Isaac Adamson's Blog, page 2

Jan Hus

Prague Unbound considers Bohemia’s most famous heretic…

Heretic Jan Hus, the first reformer of the Catholic Church, had arguably more influence on the history of greater Europe than any other figure in Bohemia. By his 30s, the former Charles University student had become the most popular preacher in the city, with thousands gathering each week at the unadorned Bethlehem Chapel to hear his sermons, during which he often decried corruption and ideological hypocrisy within the Catholic Church. Among his beliefs that found popular support was that all Christians, not just the clergy, should be allowed to partake of the eucharistic blood of Christ. Hussite followers thus adapted a golden chalice as their symbol – a symbol which may still be seen in various forms throughout Prague (Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk drank at a pub called U kalicha – The Chalice).

For his beliefs, Jan Hus quickly ran afoul of Rome and in 1411 was excommunicated by Pope Alexander V. But with the backing of King Wenceslas, Hus continued preaching, attacking Rome’s decree that all those who agreed to either fight in or fund the Crusades would be fast-tracked to Heaven, all sins forgiven. Enraged, the Pope ordered the Bethlehem Chapel be destroyed, but fearing a massive public revolt, Prague authorities refused.

Wishing to end the schism, Hungarian King Sigismond promised Jan Hus safe passage to meet the Papal authorities in Constance. But once Jan Hus arrived, the Pope’s people went back on their word. Hus was imprisoned in the dungeon of a Domincan monastery and put on trial, where refused to recant his writings and teachings. On July 6, 1415, Jan Hus’ hands were bound behind his back, his neck chained to a stake in the ground and he was burned at the stake. Following his death, his skull was crushed and all his bones broken. His heart was cut out and roasted again on a sharpened club, with his ashes eventually being dumped into the Rhine River. The river was then beaten and set on fire (not really, but you get the idea.).

News of his execution wouldn’t reach Prague for nearly half a decade, but it eventually sparked the Hussite wars, which lasted 14 years, devastated much of Bohemia, and ended with neither side achieving victory (on the plus side, the wars gave one-eyed warrior Jan Žižka ample outlet for his marauding and throwing-people-out-of-windows skills).

In 1999, fully 583 years after Hus’ death, Pope John Paul II apologized to the people of the Czech Republic for the execution of Jan Hus, saying it was a regrettable mistake.

Oh well, better late than never.

(Photo via Paul Holloway)

Letná Plain

From Prague Unbound , a look at the troubled history of Letná Plain…

Located on the northeast side of Hradčany, Letná Plain was long a strategic gathering place for the various invading armies preparing to lay siege to the Castle. Today, it’s home to a large open space park, its most visible feature a large metronome on a plinth overlooking the Vltava River.

The plinth where the metronome now stands was once the site of the largest sculpture in the world, a 90-foot-high depiction of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Liberator of Nations, Gardener of Human Happiness, better known as Josef Stalin. The short-lived monument had a tortured history – Otakar Švec, sculptor responsible for its creation, committed suicide three weeks before the statue was unveiled (his wife and assistant had killed herself two years earlier). Evidently still maintaining some sense of irony through it all, he left monies earned from the commission to a school for blind children as a way to make up for inflicting such an eyesore upon the people of Prague. The model Švec had used for his Stalin lookalike, an electrician at Barrandov Studios, killed himself as well, albeit by slowly drinking himself to death after being socially ostracized, his former friends refusing to call him by name and instead mockingly addressing him as “Stalin.”

Also in the statue behind Stalin stood the usual proletariat heroes – the honest laborer, the proud matron, the humble farmer, the brave soldier – and Praguers jokingly called to the hated monument as “bread line,” in reference the queues they regularly had to suffer to get their hands on ordinary foodstuffs.

To make matters worse, less than a year after the monument’s unveiling, Josef Stalin was denounced by Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev and his brutal crimes (at least some of them) brought to light. Krushchev said he wished to end the cult of personality that had been built up around Stalin over the last 30 years.

A cult, ahem, celebrated in massive stone fashion in Prague. Czechoslovakian authorities were further embarrassed because they couldn’t figure out how to dismantle to the 17,000 ton ode to despotism and genocide, and the monument remained in place for over five years before they called in West German demolition experts, who brought it down with the help of 1,750 pounds of dynamite over the course of two weeks* – the whole episode playing out like some bizarre 20th century incarnation of the Golem legend. It’s said remnants of Stalin’s exploded head may still be found in the stygian depths of the Vltava River.

Soon after the fall of Communism, in 1996 Michael Jackson (a kind self-created Golem, no?) had a huge statue of himself temporarily erected on the site to kick off his HIStory tour. Read into that what you will.

That Letná Park is also home to the oldest functioning carousel in Europe seems appropriate – for Letná is certainly a place where what goes around, comes around.

*Curiously, the Stalin monument was not the first large scale Otakar Švec work to be destroyed for political reasons – monuments he created to honor Czech heroes Tomáš Masaryk and Jan Hus were destroyed by the Nazis, and a monument to FDR was taken down by the Soviets. Clearly the poor man had a talent for aligning himself on the wrong side of history.

Photos via Aktorn, Wikimedia Commons, and Julo, Wikimedia Commons

Rabbi Loew

In today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound , we take a look at Rabbi Loew and the legend of the Golem…

Judah Loew ben Bezalel, religious leader, scholar, mystic, and statesman, was one of the most important figures in Rudolfine Prague. Though in his time Jews were forbidden to travel outside the walled enclosure of the ghetto, the learned Rabbi Loew earned the friendship and respect of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, and famously won audience with the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in 1592. Its said that Rudolf II was chiefly interested in learning from the Rabbi the secrets of the Kabala, and would thereafter regularly have Loew secreted across the river in the dead of night so as not to arouse the ire of the Jesuits, who already suspected the sovereign of heresy and even necromancy.

Many supernatural acts have been credited to Rabbi Loew – during one crossing of the Charles Bridge to visit the Emperor, bystanders recognized him as a Jew and began pelting him with stones, but just before the rocks hit him they magically transformed to rose petals. On another occasion, a strange plague descended upon the ghetto that killed only children. Each night the dead children would rise from their graves in the Old Jewish Cemetery to create havoc and spread mayhem and fear. The Rabbi captured one of the ghosts by removing its burial shroud. The spirit then revealed the cause of this odd plague – a woman in the ghetto had killed her own child and gone unpunished, and until she was brought to justice, the plague would claim more children and their ghosts continue their nightly revels. The Maharal tracked down the woman, and when she was tried and executed the plague ceased and the spirits were quieted.

But of the many legends associated with The Maharal of Prague the most famous is surely that of the Golem, a homonculous the Rabbi created from the mud of the Vltava River and animated by writing the secret word “emet” (truth) on a slip of paper placed under the creature’s tongue. The massive Golem protected the ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks at night and worked as a servant to the Rabbi during the day, albeit one whose slavish following of orders created problems. When the Rabbi’s wife asked him to fetch some water for her bath, the Golem emptied half of the Vltava and flooded the ghetto, causing many residents to drown. Another time, when asked to fetch some apples, he ripped down three trees and carried them on his back through the narrow streets, causing much damage along the way.

The situation came to a head when Rabbi Loew forgot to remove the animating slip of paper from Golem’s mouth during the Sabbath so that the creature could rest as commanded by Jewish law. The Golem ran amok, smashing windows, tearing up cobblestones from the streets and hurling them at anyone in his sight, kicking holes in buildings and generally terrifying the people of the ghetto. The Rabbi eventually lured the creature to the attic of the Old New Synagogue, where he removed the slip of paper. With the monster pacified, Rabbi Loew erased the “e” from “emet” written on the paper, changing the word to “met” (death). When he slipped the paper back in the Golem’s mouth, the creature dissolved into the mud of its creation.

Though Rabbi Loew was rumored to have some hand in designing the infamous Rudolf Complication, we can tell you with supreme confidence he had nothing to do with the watch whatsoever. The Rabbi was far too wise to involve himself in such nefarious schemes.

(Image in public domain)

Petřín Hill

In today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound , we visit the lovely Petřín Hill…

Petřín is a sprawling hillside park rising from the left bank of the Vltava River. Attractions include winding paths, a rose garden, an Eiffel-inspired observatory and a mirror maze housed in a small replica castle. It is also the home of the Hunger Wall, a medieval defensive barrier constructed at the behest of Charles IV. It gained its name as its construction provided employment during a 1361 famine that wiped out many of Prague’s less fortunate inhabitants (the term ‘Hunger Wall’ is still used by Praguers to refer to public works that serve no legitimate purpose – which we’re guessing wouldn’t sit so well with all those on the brink of starvation in the 14th century).

Petřín is also one of the few Prague landmarks that Franz Kafka directly referred to in his work, setting a passage of Description of a Struggle on the hill – a passage in which the narrator witnesses his young acquaintance casually plunge a knife into his own arm and begin bleeding profusely, prompting the narrator to run to a dilapidated and abandoned Gardener’s House (still standing at present, still abandoned) in hopes of finding help.

The hill is more strongly associated with the poet Karel Mácha (there’s a statue of him here) and his tragic love poem May, making it a favorite meeting place for lovers. It’s also associated with ‘The Burning of the Witches’, a yearly festival when Czechs gather around bonfires and burn their old brooms in effigy. Indeed, Petřín served as a burial place for several hundred women burned to death in witch-hunts during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Ah, nothing says love like the smell of burning witches.

(Photo via Petr Novák, Wikimedia Commons)

Hněvín Castle

From Prague Unbound , a glance at the castle that once imprisoned the nefarious Edward Kelley…

Hněvín Castle dates back to the 13th century, where it was built on a hill overlooking the village of Most, about 48 miles northwest of Prague. It was used as a prison by Rudolf II, his most notorious prisoner being alchemist Edward Kelley, who reportedly died after a failed escape attempt from one of its towers (not quite what happened, we’re afraid). During the Thirty Years War, the castle begin an important strategic focal point, with both sides fighting over it and destroying most of Most village in the process before the Swedes eventually conquered it. After the war ended, the people of Most convinced Ferdinand II to allow them to tear the castle down so that it would not be a target in any future conflicts and their village could for once be left in peace. When maurading armies no longer seemed a threat, the castle was rebuilt around 1900.

The village of Most has a troubled history. In 1895, several houses and the people inside were engulfed in quicksand. During WWII, the area suffered heavy Allied bombing because of its role in supplying Germany with petroleum. After the war, Most became a center of lignite mining and during the Communist era became cloaked in a black cloud of pollution. In the mid-60s, the town was relocated to make room for more mines, a process that involved destroying historical monuments dating back to the 15th century, wrecking hundreds of houses, and moving the massive, 13,000-ton Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, intact, half a mile away – an engineering feat that involved 53 trucks moving along specially constructed rails at a speed of about 30 yards a day.

Since the end of the Communist era, Most has suffered heavy unemployment and is known for the number of people living in paneláks – large concrete tenement housing complexes that were in Most’s case created in the wake of all the buildings Communist authorities destroyed when moving the town. The most notorious among them is Chánov, a derelict 13-building complex that has become a Romany ghetto and lacks amenities like elevators, windows, and running water.

 

 

Some say every misfortune that has befallen Most can be traced to Kelley’s imprisonment, that he must have put some sort of evil curse on the town that once confined him.

But if Kelley’s magic was as powerful as all that, don’t you think he would’ve managed to escape?

(Photo of Hněvín Castle via Jan Suchý, photo of Chánov via Josef Sábl, both Wikimedia Commons)

Olšany Cemetery

In today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound , we visit the city’s creepiest necropolis…

The Olšany Cemetery (Olšanské hřbitovy) began in the 1680s when the plague swept through Prague and left some 30,000 corpses in its wake. The cemetery, outside what was then the city limits, expanded once more in the 18th century when the plague returned for a couple encore performances.

Today the beautiful necropolis boasts nearly a million residents by some estimates, making it nearly as populous as Prague itself. People now resting in its hallowed ground include many famous playwrights, actors and public figures you may have heard of, as well as a great many more that you most certainly have not.

But don’t feel bad for them – no one will remember you either.

Stromovka Park

In today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound , we visit Stromovka Park and the dead general who lives in the pond and eats rotten fish…

Founded by King Premsyl Otakar II in 1268 as a royal game preserve, Stromovka is Prague’s largest park, its size rivaling that of New York City’s Central Park. In the 15th century King Vladislav Jagellonský built a hunting lodge on the premises and an Imperial Mill was added during Emperor Rudolf II’s reign.

The area fell into disrepair after Rudolf’s death, and most of its structures were destroyed during the Hussite Wars. Stromovka received a facelift when Prague was awarded the World’s Fair in 1891, with new buildings including the iron and glass Art Nouveau Průmyslový Industrial Palace constructed on its grounds (the building partially burned down in 2008). More recently, the area one of the hardest hit by the floods of 2002, during which many of its oldest trees were uprooted and swept away.

The park’s most infamous resident probably didn’t mind the flood though. In 1848 Austro-Hungarian General Windischgratz – a Carpathian distantly related to our old friend Vlad the Impaler — was charged with putting down a rebellion by Czech nationalists (during a riot, his own wife was killed by a stray bullet), a task he accomplished in brutal fashion.

After retiring from combat, he lived at an estate house in Stromovka and soon became known for eccentricities that included bathing in the park’s ponds by moonlight and claiming to be captain of the fish, even going so far as barking out orders to them. For reasons unknown, he was murdered by a miller named Vondra who beat him to death and threw Windischgratz’s body in the water. He remains there still, feasting on the rotten fish in the shallows of pond and occasionally snatching humans who stray too near its banks at night. Eating fish day in and day out gets old after awhile.

Make your way to Stromovka and we’ll be there to meet you, Dear Reader. We’ve been waiting for a long time.

(Photo via Zdenek Svoboda, Flickr Creative Commons)

Cibulka Manor

In today’s Prague Unbound excerpt, a glance at an elegant 14th century manor house that now lies in ruins…

Cibulka Manor’s origins reach back to the 14th century, though not much is known about it until it became a vineyard in the 15th century. In the 16th century, the entire area was owned by Veleslavín Cibulka (thus the name) but it was virtually wiped out during the Thirty Years War. It was restored, only to be destroyed again in the 1740s during The War of Austrian Succession.

In 1817 the complex that now stands was built by (deep breath) Bishop of Passau Leopold Leonard Raymund Reichsgraf Joseph Thun-Hohenstein (we’re guessing his friends just called him Leo), an Enlightment character fond of music, art, gambling and the supernatural. At Cibulka, he created a chateau complex with English-style landscaped gardens, a Chinese pagoda, gazebos, reflecting pools, stone terraces, artificial ancient ruins and an observation tower guarded by a mechanical puppet dressed in knightly armor.

Cibulka’s heyday didn’t last long. Following Thun-Hohenstein’s death in 1826, the place quickly fell into disrepair and then was further damaged by fire. His heirs showed no interest in the property and it changed hands a number of times before being sold to the city in 1922.

The property was seized (along with everything else) by the Communists, later fell into the hands of a bank, and though many plans have been put forth to restore it, the decrepit Manor complex has remained abandoned and in ruins for nearly two hundred years, its only residents being the squatters who are periodically chased out by police.

During one such raid in the late 1990s, police made a curious discovery when they found in a basement of the main house a wooden crate filled with mummified hands. Carbon dating showed them to be from the 17th and 18th centuries, but their origins remain otherwise unknown. The discovery didn’t make the stir you might imagine. This is an old land full of old ghosts and old superstitions. Old bones are old news.

Come to Cibulka, Dear Reader, and you’re bound to make a curious discovery of your own. Don’t disappoint us.

Old Town Bridge Tower

In today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound , we visit a bridge tower with some curious inscriptions…

Constructed during Charles IV’s reign to protect the city from Northern invaders, the Old Town Bridge Tower (Staroměstská mostecká věž) located on the east side of Charles Bridge is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful pieces of Gothic architecture in all of Europe.

It once acted as a debtor prison and is known as the place where the severed heads of 13 nobles were put on display following the Battle of White Mountain.

Lesser know are the mystical palindromes inscribed upon it.

Carved into the Old Town Bridge Tower is the sequence 135797531, an ascending and descending sequence of odd digits that has special significance. The palindromic number refers to 9 July 1357, at 5:31 am, the precise lucky moment chosen by royal astrologers and numerologists for Charles IV to lay the foundation stone of the Charles Bridge.

But that’s not all.

Under the roof of the tower’s archway are two incantations against evil written in Latin. “Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor” and “Signate Signate mere me tangis et angis” – which translate roughly as, “Rome, love will be sacrificed to you through upheavals” and “Sign, if you stain me with your touch you´ll be strangled.”

Of course, such incantations against evil proved useless. Everyone knows Demons and other evil spirits simply adore palindromes.

(Photo via Paul Holloway)

The Faust House

In today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound, we visit the reputed former dwelling place of the legendary Dr. Faustus…

This baroque mansion in Charles Square was reputed to be the dwelling place of the legendary Doktor Faustus, a 14th century scholar who famously sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge.

There is said to remain to this day a hole burned in the roof through which the Devil whisked the doomed scholar off to Hell, though the hole was in reality not a Beelzebubian exit but the result of an alchemical experiment gone explosively awry. This experiment was not conducted by original owner and alchemist Prince Václav of Opava, nor latter occupant Ferdinand Antonin Mladota of Solopysky, nor astrologer Jakub Krucinek— whose younger son murdered his own brother over treasure hidden in the house—nor nineteenth century eccentric Karl Jaenig, who commissioned functional gallows to be built on the premises and slept in a wooden coffin and specified in his will that he be buried face down in order to see where it was he was going (as might you be, Dear Reader, if we’re being frank here). Instead the hole was created by a certain Edward Kelley—forger, adulterer, duelist, occasional necromancer, mountebank, bad credit risk, accomplished bullshitter—but not, despite such obvious qualifications, a famous artist.

The best account of former occupant Edward Kelley’s unhappy time in Prague can be found in “The Ballad of Edward Kelley,” which we’ll be posting later this week – if you’re both diligent and foolish enough to stay tuned.

The Faust House is currently closed to the general public. For their protection, we presume.

(Photo via Paul Holloway)