sandr020

Jan Tomas Forman was born in 1932 in Caslav, now part of the Czech Republic. During the Nazi occupation, Forman's Protestant mother Anna Švábová died in Ausch­witz in 1943. As a member of the Protestant anti-Nazi Underground, Milos’ putative father Professor Rudolf Forman was arrested for distributing banned books; he died while being int­errogated by the Gestapo in a concentration camp in 1944. Forman had no idea what had happened to his parents. During the rest of his childhood, Forman was raised by relatives. Aged 18, Forman joined the newly founded Prague film school Famu and began directing documentaries for Czech television. He was a mover and shaker in Prague’s theatres and cinemas in the 1950s and early 60s. Forman’s films, and others of the Czech new wave, intro­duced to the cinema portrayals of working-class life eg A Blonde in Love (1965), not of soc­ialist realism. The more liberal faction of the Communist party, then in ascendancy, appropriated these movies as exp...

Independence came at the end of WWI when the Austro-Hungarian Emp­ire fell apart. It marked the first time since the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 that Bohemia was not under foreign rule. The First Republic was declared on 28th Oct 1918 when a Czech novelist read the independence proclamation of the sovereign state of Czech­osl­ovakia in the St Wenceslas Square. So the reading in the square was seen as the official start of the new country. During the cele­brations in Nov 1918, a mob tore down a Victory Column on Old Town Square. It had been there since 1650 and celebrated a battle that occurred on Charles Bridge at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Some said the column glorified the Hapsburg domination of the country. This year locals and tourists are invited to comm­em­orate the est­ablishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, following the end of WWI. To mark the 100th anniversary, hundreds of cul­t­ural, social and sport­ing events will take place throughout 2018 that high­light the ...

The 1400s was the peak of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars , when Wal­lachia in Southern Romania was one of Hungary's strongest rivals. Sit­uated between Christian Europe and the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, Transylvania and Wallachia  (see map) were often the scene of bloody battles. The Ottoman forces pushed west­ward into Europe, and Christian Crusaders marched eastward toward the Holy Land. Vlad the Impaler Tepes (1431-1476) was born in Trans­yl­vania in 1431, son of the famous war lord Vlad II and the Princess of Moldavia. He had two older half-brothers and a young­er full broth­er. In his birth year Vlad's father trav­elled to Nuremberg where he was honour­ed with the Order of the Drag­on, and was grant­ed the sur­name Dracul after his induction into the Christian Military Order of the Dragon. In 1436, Vlad II Dracul ascended the Wallach­ian throne. When Vlad II was called to a diplomatic meeting in 1442 with Sultan Murad II, he brought his young sons along. But the me...

Since first writing about art stolen by the Nazis during WW2 and hid­den in various underground salt mines in Germany and Aust­ria, I have read everything I could on The Monument Men . When the Nazis found the Altaussee Salt Mines in Alp­ine Bavaria, for examp­le, they were delighted to ship their 6500 stolen art treas­ures into this salt-heavy, pastoral hideout. Today, ever since the film Monument Men appeared in our cinemas, tourists have flocked to the Altaussee Mines. When I heard of the Krakow Salt Mines Museum of Art on tv, I assumed it was another amazing memorial to art stolen by the Nazis during WW2. Wrong! Nonetheless it is fascinating. The Krakow Salt Works Museum is a large exhibition space in the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Southern Pol­and, established after WW2. The mine, which continuously pro­duced table salt from the Middle Ages on, now consists of Two Worlds, A] an underground with a large exhibit in the salt mine 135m below and B] an above­ground in the Salt Works Castl...

When I met my Czech born boyfriend (now husband) in 1969, I thought I better read some Kafka, listen to Dvořák and Janáček, and eat palač­inkas. It all worked well, except for the Kafka. Now the German sch­olar Reiner Stach 's excellen  Biog­raphy of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) filled in a lot of gaps. Stach spent 20+ years working on Kafka’s life, transl­ated into English. The biography started with Kafka’s childhood in the dying days of the Hapsburg empire in 1883: family life in the Prague flat, schooling, law studies at university and career as an insurance clerk. Alas young Franz’s relationship with his over­bearing father was horrible. Hermann Kafka was a stocky, ambitious and succ­essful merchant, while his only son was tall, thin and fragile. So they were physically, emotion­ally and intellectually opposed. Biography of Franz Kafka: Vol. 1 The Early Years, Vol. 2 The Decisive Years and Vol. 3 The Years of Insight Kafka knew himself well. He wrote “The way I am, I am as the out...

Ingrid Carlberg’s book RAOUL WALLENBERG: The Biography has 3 parts: the early years; Budapest heroism; and the family’s post-war attempts to get him home. I have concentrated on the first two parts, backed up by Jan Larsson ’s journal article. And from my mother in law who lived in Budapest in 1944-5; she would have loved this book. Raoul Wallen­berg (1912-?) was born near Stockholm. The family had been lead­ing bankers and diplomats for many years. His father was a naval of­ficer and a cousin of two of Sweden’s best-known C20th financiers and indust­rialists. But dad died just before the baby’s birth. After compulsory mil­itary service, in 1931-5 Raoul studied archit­ecture the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Then grand­pa sent him to Cape Town to train in a Swedish building mater­ials firm. Finally grandpa arranged another job at a Dutch bank in Haifa where Wallenberg met German Jewish exiles for the first time. After returning to Sweden in 1936, Wallenberg went into inter­nat­io...

Art historians often cite rabbinical rulings against all Jewish art in the Middle Ages. But any such restrictions were limited to the geog­raph­­ic community where each ruling was given!! And in any case, they were no longer applicable by the C19th. Even better, national art schools and academies formally opened their doors to Jewish students in the C19th, in Britain, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Romania etc. Talented Jewish artists emerged. Moritz Oppenheim (1800-82), Solomon Hart (1806–81), Jozef Israels (1824–1911), Alphonse Levy (1843-1918), Maurycy Gottlieb (1856-79), Solomon J Solomon (1860–1927), Samuel Hirszenberg (1865-1908), Boris Schatz (1867-1932) and Ephraim Lilien (1874–1925) were certainly creating worthy careers for them­selves. Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was regarded as a pioneer of modern artistic dev­elopment. But in my opinion, the most import­ant of all C19th Jewish art­ists was Hungarian-born Is­­idor Kaufmann (1853-1921). Young Kaufmann studied...