Maid war

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Ctirad and Šárka
by Josef V. Myslbek (1881)

The Maiden War (also Amazon War or Bohemian Maiden War ; Czech. Dívčí válka ) is a fabulous war between women and men for rule in Bohemia .

Lore

Ctirad and Šárka
by Věnceslav Černý

The oldest written tradition can be found in the Chronicle of Cosmas of Prague at the beginning of the 12th century. According to her, the girls of the country lived like Amazons after the death of Princess Libuše , chose their own leaders, wore the same clothes as the men, hunted in the woods and chose their own men. When they even built their own castle called Děvín (Girls' Castle ), the men built a second castle called Chrasten nearby on the site of what would later become Vyšehrad, and war broke out between the two sexes. A three-day feast was held to mark the conclusion of peace, but every man abducted a woman on the first night, and since then women have lived under the domination of men.

The Chronicle of Dalimil develops the legends in the 14th century in the style of courtly epic . Libuše's husband Přemysl became the leader of the men, and the elected queen of women was given the name Vlasta . Dalimil also incorporates the motif of seduction into the narrative. Šárka , the most beautiful of the women, lets herself be shackled and thus lures a young noble named Ctirad into the trap. The women braid him into the wheel of the other men as a deterrent. He survived the ordeal and, after the final victory, had Přemysl Šárka buried alive. This motif in particular was later designed and varied with numerous fantastic details.

Interpretation and reception

The historian Dušan Třeštík identifies the story as one of the four Czech myths , alongside an Indo-European myth of the creation of the world, the arrival of the tribe in the land under the great father Čech and the marriage of the plowman Přemysl with the fortune teller Libuše.

Attempts were made to locate the “castle of women” in various places that bear this name. In addition to the Děvín mountain in Northern Bohemia, there is also a mountain of the same name in Moravia .

Fiction
  • Friedrich C. Schubert: Wlasta or the maid war. Tragedy in four acts . Schreiber, Munich 1877.
  • Carl Franz van der Velde : The Bohemian Maiden War. Novella . Macklot Verlag, Stuttgart 1824 (based on this legend).
  • Carl Franz van der Velde: The Bohemian Maiden War. Drama in five acts . In: Die deutsche Schaubühne , vol. 12 (1871), issue 7/8, pp. 1–22.
  • Theodor Mundt : Bohemiconymphomachia . Novel sketch in: TM: Madonna. Conversations with a saint . Leipzig, 1835.
music

The third part of Bedřich Smetana's cycle of symphonic poems My Fatherland is called Šárka; this is also about this legendary material.

literature

  • Dušan Třeštík : Mýty kmene Čechů . Nakladatelství lidové noviny, 2003, ISBN 80-7106-646-X .
  • Naďa Profantová, Martin Profant: Encyklopedie slovanských bohů a mýtů . Nakladatelství Libri, Praha 2000, ISBN 80-7277-011-X
  • Kosmova Kronika česká . Paseka, Praha-Litomyšl 2005, ISBN 80-7185-515-4 .
  • Kronika tak řečeného Dalimila . Svoboda Praha 1977.

Web links