add search bars and the like without ruining the look of the site, you will hopefully find it easier to search for them very soon.
The day started with an announcement from Moscow Radio that the Red Army had broken through German lines, was near Dresden, and would soon be arriving in Bohemia, although no ETA was given for when it would reach Prague.
In the meantime, the Czech insurgents were low on supplies, and the Germans took advantage of this, occupying Libeň, Holešovice and Karlín and using tanks, aircraft and artillery to attack Prague.
Up to 67 Czechs were murdered, including people who had been waiting at the station since 5 May, and two 16-year-old apprentices working in the station’s restaurant.
Around 12:30, Karl Dönitz – who had succeeded Hitler as President of Germany after the latter’s death – announced the surrender and the end of the Nazi Party’s role in the government.
Meanwhile, Hermann Göring gave himself up to the Americans near Radstadt, Austria.
Military commander Schöner ordered Rudolf Toussaint, commissioner of the German army in the office of the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, to destroy Prague; he refused, and went to the headquarters of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Republic to negotiate a ceasefire.
As a result of this meeting, a protocol was drawn up at 16:00, announcing a ceasefire which would come into effect two hours later. In exchange for ceasing their fight, the Germans would be allowed to leave Prague (and their equipment) to go and surrender to the Americans.
Around the same time the protocol was signed, Winston Churchill was announcing Germany’s unconditional surrender (hence 8 May being Victory in Europe Day in many countries).
German troops started leaving, via Beroun and Plzeň, at 23:00 that night; some Nazis ignored the surrender and continued to fight. Almost at the same time that they started leaving, the German Instrument of Surrender – conceding the defeat of Germany – was signed in Berlin.
Two hours earlier, around 21:00, Red Army troops had entered Terezín concentration camp and liberated it; news of this reached Prague by midnight, where the local population was still wondering when somebody was going to come and liberate them (and who that would be).
What's in a Prague street name 
