Karel Sabina

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Karel Sabina (1871)

Karel Sabina [ ˈsabɪna ] (born December 29, 1813 in Prague ; † November 7, 1877 there , then in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy ) was a Czech, radical-democratic journalist under the pseudonyms Karel Sabinsky, Arian Zelinsky and Leo Blaß; a politician and writer, whose special literary achievement is the libretto to Bedřich Smetana's opera The Bartered Bride , which premiered in 1866 .

life and work

Karl Sabina grew up as the illegitimate son of a caretaker and operator in Prague's Karlsgasse and graduated from the grammar school in Prague's old town . Nothing certain is known about his biological father. The information about details of his life comes largely from a hearsay biography of Max Brod . After that, his stepfather, a bricklayer, is said to have beaten him several times. Sabina studied philosophy and law for a few semesters at the Universities of Prague and Vienna and, in order to secure his livelihood, was an educator in various bourgeois houses without much enthusiasm. During this time he was friends with Karel Hynek Mácha , the author of the poetry story Máj , who died in 1836. In 1845 Sabina published a study about him, which Jakub Arbes considers to be the most important that Sabina created before 1848, alongside his novella The Gravedigger .

His stay in Vienna ended in 1839 with his expulsion from the city after he had published liberal articles in the Adler magazine . Then he tried to find a living in Prague with literary work. This livelihood was made more difficult for him by censorship measures, house searches and police interrogations by the authorities of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . The desire to escape this surveillance and gain some financial security later led him to an association with these institutions.

Sabina's tomb in Prague

From 1848 on, Sabina was considered one of the leading figures of the Czech radical democrats, was a member of the secret society Repeal , which also included Emanuel Arnold , Vilém Gauč , František Havlíček , Ludvík Ruppert and Vincenz Vávra-Haštalský , and the writers' association Májovci . Sabina was a talented and popular public speaker and for a short time a member of the Bohemian state parliament . In 1849 he was arrested for participating in the Whitsun uprising in Prague . Because negotiations that he and other patriots with staying in Prague Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin had done, he was first in March 1853 to death , then to 18 years in prison convicted. Pardoned in May 1857, Sabina returned to Prague from the Olomouc prison and lived as a writer again. He was also temporarily a dramaturge at the Czech Interim Theater . Before laying the foundation stone for the new Prague National Theater , he gave a fiery speech on May 10, 1868 in a solemn event in front of 20,000 people on Mount Rip near Raudnitz.

Sabina's "betrayal"

In the summer of 1872, various Prague papers published that Karel Sabina was said to have been secretly working for the police for a good 10 years. A self-empowered vime court expelled him from the country, which failed for unknown reasons. He then lived penniless, persecuted and disguised in Prague as a writer on the verge of starvation. Sabina is said not to have denied his work with the imperial authorities, but played it down. Feeling unjustly accused, he brought proceedings against his detractors, which were crushed in 1873.

His son Alois and his daughter Euphrosyne Sininka, who was married in Orenburg on the Urals and whose mother is hardly known, are said to have moved away from him. As far as Karel Sabina was still able to publish, he did so under pseudonyms , sometimes using the German language . In November 1877 he probably died of exhaustion at the age of 64.

According to his biographer Max Brod , for almost half a century from 1872 and after his death in 1877 to 1918, almost only lies and malicious character assassination were circulated in the Czech media about Karel Sabina. In the year of the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, the police files kept under lock and key in Prague and Vienna could be viewed. An essay by Jakub Arbes , the editor in charge of the influential daily Národní listy, was one of the exceptions . Max Brod relies on this work. Thereafter, the ostracized "spy" Karel Sabina fed the Javůrek police council exclusively with general, meaningless reports that one could believe that Sabina had "only had the highly commendable police for the best". She used it to finance the life of an enemy of the state of the monarchy. In any case, this material was completely unsuitable for denouncing comrades-in-arms and thus extraditing them. “Sabina knew everything and didn't tell the police anything.” This was also emphasized by the Májovci activist Josef Václav Frič in his memoirs. When Frič also brings the romantic Sabina close to the likable “Baron of Lies” Münchhausen , Brod's suspicion that Sabina’s double play was not only due to his lack of money is confirmed. The reckless and comedic is described by various contemporary witnesses as a character trait of Sabina. After all, there might even have been a very ambivalent relationship with the police council that Sabina had already known from school.

Max Brod developed the initially astonishing but basically obvious theory that Sabina's “betrayal” had already been sketched out and justified in his famous libretto for the Bartered Bride . “Jeník sells his bride, but he doesn't deliver her.” Even Sabina's constant financial need can be found there. On the one hand, Jeník tries to use his trick to help his bride parents out of debt; on the other hand, Sabina had to be paid 20 guilders for an opera libretto, which was a considerable financial success, from Smetana, who at the time was penniless himself.

With the exception of this libretto, there are no writings by Karel Sabina in German translation.

Works

Narrative prose
  • Hrobník (The Gravedigger ), 1844
  • Obrazy ze 14. a 15. věku , 1844
  • Povídky, pověsti, obrazy a novely , collection of short stories, 2 volumes, 1845
  • Vesničané (Village People), 1847
  • Tábor jiskry časové (Tabor, spark of time), 1849
  • Blouznění (enthusiasm), 1857
  • Hedvika (Hedwig), 1858
  • Jen tři léta (Only three years), 1860
  • Věčný ženich (The Eternal Bridegroom), 1863
  • Na poušti , 1863
  • Oživené hroby (Revived graves), diary from prison, 1870
  • Morana čili Svět a jeho nicoty , 1874
Essays
  • Úvod povahopisný , a study on Karel Hynek Mácha , 1845
  • Duchovní komunismus (Spiritual Communism), 1861, a book about the need for comprehensive popular education
  • History of Czechoslovak Literature of the Ancient and Middle Ages (in Czech), 1866
  • Chronicle of the Prussian-Italian-Austrian War (in Czech), 1868
  • Defense against liars and defamers , 1872
  • The theater and drama in Bohemia up to the beginning of the 19th century , 1877
  • The petrels of the revolution in Austria before March 1848 , 1879

Posthumously letters, memoirs, reviews, etc. published, see ÖLB

Poetry
  • Básně , 1841
Dramas
  • Černá růže
  • Inzerát , 1866
  • Maloměstské klepny
  • Šašek Jiřího z Poděbrad
Libretti

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Sabina, Karl . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 28th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1874, pp. 6–12 ( digitized version ).
  • Vojtech Kristián Blahník: Karel Sabina , Prague 1911.
  • Mirko Očadlík: Karel Sabina - libretista , in: Narodní a Stavovské divadlo 5, 1927, no.12 .
  • Václav Záček: K prípadu Karel Sabina (On the Karel Sabina Case), in: Časopis Národního mus. 110, 1936, pp. 73 ff.
  • Emil Schneider: Political, religious and social issues with Karel Havlicek, Karel Sabina and Svatopluk Čech , Prague 1938.
  • František Götz and Frank Tetauer: České umění dramatické, Část I. - činohra , Prague 1941, pp. 73–75.
  • Jan Thon: O Karel Sabina , Prague 1947
  • Julius Fučik: Tři study. Božena Němcová, Karel Sabina, Julius Zeyer , Prague 1948
  • Jaroslav Purš: K prípadu Karel Sabina . In: Rozpravy Československé . NS 69/8, 1959.
  • Max Brod : The Bartered Bride - The adventurous life novel by the lyricist Karel Sabina . Bechtle, Munich / Esslingen 1962 ( DNB 450634434 ).
  • Jiří Kořalka :  Sabina Karel. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 9, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7001-1483-4 , p. 361 f. (Direct links on p. 361 , p. 362 ).
  • Karel Sabina . In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon . Edition Munich 1988, review of his libretto on the sold bride , plus references.
  • Slavomir Ravik: Karel Sabina (portrét konfidenta) , Prague 1998.
  • Biographical lexicon on the history of the Bohemian countries, published on behalf of the Collegium Carolinum (Institute) by Ferdinand Seibt , Hans Lemberg and Helmut Slapnicka, Volume III, R. Oldenbourg Verlag Munich 2000, ISBN 3 486 55973 7 , p. 586.
  • Pavel Kosatík: Čeští democé: 50 nejvýznamnějších osobností veřejného života , Prague 2010.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Smetana, Bedrich . In: Kurt Honolka : Music in the past and present . Vol. 12, Bärenreiter-Verlag 1986, p. 781 ff.
  2. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 142.
  3. ^ Max Brod, Munich 1962, pp. 26 and 39.
  4. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 31.
  5. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, pp. 43/44.
  6. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 45.
  7. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 106.
  8. ↑ Sabina's marriage is in the dark. Brod occasionally mentions Sabina's poor, also ailing and also quarreling woman, who embroidered ribbons and scarves that are difficult to sell (p. 150) in order to contribute to the rent. In any case, Sabina had to take care of her.
  9. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 207.
  10. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 109.
  11. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 111.
  12. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 91.
  13. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 164.
  14. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, pp. 138, 118.
  15. ↑ Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 115.
  16. ^ Criticism in Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 215 ff.
  17. ^ Criticism in Max Brod, Munich 1962, p. 211 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Sabina, Karel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Želinský, Arian; Pale, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech radical democrat, publicist, writer and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1877
Place of death Prague