Czech cultural celebrities: John Hus, Smeta, Kafka, etc.

Hus (1371-1415) was a great Czech patriot and an outstanding religious reformer. He was also a pioneer of great social changes at that time. He was admitted to the University of Prague in 1391 and stayed at the school to teach after graduation. In 1401, he served as the dean of the school's liberal arts college and in 1402, he became the president of the school. In the same year, he publicly preached. He promoted the ideas of the Englishman Wycliffe and advocated church reform. He was excommunicated and expelled from Prague in 1411, but he still insisted on preaching to the people and spreading his ideas. Summoned to a synod in Constance in 1414, he was condemned. On July 6, 1415, he was sentenced to be burned at the stake and died calmly! This aroused public anger and accelerated the outbreak of the "Hussite War".

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884), Czech composer, pianist and conductor, the founder of Czech classical music. The pioneer of Czech national opera and the founder of the Czech national music school. Unfortunately, he became deaf in 1874, but he continued to create, the most famous of which are the symphonic poem suite "My Motherland" composed of six independent symphonic poems and the First String Quartet "My Life". He is known as "the founder of Czech national music", "the father of new music" and "Glinka of the Czech Republic".

Franz Kafka, a Czech novelist who lived under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Born into a Jewish businessman family, he entered Prague University to study literature and law at the age of 18. He began writing in 1904. His main works are four collections of short stories and three novels. Unfortunately, most of them were not published during his lifetime, and the three novels were not completed. Kafka is a famous European Expressionist writer. He lived in an era when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was about to collapse, and was deeply influenced by the philosophies of Nietzsche and Bergson. He also always took a bystander attitude towards political events. Therefore, most of his works used deformed and absurd images and symbolic intuition to express hostile people. An isolated, desperate individual surrounded by a social environment. His writing style is clear and imaginative, and he often uses allegorical style. The moral behind it is different for everyone, and it has not been (or will never be) conclusive. Therefore, various writing schools in the 20th century have recognized him as a pioneer.