Dobrý voják Švejk

PHOTO_L(attentat.gif,František Ferdinand and Žofie Chotková Chotek leave the Sarajevo Town Hall, five minutes before the assassination, June 28 1914.)

LIT(The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk) is a novel with an unusually rich array of characters. In addition to the many who directly form part of the plot, a large number of fictive and real people (and animals) are mentioned; either through sv:s anecdotes, the narrative or indirectly through words and expressions.

This web page contains short write-ups on the persons the novel refers to; from Napoleón in the introduction to Captain Ságner in the last few lines of the unfinished Book Four. The list is sorted according to the order of which the names appear. The chapter headlines are from Zenny K. Sadlon's recent translation and will in most cases differ from Cecil Parrott's version from 1973. The list of people is to my knowledge nearly complete.

The names are colored according to their role in the novel, illustrated by the following examples: Doctor Grünstein who is directly involved in the plot, Heinrich Heine as a historical person, and Ferdinand Kokoška as an invented person.