Levá fronta

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The group Levá Fronta , in German the Left Front or Left Front (rarely abbreviated LF or LeF ), and their eponymous magazine Levá fronta , were among the best-known and driving forces of the artistic avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s in Czechoslovakia, which was influenced by Marxism .

After the fall of the Prague Spring , a group of pro-Soviet party cadres tried in 1969 to found a left-wing dogmatic group of the same name and to draw a parallel to the Levá fronta of 1929. Over time, their demands became too radical for the leadership of the CPC , so that the party brought about the end of the group.

Avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s

The artistic avant-garde of this time in Czechoslovakia comprised numerous groups and artists from many directions. It belonged to groups such Surealistická skupina (Surrealist group) by André Breton was inspired (u a.. Toyen , Jindrich Štyrský , Karel Teige , Vítězslav Nezval , Konstantin Biebl , Jaroslav Jezek , which is active in the field of photography and a..) Fotoskupina pěti - Photo group of Five (František Povolný, Hugo Táborský and others), Devětsil (Karel Teige, Jaroslav Seifert , Vladislav Vančura , Adolf Hoffmeister , Vítězslav Nezval and others), Bauhaus supporters ( Otto Eisler and others), Literární skupden - literary group (Konstantin Běkieblista and others) ) or "Davisté" for the magazine DAV ( Vladimír Clementis , Daniel Okáli and others).

Dispute with the Communist Party line

In February 1929 the KPTsch Gottwald was elected General Secretary at the 5th party congress . After a long phase of relative independence from the Comintern , the so-called Bolshevization of the party was initiated and with it a new line in cultural policy. As a reaction to this subordination to the Comintern, discussions arose in the avant-garde groups, which later went down in history as the "generation discussion" and which faced the new view of developments in the Soviet Union. In particular, the initial enthusiasm for the new future, which was rooted in the Marxist-oriented avant-garde, was questioned by a few people: as a protest against this new line, seven well-known artists from the Devětsil group signed the so-called Manifesto of Seven . Immediately a kind of "anti-manifesto" appeared from several Devětsil colleagues who condemned the advance of the seven and supported the line of the Communist Party. The seven, all founding members of the party, were expelled from the party in March 1929.

Levá fronta (1929–1938)

Against this background, a group of left-wing artists, the Levá Fronta , formed in 1930, who saw themselves as the successors of the Devětsil group . The founding date is October 18, 1929. On this day there was a general meeting of the (mainly) members of Devětsil, in which some basic documents such as the programmatic declaration of the new association were approved. The driving members were Stanislav K. Neumann, Karel Teige, Vítězslav Nezval, Bedřich Václavek, EF Burian , Vilém Závada , František Halas and others. The chosen name Levá fronta was based on the left front in the Soviet Union, the LEF .

The group was founded relatively quickly in other cities, first in Brno (according to a source probably on December 5, 1929, initiated by Bedřich Václavek, Jan Krejčí, Jindřich Honzl and EF Burian , among others ); other local associations were formed in 1931 in Boskovice, Žilina, Užhorod, Hradec králové and Ostrava.

Working sections soon arose, specializing in various fields: the literature section, which was probably the most important, doctors, philosophy, sociology, economics. Filmová a fotografická skupina (Film-Foto group, also known as "fi-fo") came into being in 1931 , inspired by the film historian Lubomír Linhart (who became its spokesman). The architects who founded their own section - Architektonická sekce Levé fronty (AsLeF, the Architectural Section of the LeF), initiated by Karel Teige u. a. (similar to the Architekti Devětsilu group , ARDEV, Architects of Devětsil). While in poetry the orientation towards poetism, later increasingly accompanied by epic elements, predominated, the active forces of the architecture section were first influenced by purism (especially by Le Corbusier ) and later became protagonists of functionalism and above all of Constructivism to be.

In her programmatic declaration Levá fronta described her goals: she wanted to propagate socialist culture and promote cooperation between the progressive intelligentsia and the working class. The declaration also stated that the group was apolitical and not linked to any political party; Levá fronta, or at least some parts of it, increasingly transformed itself into an association with political and cultural-political goals and in numerous papers it was certified that it worked with the Communist Party; this was especially true of the wing around Gustav Breitenfeld.

Some architects visited the Soviet Union (like Karel Teige) or lived and even worked there (like Jaromír Krejcar ). Nonetheless, the Czech avant-garde of the Levá fronta saw the move away from constructivism in favor of classicism, as happened in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, with a slight delay. The end of Soviet classicism was particularly painful for them because their belief that modern architecture could only develop in a country that was building socialism was suddenly destroyed. The suppression of the progressive elements of architecture and, in particular, the increasingly disturbing information about the Stalinist purges, ultimately disaffected most supporters of the Levá fronta; after two years of professional activity, Krejcar hastily left the Soviet Union. Others like Karel Teige were also very disappointed by the development.

Levá Fronta magazines and publications

The Levá Fronta group was also active as a journalist. She published the eponymous magazine Levá fronta . It appeared in Prague from 1930 to 1933, the editor-in-chief was SK Neumann . It was also published in Brno (1931), and the local group in Ostrava published its own magazine Kampaň . The magazine devoted a lot of space to the question of Marxism, especially from the point of view of the increasingly important struggle against fascism.

A number of publications and books have been published by Levá fronta, for example Engels' study, Wohnungsfrage (1932), Miljutin's Sozgorod (1931), Teiges The Right and Left Architecture.

Levá fronta 1969–1970

On December 20, 1969, already during the so-called normalization in Czechoslovakia after the violent end of the Prague Spring , there was a resurgence of orthodox-conservative, pro-Soviet forces whose influence had been interrupted during the Prague Spring. For example, the signatories of the so-called invitation letter were again very active within the party, and the ultra-left group around party functionary Josef Jodas tried to speed up the settlement with the liberal forces. The re-establishment of the Levá fronta was an attempt by dogmatic Stalinists to accelerate the purges in the party and in society. They tried to give the impression that they could build on a long tradition. The most active members included B. Vilém Nový , Karel Mestek , Emanuel Famíra and Soňa Penningerová , the leading role fell to Jaromír Hrbek , who was briefly Minister of Education in the Czech government of Stanislav Rázl and Josef Kempný and Josef Korčák . Their assessment in later literature ranged from "bluntly rigid and orthodox Stalinists" to "ultra-left sectarians" to "dogmatists whose intellectual horizon got stuck in the 1950s".

At their ideological conference on 3-4. In October 1970 they described the situation in such an exaggerated way that they indirectly accused the party leadership of Gustáv Husák at the time , which had already come to terms with the Soviets, of failing to fight revisionism, with only Hrbeks Levá fronta (not the CPTsch) in the Was able to put an end to it. His program and failures had gone too far for the KPTsch leadership. She disapproved of the decisions of the ideological conference and forbade the publication of the Levá fronta material. In July 1971, Hrbek then lost his ministerial function, which then drowned the Levá fronta as a political force.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e J. Lehár et al .: Česká literatura od počátků k dnešku , in: Lidové noviny, Prague 1998; J. Poláček et al .: Průhledy do české literatury 20. století , CERM, Brno 2000; Jan Mukařovský: Dějiny české literatury , Volume IV, Literatura od konce 19. století do roku 1945 , Victoria Publishing, Prague 1995; all quot. based on: Adéla Křížová: Časopis Levá fronta v historickém kontextu počátku 30. let , online at: theses.cz / ... , page 11ff. (partly in notes)
  2. ↑ Literární skupina , short keyword of the online encyclopedia Vševěd, online at: encyklopedie.vseved.cz / ...
  3. ↑ a b c Levá fronta , short keyword of the online encyclopedia CoJeCo, online at: cojeco.cz / ...
  4. ↑ Diskuse ne pouze generační , foreword by the literary historian Vladimír Dostál, in: Štěpán Vlašín et al .: Avantgarda známá a neznámá, Volume 3, 503 pages, p. 7ff., Svoboda, Prague 1970, online at: ucl.cas.cz/ ...
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Levá fronta , 1929, page 48; Rostislav Švácha: Sovětský constructivism a česká architektura , in: Umění (Journal of the Institute for Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), year 1988 [No. 1], page 54ff .; Josef Pechar: Československá architektura , Prague 1979; all quot. after: Michael Bartůšek: Ohlasy sovětské avantgardní architektury v české architektuře 20. – 30. let , page 26ff., Prague 2010, online at: dspace.cuni.cz / ...
  6. ↑ a b Jaroslav Váňa: Levá fronta včera a dnes , in: Obrys-Kmen, 34/2004, weekly magazine of the Unie českých spisovatelů (Union of Czech Writers), online at: obrys-kmen.cz / ...
  7. ↑ Levá fronta , directory of members of the group, Informační systém abART, online at: abart-full.artarchiv.cz / ...
  8. ↑ Linhart Lubomír (1906–1980) , material from the Národní filmový archiv (National Film Archive) Prague, page III, online at: nfa.cz / ...
  9. ↑ a b Levá fronta , programmatic explanation of the group, in: Štěpán Vlašín et al .: Avantgarda známá a neznámá, Volume 3, pp. 119ff., Svoboda, Prague 1970, online at: ucl.cas.cz / ... ; Original editions appeared in ReD (magazine of the Devětsil group ), 1929/2; English version: The Left Front's “Founding Manifesto” (1929) , online at: modernistarchitecture.wordpress.com / ...
  10. ↑ Rostislav Švácha: Sovětský Konstruktivismus a česká architektura , in: Umění (Journal of the Institute for Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), year 1988 [No. 1], page 54ff .; Rostislav Švácha (ed.): Jaromír Krejcar 1895 až 1949 (exhibition catalog), Prague 1995; both quoted after: Michael Bartůšek: Ohlasy sovětské avantgardní architektury v české architektuře 20. – 30. let , Prague 2010, online at: dspace.cuni.cz/
  11. ↑ a b Pavel Urbášek: Jak "pancéřové divize" bránily socialism. K úloze ultraradikální levice v letech 1968–1970 , article in the online magazine Listy, 4/2006, online at: listy.cz / ...
  12. ↑ Josef JODAS (tzv. Jodasova skupina) , curriculum vitae and report on the Totalita.cz portal, online at: totalita.cz / ...

literature

  • Miloslav Laichman: Brněnská levá fronta 1929-1933 . Brno: Blok, 1971
  • Wolf Oschlies : "Pressure Group" of the dogmatists: historical-critical comments on the establishment of the "Levá fronta" in Czechoslovakia in 1969/70 . Cologne: Federal Institute for Eastern and International Studies, 1970

Web links