Milena Jesenská
Encyclopedia
Milena Jesenská (ˈmɪlɛna ˈjɛsɛnskaː) (10 Aug 1896, Prague
– 17 May 1944, Ravensbrück, Germany
) was a Czech
journalist, writer, editor and translator, who refused to abandon her Jewish friends and was deported to and died alongside them in Ravensbrück concentration camp
.
, the first professor of medicine at Prague's Charles University who was among the 27 Bohemian luminaries executed in the Old Town Square
in Prague
on June 21, 1621 for defying the authority of the Habsburgs King Ferdinand II
. However, this belief has been challenged as unfounded. Jesenská's father Jan
was a dental surgeon and professor at Charles University in Prague
; her mother Milena Hejzlarová died when Milena was 16. Jesenská studied at Minerva, the first academic gymnasium for girls in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After graduation she enrolled briefly at the Prague Conservatory
and at the Faculty of Medicine but abandoned her studies after two semesters. In 1918 she married Ernst Pollak, a Jewish intellectual and literary critic whom she met in Prague's literary circles, and moved with him to Vienna
. The marriage, which allegedly caused her to break off relations with her father for several years, was an unhappy one.
, and wrote him to ask for permission to translate it from German
to Czech
. The letter launched an intense and increasingly passionate correspondence. Jesenská and Kafka met twice: they spent four days in Vienna
and later a day in Gmünd
. Eventually Kafka broke off the relationship, partly because Jesenská was unable to leave her husband, and their almost daily communication ceased abruptly in November 1920. They meant so much to each other, however, that they did exchange a few more letters in 1922 and 1923 (and Kafka turned over to Jesenská his diaries at the end of his life). Jesenská's translation of The Stoker
was a first translation of Kafka's writings into Czech (and as a matter of fact, into any foreign language); later she translated two other short stories of Kafka and also texts by Hermann Broch
, Franz Werfel
, Upton Sinclair
, and many others.
In Vienna, Jesenská also began to write herself, contributing articles and later also editorials to women's columns in some of the best known Prague dailies and magazines. For example, she contributed to Tribuna
, and between 1923 and 1926, she wrote for Národní listy, Pestrý týden and Lidové noviny
.
In 1925 Jesenská divorced Pollak and moved back to Prague, where she later met and married avant-garde Czech architect Jaromír Krejcar
. In Prague she continued working as a journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, and also as children's books editor and translator. Some of her articles from the period were published in two separate collections by the Prague Publishing House Topič.
In the 1930s Jesenská became attracted to communism
(like many other Czech intellectuals of the period), but eventually abandoned her sympathies for the ideology altogether in 1936, when she grew aware of excesses of Stalinism
. In October 1934 her second marriage ended - she gave a consent to divorce Krejcar so that he could marry a Latvia
n interpreter whom he met during his visit to the Soviet Union.
Between 1938 and 1939 she edited the prestigious Czech magazine for politics and culture Přítomnost
(The Presence), founded and published in Prague by the esteemed political commentator and democrat Ferdinand Peroutka
. Here she wrote editorials and visionary commentaries on the rise of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in Germany, the Anschluss
of Austria
to Nazi Germany and the possible consequences this was to have for Czechoslovakia
.
army, Jesenská joined an underground resistance movement and helped many Jewish and political refugees to emigrate. She herself decided to stay, however, despite the consequences. In November 1939 she was arrested by the Gestapo
and imprisoned first in Prague's Pankrác
and later in Dresden
. In October 1940 she was deported to a concentration camp in Ravensbrück
in Germany. Here she provided moral support to other prisoners and befriended Margarete Buber-Neumann
, who wrote her first biography after the war. Jesenská died of kidney
failure in Ravensbrück on May 17, 1944.
Jana "Honza" Krejcarová, the daughter of Jesenská and Jaromír Krejcar
, was a writer for the Czech underground
publication Půlnoc in the early 1950s and for Divoké víno in the 1960s.
for soprano and orchestra, entitled Milena, by the Argentine
composer Alberto Ginastera
. Ginastera's work was based on Kafka's letters.
Anthologies of Jesenská's texts, articles, and correspondence published after her death:
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
– 17 May 1944, Ravensbrück, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
) was a Czech
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
journalist, writer, editor and translator, who refused to abandon her Jewish friends and was deported to and died alongside them in Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
.
Early life
Jesenská's family is believed to descend from Jan JeseniusJan Jesenius
Jan Jesenius was a Slovak physician, politician and philosopher...
, the first professor of medicine at Prague's Charles University who was among the 27 Bohemian luminaries executed in the Old Town Square
Old Town Square (Prague)
Old Town Square is a historic square in the Old Town quarter of Prague in the Czech Republic at .Located between Wenceslas Square and the Charles Bridge, Prague's Old Town Square is often bursting at the seams with tourists in the summer. Featuring various architectural styles including the...
in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
on June 21, 1621 for defying the authority of the Habsburgs King Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor
Ferdinand II , a member of the House of Habsburg, was Holy Roman Emperor , King of Bohemia , and King of Hungary . His rule coincided with the Thirty Years' War.- Life :...
. However, this belief has been challenged as unfounded. Jesenská's father Jan
Jan Jesenský
Jan Jesenský , professor of stomatology at Prague University.He was the founder and head of the Prague Stomatology Clinic until the German occupation in 1939, a member of the Bohemian Academy, a member of International Association for Dental Research , whose Honorary Vice-President he became...
was a dental surgeon and professor at Charles University in Prague
Charles University in Prague
Charles University in Prague is the oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1348, it was the first university in Central Europe and is also considered the earliest German university...
; her mother Milena Hejzlarová died when Milena was 16. Jesenská studied at Minerva, the first academic gymnasium for girls in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After graduation she enrolled briefly at the Prague Conservatory
Prague Conservatory
Prague Conservatory, sometimes also Prague Conservatoire, in Czech Pražská konzervatoř, is a Czech secondary school in Prague dedicated to teaching the arts of music and theater acting.- Instruction :...
and at the Faculty of Medicine but abandoned her studies after two semesters. In 1918 she married Ernst Pollak, a Jewish intellectual and literary critic whom she met in Prague's literary circles, and moved with him to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. The marriage, which allegedly caused her to break off relations with her father for several years, was an unhappy one.
Career
Since Pollak's earnings were initially inadequate to support the pair in the city's war-torn economy, Jesenská had to supplement their household income by working as a translator. In 1919 she discovered a short story (The Stoker) by Prague writer Franz KafkaFranz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, and wrote him to ask for permission to translate it from German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
to Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
. The letter launched an intense and increasingly passionate correspondence. Jesenská and Kafka met twice: they spent four days in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and later a day in Gmünd
Gmünd
Gmünd is a town in the district of Spittal an der Drau, in the Austrian state of Carinthia.The municipality is situated within the valley of the Lieser river, a left tributary of the Drava, east of the Hohe Tauern mountain range.-Municipality breakdown:...
. Eventually Kafka broke off the relationship, partly because Jesenská was unable to leave her husband, and their almost daily communication ceased abruptly in November 1920. They meant so much to each other, however, that they did exchange a few more letters in 1922 and 1923 (and Kafka turned over to Jesenská his diaries at the end of his life). Jesenská's translation of The Stoker
The Stoker
"The Stoker" is a short story by Franz Kafka. Kafka intended to include the story as the first chapter in a novel he did not complete; the novel was posthumously published under the title Amerika.-Plot :...
was a first translation of Kafka's writings into Czech (and as a matter of fact, into any foreign language); later she translated two other short stories of Kafka and also texts by Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch was a 20th century Austrian writer, considered one of the major Modernists.-Life:Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately...
, Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, and many others.
In Vienna, Jesenská also began to write herself, contributing articles and later also editorials to women's columns in some of the best known Prague dailies and magazines. For example, she contributed to Tribuna
Tribuna
Tribuna is a weekly Russian newspaper that focuses largely on industry and the energy sector, published from 1969. Until 1990, the newspaper titled the Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya, then it was renamed into the Rabochaya Tribuna. Since April 1998 for newspaper fixed the current title.Since 2000s...
, and between 1923 and 1926, she wrote for Národní listy, Pestrý týden and Lidové noviny
Lidové noviny
Lidové noviny is a daily newspaper published in the Czech Republic. It is the oldest Czech daily. Its profile is nowadays a national news daily covering political, economic, cultural and scientific affairs, mostly with a centre-right, conservative view...
.
In 1925 Jesenská divorced Pollak and moved back to Prague, where she later met and married avant-garde Czech architect Jaromír Krejcar
Jaromír Krejcar
Jaromír Krejcar was a Czech functionalistic architect, student of Jan Kotěra and member of Devětsil.He collaborated with Czech structural engineer, Dr...
. In Prague she continued working as a journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, and also as children's books editor and translator. Some of her articles from the period were published in two separate collections by the Prague Publishing House Topič.
In the 1930s Jesenská became attracted to communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
(like many other Czech intellectuals of the period), but eventually abandoned her sympathies for the ideology altogether in 1936, when she grew aware of excesses of Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. In October 1934 her second marriage ended - she gave a consent to divorce Krejcar so that he could marry a Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
n interpreter whom he met during his visit to the Soviet Union.
Between 1938 and 1939 she edited the prestigious Czech magazine for politics and culture Přítomnost
Prítomnost
Přítomnost is a Czech quarterly political-cultural magazine published in Prague.- History :The Přítomnost newspaper was able to come into existence thanks to T. G...
(The Presence), founded and published in Prague by the esteemed political commentator and democrat Ferdinand Peroutka
Ferdinand Peroutka
Ferdinand Peroutka was a Czech journalist and writer.-Life:Peroutka was born to a Czech-German family in Prague in 1895. In 1913 he began his career as a journalist. After World War I, he became a editor-in-chief of a new newspaper Tribuna...
. Here she wrote editorials and visionary commentaries on the rise of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in Germany, the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
to Nazi Germany and the possible consequences this was to have for Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
.
Death
After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
army, Jesenská joined an underground resistance movement and helped many Jewish and political refugees to emigrate. She herself decided to stay, however, despite the consequences. In November 1939 she was arrested by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
and imprisoned first in Prague's Pankrác
Pankrác
Pankrác is a neighborhood of Prague, Czech Republic. It is located south of the city centre on the hills of the right bank of the Vltava River and is part of the Prague 4 district as a deal of Nusle quarter. The name derives from the local baroque initially very old church of St Pancras, which is...
and later in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. In October 1940 she was deported to a concentration camp in Ravensbrück
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
in Germany. Here she provided moral support to other prisoners and befriended Margarete Buber-Neumann
Margarete Buber-Neumann
Margarete Buber-Neumann , was a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic. She survived imprisonment during World War II in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany...
, who wrote her first biography after the war. Jesenská died of kidney
Kidney
The kidneys, organs with several functions, serve essential regulatory roles in most animals, including vertebrates and some invertebrates. They are essential in the urinary system and also serve homeostatic functions such as the regulation of electrolytes, maintenance of acid–base balance, and...
failure in Ravensbrück on May 17, 1944.
Jana "Honza" Krejcarová, the daughter of Jesenská and Jaromír Krejcar
Jaromír Krejcar
Jaromír Krejcar was a Czech functionalistic architect, student of Jan Kotěra and member of Devětsil.He collaborated with Czech structural engineer, Dr...
, was a writer for the Czech underground
Underground press
The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....
publication Půlnoc in the early 1950s and for Divoké víno in the 1960s.
In music
Jesenská was the subject of a cantataCantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
for soprano and orchestra, entitled Milena, by the Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
composer Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...
. Ginastera's work was based on Kafka's letters.
Works
Anthologies of Jesenská's texts and articles published during her lifetime:- Cesta k jednoduchosti ("The Road to Simplicity"). Praha: Topič, 1926.
- Člověk dělá šaty ("Man Makes Clothes"). Praha: Topič, 1927.
Anthologies of Jesenská's texts, articles, and correspondence published after her death:
- Ludmila Hegnerová, ed. Milena Jesenská zvenčí a zevnitř: Antologie textů Mileny Jesenské. (Anthology of Jesenská's texts.) Praha: Prostor, 1996.
- Václav Burian, ed. Nad naše síly: Češi, židé a Němci 1937-1939. (Articles published in Přítomnost). Olomouc: Votobia, 1997.
- Kathleen Hayes, ed. The Journalism of Milena Jesenska: A Critical Voice in Interwar Central Europe. Translated from Czech and with an introduction by Kathleen Hayes. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003.
- Alena Wágnerová, ed. Dopisy Mileny Jesenské. (Jesenská's letters.) Prague: Prostor, 1998.
Selected bibliography
- Mary Hockaday. Kafka, Love, and Courage: The Life of Milena Jesenská. New York: The Overlook Press, 1997. ISBN 087951731X http://www.aaabooksearch.com/Book/087951731X.html
- Margarete Buber-Neumann. Milena: The Tragic Story of Kafka's Great Love. Arcade Publishing, 1997. ISBN 1559703903 http://www.aaabooksearch.com/Book/1559703903.html
- Kafka, Franz. Letters to MilenaLetters to MilenaLetters to Milena is a book collecting some of Franz Kafka's letters to Milena Jesenská from 1920 to 1923.-Publication history:The letters were originally published in German in 1952 as Briefe an Milena, edited by Willy Haas, who decided to delete certain passages which he thought might hurt people...
. Translated by Philip Boehm, New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
: Schocken Books, 1990. ISBN 0805208852
External links
- Milena Jesenská Fellowships for Journalists, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna – http://www.iwm.at
- Přítomnost 36 (1938) and Přítomnost 41 (1938) - two essays by Milena Jesenska (in Czech) online