Prague Capital Of The Twentieth Century

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Prague Capital Of The Twentieth Century

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Author : Derek Sayer
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2021-11-09

Prague Capital Of The Twentieth Century written by Derek Sayer and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-11-09 with History categories.

The story of modernity told through a cultural history of twentieth-century Prague Setting out to recover the roots of modernity in the boulevards, interiors, and arcades of the "city of light," Walter Benjamin dubbed Paris "the capital of the nineteenth century." In this eagerly anticipated sequel to his acclaimed Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, Derek Sayer argues that Prague could well be seen as the capital of the much darker twentieth century. Ranging across twentieth-century Prague's astonishingly vibrant and always surprising human landscape, this richly illustrated cultural history describes how the city has experienced (and suffered) more ways of being modern than perhaps any other metropolis. Located at the crossroads of struggles between democratic, communist, and fascist visions of the modern world, twentieth-century Prague witnessed revolutions and invasions, national liberation and ethnic cleansing, the Holocaust, show trials, and snuffed-out dreams of "socialism with a human face." Yet between the wars, when Prague was the capital of Europe's most easterly parliamentary democracy, it was also a hotbed of artistic and architectural modernism, and a center of surrealism second only to Paris. Focusing on these years, Sayer explores Prague's spectacular modern buildings, monuments, paintings, books, films, operas, exhibitions, and much more. A place where the utopian fantasies of the century repeatedly unraveled, Prague was tailor-made for surrealist André Breton's "black humor," and Sayer discusses the way the city produced unrivaled connoisseurs of grim comedy, from Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek to Milan Kundera and Václav Havel. A masterful and unforgettable account of a city where an idling flaneur could just as easily be a secret policeman, this book vividly shows why Prague can teach us so much about the twentieth century and what made us who we are.

Postcards From Absurdistan

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Author : Derek Sayer
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2024-10-29

Postcards From Absurdistan written by Derek Sayer and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-10-29 with History categories.

"This book is the third in a trilogy that looks at the cultural history of Prague in order to tell the larger story of competing notions of European modernity-Reformation and Counter-Reformation, empire and nation, fascism and democracy-as they all played out on a single stage. This volume begins in 1938, when Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the Munich agreement and shortly before the invasion of the Third Reich, and it runs until the present day, when liberal democracy appears to be giving way to right-wing populism (as in much of the world). Like the previous volumes in the series, it sees Prague as a palimpsest of the cultures that overtook it-cultures that aimed to impose their own visions of modernity on the city. In this book, Sayer charts three major "modernities:" the Third Reich's brutal totalitarianism, the shifting face of Soviet communism, and the supposed freedoms of Western capitalist democracy. In Sayer's reading, the Nazis, Soviets, and Western democrats each believed that Prague had reached the end of history, that it had achieved "the final form of human government" (in Fukuyama's words). All were proved spectacularly wrong. As these political movements disintegrated, they returned the city to a state of banal surreality that Czech dissidents in the 1960s dubbed Absurdistan. Putting the notion of Absurdistan at the center of his story, Sayer engages with artists, creators and the things they produced, which unsparingly revealed the absurdity of the "modern" world and its notions of progress. He explores the work of Milan Kundera, Miloés Forman, Vâaclav Havel, and many others lesser known in the Anglophone world. He examines the tradition of vulgar absurdist comedy beginning with Kafka, and he shows how Prague's cultural products have been marked by persistent moral ambiguity, or in Kundera's words, "the intoxicating relativity of human things," since the mid-century. The overarching argument of this book is that, by looking to Prague's cultural history, we can see that modernity has never been a single or stable notion, and as different ideologies of modernity have come head-to-head, they have produced a rich culture of ambiguity and absurdity. We published the first two books in the trilogy, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (1998), which spanned the 18th to the turn of the 20th century, and Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century (2013), which looked at modernism and revolutionary thinking in Prague in the first half of the 20th century. Both books did well, and Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century won the prestigious George L. Mosse Prize for European cultural and intellectual history from the American Historical Association"

Prague

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Author : Derek Sayer
language : en
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Release Date : 2018-10-15

Prague written by Derek Sayer and has been published by Reaktion Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2018-10-15 with Travel categories.

Thirty years ago, Prague was a closed book to most travelers. Today, it is Europe’s fifth-most-visited city, surpassed only by London, Paris, Istanbul, and Rome. With a stunning natural setting on the Vltava river and featuring a spectacular architectural potpourri of everything from Romanesque rotundas to gothic towers, Renaissance palaces, Baroque churches, art nouveau cafés, and cubist apartment buildings, Prague may well be Europe’s most beautiful capital city. But behind this beauty lies a turbulent and often violent history, and in this book, Derek Sayer explores both. Located at the uneasy center of the continent, Prague has been a crossroads of cultures for more than a millennium. From the religious wars of the middle ages and the nationalist struggles of the nineteenth century to the modern conflicts of fascism, communism, and democracy, Prague’s history is the history of the forces that have shaped Europe. Sayer also goes beyond the complexities of Prague’s colorful past: his expert, very readable, and exquisitely illustrated guide helps us to see what Prague is today. He not only provides listings of what to see, hear, and do and where to eat, drink, and shop, but also offers deep personal reflection on the sides of Prague tourists seldom see, from a model interwar modernist villa colony to Europe’s biggest Vietnamese market.

Prague 20th Century Architecture

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Author : Michael Kohout
language : en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date : 1999-04-22

Prague 20th Century Architecture written by Michael Kohout and has been published by Springer Science & Business Media this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1999-04-22 with Architecture categories.

This pocket-sized yet comprehensive guidebook to modern architecture in Prague shows its development from the Art Nouveau and beginnings of the Modern Style at the turn of the 20th century, the unique Cubist buildings from the years before World War I, the "National Style" of the newly established Czechoslovak Republic, the functionalist avant-garde of the inter-war period, the most remarkable examples of post-World War II buildings, and the revival of architectural production after 1989. 200 pages cover 220 buildings spanning the period 1900 to 1997. Each entry contains a descriptive text, period photographs, and selected entries are provided with plans. An indispensable companion for discovering the vast architectural heritage of the Czech capital.

Prague Panoramas

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Author : Cynthia Paces
language : en
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Release Date : 2009-09-27

Prague Panoramas written by Cynthia Paces and has been published by University of Pittsburgh Pre this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009-09-27 with History categories.

Prague Panoramas examines the creation of Czech nationalism through monuments, buildings, festivals, and protests in the public spaces of the city during the twentieth century. These "sites of memory" were attempts by civic, religious, cultural, and political forces to create a cohesive sense of self for a country and a people torn by war, foreign occupation, and internal strife. The Czechs struggled to define their national identity throughout the modern era. Prague, the capital of a diverse area comprising Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Poles, Ruthenians, and Romany as well as various religious groups including Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, became central to the Czech domination of the region and its identity. These struggles have often played out in violent acts, such as the destruction of religious monuments, or the forced segregation and near extermination of Jews. During the twentieth century, Prague grew increasingly secular, yet leaders continued to look to religious figures such as Jan Hus and Saint Wenceslas as symbols of Czech heritage. Hus, in particular, became a paladin in the struggle for Czech independence from the Habsburg Empire and Austrian Catholicism. Through her extensive archival research and personal fieldwork, Cynthia Paces offers a panoramic view of Prague as the cradle of Czech national identity, seen through a vast array of memory sites and objects. From the Gothic Saint Vitus Cathedral, to the Communist Party's reconstruction of Jan Hus's Bethlehem Chapel, to the 1969 self-immolation of student Jan Palach in protest of Soviet occupation, to the Hoskova plaque commemorating the deportation of Jews from Josefov during the Holocaust, Paces reveals the iconography intrinsic to forming a collective memory and the meaning of being a Czech. As her study discerns, that meaning has yet to be clearly defined, and the search for identity continues today.

Reflections Of Prague

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Author : Ivan Margolius
language : en
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Release Date : 2012-08-06

Reflections Of Prague written by Ivan Margolius and has been published by John Wiley & Sons this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-08-06 with History categories.

Reflections of Prague is the story of how a Czech Jewish family become embroiled in the most tragic and tumultuous episodes of the twentieth century. Through their eyes we see the history of their beloved Prague, a unique European city, and the wider, political forces that tear their lives apart. Their moving story traces the major events, turmoil, oppression and triumphs of Europe through the last hundred years – from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the First World War; from the vibrant artistic and intellectual life of Prague in the times of Kafka, the Capek Brothers and Masaryk to years of hunger in a Polish ghetto and the concentration camps of Hitler; from the tyrannous rule of Stalin to the rekindled hopes of Dubcek and the subsequent Soviet occupation to liberation under Havel. Told from Ivan’s perspective, it is a poignant but uplifting tale that tells of life lived with purpose and conviction, in the face of personal suffering and sacrifice. ‘A remarkable book. This archetypical story of the twentieth century is intertwined with an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative of the history of the Czechs, of Prague, interspersed with samples of exquisite poetry by great contemporary poets. So the narrative flows like Eliot’s sweet Thames full of the debris of tragic lives, of horrors, of moments of beauty and testimonies of love – all against the backdrop of man’s inhumanity.’ Josef Škvorecký ‘A poignant and vivid mémoire of a child searching for traces of his father, lost in the murky ideologies of post war Central Europe. An engrossing book.’ Sir John Tusa

Prague

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Author : Ivan Margolius
language : en
Publisher: B. T. Batsford Limited
Release Date : 1996-01-01

Prague written by Ivan Margolius and has been published by B. T. Batsford Limited this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1996-01-01 with Architecture categories.

This guide looks at a broad range of architecture in Prague, providing an understanding of the historical and political contexts that have shaped it. It focuses on significant projects built since 1990 as well as providing practical information for vistors.

Women Of Prague

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Author : Wilma Iggers
language : en
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Release Date : 1995

Women Of Prague written by Wilma Iggers and has been published by Berghahn Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1995 with Social Science categories.

"The richness of the material and its skillful assembly make this a very readable volume ... revealing a wonderful range of perspective, from personal, intimate reflections to timely comments on the politics and society of both Prague and the Czech Republic of the era under study." - Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe "Wilma Iggers offers English-reading audiences fascinating new perspectives ... in a sensitive introduction to the city's modern experience and translated sections from the writings of twelve women ... This volume is particularly welcome since the work of most of these writers has not been readily available in English before." - Gary B. Cohen, University of Oklahoma For many centuries Prague has exerted a particular fascination because of its beauty and therichness of its culture and history. Its famous group of German and Czech writers of mostly Jewish extraction in the earlier part of this century has deeply influenced Western culture.However, little attention has so far been paid to the roles of women in the history of thisethnically diverse area in around Prague. Based on largely autobiographical writings and letters by women and enhanced by extensive historical introduction, this book redresses a serious imbalance. The vivid and often moving portraits, which emerge from the varied material used bythe author, offer fascinating and new insights into the social and cultural history of this region.

Europeana

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Author : Patrik Ourednik
language : en
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Release Date : 2024-06-25

Europeana written by Patrik Ourednik and has been published by Deep Vellum Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-06-25 with Fiction categories.

Tracing the Great War through the Millennium Bug, 1999 through 1900, Dadaism through Scientology through Sierra Leonean bicycle riding and back, award-winning Czech author Patrik Ourednik explores the horror and absurdity of the twentieth century in an explosive deconstruction of historical memory. Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century opens on the beaches of Normandy in 1944, comparing the heights of different forces’ soldiers and considering how tall, long, or good at fertilizing fields the men’s bodies will be. Probing the depths of humanity and inhumanity, this is an account of history as it has never been told: “engaging, even frightening.” At once recreating and uncreating the twentieth century, Ourednik explores the connections across the decades between the disparate figures, events, and politics we thought we knew. Patrik Ourednik’s Europeana merits the author’s reputation as a giant of post-1989 Czech literature. Now translated into 33 languages, the book is a masterwork of cubism, a polymorphic monologue of statistics and movements and fine print and discoveries that evokes the deadpan absurdity of Kafka and the gallows humor of Hašek. Ourednik has created a mesmerizing, maddening account of the past, and his interrogation of “truth” and objectivity resonates now more than ever.

Prague In Danger

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Author : Peter Demetz
language : en
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Release Date : 2009-04-14

Prague In Danger written by Peter Demetz and has been published by Macmillan + ORM this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009-04-14 with History categories.

A dramatic account of life in Czechoslovakia's great capital during the Nazi Protectorate With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his account of more than a thousand years of Central European history, the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years—a tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague then—a "first-degree half-Jew," according to the Nazis' terrible categories—and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city under German occupation with his personal memories of that period: from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain. Demetz expertly interweaves a superb account of the German authorities' diplomatic, financial, and military machinations with a brilliant description of Prague's evolving resistance and underground opposition. Along with his private experiences, he offers the heretofore untold history of an effervescent, unstoppable Prague whose urbane heart went on beating despite the deportations, murders, cruelties, and violence: a Prague that kept its German- and Czech-language theaters open, its fabled film studios functioning, its young people in school and at work, and its newspapers on press. This complex, continually surprising book is filled with rare human detail and warmth, the gripping story of a great city meeting the dual challenge of occupation and of war.