Famous Czech Personality

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Famous Czech Personality

Jan Hus

Jan Hus was one of the most eminent personalities in our history. In fact, we don’t really know the date and place of his birth. It is assumed that it was in 1372 in Husinec. He was born in a poor and very populous family. Hus is known as a Czech thinker, preacher and leader of a reform movement.

From his history : He graduated from Charles’ University in 1393 and he was awarded the lowest academic degree there. He didn’t differ from the other students. He was doing his duties to the school, visiting libraries etc.. He visited pubs also where he was discussing all the problems in the society. The most usual topics were three. The first one was moral descent of a church, the second were problems in the state and the third was University. On the University all the people were divided to four groups. Czechs, Poles, Bavarians and Saxons and each group had one vote. So if Czechs wanted to change something they had no chance to do it. Czech students were unsatisfied with this and therefor they protested against it with Hus as a leader. In 1396 Hus became a mister of a liberal arts and than he started to teach at Charles’ university. In 1400 he was consecrated to a priest and he desired to be a preacher. His first sermons were in the church of Santa Martin. He started his dizzying preacher way in 1402 in Betlémská kaple and in a short time he became very popular priest in Prague. He had to finish his work in 1412 there, because of severe conflicts between him and the church. In his speeches, Hus strongly criticized drawbacks of a feudal society and mistakes of the ministries. For his philosophy he found inspiration in Viklefs’ writings. And in his later work he extended them also. Viklef was an English priest who was chased in England for his ideas and criticism of a church.

Hus was strongly against indulgences in his sermons and therefore he caught in to the conflict with a bishop. In 1412 he was given in to the interdict. Serious consequences for the city of Prague resulted from this fact : no funerals, weddings, devotions and baptisms were allowed. Because of disputes with the king Václav IV. he left Prague and he moved to the country ( Krakovec ). At this time he started to write a lot of important writings ( Postila, De ecclesia ) against the church. He was also very important for our language. He wrote a lot of books in which he simplified the orthography. The tension between Hus and the church gradually increased and therefore he went to the council in Kostnice in September 1414 to explain his minds and his creed. However on the council they wanted him to recall his minds in his sermons, but he refused to change it. For this act he was burned on the pyre 6. July 1415. Because of his popularity, people were very disappointed with his death and therefore in the following period they started revolution against government and the Church.

Emil Zátopek

(*19.9. 1922 )

-famous name in our sport history

Emil Zátopek was born in 19.9. 1922 in Kopřivnice. His father worked like joiner in Tatra. He had six brothers and sisters. He was the fastest boy in the class and he ran to the teacher for snack at the brake. He played football too. After the basic school he went to the secondary chemistry school to Zlín. He liked this studying and working in the factory, because he could his teoretic knowledge (for example about silk) quiet practised. It is uncredible, but till his nineteen years he didn´t run any race and he didn´t train the running. It was only chance what became his sports career: in the last year of studying got his class a new P.T. master, who was very strong. All boys had to run in The Sunday´s running of Zlín. But Zátopek didn´t want to run. He said, that he couldn´t run because he had bad his knee. But the teacher took him to the doctor and the doctor said, that he was healthy. The teacher was very angry and said, that he was lazy. The next day he ran very fast and he was second. After the race he was stopped by Tomáš Šalé, who looked for the talents in this race. He asked him, if he wanted to go to the stadion.Emil said yes and he became training. In turn he had no opponent in Zlín and then in the Czechoslowakia. The first confrontation with Europea´s runners was in 1946 in Oslo.It was Europea´s Champion Ship. He ran there 5000 m and he was fifth. Two years later, it was Olympic games in London, at first he ran 10 000 m. There was very good competition ( Heino, Albertsson, Mimoun); his course of win was 1:10. At the end Zátopek had very good finish and he won. Then he ran 5000 m;where he was second.The fasterst was Reif. In 1950 was The Europea´s Champion Ship in Brusel. Before this champion ship he ran 10 000 m under 30 min. So he prefered at champion ship 5 000 m. It was the fight between Zátopek and Reiff. Reiff ran very quickly, he was first for a long time, but in the last round he was overtaken by Zátopek and Emil won. In the next olympic games in Helsinki in 1952 he won three gold olympic medals and his wife Dana, who juwelined there, won one gold medal too. Emil ran 5 000 m, 10 000 m and marathon. The biggest problem was marathon, because he couldn´t ran slowly and he learnt three days to run slowly. But he had no problems to win. Than he won the 10 000m on Europea´s Champion ship in Bern. And he ran the olympic marathon in Melbourne in 1956.He was there fifth because two months ago he had operation of rupture so he had no training and not a lot of power.