Karel Stanislav Sokol

Karel Stanislav Sokol

Karel Stanislav Sokol (born October 5, 1867 in Heřmanův Městec , † March 20, 1922 in Prague ) was a Czech politician, journalist and publisher. He was a member of the Austrian House of Representatives .

Life

Sokol was born as the son of the teacher Josef Sokol (1831-1912), who was himself a member of the Bohemian state parliament and a member of the House of Representatives. Karel Sokol graduated from high school, which he graduated in 1886. He then studied philosophy at the Philosophical Faculty of the Czech University in Prague and during his studies he was involved with the radical oppositional, so-called progressives, for whom he organized the Academic Reading Association and the Slávia student publishing house. Since he published the student newspaper "Časopis českého studentstva" between 1889 and 1992, he was expelled from the University of Prague and from 1890 had to continue his studies at the University of Vienna . Between 1892 and 1893, Sokol was also co-editor of Neodvislost and, in 1893, of the literary magazine Nové proudy . Through his participation in the Omladina he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 1894, but was given amnesty again in 1895. He then worked for the newspaper Radikální listy and worked to maintain the unity of the progressive movement within the Young Czechs . In 1899, however, there was a break with the Young Czechs and Sokol founded the Czech constitutional party together with Alois Rašín . Sokol was a member of the Bohemian Landtag between 1909 and 1913 and ran for the supplementary election to the Reichsrat in 1910 in the electoral district of Bohemia 3 (Prague-Upper New Town I), where he was able to prevail in the runoff election. He was a member of the Reichsrat until 1911.

As a politician, Sokol always represented the most radical form of Bohemian constitutional law and during the First World War stood in the camp of the fiercest opponents of the Czech policy of activity. From 1917 he also openly advocated an independent Czech state. At the beginning of 1918 he participated in the union of the Czech bourgeois parties in the constitutional democracy, which appeared as the National Democratic Party in 1919 and was himself a member of the National Committee and from October 1918 a member of the Revolutionary National Assembly. Between 1920 and 1922 he was a member of the Czechoslovak Senate. After 1918 he was also a member of the Bohemian Provincial Administrative Committee, director of the National Theater, chairman of the State Conservatory and the Bohemian Trade Council and was involved in national associations such as the National Union for Northern Bohemia, in various journalists' associations and as a popular educator.

literature

• J. Pokorný. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 12, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2001–2005,ISBN 3-7001-3580-7, p. 400.