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Who is who

Jan Vaněk was arguably the most obvious of all the prototypes of characters in The Good Soldier Švejk.

The Who's who page on Jaroslav Hašek presents a gallery of people from real life who, to varying degrees, are associated with The Good Soldier Švejk and its creator. Several of the characters in the novel are known to be based on real-life individuals, mostly officers from Infanterieregiment Nr. 91. Some of Hašek's literary figures carry the full names of their models, some are only thinly disguised, and some names diverge from that of their "model", but they can be identified by analysing 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 the prime example here, 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 as of 15 February 2026 the list is restricted to Radko Pytlík and Václav Menger, plus two important but relatively unknown contributors to our knowledge about Hašek and Švejk. In due course, entries on other experts like Zdena Ančík may be added.

Obvious inspiration

Hašek Lacina Schlager Vodička Lukas Adamička Wenzel Bigler Sagner Vaněk Kompit

Some similarity

Strašlipka Michálek Dub Eybl Švejk Kuděj Mašek Čížek

Haškologists

Morávek Hůla Pytlík Menger

Pytlík, Radko
*8.10.1928 Praha - †31.1.2022 Praha
Wikipediaczenru SearchŠvejkův slovník
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Dr. Pytlík at Lipnice, 27 April 2013

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Radko Pytlík with his early mentor Zdena Ančík, himself a prominent Haškologist.

© LA-PNP

Radko Pytlík - „Velký člověk, nobles, hudebník. Napsal čtyři desítky knih. Zkrátka úžasné věci. To je náš guru. Guru haškologie, guru hrabalogie, člověk, který rozuměl světu a uměl ho i popsat.“

Richard Hašek to Radiožurnál, 1 February 2022.

Radko Pytlík was a prominent literary scholar and writer who is best known as a specialist in the writings and life of Jaroslav Hašek. He is widely regarded as the leading authority on the creator of The Good Soldier Švejk and on the novel itself.

Over the course of almost 70 years he conducted extensive literary and historical research and was also very productive as a writer. Apart from his works on Hašek, he wrote books about Bohumil Hrabal, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, Egon Erwin Kisch and others. Some of his books touched on humour in general and also the local history of Prague VII, his home district in the Czech capital.

All in all he published around 40 books and also contributed to a number of newspapers and magazines. Pytlík was married twice and had a daughter and a son. His son is the well-known actor and singer Vojtěch Dyk.

Pytlík graduated from Karlova Univerzita in Prague where he studied Czech language, philosophy and literature. His dissertation was on the early writing of Jaroslav Hašek (1952). After finishing his studies and completing his military service, he was employed from 1955 onwards by Ústav pro Československou literaturu (The Institute of Czechoslovak Literature), where he worked until he retired in 1991.

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Toulavé house (1971), Dr. Pytlík's finest work.

He began publishing in 1951, and in 1960 he and Miroslav Laiske published the book Bibliografie Jaroslava Haška, which catalogued all of Jaroslav Hašek's known writings at the time. In 1961 he published his first book on, simply called Jaroslav Hašek. In 1971 the book that is arguably his finest work appeared, a full biography of Jaroslav Hašek titled Toulavé house (The Wandering Gosling). It has been translated into several languages, and parts of it were even reproduced in Cecil Parrott's The Bad Bohemian (1978), so far the only English-language biography of Hašek to exist.

In the early eighties Pytlík was particularly productive, mainly around the 100th anniversary of Hašek's death in 1983, a time when Czechoslovakia was flooded with material about Jaroslav Hašek. During this period his first work of "pure švejkology" appeared, called Kniha o Švejkovi (The book about Švejk) (1982). This was probably the first meta-text about The Good Soldier Švejk ever published in book form.

After his retirement Pytlík continued to write and research, but less actively and without the support of the authorities (the Communist regime "canonised" Hašek, so ample funds were made available for research). Revised versions of Toulavé house appeared in 1998 and 2012. Books about The Good Soldier Švejk were published in 2002 and as late as 2019.

His most important contribution to scholarship on Hašek since 1990 is by far Data, fakty, dokumenty (2013), a reflection of Pytlik's immense knowledge of his favourite subject. The book could have benefited from more thorough editing and a clean-up, but it still remains the most complete collection of information about Jaroslav Hašek available and is a good starting point for further research.

Pytlík was, apart from being an outstanding literary scholar, a man of multiple talents. He was an accomplished musician and singer, and spoke German and Russian fluently. He was witty and charming, had an appealing low-key sense of humour, and expressed his knowledge and views eloquently. Moreover, he was capable of captivating and entertaining his audience. It was always a pleasure to listen to him talk about his favourite subject, Jaroslav Hašek, over a beer or two in one of his favourite hospody in Holešovice.

Literature
© 2008 - 2026 Jomar Hønsi Last updated: 13 September 2026