The Good Soldier Švejk

	The Good Soldier Švejk
	Who is who
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The Who's who page on Jaroslav Hašek presents a gallery of persons from real life who to a varying degree are associated with The Good Soldier Švejk and his creator. Several of the characters in the novel are known to be based on real-life people, mostly officers from Infanterieregiment Nr. 91. Some of Hašek's literary figures carry the full names of their model, some are only thinly disguised and some names diverge from that of their "model", but they can be pinpointed by analyzing the circumstances in which they appear.

A handful of "prototypes" are easily recognisable like Rudolf Lukas and Jan Vaněk, others like Zdeněk Matěj Kuděj and Emanuél Michálek are less obvious inspirations. One would also assume that most of these characters borrow traits from more than one person, one such example is Švejk himself.

A far larger number of assumed prototypes are connected to their literary counterparts by little more than the name. Josef Švejk is here the prime example, but Jan Eybl also fits in this category. The list of prototypes only contains those who inspired characters that directly take part in the plot.

Researchers, the so-called Haškologists, are also included on this page but this list is per 15 June 2022 restricted to Radko Pytlík and two important but relatively unknown contributors to our knowledge about Hašek and Švejk. In due course entries on other experts like Václav Menger and Zdena Ančík will be added.

Obvious inspiration

Hašek Lacina Schlager Vodička Lukas Adamička Wenzel Bigler Sagner Vaněk Kompit

Haškologists

Morávek Hůla Pytlík Menger

Hůla, Břetislav Josef Antonín

*31.3.1894 Polička - †2.4.1964 Dobřichovice

Hůla was a columnist, translator and communist political activist who rightfully ought to be considered the first ever "scientific" haškologist and švejkologist, and in hindsight he ranks as one of the most important. He was the only post-World War II Hašek-expert who knew the author personally. Important with regards to The Good Soldier Švejk are his explanations to Švejk (vysvětlívky), a 170 page document was never published under his name, but printed by Zdena Ančík in a 1953 edition of The Good Soldier Švejk. He didn't have the chance to publish the material himself but his effort in identifying Hašek's innumerable stories across dozens av newspaper and magazines was invaluable.

Hůla has arguably researched more and collected more material on Jaroslav Hašek than anyone apart from Radko Pytlík. He was very knowledgeable on his subject, methodical in his research and also document his findings impeccably. The material that Hůla collected has been drawn upon extensively by biographers. All later haškologists owe Hůla much but hardly any of a them gave him credit for his efforts (and most of them admittedly didn't even know about his contributions).

Early years

Břetislav Hůla was born in 1894 in Polička, a small town in Vysočina. His parents were František Hůla, a k.k. Gendarmerie (Austrian state police) officer, his mother Marie Hůlová, born Borešová (from Soběslav). Břetislav was the youngest of four children. In 1896, after his father’s premature death, the widow and the children moved to Vinohrady, then to Praha II.. Here they show up in police records in 1896, 1897, 1901 and 1903. Young Břetislav studied at the gymnasium in Žitná ulice, incidentally where Jaroslav Hašek had studied ten years earlier. By 1907 (and still in 1910) his mother seems to have been the proprietor of a Trafika in that very street (568/18), and they lived in Žitná ulice 565/12. On 10 July 1913 Hůla graduated from the gymnasium and embarked on law studies at Univerzita Karlova (Charles University) that same autumn. He had completed two terms by the outbreak of war, aided by a Franz-Joseph Stipendium worth 240 Crowns!

In the Austro-Hungarian army

Soon he was off to fight for his emperor. Called up to serve with the Prague's own Infanterieregiment Nr. 28, he was sent first to the Serbian with the 2nd battalion. At some stage he was injured; he appears in Verlustliste Nr. 140 on 12 March 1915 as Verwundet, belonging to the 7th company. Here his rank is listed as one-year volunteer. On 3 April 1915 he was captured by Dukla, now with the 10th company (i.e. 3rd battalion). Subsequently interned in camps in Ardatov and Simbirsk, and in total he spent 17 months in Russian captivity.

Czech volunteer

On 3 August 1916 he joined the Czech anti-Austrian volunteers in Russia (Českoslovenká Střelecká Brigada, later known as the Legions. He was assigned to the same unit as Jaroslav Hašek; the 1st Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment. Like Hašek he worked for the Union of Czechoslovak Associations in Russia, and both became contributors to Čechoslovan. It is possible that the two met already in the autumn of 1916, but we don’t know exactly when Hůla started to write for the paper (Hašek had his first contribution published in July).

In June 1917 Hůla wrote an article in Revoluce, a Czech weekly in Kiev who were centred around the ultra-nationalist group Černá Ruka (Black Hand). It was in this paper that Jaroslav Hašek on 23 April 1917 published his infamous The Czech Pickwick Club that pilloried virtually the whole leadership of the Czech organisations in Russia. The loud-thinking writer and satirist was "exiled" to the front already on 3 May, but from 15 November 1917 he was back in the offices of Čechoslovan. If he hadn't met Hůla previously he would surely have done so now (or very soon after).

From January 1918 both are listed on the front page of Čechoslovan as editors. Hůla and Hašek celebrated New Year 1917/18 together in the editorial offices, and Jaroslav Hašek was reportedly in a very sentimental mood (Radko Pytlík). Around this time the two belonged to a group of radicals who toyed with idea of organising terrorist groups to operate in Austria-Hungary, an idea firmly rejected by Professor Masaryk (who was in Kiev at the time).

Bolshevik

Hašek-expert Cecil Parrott even notes that "the Communist Hůla” was instrumental in Hašek's shift towards the extreme left in early 1918. This view is shared by Radko Pytlík in his latest book (2013). It is however not clear when Hůla started to sympathise with the Bolsheviks. Biography of the Comintern claims “after the October Revolution” whereas Encyclopaedia of Czech Literature states that “early in 1918 he joined the Czech communists in Kiev, organised around the weekly Svoboda”. In either case Parrott and Pytlík may have a good point.

In the meantime the Red Guards had occupied Kiev on 8 February 1918. This event made an impression on the two journalists who for the first time came in contact with representatives of the new regime. This is very clear in the two issues of Čechoslovan that were published during the Bolshevik occupation. Although HasJ’s writing had started to drift towards the left already in January, the shift was now dramatic. The paper as a whole more or less espoused Bolshevik ideas, and according to historian Jaroslav Křižek, Hůla played a prominent role in this break with the past. Amongst the Bolshevik occupiers of Kiev were also a few hundred Czechs, amongst them Václav Fridrich, who was head of the Red Guards in Kiev, appointed by commander Mikhail Muravyov.

The Bolshevik occupation of Kiev was brief. Soon peace negotiations between Germany and Russia broke down, and on 18 February the German army attacked. Retreating from the invaders (they reached Kiev on 1 March 1918), Bolshevik and Czechoslovak troops were forced east, fighting a rearguard battle as de-facto allies. Which unit Hůla and Hašek were part of during the withdrawal is unclear, but it was very likely Fridrich’s Red Guards (Muravyov had by then been appointed commander of the Red Guards in Moldova, and later in Odessa).

At some stage during this retreat Hašek and Hůla left the army and travelled together to Moscow (via Kharkov) where they joined the Petrograd section of the left wing of the Czech Social Democrats. In Moscow they contributed to the paper Průkopník where Hašek in a front page article on 27 March made his opposition to the transfer of the legions to France clear, and also rued the Czech Army's reluctance to fight the Germans during the invasion of Ukraine. Hůla published articles in the same newspaper. Václav Menger remembers meeting both in Moscow at this time and writes that Jaroslav Hašek and Hůla were inseparable, but were also on friendly terms with their former comrades from the Legions, and even went drinking with them. Amongst those "enemies" were the sculptor Vlasta Amort and the future Czechoslovak general Jan Šípek.

At the beginning of April Hašek was sent to Samara as an agitator/recruiter, and their paths split. In May 1918 Hůla was instrumental in organising the Czech section of the Bolshevik Party. Rudolf Medek also mentions him in a scathing attack on the left-wing social democrats. The article Průkopníci was published in Československý deník (6 April 1918). In his book Pout’ do Československa he tells how Jaroslav Hašek and Hůla in Restaurant Praha in Moscow tried to convince Ladislav Tuček to join the Bolsheviks. This allegedly happened after the battle of Bachmach (ended 13 March).

Back home

In November 1918 Hůla returned to Prague and took up his abandoned law studies, where he completed another two terms. There is however no evidence of him having graduated in the summer of 1919. He lived at two different addresses: Všehrdova ulice 17 (Malá Strana) and Ruská ulice 26 (Vršovice). He also edited the papers Naš venkov and Svoboda, and translated Russian Communist literature.

In 1920 he was one of four Czech delegates at the 2nd congress of Comintern in Petrograd and Moscow (July and August), and even became a member of the Comintern executive committee (EKKI). He stayed in Moscow at least until 17 September 1920, a day he wrote an article about Soviet art[a]. It was at the request of Hůla that Jaroslav Hašek in October 1920 was asked to return to Czechoslovakia to aid the revolutionary movement in his homeland.

There is no evidence that the two met after Hašek's return although there is a period of 11 days where it hypothetically could have happened. The author/activist appeared in Prague on 19 December 1920, and Hůla was arrested in his flat in Dejvice on new years eve.

Arrested

Hůla was at this stage editor of the weekly Svoboda in Kladno, together with later Czechoslovak president and hard-line Stalinist Antonín Zápotocký. During the previous week they were amongst the organisers of a general strike and attempted revolution that the left wing of the Czech Social Democrats (communists) instigated. After the failed coup the leaders were put on trial, incidentally at c.k. zemský co trestní soud, an institution well known to Švejk!. Hůla was sentenced to 13 months in prison. In press reports from the court proceedings in April 1921 he is listed as “editor from Dejvice”.

Interwar years

After his release on 3 January 1922 and until 1926 Hůla worked for several Communist newspapers, amongst them Rudé Právo. He was active in the Communist party organisation until 1926 when he left, accused of "rightism" and "opportunism". In 1927 he signed a petition against the treatment of Trotsky, printed in Rudé Právo. He seems never to have returned to active politics, instead making a living as a translator from Russian and German (he translated Lenin, Dostoevsky, Turgenev etc.) using pseudonyms. He also attended classes in philosophy at Charles University. From 1928 he was active in Umělecká Beseda (Artists Union) and after World War II briefly in the Czechoslovak Red Cross.

Nazi occupation

Little is known about his activities during the Nazi occupation, but in 1942 he appears to have been writing for a periodical named Přitomnost. Lidové Noviny reproduced one of his articles and it shows a pro-German tendency. During the protectorate he continued his work as a translator, working on Dostojevsky and Mikhail Sholokhov (And Quiet Flows the Don). He also translated a book by German art historian Wilhelm Waetzoldt. The book titled Nebojte se umění (Have no fear of the arts) was published in 1942. The original text was presumably Du und die Kunst (1938).

Professional haškologist for Synek

From 1 February 1947 he was commissioned by the publishers of The Good Soldier Švejk, Nakladatelství Karel Synek, to edit and publish a new version of Sebrané spisy (Collected works), to be issued in 12 or 13 volumes. An early version had been published by Synek from 1925 to 1929, edited by Dolenský, but was deemed incomplete. It contained 419 stories, was issued in 16 soft back instalments and was illustrated by Josef Lada. Hůla went about assembling and identifying new material very methodically; browsing newspapers and magazines and reporting on the progress once a month. The result was an impressive collection: he found 303 previously unknown stories. In addition Hůla identified many of the pseudonyms the author had used, more than 100 in total, paving the way for further discoveries. In a letter to Synek dated 27 December 1948 he summarises his work, and also estimates that a further 500 stories could exists. He also thanks Synek for honouring their contract. In 1947 he also met actor Václav Menger, another friend of Hašek’s who in the thirties had written two semi-factual biographies about the author. Václav Menger handed over all the material he had collected and was very pleased that Synek and Hůla had taken on the task to publish an updated Sebrané Spisy (Collected works). The contract with Synek covered two entire years; 1947 and 1948.

Working for the Ministry of Information

By early 1948 he had also started to collaborate with Zdena Ančík, a Communist journalist and columnist who at the time was secretary for minister of information, Václav Kopecký. Ančík later achieved recognition as a pioneer haškologist. He had been active in the Czech resistance during the war, and managed to escape to England. He was an admirer of Jaroslav Hašek, and in 1953 he published the first post-war biography on the famous father of The Good Soldier Švejk. The book O životě Jaroslava Haška contained a lot of new material, no doubt (in part) thanks to Hůla.

Correspondence dated 15 January 1948 reveals that Hůla was assisting the ministry of information in collecting material for an exhibition on Jaroslav Hašek (it eventually opened on 19 May 1953). In a letter to Ančík he reveals how a photo from 1917 that shows Jaroslav Hašek together with Václav Menger and Jan Šípek was to be modified for the upcoming exhibition, retaining Hašek alone. From October he started to report and hand over material at regular intervals. This included not only stories by Hašek that he was discovering but also material from archives, most importantly from the Ministry of Interior who had kept records on the author's encounters with the police. These have been drawn upon extensively by biographers like Radko Pytlík. He was also in close contact with former friends and colleagues of the author: Josef Lada, Alois Hatina, Ladislav Grund, Zdeněk Matěj Kuděj, Gustav Roger Opočenský and others. He also collected extensive material from other archives and sources, including newspapers and magazines.

In the autumn of 1948 Hůla landed in trouble as he was being investigated for his conduct during the Nazi occupation. Ančík informed him on the proceedings, that he had been given a one-year sentence, but was offered an amnesty. It is obvious that Hůla had become very dependent on Ančík who was well connected in the party hierarchy.

According to the official Slovník české literatury Hůla retired due to ill health in 1948 but his letters to Ančík reveal continued and impressive research until September 1951 when he in a desperate tone pleads to Ančík for protection against confiscation of his property. From now the correspondence seems to have ceased. By early April 1950 he had moved to Dobřichovice where he lived in house number 129. Otherwise his names appears in several StB documents dated from 1953 to 1958, some of them indicating that he may have been an informer (unconfirmed). He lived in Dobřichovice until his death in 1964.

Legacy

Hůla’s collection of is still available at LA PNP at Strahov. It contains seven cartons of documents, the bulk of it directly related to Jaroslav Hašek. Yet more is stored in the files of Zdena Ančík to whom he had passed on virtually all the results of his research. Hůla also edited a selection of stories by Hašek: Škola humoru (1949). Hůla's research was extensively used by Ančík and František Daneš when they finally set about publishing Spisy Jaroslav Haška (later Milan Jankovič and Radko Pytlík joined the editorial board).

Ančík in particular owes much of his reputation as a Hašek-expert to the endeavours of Hůla. In some editions of the novel that appeared in the 1950's he printed (with minor modifications) Hůla's extensive "vysvětlíky" (explanations) without saying a word about their origin (his only contribution to them was proof-reading). When Ančík and Daneš in 1955 published the first volume of the 16-part “Writings of Jaroslav Hašek”, Hůla is not mentioned although the series mainly consisted of stories that he had identified as written by Jaroslav Hašek. In 1960, In Bibliografie Jaroslava Haška Hůla's name finally appears, albeit as a minor note. Radko Pytlík reveals that Hůla's collection had been deposited at PNP by 1955, the year Pytlík became aware of it. How the material ended there 10 years before the owners death is not known.

Hůla's explanations to The Good Soldier Švejk is a 170-page type-written document, still in the custody of PNP. He seems to have been commissioned by Ančík to collect the explanations, and the latter also did some proof-reading. The work started on 25 May 1951 and was to be completed by 1 October. The explanations shows evidence of a very knowledgeable person, and the sheer extent of the information is impressive. Errors of course exist, but those are remarkably few and Hůla had not even finished the document when he seems to have abandoned work on it. His political views shine through, some of the entries are quite amusing in retrospect. U Fleků is described as a place where “the petite bourgeoisie get radicalised after a few beers”. All of this, including Hůla’s blunders, is faithfully reproduced by Ančík who only corrected some minor errors in the original manuscript. The odd explanation has also found the way into English translations of The Good Soldier Švejk (e.g Rava Ruska). If anything could be criticised it would be a Oberst Kraus like tendency to explain even the most obvious of terms.

The extent of Hůla's research has largely remained unknown. There was not a single word said about him at the conference in Bamberg in 1983, and of course not at the rival conference in Dobříš that same year. Nor has he (to my knowledge) been mentioned at subsequent Hašek-conferences at Lipnice in 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018. The side-lining of Hůla has been so effective that even Hašek-experts with an explicit anti-communist agenda (e.g. Pavel Gan and Jan Berwid-Buquoy) have overlooked him completely. So did Hašek's only other foreign-language biographers: Gustav Janouch and Cecil Parrott.

Only the recent research of Petr Kovařík has shed proper light on the importance of Hůla and his research on Jaroslav Hašek. It was published as an epilogue to his book Když bolševici zrušili Vánoce (2005). In Radko Pytklík’s latest collection of Hašek’s short stories, Turista Arataš a jiné humoresky, 2012, Hůla’s role in collecting stories by Hašek is briefly mentioned. Recently, in an extensive fact file on "Švejk": Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk, Notes on the Russian Translation (Sergey Soloukh, 2013), Hůla’s contribution is given due recognition.

Credit: SOA Zámrsk, NAČR, VÚA, LA-PNP, Lexicon české literatury, Radko Pytlík, Petr Kovařík, Archiv UK (Petr Šmíd)

Literature

Pobytové přihlášky pražského policejního ředitelství, NAČR,1851 - 1914
Pobytové přihlášky pražského policejního ředitelství, NAČR,1851 - 1914
Soupis pražských domovských příslušníků 1830-1910 (1920), Popisní úřád král. hlav. města Prahy
Verlustliste Nr. 140, K.u.k. Kriegsministerium,12.3.1915
Verlustliste Nr. 374, K.u.k. Kriegsministerium,9.2.1916
"Těrevsat", Rudé právo,31.10.1920 [a]
Soudruh Hůla zatčen, Rudé právo,1.2.1921
Kruté tresty odsouzených, Rudé právo,14.4.1921
Rozbroje v komunistické straně, Družina československých legionářů,6.8.1925
„Kavárenští hypochondři.”, Rudé právo,28.10.1927
Zeležitosti komunistické strany, Rudé právo,20.11.1927
К 70. výročí trvání Umělecké Besedy v Praze, Letem světem,28.2.1933
Z řádné valné hromady Umělecké besedy v zasedací síni U. B, Letem světem,4.4.1933
K technice sociální práce, PřitomnostBřetislav Hůla,1.2.1943
Spisy Jaroslav Haška, PráceVáclav Kaplický,13.3.1947
Fond Břetislav Hůla, Památník národního písemnictví
Když bolševici zrušili vánoce, Petr Kovařík,2005
Břetislav Hůla, Wikipedia
Hůla in the archives of the Legions, VÚA Wrongly listed as Bohuslav Hula

References
a	"Těrevsat"	Rudé právo	31.10.1920