Honoring Helen Brooke Taussig

Today we are honoring Helen Brooke Taussig, a woman physician who saved thousands of children’s lives. When in May 1980, the famed 87- year physician, Helen Brooke Taussig, lost her life during a car accident, the Czech foreign press did not devote any attention to that event. Nobody could, of course, suspect that she was, on...

PEOPLE, Women

March 21, 2017

Czech Composer Rudolf Friml and American Music

Charles Rudolf Friml was born on December 7, 1879 in Prague. The son of a baker, he already showed aptitude for music at an early age and entered the Prague Conservatory in 1895, where he studied the piano and composition with Antonín Dvořák. Passionate about music, he was expelled from the conservatory in 1901 for performing without...

ENTERTAINMENT, Music

Czech_Composers_Jerome_David_Kern_Tres_Bohemes

March 2, 2017

Father of American Musical Theater is Czech

Today we have another surprise for you. How many of you realized that the man considered the ‘Father of American Musical Theater’ comes from Czech parents? Yes. Jerome David Kern (1885-1945), is remembered for his almost 1,000 songs and more than 100 theater performances and films. Jerome Kern was born in New York, in Sutton Place,...

ENTERTAINMENT, Music

February 24, 2017

Father of Modern Astrology and His Czech Roots

Czech Americans are known to have excelled in just about every aspect of human endeavor, including business, religion, government & politics, law, music, dramatic art, visual art, creative writing, publishing, media, education, activism & reform, the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences, physical sciences & mathematics, engineering, medicine, military, exploration, espionage, sports, and modeling (Encyclopedia of...

NOSTALGIA, Time Warp

February 15, 2017

The Elegant Dress Designs of Hana Podolská

Today we are taking a look at the elegant dress designs of Hana Podolská. We chose today because it has been exatcly 45 years ago today, that famous Czech fashion designer, Hana Podolská, died. The First Republic is in Czech historical context understood as the Golden Age. A time of flowering of the new state...

Bohemians, Fashion, Women

October 6, 2016

Czechs Remember Vaclav Havel with Heart-Shaped Monument

A small square by the National Theater in Prague, Czech Republic was renamed yesterday after the late president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel. Havel was a Czech playwright, politician, and essayist. He was also the last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993-2003). Yesterday, on what would have been the late president’s 80th...

PLACES, Prague

frantisek-hilmar-kytka-FM-Hilmar-Frantisek-Matej-Hilmar-Polka

June 28, 2016

František Hilmar, Father of the Polka

Here is something that most of you may not know about our family… My father can trace his history back to around 1648, when the first Hilmar (Hylmar) came from Swedish/Nordic territory to Košťanech (in what’s now known as the Czech Republic) as a soldier in the Thirty Years’ War. He settled and made his...

Bohemians, CULTURE, LIFESTYLE, Music