Karel Havlíček. (1821—1856.)
On Chicago’s near southwest side, in the Douglas Park, stands a beautiful statue of a man whom the Czech nation came to regard as their hero and martyr and who within a brief space of time allotted to him has by his literary work contributed most efficiently towards the liberation of Czechs from the fetters of Austrian tyranny. Thus he became a direct precursor of the revolutionary movement for the Czech and Slovak independence which during the World War has culminated in the political and diplomatic activities of Professor T. G. Masaryk, since 1918 the first President of the newly created Czechoslovak Republic.
It is, indeed, not a mere coincidence that Masaryk ever since has maintained a very close and intimate relation toward the founder of Czech national journalism and the extraordinarily gifted poet. One of Masaryk’s early writings, published in 1896, deals with the strong personality of Karel Havlíček who, both prior to and after the March revolution of 1848, fought many a gallant and victorious battle with the Austrian bureaucracy and the absolutist régime of the Vienna government for his ideals of the political awakening of the Czech nation, till he finally fell a victim to the stupidity of the Habsburg police and died, broken in heart and body, at the early age of 35 years.
Karel Havlíček was born October 31, 1821, in the village of Borová near the city of Přibyslava in Bohemia. After his graduation from the classical gymnasium in Německý Brod he went with his family to Prague where he enrolled in the University as student of philosophy and later on of Catholic theology; but having been dismissed from the school of divinity on account of his rather radical and advanced views he devoted all his energy to a literary career, and began to spend most of his time for a thorough study of Slavonic languages, especially of Russian
