Name Jiri Mahen Movies Janosik | Role Novelist | |
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Died May 22, 1939, Brno, Czech Republic Similar People Martin Fric, Juraj Janosik, Gustav Marsall‑Petrovsky, Jaroslav Siakel, Karel Hasler | ||
Jiri Mahen (December 12, 1882 – May 22, 1939) was a Czech novelist, playwright and essayist.
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Life
He was born Antonin Vancura, in Caslav, to an old noble family of the Bohemian Brethren faith. In his grammar-school years he became an anarchist. He later studied linguistics of the Czech and German languages at Prague University. After 1910, he worked as a journalist for Lidove noviny, one of the leading Czech newspapers. In the 1920s, he became the director of Brno Municipal Library. In 1939, due to depression following Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia, he committed suicide on May 22 in Brno.
Mahenova knihovna (Mahen's Library, Brno City Library) is named after him.
Mahen was the cousin of the novelist Vladislav Vancura.
Work
His most important texts are the novels Kamaradi svobody (Friends of Freedom) and Mesic (The Moon), a novel involving poetism, the theatre plays Mrtve more (Dead sea), written in 1917, Janosik (Janosik), in 1910, and Generace (Generation), in 1921. He was the author of many essay books of which Rybarska knizka (Fishermen's Book) written in 1921 is the best known.