Famous People

Princess Libuse (pre-9th c.)--Fabled mother of Bohemia. Legend holds that the clairvoyant Libuse, the daughter of Bohemian philosopher Krok, stood on a cliff on Vysehrad Hill looking over the Vltava and foretold that on this land a great city would stand. She and Prince Premysl Orác declared the first Bohemian state, launching the Premyslid dynasty, which lasted from the 10th to the 12th century.

St. Wenceslas (Svatý Václav; ca. 907-35)--Patron saint of Bohemia. Prince Wenceslas was executed at the site of the present-day city of Stará Boleslav--on the orders of his younger brother, Boleslav, who took over the Bohemian throne. A popular cult arose proclaiming the affable and learned Prince Wenceslas as the perpetual spiritual ruler of all Czechs. The horse market, Prague's traditional meeting place, was the scene of a brief thrust of Czech nationalism against the Austrian Empire in 1848, when people named the place Wenceslas Square (Václavské nám.). A statue at the top of the square, depicting the horse-mounted warrior, was erected in 1912.

Charles IV (Karel IV; 1316-78)--Bohemian king, Holy Roman emperor, and chief patron of Prague. Born to John of Luxembourg and Eliska, the sister of the last Premyslid king, Charles, originally christened Václav, was reared as John's successor; John had taken over the Bohemian crown in 1310. Charles was educated in the royal court in Paris and spent much of his adolescence observing rulers in Luxembourg and Tuscany. Charles ascended the throne in 1346, and during his reign he made Prague the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and one of Europe's most advanced cities. He also inspired several key sites through the country, including Prague's university (Universita Karlova), stone bridge (Karluv most), largest New Town park (Karlovo nám.), and the spa town of Karlovy Vary.

Master Jan Hus (1369 or 1370-1415)--Religious reformer, university lecturer, and Czech nationalist symbol. Upset with what he thought was the misuse of power by Rome and the German clergy in Prague, Hus questioned the authority of the pope and called for the formation of a Bohemian National Church. From his stronghold at Bethlehem Chapel in Old Town, he declared that the powerful clergy should cede their property and influence to more of the people. In 1414, he was summoned to explain his views before the Ecclesiastic Council at Konstanz in Germany but was arrested on arrival. He was burned at the stake as a heretic on July 6, 1415, a day considered the precursor to the Hussite Wars and now commemorated as a Czech national holiday. His church lives on today in the faith called the Czech Brethren.

K. I. Dienzenhofer (1689-1751)--High baroque architect and builder. He and his son, Krystof, were responsible for some of the most striking Czech church designs. These include Prague's Church of St. Nicholas in Lesser Town, the Church of St. Nicholas in Old Town, and the Church of St. John of Nepomuk on Hradcany.

Bedrich Smetana (1824-84)--Nationalist composer. After studying piano and musical theory in Prague, Smetana became one of Bohemia's most revered composers, famous for his fierce nationalism. His Vltava movement in the symphony Má Vlast (My Country) is performed on the opening night of the Prague Spring Music Festival; it's also used as a score in Western movies and TV commercials. His opera The Bartered Bride takes a jaunty look at Czech farm life.

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)--Neo-Romantic composer and head of Prague Conservatory. Dvorák is best known for his symphony From the New World, which was inspired by a tour of the United States. His opera about a girl trapped in a water world, Rusalka, remains an international favorite; it became a popular film in Europe, starring Slovak actress Magda Vasáryová.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924)--Writer. Author of the depressing but universally read novel The Trial, Kafka was a German-Jewish Praguer who, for much of his adult life, worked in relative obscurity as a sad Prague insurance clerk. In works like Metamorphosis, The Castle, and Amerika, Kafka described surreal and suffocating worlds of confusion. Now many use the adjective Kafkaesque to mean "living in absurdity". Anyone who tries to apply for anything at a state office here will know that Kafka's world lives on.

Tomás G. Masaryk (1850-1937)--Philosopher, professor, and Czechoslovakia's first president. Educated in Vienna and Leipzig, Masaryk spent decades advocating Czech statehood. In 1915, he made a landmark speech in Geneva calling for the end of the Habsburg monarchy. He traveled to Washington, D.C., and received the backing of President Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I for a sovereign republic of Czechs and Slovaks, which was founded in October 1918. During his nearly 17 years as president, Masaryk played the stoic grandfather of the new republic. He resigned for health reasons in 1935 and died less than 2 years later.

Klement Gottwald (1896-1953)--Communist leader. He was named prime minister after his Communist Party won the highest vote count in the first postwar election in 1946. By February 1948, he had organized the complete Communist takeover of the government and eventually forced out President Edvard Benes. When he became president in June 1948, the name of his hometown Zlín was changed to Gottwaldov (it changed back to Zlín after the 1989 revolution). He was abhorred for his role in the 1950s show trials that purged hundreds.

Alexander Dubcek (1921-92)--Government leader. Though he's not a Czech, Dubcek is a key figure in the history of Prague and the country. A Slovak Communist, he became the first secretary of the Communist Party in January 1968, presiding over the Prague Spring Reforms. After he was ousted in the August 1968 Soviet-led invasion, Dubcek faded from view, only later to stand with Havel to declare the end of hard-line Communist rule in 1989. He returned to become speaker of Parliament after the Velvet Revolution but was killed in a dubious car accident in 1992.

Václav Havel (b. 1936)--Author, dissident, ex-president. Absurdist playwright in the 1960s, Havel became a leading figure in the pro-democracy movement Charter 77 and the first president after leading the Velvet Revolution.

Among other famous Czech expats are Oscar-winning film director Milos Forman (Amadeus, The People vs. Larry Flynt) and Milan Kundera, the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and other controversial works about 20th-century Czech life. Kundera is now a French citizen and bitterly refuses to make a public return to his homeland, after having left during the dark days of Communist "normalization".

Former tennis superstars Ivan Lendl and Martina Navrátilová, now of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Aspen, Colorado, hail from Ostrava and R[av]evnice, respectively. Two of the greatest stars in NHL ice hockey, Jaromír Jágr and Dominik "The Dominator" Hasek, have made millions playing in America, but both say they miss home and will move back.

The Czech Republic is the homeland of many supermodels. Wonderbra icon Eva Herzigová hails from the blue-collar northern Bohemian industrial berg of Litvínov--whose smokestacks are about as far removed as you can get from the catwalks where she works. Model, actress, and writer Paulina Porízková is from the town of Prostýjov; Victoria's Secret angel Karolína Kurková is from Dcin, near the German border; and tsunami survivor and activist Petra Nemcová is from Karviná, in Moravia.

Mention should also be made of Ivana Trump (pronounced Ee-vah-nah), born in Gottwaldov (now known again as Zlín), east of Prague. The woman who first brought meaning to the term "Velvet Divorce" starred as a skier on the Czechoslovak National Team and as a model before going down the slippery slope with billionaire husband "The Donald" and then with her rebound mate Riccardo Mazzucchelli. Her first novel, For Love Alone, blatantly autobiographical, took place partly in Bohemia.

Prague's Most Powerful Daughter: The Rise & Surprise of Madeleine Albright

Marie Jana Koerbelová took an unlikely path to becoming one of the most powerful women in the world. Born in Prague in 1937, she first learned about the horrors of politics gone wrong at an early age when in 1938 her diplomat father, Josef Koerbel, fled with the family to London as Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.

After the war, the family moved to Belgrade, where Josef was appointed Czechoslovak ambassador to Yugoslavia (he also served as a delegate at the founding of the United Nations). Marie was sent to boarding school in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French. Prague's 1948 Communist coup turned the family into refugees again, for Josef feared that his pro-democracy credentials meant that he'd be singled out in the impending totalitarian purges. Eventually the family received asylum in the United States. At age 11, Marie Jana Koerbelová, renamed Madeleine Korbel for American ears, began a new life in Colorado, where her father took a teaching position at the University of Denver.

Her father's fierce devotion to democracy and his interest in world politics influenced Madeleine tremendously, by her own account. After her marriage to New York newspaper scion Joseph Albright (whom she later divorced), Madeleine Albright began to study and forge a career in foreign policy while raising three daughters. Her writings and teachings often focused on the land of her birth and the horrors it had suffered.

After becoming an immensely popular professor at Georgetown University and advising former Czech president Havel following the Velvet Revolution, she was picked by then-U.S. President Clinton as ambassador to the United Nations.

On her first official visit to Prague as ambassador in 1994, she walked into the palatial foreign ministry where her father had once worked. "This is a really emotional moment for me," she said to journalists as she entered Cernín Palace, fighting back tears. She has since played tour guide for the Clintons in Prague and has dazzled Czechs in her native language, albeit frozen in a girlish tone and vocabulary.

In early 1997, Ambassador Albright became Secretary of State Albright, the first woman ever to serve in such a high government post. "Nothing compares to the feeling of coming to my original home, Prague, as Secretary of State of the United States, for the purpose of saying to you, .Welcome home,'" she said in both languages in an emotional 1997 speech celebrating the country's invitation to join NATO.

Raised a Catholic, she said she discovered only in early 1997 that her parents hid their Jewish heritage during the war and never told their children of their true background. During that 1997 trip, Albright visited the Pinkas Synagogue, where the names of her paternal grandparents are inscribed on the wall, alongside the names of thousands of Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust.

Albright's remaining link to Prague is the house U labutí ("At the Swans"), tucked in the corner at Hradcanské nám. 11 adjacent to the castle, where she lived as a small girl.

Just before his 1977 death, Albright's father had foreshadowed 1989's revolutionary events when he wrote this as the last paragraph of his final book, Twentieth Century Czechoslovakia: "The spark is still there. One cannot doubt that it will flicker one day again into flame, and freedom will return to this land that is so essentially humane."

You can find out more about Albright's feelings regarding her original homeland in her book titled Madam Secretary.