http://radio.cz/en Latest articles on 'History' - information about historical events in the Czech Republic and important figures in Czech history en Sat, 26 May 2012 02:01:00 +0200 Sat, 26 May 2012 02:01:00 +0200 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Radio Prague CMS 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Radio Broadcasting cr@radio.cz (Cesky Rozhlas) webmaster@radio.cz (CRo Webmaster) http://radio.cz/en/article/148133 When I first moved to Prague nearly two decades ago, Czech friends were often amazed that I had never heard of the American singer, Dean Reed. Dubbed the “Red Elvis”, Reed was a household name throughout the Eastern Bloc. Sat, 26 May 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:81d18c07-9700-523a-856b-9c3745c04e4c http://radio.cz/en/article/148088 Prague and Lima have been marking the 90th anniversary of diplomatic relations this week through a number of events, including a ceremony in Lima preceding the return of an historic Czechoslovak-built tank to the Czech Republic. The LTP 38, as it is known, was built for Peru in the 1930s, designed specifically for high terrain. Originally, there were 24 of the armoured fighting vehicles. Wed, 23 May 2012 15:52:10 +0200 urn:uuid:61e95093-e59a-5c92-beda-817d1400c0cd http://radio.cz/en/article/148062 In this week's Spotlight we will travel to the small town of Stará Boleslav just northeast of Prague. According to legend, it was in this town that the Přemyslid Prince Wenceslas, later St Wenceslas, was slain by his own brother Boleslav in the 10th century. Tue, 22 May 2012 16:00:59 +0200 urn:uuid:f897998f-46e4-57eb-8243-90388167b3e0 http://radio.cz/en/article/148058 You could almost say that Prague keeps getting older. Not long ago, archaeologists found evidence of the oldest ploughed field here, tended five and a half thousand years ago. Now the imprints of structures have been found in the same location, dating back even further, some 7,500 years. Tue, 22 May 2012 15:42:25 +0200 urn:uuid:10dfa625-abed-58f8-8542-a429d427f444 http://radio.cz/en/article/147927 On March 2 1978 - for the first time - a person was launched into space who was neither a Soviet nor an American citizen. His name was Vladimír Remek, and he came from Czechoslovakia. Millions of Czechs and Slovaks had the chance to follow the event live both on radio and television, and it was even celebrated in song: Sat, 19 May 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:1ef8c01c-f445-51b9-a80d-2646d21b32e3 http://radio.cz/en/article/147989 Czechs and Slovaks spent most of the 20th century in one country, Czechoslovakia. Ever since its foundation, however, each nation had a different idea of how the country should work, and what their role in it should be. In his new book entitled Czechs and Slovaks in the 20th Century: Cooperation and Conflicts, historian Jan Rychlík argues that Czechoslovakia was in fact bound to fail as a state, and that communism only postponed its inevitable end. Sat, 19 May 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:7f5df350-561b-5557-a226-3d93f9d0b2c0 http://radio.cz/en/article/147749 In the 1970s the Cold War was fought on many fronts. One of them was Northern Ireland, where the tension and violence that raged throughout the decade also became part of the propaganda war between East and West. At the time, Czechoslovak Radio’s correspondent in London was Karel Kvapil, who had entered the radio after the wave of sackings following the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, and later went on to become its last communist era general director. In 1977 Kvapil travelled to Belfast, to report on the Troubles. For part of his programme he spoke with women on a housing estate in a mainly Catholic area of the city: Sat, 12 May 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:9b8c69e1-de65-57d5-a9ff-943ebec66e0a http://radio.cz/en/article/147768 The Israeli author Tom Segev is in Prague to launch the Czech translation of his acclaimed biography of the Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. Entitled Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends, Tom Segev’s latest work offers a critical yet compassionate look at the complicated man who devoted his life to tracking down Nazi criminals. Radio Prague spoke to Tom Segev during his Prague visit, and asked him how different the real Simon Wiesenthal was from the myths he himself helped create. Thu, 10 May 2012 15:35:26 +0200 urn:uuid:d4370bd8-e7dc-50f8-9494-7a6194083503 http://radio.cz/en/article/147704 Anniversaries give us the chance to think again about the meaning of events and their relevance today. Next month it will be exactly 70 years since the destruction by the Nazis of the Czech village of Lidice in June 1942. The facts and figures are well known, and even in the shadow of huge numbers later killed in the Holocaust, still remain shocking: 340 people were murdered, including 88 children and all but two of the men of the village. They were killed systematically and in cold blood in a calculated attempt by the SS to prevent Czech insurgency. The extent to which Lidice later became a tool of communist propaganda, using rhetoric that equated Nazi Germany with the “West”, is also well known, and for many Czechs, the memory of Lidice still remains tainted by this legacy. So what can Lidice mean to us today, now that all but a handful of the survivors are no longer with us and with memories of both Nazism and Communism fading? David Vaughan brings us a special programme. Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 urn:uuid:c6d8b919-79a3-523f-8768-9a14a9c9d960 http://radio.cz/en/article/147632 If there was one sound guaranteed to infuriate Czechoslovakia’s communist leaders during the 1970s and 80s it was the call-sign of the US-funded Radio Free Europe, broadcasting from Munich to the countries of the Eastern Bloc. After the Soviet-led invasion of 1968, many Czech and Slovak émigrés of a wide variety of political hues ended up working for the station’s Czechoslovak Section. Back home they found a receptive audience and Czechoslovakia’s communist leaders became little short of obsessed with discrediting Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts. Here is a short extract from a Czechoslovak Radio programme from 1976, which opened by playing that despised call-sign: Sat, 05 May 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:b0801726-7df8-550b-acd2-f4d86abb5f49 http://radio.cz/en/article/147598 Prague’s Old Town Square may be famous for its grandeur and architectural beauty, but it is, in fact, a shadow of its former self. A great chunk of the Old Town Hall building was decimated by the Nazis at the end of the war, and has never been rebuilt. To this day, a rather bare park stands where most of the building once did. And across from the famous Jan Hus sculpture used to be a towering Marian column, built in 1650 and felled in 1918, by Czechs who felt it symbolized the country’s Habsburg past. Thu, 03 May 2012 14:38:35 +0200 urn:uuid:e3fa0cfa-bd01-5238-9f9f-d15eba0bcc52 http://radio.cz/en/article/147573 Two massive wooden boxes, each weighing over 300 kilograms – that was what the botanist and pharmacologist Bohuslav Jiruš left the National Museum in his will some 100 years ago. The humungous mystery crates came with one instruction: They should not be opened until 200 years after Jiruš’s death –the year 2101. Now, the National Museum has published the surprising result of its vote on whether its researchers should be allowed to take a peak inside with computed tomography. Wed, 02 May 2012 16:03:39 +0200 urn:uuid:bbfee63d-9d09-562b-b8ad-e2417cde0c97 http://radio.cz/en/article/147563 South Moravia is well-known for its wine, which has been produced there at least since thirsty Roman soldiers far from home began doing so in the 2nd century. Move forward a thousand years or so, to the 13th century, and wine trading had become one of the most profitable businesses in the region. Those are the days that our destination for today stretches back to. Wed, 02 May 2012 14:21:05 +0200 urn:uuid:cf002df6-a758-53d5-8c64-4d623f83c35b http://radio.cz/en/article/147449 In the 1970s the communist authorities tolerated popular music as long as it was insipid, colourless and unoriginal – everything that the Czech psychedelic rock band The Plastic People of the Universe most definitely was not. Their music was inspired by Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground, their lyrics anarchic, their behaviour unconventional and their hair long. In 1976 four members of the band were sentenced to prison terms for what was described as “organised disturbance of the peace”, and in December of the same year Czechoslovak Radio broadcast a documentary that painted the band in the darkest possible colours and included extracts from their music, recorded secretly at their concerts. Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:c7568d6d-28ba-53fb-a2b4-e34f39cb8b98 http://radio.cz/en/article/147272 The 1960s had seen a thriving musical scene in Czechoslovakia, which had been broadly tolerated by the regime, especially during the 1968 Prague Spring. With the political clampdown of the early 70s, rock and pop music were also to suffer. But this was a gradual process, and, initially at least, the communist authorities were careful not to go too far to alienate young people. Sat, 21 Apr 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:81da6800-6141-5c3a-bd77-e2d2124cf34d http://radio.cz/en/article/147309 Prague’s Antonín Dvořák Museum recently reopened after renovation with a new programme dedicated to the life and work of the famous composer. Entitled The journeys of Antonín Dvořák, it offers a new look at the composer’s stays abroad. It also features an exhibition on Dvořák’s Czech-American friend and collaborator, Josef Jan Kovařík, who worked with Dvořák during his stay in New York. Sat, 21 Apr 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:dec3e06c-5bc2-54a3-aee4-79d9ee903295 http://radio.cz/en/article/147064 In the course of 1969 and 1970 Czechoslovak Radio was transformed back into what it had been in the 1950s, a tool of hard line propaganda. In the process, over 700 radio staff were forced to leave their jobs. Those who stayed found their freedom of expression severely curtailed. To give an idea of the extent to which things had changed by August 1969 - the first anniversary of the Soviet led invasion – I will start with a short extract from Radio Prague’s broadcasts back in 1968, as the tanks rolled into the city. At the time the radio was playing a crucial role in keeping the world informed of what was really happening – including reports of violent incidents as the invading troops opened fire on civilians: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:acc461d1-243e-5f77-a369-d299638d9113 http://radio.cz/en/article/146934 In last week’s From the Archives we followed the tragic last days of the student Jan Palach, who on January 16 1969 set himself alight in protest against growing apathy in the face of the Soviet invasion five months earlier. The whole country was in shock. Such a drastic and violent sacrifice had little precedent in modern Czech and Slovak history, and perhaps for just that reason Palach immediately became a symbol of the country’s lost liberty and a rallying cry for those who still hoped to save something of the reforms of 1968. Those in power had to be cautious; they were well aware that Palach’s legacy could be explosive. Sat, 07 Apr 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:add5edb1-2848-5d75-97ef-5388e0b7901d http://radio.cz/en/article/146753 On the evening of January 16 1969, Czechoslovak Radio broadcast a disturbing item of news: “Today at around 3 pm, 21-year-old J.P., a student at the Philosophical Faculty suffered serious burns on Wenceslas Square. He poured an as yet unknown flammable liquid over himself and set his clothes alight resulting in severe burns.” Sat, 31 Mar 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:4020de79-dff7-53ec-bac8-3d8cbe0915b2 http://radio.cz/en/article/146754 Tucked away in a former monastery in Prague’s Nové Město, the Czech Police Museum boasts a fascinating permanent exhibit exploring the history of Czech police, the development of criminology, infamous murder cases and much more. Sarah Borufka went along and has this report. Sat, 31 Mar 2012 02:01:00 +0200 urn:uuid:24ecb174-9049-5939-ba7b-46e4b0d99bd9