In the footsteps of František Gellner
Everything he satirically criticized in his life he found in Příbram - the false morality of the time and hypocritical petty bourgeoisie. František Gellner spent three years in Příbram, yet this bohemian period was one of the most important chapters of his life.
1ST MINING ACADEMY
After failing at the Technical University in Vienna, František Gellner began to study at the Mining Academy in Příbram. He did not finish it either.
"The policemen here in Pribram are very polite. When we greased up on Wednesday, a policeman opened my house and carried me to my apartment. And into a stranger's," he wrote in one of his letters. František Gellner came from Mladá Boleslav, where he was born on 19 June 1881, and came to the "Příbram exile" after a previous unsuccessful study at the technical university in Vienna. At the insistence of his father, a Jewish merchant from Mladá Boleslav, he came here in the autumn of 1901 to study at the Mining Academy.
He rented an apartment in a house on the corner of Dlouhá Street and Komenský Square and went to the university lecture halls. And also to the pubs in Pribram. Already in October, officers caught a group of academics dragging away benches in Jirásek Gardens at 5 a.m., destroying gas lamps and banging on the metal shutters of shops. During his first year of study, Gellner did not miss the "jump over the skin", a traditional ceremony during which students are admitted as miners. During the summer he travelled through Bohemia, only to return to Pribram again in the autumn.
2. JIRÁSKY SADY
Early in the morning, a certain group of academics moved to the town's orchards to "haul away the benches".
He moved three times in two months. First to the U Sebastopol Inn, then to Střelecká Street, and finally to the house of the merchant Hušpauer on the corner of Střelecká Street and Wenceslas Square, where he lived until the end of his studies.
Under the Holy Mountain in Příbram
I hired for seven gold coins
a room with thirty statues,
crosses and paintings of saints.
(Joys of Life)
More than studying, František Gellner devoted himself to drawing cartoons and writing poems. Even before he came to study at the Pribram Academy, his collection After Us Let the Flood Come was published. He collected other poems, often inspired by Příbram, in Joys of Life, which he published in 1903.
3. HUŠPAUER'S HOUSE
František Gellner lived in a small room in the house of the merchant Hušpauer in 1903-1904.
In the city, he often visited the restaurant U Stočesů in Zahradnická Street, where the Prokop Academic Society had a common room. He was also involved in the younger Carbonia association, which organised various cultural events and was based in the U Černého orla inn on the main square (where the Jan Drda Library stands today). Gellner's studies at the Mining Academy were unsuccessful, and so he said goodbye to Příbram in the summer semester of 1904.
His next steps were to academies in Munich, Paris and Dresden - but he did not graduate from any of them. In 1911 he returned to Bohemia, and from a bohemian in Buric he became a disciplined and reliable editor of Lidové noviny, to which he contributed feuilletons, cartoons and poems.
When war broke out in Europe, he enlisted in the army. After one grueling march on the Halych front, a weary Gellner lay down beside the road, covered himself, and awaited his fate. From then on, he was never seen again. He was 33 years old.
4. RESTAURANT AT THE STOCES
In the common room of the restaurant U Stočesů in Zahradnická Street, the Prokop Academic Society met.
Václav Bešt'ák with the contribution of Josef Fryš
photo: Karolina Ketmanová
