Friday, 10 May 2024 Prague, Much more Mucha and Operation Anthropoid

Written 4 June 2024

As we see it, you can never have too much Mucha, and we had no Viking activities scheduled for the morning, so we called an Uber (which turned out to be a little more challenging than it should have been) and turned up on the doorstep of the Mucha Museum just as they opened the doors at 10 am. Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939) wasn't actually from Prague (just born in a nearby town), but he was proudly Czech and proudly slavic, and after some time in Paris and some in the U.S., he moved back and lived here.

Here you see him ca. 1898 (left) and again ca. 1933 (right)

Mucha has pretty much come to personify the Art Nouveau movement. This pair is entitled Flowers and Fruits. He's even better known for his many series of four items: times of day, seasons, types of flowers, the arts, and other foursomes, as well as reams of advertising work and posters for Sarah Bernhardt's theatrical productions.

We were struck with how pale the colors seemed in many of the postered displayed in the museum. I wonder whether they are older than the prints we've seen elsewhere, or whether at some point they were exposed to too much sunlight for a while.

Written 6 June 2024

I was especially struck by these two images. The one at the left is a poster advertising a "pantomime ballet" called Princess Hyacinth, and Mucha has worked the hyacinth-flower motif all through it, in her crown, her jewelry, all the embroidery of her clothes, the silver circle she's holding. I also wonder about the content of the ballet, since the circular frame she's sitting in protrays, a pickax, blacksmith tools, and a chemical retort!

The poster on the right promotes a lottery that raised money for education in the Czech language. It was intended to resist the "Germanification" being imposed by the Austro-Hungarian empire. Čhechia, the symbolic mother of the Czech nation, sits on a dead tree, her head in her hands and her long braids hanging down. A schoolgirl with books and pencils looks accusingly out at the viewer, demanding their help with her education as well as help for the ailing Čhechia.

At the right here is an exquisite pencil rendering of Datura flowers, together with sketches of possible use of the motif in ceiling and table lamps. (Sorry about the bright spots; I couldn't get all the reflections off the glass.) It was part of a book of what seemed to be early "clip art," or maybe just ideas for artists, illustrators, and decorators.

At the left is a photo of Paul Gaugin, in his shirttails, playing the harmonium in Mucha's studio.

The museum also featured lots of photos of him, his family, and his friends (like Gaugin, Rodin, the Lumière broters, etc.), as well as extensive exhibits on the epic cycle of paintings he produced (once he'd moved back to Prague) to celebrate the saga of the slavic peoples through history.

When we'd finished at the museum, we crossed the street to the Palace Hotel and had lunch in its café. The bread came, as it did many places we ate, with a little dish of slightly orange-colored spread, based on fresh cheese or butter or a combination of the two and flavored with paprika or other red pepper.

I finally got to try liver dumpling soup! It was a clear beef broth with skinny little noodles in it (as well as a few veggies cut into skinny little julienne to match the noodles), mostly lying in the bottom of the bowl, and three little round liver dumplings, which were quite mild-flavored and delicious and, in texture, were much more my idea of a dumpling than the massive, very dense, and tough bread dumplings we've been getting—I could cut them easily with a spoon.

David had the soup of the day, a scrumptious purée of mushroom, drizzled with herb oil.

I ordered another starter as my main course, this beautiful and tasty carpaccio of veal tenderloin with fried capers, arugula, and flakes of cheese—not Parmesan, we were told, but Gran Moravia, a Czech product.

David got a huge mound of asparagus risotto (he loves both asparagus and risotto), also topped with arugula and cheese and so big he couldn't finish it.

In the afternoon, we went on the Viking excursion centering on the Czech resistance in WWII. The first part of it consisted of a scenic drive during which the guide pointed out many of the important buildings and monuments pertaining to the subject. As always, it was hard to get good photos from the bus and hard afterward to match up the photos with what we were told they were.

For example, I got this quick shot of a stone lion out the bus window, and I'm sure we were told that the building with the stone lions was the Nazi parliament during the occupation but was now a concert hall, the home of the Czech philharmonic. Later I was able to confirm that the building shown here at the right is the concert hall, called the Rudolfinum, but no photos I could Google up of it or of the "Nazi parliament" featured any stone lions. So who knows?

Looking across the river (not the Elbe, which we would later be cruising on, but the Vl tava, called the Moldau in German), we got this good view of St. Vitus Cathedral, sticking up from its position inside Prague castle (which doesn't actually look very castle-like).

Later, from the other side of the river looking back, a chance view of our hotel. You can see why it's called "the big one," to distinguish it from the other, smaller Hilton in town.

On the bus ride, our guide filled us in on Czech history since the 18th century. At that time, this aea, Bohemia, was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which lasted until 1918. It was the northernmost part of the empire, and the ruling Hapsbourgs put the empire's industries up hereBohemia, Moravia, and Silesia are the three provinces that now form the Czech republic; Prague is in Bohemia.

Maria Theresa, who ruled the empire 1740–1780, once proclaimed, "What would I be without Bohemia, only a poor princess!" When Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918 (the end of WWI), having all that industry helped the country. When it was formed, it was in the top 10 industrialized nations.

The Czechs were more German-influenced, and the Slovaks were Hungarian influenced. Slovakia was more mountainous and agricultural. The Czechs still regard themselves as a Slavic nation, but recent studies reveals that Czechs now carry more German than Slavic genes.

As we drove through the former Jewish ghetto, the guide mentioned that Joseph II (Maria Theresa's son) abolished the ghetto and and Jews were then integrated into society. We passed the Jewish cemetery, which she said was "among the top 10 Jewsh cemeteries in the world." By what measure, I wonder—number of graves?. It's certainly very old.

Then, in 1938, the Nazis marched in. Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France met in Munich in September of 1938 and signed an agreement that Czechoslovakia must surrender the so-called Sudentenland (its border regions and most of its defenses, 1/6 of the country) to Nazi Germany. Shortly thereafter, Hitler declared Moravia and Bohemia a German "protectorate." He actually delayed the trains so that he could reach Prague and make the announcement before the Czech president could get there.

Hitler appointed Reinhard Heydrich, the notorious "blond beast," the "Butcher of Prague," to rule the protectorate.

At this point, we left the bus for the walk to our next destination, and on the way we stopped to look at the famous "dancing house," a building designed by (who else) Frank Gehry (the same guy who designed the Louis Vuitton Institute in Paris, which I describe in my diary of 13 June 2019).

The building is supposed to look like a dancing couple, and the restaurant on its ground floor is called "Fred and Ginger."

Written 9 June 2024

Under its portico is a large golden fly (maybe 2 m long) perched on the ceiling, an artistic reference to Franz Kafka, another favorite son of the city.

Czech president Václav Havel lived next door to it for many years. We were shown the building but didn't go inside.

At the right is the place we were headed—the orthodox Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius.

When the protectorate was declared and Reinhard Heydrich was put in charge of it, he quickly became profoundly hated because of his harsh and ruthless methods of keeping order. By the allies, he was considered the third-most imortant target for assassination, after only Hitler and Himmler, so a plan, called Operation Anthropoid, was put in place to have him killed. Two Czechoslovakian patriots (Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubi#353;) who had escaped to England and were fighting with British forces, volunteered to carry it out.

Heydrich had commandeered a villa outside Prague (as it happens, the villa belonged to Ferdinand Bloch, huband of Adele Bloch-Bauer, subject of Klimt's famous painting of "The Woman in Gold") and commuted to his office in the city every morning, in an open car, accompanied only by his driver. The plan was for Gabčík and Kubi#353; (who had secretly parachueted back into the country and made their way to Prague) to ambush his car, one armed with an assault weapon and the other with grenades, at a particular sharp bend in the street, where the driver would have to slow down. They did, but the gun jammed. The grenade guy rolled a grenade under the car, and the two fled on foot.

Heydrich, who had stood up in the passenger seat was injured by shrapnel and died of blood poisoning a few days later, the result of bits of the car's seat driven deep into his body. This was the only successful assassination of a high Nazi official—the plots to kill Hitler, Himmler, and others all failed.

Gabčík, Kubi#353;, and their accomplices made their way, as planned, to St. Cyril—all except for one, who panicked and did absolutely the wrong thing. He fled instead to his mother's house in a village outside Prague. Gabčík and Kubi#353; joined a handful of others from other operations in the crypt of St. Cyril, where they hid for 20 days, sleeping in the niches intended for the bodies of deceased monks. They were without heat and without light except for that provided during the day by a single small window. One of the priests of the church brought them food and water. A number of people surely knew (starting the higher officials of the church and the families that sheltered them before the ambush) but everyone kept silent.

Meanwhile the Nazi's were scouring the city and the countryside, looking for them, massacring and burning entire villages in the process. Eventually the lone accomplice outside the city, fearing not just for himself, but for his family and his village, cracked and revealed the hiding place.

According to our guide, Nazi troops showed up mere minutes before the fugitives were scheduled to be smuggled out of the church (and the country) in coffins. They put a fire hose in the small window and began to fill the crypt with water. A bloody six-hour gun battle ensued, during which the handful of people in the crypt held off much greater numbers. At the end, each of them save the last bullet for himself. Kubi#353; was the only one taken alive—he'd been badly injured by a grenade and was unconscious when the others killed themselves—but he died shortly after being taken to the hospital. The priest and several others were executed for their part in the events.

Here are exterior and interior views of the crypt's single window. As you can see at the left, the spot is still considered a shrine to the martyrs. The red and white cylinders on the sill are votive candles. The wall around is is pocked with bullet holes. "1942" is set in large mosaic characters in the sidewalk below it. (In the photo above of the church, the white car with the green door happens to be parked right in front of it.) While we were there, several school groups came to tour it. The bar across the street is even called The Parachutists.

The photo at the right exaggerates the amount of light the window provided; supplementary electric lighting is now used, for the safety of visitors.

  Bronze busts commemorate Gabčík and Kubi#353; (the niches where they slept are visible in the background), and the right-hand photo shows the bishop and priest who were executed.

Our guide explained that not many Czechs are orthodox but that the church servies the many orthodox worshipers of other nationalities who live here. Her own parents were married there, even though they were not orthodox. It wasn't easy to get married in the church during the occupation, but St. Cyril was available.

  The bus then took us back to the hotel, where we had dinner reservations at its high-end restaurant, Seasons. We opted to splurge on the five-course tasting menu, but it turned out it wasn't as much of a splurge as we thought—at the end, they gave us a 20% discount for being there with Viking!

The bread (left) came in these strange, striped, glass and/or ceramic bent halfpipes. I asked whether any of the seeds and nuts with which it was studded was buckwheat (which David can't digest). The waiter didn't know, so he just brought is a second dish with plain bread for David.

The most photogenic dish was probably this first-course assemblage of lobster and asparagus with splodges of rhubarb-grapefruit gel. Very tasty as well.

The second course was described on the menu as a "raviolo," but it turned out to be, for each of us, an uncut half-sheet of ravioli stuffed with artichokes, Taleggio cheese, and sorrel. Excellent.

Next came halibut with cucumber, seaweed, mussels, and "lemon guazzetto." According to the internet, a "guazzetto" is a thin, usually tomato-based seafood stew," but the word literally means "splashed with wine," so I guess ours was a lemon-wine sauce. David even ate the little poached cucumber cubes without complaint.

The fourth course was rare slices of grilled lamb rump with their juices, accompanied by white garlic purée, peas, lettuce, and mint. As you can see, the peas were mashed up (perhaps with the mint) into an amazingly delicious purée, and some of that purée was stuffed in among the leaves of the lettuce before it was braised. Wow, was that a good combination!

Dessert was a knockout—a warm raspberry soufflé, bright pink inside, topped with caramelized-white-chocolate ice cream! The plate around it was sprinkled with intensely flavored raspberry powder, which is probably what the souffléwas flavored with (as opposed to just fresh raspberry juice or purée).

Here's a photo of the half-eaten soufflé showing how bright pink it was inside.

Finally, at the right is a view from my hotel window of the Žižkov Television Tower. It's not on the current list, but our guide assured us that at least at one time it was ranked #2 on the list of the world's top ten ugliest buildings, after some monstrosity in Korea.