Záviš Kalandra

Záviš Kalandra before 1928

Záviš Kalandra (born November 10, 1902 in Frenštát pod Radhoštěm , Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic ), † June 27, 1950 in Prague ) was a Czech historian , journalist , publicist and writer . As an unorthodox Marxist , he came into conflict with communist power and was sentenced to death in a show trial for treason and executed in 1950 . Kalandra used pseudonyms such as Jiří or Juraj Pokorný , Jan Albert , Jaroslav Bitnar , Josef Krejčí , František Kohout and others.

Life

Kalandra was born into a medical family. After graduating from high school in Valašské Meziříčí , he began studying at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague (1922 to 1927), where he studied philosophy as well as classical philology; In 1928 and 1930 he continued his studies in Berlin . He was interested in Schopenhauer's views and also in psychoanalysis , and he became a member of the Surrealist group , where he met Karel Teige . In the 1930s he was also in contact with the French surrealists around Paul Éluard .

In the pre-war period, Kalandra's professional focus was political journalism. He was already involved in the political left as a youth and joined the KSČ in 1923 . He worked for several left-wing magazines: from 1926 to 1928 mainly for the student newspaper Avantgarde , from 1928 to 1936, at times as editor-in-chief, for the daily newspapers Rudé právo and Haló noviny and the magazine Tvorba . In the mid-1930s, Kalandra was one of the few left-wing intellectuals who criticized the Stalinist trials in the Soviet Union, alongside Jiří Weil , Karel Teige and Emil František Burian . Together with Josef Guttmann he published two brochures - "Odhalené tajemství moskevského procesu" (The Uncovered Secret of the Moscow Trial) and "Druhý moskevský proces" (The Second Moscow Trial) - in which he describes the Moscow party leadership and the submissive attitude of the European Communists sharply attacked the trials; after the Seventh Party Congress in 1936, the Communist Party withdrew his editorial posts and expelled him on charges of Trotskyism . Also together with Guttmann, Kalandra tried in 1937 and 1938 to create a counterweight to the press, which was loyal to Stalin, in the self-founding Proletář and Proletářské noviny (Proletarians, Proletarian Newspaper). He also wrote for the illustrated Světozor (Weltblick), for the political magazine Přítomnost (present) and edited the news lexicon Naučný slovník actualit (conversation lexicon of current affairs).

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Germany, he worked in the resistance group V boj (In den Kampf). In September 1939 he was arrested by the Gestapo . He was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen concentration camps until the end of the war .

After the war, Záviš Kalandra turned his back on politics. He continued work on his main historical work, České pohanství (Czech Paganism), an investigation into the early history and mythology of Bohemia. The Gestapo had confiscated the first part of the manuscript when he was arrested, so he had to reconstruct it. The work was published in 1947. In 1948 he began a psychoanalytic work on the reality of dreams , which he could no longer finish.

In preparation for the first Czechoslovak show trial against " Milada Horáková and others" he was taken into custody by the State Security on November 7, 1949 as the head of an imaginary " Trotskyist group " . The accusation against the total of 13 accused was of espionage and high treason . On June 27, 1950, Záviš Kalandra was sentenced to death in a show trial before the newly established State Court and hanged in the Pankrác prison in Prague .

At the end of the trial, the court had carried out four death sentences, ignoring high-ranking international protests - among others, Albert Einstein and Kalandra's friends André Breton and Albert Camus had turned to the Czechoslovak judiciary with appeals for clemency. The judgment against Kalandra remained final until 1968. A full rehabilitation did not follow until 1990. In 1991 Václav Havel awarded Záviš Kalandra the first class Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Order in memoriam . The only person involved in the judicial murders was the public prosecutor Ludmila Brožová-Polednová who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2008.

Works (selection)

Editor Jiří Brabec has compiled about 600 texts in a complete bibliography that Kalandra had published under her own name or pseudonym. Most of them come from newspapers, magazines, other periodicals and edited volumes. It was published as a monograph:

• Zapovězená Ženeva (The Forbidden Geneva) - contemporary historical work on international peace conferences, Levá fronta, Praha 1932
• Znamesí Lipan (The Sign of Lipany) - historical study of the Hussite Wars, Knihovna Levé fronty, Praha 1934
• Odhalené tajemství moskevského procesu (The Uncovered Secret of the Moscow Trial) - pamphlet, self-published together with J. Guttmann, Prague, September 1936
• Druhý moskevský proces (The Second Moscow Trial) - polemic, together with J. Guttmann, Praha, January 1937
• Socialisté a antisemitismus (The Socialists and Antisemitism) - under the pseudonym František Kohout, Letáky všem pracujícím 19, Čs. sociální demokracie, Praha 1946
• České pohanství (Czech Paganism) - historical and mythological investigation, Fr. Borový, Praha 1947, new edition by Dauphin 2003, ISBN 80-86019-82-9
• Zvon slobody (Bell of Liberty) - under the pseudonym Juraj Pokorný, Tatran, Bratislava 1948
• Skutečnost snu (Reality of Dreams ) - Psychoanalytical work, 1948–1949, unfinished. Excerpts from Intelektuál a revoluce , 1994
• Intelektuál a revoluce - selection of works, edited by Jiří Brabec, Český spisovatel, Praha 1994, ISBN 80-202-0474-1
• Parmenidova filosofie (The Philosophy of Parmenides ) - Herrmann a synové, Praha 1996, ISBN 978-8023801262

literature

(all titles in Czech unless otherwise stated)

• Jaroslav Bouček: June 27, 1950 - poprava Záviše Kalandry: česká kulturní avantgarda a KSČ . Praha, Havran, 2006. 162 pp. ISBN 80-86515-63-X .
• Markéta Doležalová: Záviš Kalandra (1902–1950) . Documentation by the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes ( ÚSTR ), online at: www.ustrcr.cz , accessed on September 25, 2010
• Milan Churaň et al .: Kdo byl kdo v našich dějinách ve 20. století (Who was who in our history of the 20th century). Libri, Prague 1998, parts 1 and 2, ISBN 80-85983-44-3 and ISBN 80-85983-64-8 , online at: www.libri.cz
• Záviš Kalandra (11/10/1902 - 06/27/1950): Intelektuál a revoluce , online at: zivotopisyonline.cz , accessed on December 9, 2010

Web links

• Literature by and about Záviš Kalandra in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature and other media by and about Záviš Kalandra in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
• ceskatelevize.cz - Testimony of Kalandra in the show trial. Documentary broadcast on Czech television.