Karel Baxa

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Karel Baxa

Karel Baxa (born June 24, 1863 in Sedlčany , Bohemia , Austrian Empire ; † January 5, 1938 in Prague ) was a Czech lawyer, politician (member of the state parliament) and first mayor of Prague.

Life

Karel Baxa, nephew of Karel Havlíček Borovský , attended the academic high school in his youth and studied from 1881 at the law faculty of Charles University in Prague. After taking the state examination in 1888, he worked at the courts in Tábor and Cheb and from 1891 in Prague. His name appears in two large trials, for example as an opponent of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk . In the Hilsner case , as a representative of the secondary prosecution , he repeatedly brought up the motive of ritual murder and thus ensured the media spread of the legend of the ritual murder and an increase in anti-Semitic resentment in Moravia.

He took part in political life for the first time in 1893 when he was defending politically unpleasant journalists in court at the time of the state of emergency in Prague.

Politically, he made a name for himself as a member of the radical Czech movement and was elected as a member of the Bohemian state parliament in 1895 , of which he remained until 1913. From 1901 to 1918 he was a representative in the Vienna Reichsrat . Before that, after Josef Kaizl came into power , who was seen by the Czech intellectuals as a surrender to Vienna, he was with Alois Rašín , Jaroslav Preiss , Karel Stanislav Sokol and others on February 19, 1899 co-founders of the "State Right Radical Party" ( Státoprávní radikální strana ), a patriotic movement that called for Bohemia to become independent . Baxa chaired the party until 1908. In 1908 the party split and Baxa and his supporters founded the "Czech Party of Constitutional Progress" ( Česká strana státoprávně pokroková ). In 1911 he left the party and joined the "National Social Party" ( Česká strana národně sociální ), to which he belonged until his death.

After the establishment of Czechoslovakia he was elected Mayor of Prague ( Primátor ) for the "Czechoslovak People's Socialist Party" ( Československá strana národně socialistická ) . He held this position until 1937. As Lord Mayor, he made great contributions to the development of the city. Traffic was expanded, new settlements laid out and numerous social and cultural institutions such as the Prague City Theater built. In addition, however, his regular nationalist remarks were partly responsible for heightening tensions between Czechs, Germans and Jews in Prague. His support for Czech demonstrators in days of violent riots against German-language sound films in 1930, which he described as a “worthy manifestation to protect the Slavic character of Prague”, became famous.

In 1920 he was appointed chairman of the "Constitutional Court of the Czechoslovak Republic" ( Ústavní soud Československé republiky ) and in 1923 chairman of the "Board of Directors of the Czech Bank". From 1922 Baxa was chairman of the "Central Administrative Commission of the United Prague Municipalities" and from 1928 to 1937 a member of the "Czech State Representation" ( Zemské zastupitelství ).

literature

Web links

Commons : Karel Baxa  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Albert Lichtblau : The debates about the ritual murder accusations in the Austrian House of Representatives at the end of the 19th century , in: Rainer Erb (Hrsg.): Die Legende vom Ritualmord. On the history of the blood charge against Jews , Berlin 1993, pp. 267–292, here pp. 271 f.