Ferdinand Peroutka
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Ferdinand Peroutka | |
|---|---|
| Born | 6 February 1895 Austro-Hungarian Empire |
| Died | 20 April 1978 (aged 83) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist Journalist Playwright |
| Nationality | Czechoslovak |
| Subjects | Politics, society |
| Notable works | Budování státu |
| Spouse | Slávka Peroutková |
Ferdinand Peroutka (6 February 1895 – 20 April 1978) was a Czech journalist and writer. A prominent political thinker and journalist during the First Czechoslovak Republic, Peroutka was persecuted by the Nazi regime for his democratic convictions and imprisoned at Buchenwald concentration camp. Following the 1948 coup by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, he emigrated to both the United Kingdom and later, the United States.
Life
Peroutka was born to a Czech family in Prague in 1895. In 1913 he began his career as a journalist. After World War I, he became an editor-in-chief of a new newspaper Tribuna ("Tribune"). Some articles published in Tribuna were later incorporated into books Z deníku žurnalistova ("Of the Journalist's Diary") and above all Jací jsme ("What we are like") —in this book Peroutka mapped some myths about the Czech nation.
In 1924 Peroutka passed from Tribuna to
After liberation, Peroutka became editor-in-chief of the newspaper Svobodné noviny and refounded his famous magazine, Přítomnost, under the name Dnešek ("Today"). The journal became prominent through its critical stance on postwar violence committed on the German minority and hundreds of alleged collaborators. Nonetheless it also fit the general pattern of the time by hosting illusory views of the Communist party underestimating its totalitarian pretensions. Peroutka wrote two dramas: Oblak a valčík ("The Cloud and the Waltz") and Štastlivec Sula ("Sula the Happy Man"). Political articles Peroutka issued in the book Tak nebo tak ("One Way Or Another").
In 1945–1946, Peroutka was also a member of the Provisional National Assembly for the
Peroutka also became a novelist in exile. He re-wrote his drama to the novel of the same name. The second novel, Pozdější život Panny ("The Later Life of the Virgin"), deals with the idea of the rescue of
References
- ^ "Společná česko-slovenská digitální parlamentní knihovna". Poslanecká sněmovna Parlamentu České republiky. Archived from the original on 2 July 2007.
External links
- The Ferdinand Peroutka papers are available at the Hoover Institution Archives
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