Publication details
Čeští dobrovolníci v srbské armádě jako básníci a spisovatelé. Příspěvek k 110. výročí začátku Velké války
| Title in English | Czech Volunteers in the Serbian Army as Poets and Writers. A Contribution to the 110th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Great War |
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The article is dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War, which, as is well known, began with the very unsuccessful attacks of the Austro-Hungarian army on Serbia. The literature of Czech participants in the Great War is very colourful, both those who wrote about their pilgrimage within the Habsburg army and those who, for various reasons, switched to the side of the Triple Entente, who fought against their "wider homeland", and returned home with the glories of heroes. As those who contributed to the dismantling of the old monarchy and the creation of the new Czechoslovak state. Much has been written about this literature, and it would seem that there is not much more to add. However, something is missing: the introduction of the works of those Czech authors who fought in the Balkans as part of the Serbian army. Some from the very first weeks of the Austro-Hungarian aggression, some only later, on the Salonika front. It must be admitted, however, that writers of top legionary literature of the type of Kopta, Medek or Langer were not among them. On the other hand, it must be said that only a little more than 3,000 Czechs fought in the Serbian army. Of these, more than half were part of the Serbian army, but divisions built up from prisoners of war in Russia, and these eventually mostly went over to the Czechoslovak legions in Russia. In fact, Serbian legionary writers can hardly match in their literary output those who described their experiences of the war in the Balkans from the side of the Habsburg army, such as Egon Ervin Kisch, Stanislav Kostka Neumann, Karel Sellner or the lesser-known Jaroslav Křenek. Summarily, the works of the Czechs from the Serbian army are rather marginal in the vast legionary literature, but they have a firm place in it. |
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