Czech Republic

by Emily Monaco 

What do rock and roll music and the fall of the Iron Curtain have in common? In Prague, the answer is quite a bit.

I’ve always been fascinated by revolutions and rebellions, particularly in countries that I’m otherwise not that familiar with. There’s little more evocative of what makes a people tick than what makes them revolt… and the Velvet Revolution in Prague is no different. Which is why when I visited Prague for the first time, I set out to learn all I could about this revolution, seeking clues to this history in modern Prague.

Prague fell to a Communist Coup d’état in February 1948, known in Communist historiography as “Victorious February.” This set the stage for many years of cultural and historical development – development that, oddly enough, is frequently linked to a rock star who was living on the other side of the Atlantic at the time.

Many come to Prague to visit the John Lennon Wall, a wall technically belonging to the Knights of Malta that’s completely covered in graffiti devoted to Lennon. But how many people know what this emblem to one of Western music’s most important figures means to locals of Prague? I decided to find out.

A Museum and Mausoleum for Czech Communism

In order to understand Prague’s revolution, one must understand what led to it, and there’s nothing better than the Communism museum for this. The museum is full of exhibits of life under the regime, though one gets the feeling that it’s rather tongue in cheek, given the postcards devoted to life under Communism – “You couldn’t get laundry detergent, but you could get your brainwashed”; “It was a time of happy, shiny people. The shiniest were in the uranium mines.” That was my first clue that music had something to do with all of this dark history.

A fairly no-nonsense timeline is nevertheless available at the beginning of the museum, detailing how Prague eventually ended up under a Communist régime for several decades. But what’s more interesting, at least to me, are the exhibits that show what life was really like – school, daily life, shopping… — under Communism.

The exhibit ends with a video, images that we don’t have of other European revolutions that took place too long ago. Images of people marching along Wenceslas Square, calling out for freedom, for the end of Communism and the beginning of something new. And behind it all, a soundtrack for the ages. This was only the beginning of my discovery, but everything I encountered would point back to this video, this peaceful protest.

How Music Saved Their Souls

The Prague Spring came about in 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubcek was elected as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Reforms by Dubcek were intended to grant more rights to citizens, including loosening strict restrictions on media – for the first time, young Czechs could listen to the Beatles on the radio. That was one thing that surprised me as I wandered the Communist museum – how willing locals were to seek out their favorite rock groups from America, buying records on vinyl from Western Europe and listening to them in secret.

Unsurprisingly, the Soviets did not take Dubcek’s attempts in favor of change well. The country was occupied after failed negotiations, and non-violent resistance began throughout the country, lasting 8 months. Bear these non-violent resistances in mind – they’ll come back later.

1968 was an important year for other reasons linked not to politics but to music. Of course, in this case, it’s hard to separate the two. While some young Czechs were listening to the newly released “Revolution” B-Side of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” single, others were listening to more works of rock and roll.

Inspired by the Velvet Underground, a group of Prague natives formed a band called the Plastic People of the Universe, just a month after the Prague Spring was suppressed by Warsaw Pact troops and just after Jan Palach, a philosophy student, set himself on fire on Wenceslas Square, issuing a warning before his death not to follow in his footsteps, a warning displayed on the walls of the Communism museum. The Plastic People played psychedelic garage rock typical of American FM stations of the time – led by front man Milan Hlavsa, a butcher by training, the group sang controversial songs of freedom, first in English, then in Czech. Their first studio album was called “Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned,” an ironic spin on poems by outlawed Czech poet Egon Bondy and the everpresent Liverpudlian Fab Four.

Nearly everything the Plastic People did was illegal in Prague at the time. It was hard to know what would be outlawed next – laughing in a cinema, singing English songs. Professional musicians were required to wear their hair short, but the Plastics wore their hair long. Their dark, subversive lyrics got them thrown in jail for years. And yet they kept playing… and people kept listening.

In 1970, the Communist government revoked the license for the Plastics to perform in public, forcing them to take the second part of the band title that had so inspired them literally – the Plastics were going underground. For years, they remained relatively off the radar, until 1976, when they played a music festival in the town of Bojanvovice, leading to arrests of all of the band members on charges of “subversive activities against the state.”

But nearly 10 years later, their message still pulsed throughout Prague. In 1989, Velvet was no longer Underground – evolving slowly from the moment that people like the Plastics first began to question authority, the Velvet Revolution had arrived in the city.

The Velvet Revolution – Resistance in Song

Marta Kubisova is just one of the many Czechs who was inspired by the “Hey Jude” single. The actress and singer first graced the public eye when “Prayer for Marta” became a symbol of national resistance in 1968, during the Prague Spring. And in the same year, when “Hey Jude” was released, Marta adapted it, releasing her own translated version in 1969 – the cover made her a local star.

After a falsified pornography lawsuit, she was unable to work in many different places and ended up auditioning for the Plastic People of the Universe, a move disallowed by the secret police. On November 22nd, after several days of peaceful student protests and 20 years of having been banned from appearing in public, Marta sang “Prayer for Marta” from a balcony on Wenceslas Square.

Let peace continue with this country.
Let wrath, envy, hate, fear and struggle vanish.
Now, when the lost reign over your affairs will return to you, people, it will return.”
– “Prayer for Marta”

The biggest difference between the Velvet Revolution and any other revolution I’ve studied is the modifier: velvet. Stemming perhaps from a belief forged by the Plastics — that any dialogue with the totalitarian regime was futile and it was better to simply turn one’s back — the Velvet Revolutionaries did not fight for freedom, per se, but merely acted as though they were already free. The students walked. Marta sang. And it worked.

Revolution and Rock and Roll in Prague Today

Today, the John Lennon wall still attracts hundreds of tourists, who come to look at the ever-changing paintings. The Knights of Malta have long since ceased trying to stop the graffiti. But while John Lennon is a meaningful symbol for many, it’s hard to understand just how much his music meant to young Czechs in the 80s.

The wall first popped up in 1980, just after Lennon’s death, just a few years before Prague students took to the streets. The wall was created in memory of the man who, for them, embodied the freedom and liberation they so craved. “Lennonism,” then, a celebration of freedom and independence, became the counterpoint to Communism, and the evidence remains in Prague today, years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

As I walk through modern Prague, I see music everywhere – folk metal bagpipe players on a central square, a lone guitarist in a fringed suede jacket playing a Beatles song. I find Wenceslas Square, finally, on one of my last days in Prague. It’s understated and small, hardly even labeled – it seems, to me, to be the perfect place for Velvet.

Skip-the-Line Museum of Communism Ticket and Prague City Private Tour

If You Go:

♦ Museum of Communism – Na príkope 852/10, 110 00 Praha 1

♦ National Museum – U Památníku 1900, 130 00 Praha 3 (The Music and Politics exhibit runs the end of March 2015)

♦ The Museum and Archive of Popular Music – Belohorská 201/150, 169 00 Praha

About the author:
Emily Monaco is a native New Yorker living in Paris. She earned a Master’s degree in 19th century French literature from the Sorbonne and now writes about revolution, cheese, and beer. Discover her experiences with Franglais and food on her blog, tomatokumato.com. Her writing has been featured in That’s Paris, an anthology about life in Paris.

All photos by Emily Monaco:
Communist anti-American propaganda at the Prague Communism Museum.
School under Communism as depicted at the Prague Communism Museum.
A hidden record player displayed at the Prague Communism Museum.
A Plastic People of the Universe poster.
The lyrics to “Blackbird” painted on the John Lennon Wall.
Paintings of John Lennon on the John Lennon Wall.
A folk metal bagpipe player busking in Prague.
A lone dog crossing an empty Wenceslas Square.

Prague, Czech Republic

by Megan Swanik

Whether you find William Shakespeare brilliant or a bore, he taught us a litany of valuable lessons. Among them is the assurance that a name should not and does not detract from the beauty (or ugliness) of an individual.

In other words: a created, inherited, or colloquially attributed name does not indicate the beauty, substance, or importance of a person. The name doesn’t reveal all; the person does.

“What’s in a name? What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” (Romeo & Juliet, but hopefully you already knew that)

Applying Shakespeare’s wisdom on a broader scale, the same can be said of a place. A beautiful and benevolent city is just as beautiful and benevolent whether you want to call it City of Wonder or City of Doom. The substance of a location, of a city, of a street, remains steadfastly what it is by nature. It pays no mind and does not alter its feeling to meet the name bestowed upon it.

Wenceslas Square, one of the most legendary squares in Central Europe, in Prague, Czech Republic, has played host to a number of fitting names as well as false names. In tandem with the Czech people daily traversing its dark cobblestone, political subjugation in the 20th century led to cultural suppression and the great Wenceslas Square- named after a beloved Czech Saint and hero- was known momentarily by other names. Wenceslas Square (Vaclavske Namesti in Czech) was victimized by names and ideals forced upon it first by Adolf Hitler and then by Josef Stalin.

Yet though its name morphed to meet the changing political eras of 20th century Prague- the majesty and ethereal substance of the magnificent Gothic Square remained steadfastly true to its Czech identity. Wenceslas Square was known by other names. But the core of its beauty and culture remained just as sweet.

My greatest and simplest joy while living in Prague was undoubtedly the frequent walks I took, meandering aimlessly down forgotten cobblestoned streets, pausing to sit beneath the unparalleled charm of some of the best-preserved architecture in the world. When I first arrived in Prague, I felt as though somebody had stolen my daydreams of what a Gothic fairytale would look like, and turned it into a city in the Czech Republic.

As you wander down the ancient roads of Stare Mesto, passing some of the oldest synagogues and cathedrals in Europe, gargoyles and spires lurch out at you and lead you along your way. Beneath your feet sleeps an endless variation of cobblestone. Your feet feel privileged as you contemplate the feet of men like Albert Einsten, Vaclav Havel, and Franz Kafka walking for years past those very same gargoyles on that very same cobblestone. You stroll along the winding River Vltava that divides Stare Mesto and Nove Mesto (Old and New Town, respectively) from Mala Strana and Hradcany (The Lesser Quarter and The Castle District, respectively) and can’t help but spend time gawking beneath the darkened and aged Biblical Statues parading along the oldest standing bridge in Europe: Karlov Most. And above it all, resting upon its hill of antiquity and importance, sits the dark outline of the beloved Prague Castle and imposing spires of Saint Vitus’ Cathedral. It is a charming and legendary city, with an abundance of breath taking images. And Wenceslas Square is among its loveliest.

Saint Wenceslas Square reigns majestically in Nove Mesto. It stretches forward from beneath Prague Museum with the proud Saint Wenceslas statue astride his horse and rolls south to Narodny Street. The path south to Narodny is lined with shops, sausage and fried cheese stands, restaurants pouring out gulas and bars pouring out famous Czech beer.

“This is the historical and political heart of our city,” crooned the quiet yet deeply Slavic accent of my Czech History Professor in Prague. “This is where our revolutions took place. This is where we declared ourselves an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918. This is where the Nazis invaded. This is where the Russians invaded. This is where we overthrew them.” In order to understand Czech culture, he lectured, you must understand the history and importance of this square.

The Czech people are, tragically, not strangers to tyranny and oppression. They shifted (with all too brief interims of democracy) from hundreds of years of rule (characterized by varying degrees of prestige and suppression) under the Hapsburgs, to the infamously terrifying and inhumane rule of the Nazis, only to overthrow them and be immediately subjected to tyranny of a different kind- Stalinist Communism. It wasn’t until 1989, when the Velvet revolution took place (In Saint Wenceslas Square!) that the Czechs and Slovaks again became a free Czechoslovakia (And then their own, amicably separated, republics in 1993).

The Czechs have admirably maintained their unique culture despite a history like theirs. They are a stubbornly proud and resilient nation. Throughout the years they have taken steps to ensure the preservation of their distinct identity. For example, in the 19th century they organized a “Czech National Revival” in which they made sure all people were able to speak and write in Czech- as opposed to the Hapsburg inherited German language. And that resilient Czech identity seeps into the stubbornly proud and resilient ancient architecture that looms above the streets, where so much human folly and destruction played out.

I imagine Saint Wenceslas Square to be like a Czech person itself. She is (for I see her as a woman-elderly and strong) as much a part of Czech history and cultural identity as any other momentous figure- like say Saint Wenceslas himself, or King Charles for whom the oldest bridge in Europe was constructed, or the famously brilliant and brave Vaclav Havel.

She remains in her long held spot in Nove Mesto- beautiful, striking, imposing, and enduring. She sat patiently while dictators rolled in with tanks and subjugated her countrymen and then eventually were defeated. She sat, bitter yet mocking for she knew their vapid tricks for what they were, as cruel men such as Hitler and Stalin took ownership of her beauty and attributed their names to the square. For decades, in fact for the greater part of the Twentieth Century, she bore imposter names paying tribute to imposter rulers. (If you visit the Museum of Communism a few short steps from the end of her street you can still see the mocking and decaying signs that were hung during Communist ruling bearing the name of Stalin. )

I see her as mocking and wise because although she bore these names so unkindly forced upon her, she knew that a name means nothing. Her name became German and then it became Russian. But Wenceslas Square remained steadfastly Czech. It was and is defiantly unique and striking- the darkly aged colors and foreboding architecture of the Gothic Square stand firm and enduring. As does Czech culture. As does all of Prague.

As does anything or being that knows a name and title is little more than folly and semantics. Real beauty, real anything, runs much deeper than a word momentarily attributed to the surface.

Private Walking Tour: Prague Old Town, Wenceslas Square and Jewish Quarter

If You Go:

The Czech Republic is easy to reach by train, bus, or air. It is most commonly visited via Germany, which borders the Czech nation to the West. Trains from Berlin or Munich average about eighty dollars and reach Prague in about five hours. Tourism is quite rampant and accessible in Prague. Finding a hostel, hotel, or rental apartment is easy to find via any of the usual accommodation portals like tripadvisor.com, hostelbookers.com, and hostelworld.com. It should be noted that Prague gets quite cold in the winter months, but probably the most magical time to visit the city is in December when it is covered in Christmas markets. An alternative to the Christmas Markets would be the Easter Markets, but this is when the Czech tourist season is at its peak.

Private Prague Food Tour

About the author:
Megan Swanik is a freelance writer and blogger currently based in Southeast Asia. She’s been to more than twenty countries in the past five years and has lived in Southeast Asia for the last two. You can follow her adventures on her blog at www.nomadicmegan.com

Photo credits:
Wenceslas Square by Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Prag, Wenzelsplatz — 2019 — 6852” / CC BY-SA 4.0
Saint Wenceslas statue by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
Karlův most – Charles Bridge by Nice0205 / CC BY-SA

by Luke Maguire Armstrong

The “Devil” has died. Or at least the one who lived on Prague’s Charles Bridge has. His death adds another chapter to the dense history the bridge has shared. Before going into who the devil was, it is best to understand the bridge he made his home for years.

Twenty-eight statues, dating from 1628 and built by some of history’s most talented sculptors, overlook those crossing the Charles Bridge. At the end of the bridge rises the Mala Strana Bridge Tower, leading to a district of the same name. Since the bridge was ordered built by Charles IV in 1357, it has connected Prague across the Vltata River. During its 600 years, it has seen good and bad, angels and demons. Of the 17 bridges connecting the river, it is the oldest, standing because of the genius of its design.

The bridge has collected the dust of invaders and friends for centuries. It was crossed by Catholic Hapsburgs from 1618 to 1648 as they battled and finally defeated disagreeing Protestants. The victors crossed The Charles carrying booty after they plundered the collections of the recently diseased King Rudolph II.

The bridge has also felt the steps of moved masses coming from Mozart’s premier of “Don Giovanni.” Perhaps the happy tempo of these steps felt similar to those that walked the bridge in 1918 when Czech people crossed it — citizens of a sovereign country for the first time in their long history.

In only two decades the light steps of freedom were replaced by the heavy steps of German troops, occupying the city for seven years until 1945. Freedom from Germany lasted only until 1948, when Soviet tanks left deep tread marks on the bridge and country.

As hope’s light dimmed across the country, the footsteps of plotters crossed boldly through the darkness, paving the way for The Velvet Revolution in 1989. Without bloodshed on that day, Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic, as it remains today.

Then came The Devil. No one knows exactly when he first came, but everyone agrees it was over 10 years ago. On the edge of the bridge he set up shop where he thought he belonged, next to the other artists selling their creations to eager tourists in front of the Mala Strana tower.

The Devil, whose real name was Antonin, was not of their cut. While other artists came selling pictures of Prague, Antonin painted self-portraits depicted as the devil on the Charles Bridge. Every day he set up shop wearing red devil horns to paint and to sell. Though his paintings had their differences, his subject never changed. Always himself, always as the devil, always set on the Charles Bridge.

Antonin’s eccentricity led to his becoming a local legend. The folklore has it that the “Devil Man” used to be a brilliant professor who one day left his old life behind and came to the Charles Bridge where he stayed till his death.

Did he believe he was the devil? Why the Charles Bridge? Was it all a ploy for the money or was their some higher reason for what he did? I don’t know. And I won’t know. When I set out to find him and ask, he was not to be found. The other vendors informed me with long faces that he recently passed away.

Though gone, his memory will not soon fade. In his own richly eccentric way, he left his mark on the bridge, the city, and on the millions of people who crossed the bridge and, upon seeing him in his devil horns, wondered, “What the hell?”

It reminds me of something a friend posted on my Facebook wall. “Hundred of years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove, but the world may be different because I did something so baffling crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.” Whatever brought Antonin to the bridge, he attracted tourists in a way few of us ever will.

Prague Walking Tour of Old Town, Charles Bridge and Prague Castle

If You Go:

♦ For information about cultural information, events, restaurants, shops and sightseeing, see www.pragueexperience.com

♦ For information about backpacking see, www.st-christophers.co.uk/travel-tips/stories/europe/czech-republic/surviving-in-prague

♦ For information on what on what do while you’re there, visit www.myczechrepublic.com/prague

Private Food Tour With a Local in Prague

About the author:
Luke Maguire Armstrong (www.lukespartacus.com) was a baby, who became a boy, who became a man. After finishing degrees in philosophy and English abroad in Chile, Luke backpacked from Chile to Guatemala, where he spent four years as director of development organization Nuestros Ahijados. His work to battle infant malnutrition was featured on the ABC News Global Health Special: Be the Change, Save a Life. He is the author of “iPoems for the Dolphins to Click Home About” (2010) and “How We Are Human” (2012). Follow @lukespartacus.

Photo Credits:
Most photos were by Luke Maguire Armstrong. Permission to use the Devil Man photo goes to Cara and Pam at www.thegrumpygoatgallery.blogspot.com