Famous people in Prague

Since the fact that Prague has always been the cultural center of Bohemia and most of the time even of the whole Europe, many important people were coming to this gorgeous Mother of Cities, as it is sometimes called.

One of the greatest people ever was the King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, born Wenceslaus, of the House of Luxembourg. He was the eldest son and heir of John the Blind, from whom he inherited Luxembourg along with Bohemia in 1346. He was also crowned King of Germany in July 1349, after which, in 1355, he was crowned King of Italy and just three months later even Holy Roman Emperor. But he refused to move to Rome, and thus made Prague the imperial capital. During his reign, he built the first-ever university in central, northern and eastern Europe, called Charles University nowadays. Plus there is Charles Square, Charles Bridge, renovated Prague Castle and much of the cathedral of Saint Vitus by Petr Parler. He is often regarded as Pater patriae (Father of the Country).

In some way, Rudolf II was similar to Charles IV because he was King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor as well. He was a great patron of Renaissance art with the most impressive galleries in Europe at that time with paintings made by such artists as Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Hans von Aachen. Rudolf II also patronized natural philosophers, such as Tycho Brahe, a Danish nobleman, who is said to be the best and most exact observer of the sky, vanquished not until sixty years after the discovery of a telescope. He came up with a theory saying the Earth is the center of the Universe with the Sun and Moon going round it, while all the other planets go round the Sun. His assistant, Johannes Kepler, lived also in Prague, where he formulated two out of three Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion. These also provided one of the foundations of Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation.

Master Jan Hus, a Czech philosopher, reformer and master at Charles University, is closely connected with Prague as well. His teaching had a strong influence on the states of Europe and Martin Luther himself. After he was unfairly burned at the stake in German city Konstanz on July 6, 1415, his adherents, named Hussites after him, fought for his ideas in the Hussites Wars.
On October 29, 1787, one of the greatest composers of classical music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was present at the premiere of his very successful opera Don Giovanni at the Theatre of the Estates. Figaro was also celebrated with much-deserved reverence, Mozart was missing in his hometown. His quotation “My Praguers understand me”, became very famous in Bohemia.

A musician, Antonín Dvořák, was born in Prague where he later became director of the Conservatory. Franz Kafka, a Jewish writer, studied chemistry at Charles University but after two weeks he switched to law. The inventor of A-bomb, Albert Einstein, even accepted a full professorship at Charles University instead of staying at the University of Zurich.

From the great deal of other famous people connected with Prague, let us mention, for example Bohumil Hrabal, Rainer Maria Rilke, Madeleine Albright or Václav Havel.