The Good Soldier Švejk

Many admirers of Švejk may not be aware of the fact that their hero actually appeared already before the war. Our man first saw light of day in 1911; in five short stories published by the magazines Karikatury and Dobrá kopa. The first of those stories appeared in Josef Lada's magazine Karikatury on 22 May 1911, thus marking Švejk's official birthday. The five stories were subsequently included in the book Dobrý voják Švejk a jiné podivné historky (The good soldier Švejk and other strange stories), published in the autumn of 1911, then banned, before it was reissued in 1912.

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Hašek's story in Reichsrat

Český svět,13.10.1911

On 29 November 1911 one of Jaroslav Hašek's stories from the book was the subject of an interpellation in the deputy chamber of Reichsrat[a]. k.k. Landesgericht als Preßgericht in Prague on 18 November 1911 decided to confiscate the book because of the story Zpovědní tajemství (The seal of confession)[b] because it was deemed blasphemous. A group of deputies with Fresl at the front protested to the minister of justice. They pointed at that the story had been printed in České slovo already in 1908 without having been censored.

The 18 signatories were: eleven from Česká strana národně sociální (Fresl, Vojna, Formánek, Klofáč, Choc, Stříbrný, Lisy, Konečný, Slavíček, Baxa, Šviha), three Czech independent progressives (Masaryk, Kalina, Prunar), two Czech agrarians (Masata, Bradač) and even two Ukrainians (Breiter, Трильовський (Trylowskyj)). Note that the agrarian Josef Švejk didn't sign it... The complaint seems to have been heeded because in 1912 the book was printed again. The segments that had been censored were marked with a note about the petition but nothing seems to have been removed. The interpellation didn't mention Hašek or the book's title by name.

Literature

• Kundmachungen, Wiener Zeitung,23.11.1911 [b]
• Stenographische Protokolle - Abgeordnetenhaus, Poslanec Fresl...,29.11.1911 [a]