Karel Šviha

Karel Šviha

Karel Šviha (born June 11, 1877 in Neubydžow , † June 29, 1937 in Prague ) was a Czech politician and lawyer. He was a member of the Bohemian Landtag and a member of the Austrian House of Representatives .

Life

Šviha was born the son of a court clerk and studied law at the Czech University in Prague, where he received his doctorate in 1900. jur. PhD. From 1903 he worked as a judge adjunct in Komotau and Brüx and was appointed judge in 1908. In 1911 he was appointed to the position of district judge of Senftenberg .

As a student in the 1890s, Šviha became politically active in the Czech progress movement, whereupon he joined the Czech National Social Party after 1900 . Šviha was a member of the Senftenberg municipal council, where he also rose to become district chairman. He was elected to the Bohemian Landtag in 1908, to which he belonged until it was dissolved in 1913, and in 1909 he won the by-elections to the Reichstag in the electoral district of Bohemia 5 (Prague-Lesser Town), whereupon he was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives. In 1911 he prevailed in the Reichsrat election in the electoral district of Bohemia 26 , whereby he was again a member of the House of Representatives. He quickly rose to the leadership of the Prague National Social Party and was from 1911, at times together with Václav Klofáč , chairman of the Czech National Social Club in the Reichsrat. He was also a member of the Národní rada česká (NRČ) (the political umbrella organization of the Czech parties) between 1910 and 1914. Šviha was falsely denounced in March 1914 by the competing Liberal National Party and by the young Czech newspaper Národní listy as a paid confederate of the Prague State Police under the code name "Wiener", who had provided reports on the Czech parties. After a political trial, Šviha was branded a national traitor by the NRČ, as well as by the Czech press and public, after which he had to resign from all political offices in March 1914. Šviha lost a defamation trial against the Young Czech press. Although Šviha had not been an informant for the Prague police, he had briefed Archduke Franz Ferdinand about Czech politics for a long time, solicited his support for Czech constitutional reforms and received subsidies for his party. The affair may also serve as an inspiration for Franz Kafka's The Trial .

Between 1914 and 1918 he worked under a strange name as an employee of a Prague patent attorney, as a legal advisor for the Prague industrial company Waldes and as a lawyer with his own law firm in Komotau. After 1918 he was able to undergo legal rehabilitation, but stayed away from politics. Rather, he turned into a devout Catholic.

literature

• R. Luft:  Šviha, Karel. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 14, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2012–, ISBN 978-3-7001-7312-0 , p. 71 f. (Direct links on p. 71 , p. 72 ).