Bedřich Václavek

Bedřich Václavek (10 January 1897 – 5 March 1943) was a Czech literary theorist, critic, journalist and Marxist aesthetician.

Biography Václavek was born on 10 January 1897 in Čáslavice into a poor rural family. After graduating from high school in 1915, he was drafted into the army, where he served until the end of World War I. Then he entered Charles University in Prague, where from 1918 to 1923 he studied Germanic and Bohemian studies at the Faculty of Philosophy. His teachers were leading figures in Czech literary studies and folklore such as Zdeněk Nejedlý and Otokar Fischer. In 1922 he went to Berlin and studied theater and journalism there. After that he worked as a school teacher and librarian at the State and University libraries in Brno. He was a member of the group of avant-garde artists Devětsil.

A member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1925, Bedřich Václavek was actively involved in the labor movement of his region, organizing actions of solidarity between cultural figures and striking miners in 1932. In 1933, Bedřich Václavek came under police surveillance due to his active communist activities and was transferred away from Brno – to the university library in Olomouc. He was also one of the main organisers of the Left Front. In 1939, he had become an associate professor at the Masaryk University, however his PhD thesis was not accepted by the ministry of education.

After the Nazi invasion, Václavek went underground, becoming one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which had been banned. Julius Fučík brought him to work in the editorial office of the illegal newspaper of the Central Committee of the party Rudé právo. In 1942, after Fučík's arrest, Gestapo picked up Václavek's trail and he was soon arrested.

Books Od umění k tvorbě, 1928, 1949 Poesie v rozpacích, 1930 Česká literatura XX. století, 1935, 1947, 1974 Tvorbou k realitě, 1937, 1946 Písemnictví a lidová tradice, 1938, 1947 Lidová slovesnost v českém vývoji literárním, 1940 Deset týdnů, 1946, 1958 O české písni lidové a zlidovělé, 1950 Tvorba a společnost, 1961 Literární studie a podobizny, 1962 O lidové písni a slovesnosti, 1963 Knihy z Ruska a o Rusku, 1965 Tradice a modernost, 1973 Kritické stati z třicátých let, 1975 Juvenilie, 1978 Ruská revoluce a literatura, 1980 Tvorba a skutečnost, 1980 Korespondence Bedřich Václavek s Hanou Humlovou, 1983

Collected works Společenské vlivy v životě a díle K. H. Máchy, Torzo a tajemství Máchova díla, 1938 SSSR v československé poezii, 1936 České písně kramářské, (Mitautor Robert Smetana), 1937, 1949 Všemu navzdory (unter dem Pseudonym P. Bok), 1938 Český národní zpěvník, (Mitautor Robert Smetana), 1940, 1949 Historie utěšené a kratochvilné, 1941 (Pseudonym L. Čivrný), 1950 Český listář, 1949 Kniha satir, (Mitautor D. Šajner), 1949 České světské písně zlidovělé, (Mitautor Robert Smetana), 1955