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Vítejte na Českém portálu!
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The Czech Republic has a hilly landscape that covers an area of 78,871 square kilometers (30,452 sq mi) with a mostly temperate continental and oceanic climate. The capital and largest city is Prague; other major cities and urban areas include Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň and Liberec.
The Duchy of Bohemia was founded in the late 9th century under Great Moravia. It was formally recognized as an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire in 1002 and became a kingdom in 1198. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, all of the Crown lands of Bohemia were gradually integrated into the Habsburg monarchy. Nearly a hundred years later, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt led to the Thirty Years' War. After the Battle of White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule. With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Crown lands became part of the Austrian Empire.
In the 19th century, the Czech lands became more industrialized, and in 1918 most of it became part of the First Czechoslovak Republic following the collapse of Austria-Hungary after World War I. Czechoslovakia was the only country in Central and Eastern Europe to remain a parliamentary democracy during the entirety of the interwar period. After the Munich Agreement in 1938, Nazi Germany systematically took control over the Czech lands.
Czechoslovakia was restored in 1945 and three years later became an Eastern Bloc communist state following a coup d'état in 1948. Attempts to liberalize the government and economy were suppressed by a Soviet-led invasion of the country during the Prague Spring in 1968. In November 1989, the Velvet Revolution ended communist rule in the country and restored democracy. On 31 December 1992, Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The Czech Republic is a unitary parliamentary republic and developed country with an advanced, high-income social market economy. It is a welfare state with a European social model, universal health care and free-tuition university education. It ranks 32nd in the Human Development Index. The Czech Republic is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, the OECD, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group. (Full article...)
Selected article -
Czech (/tʃɛk/; endonym: čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna]), historically also known as Bohemian (/boʊˈhiːmiən, bə-/; Latin: lingua Bohemica), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intelligibility, as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German.
The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The most widely spoken non-standard variety, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of Bohemia. The dialects spoken in Moravia are considerably more varied than the dialects of Bohemia. A popular misconception holds that eastern Moravian dialects are closer to Slovak than Czech, but this is incorrect; in fact, the opposite is true, and certain dialects in far western Slovakia exhibit features more akin to standard Czech than to standard Slovak. (Full article...)Selected picture
Photographer: Honza Groh; License: Creative Commons CC-BY-SA
In this month
- 2 June 1541 – A fire destroys much of Malá Strana and the northern part of Prague Castle
- 10 June 1348 – The foundation stone of Karlštejn Castle (pictured) is laid
- 20 June 1976 – The Czechoslovakia national football team win UEFA Euro 1976
- 23 June 1955 – The first national Spartakiad is held, marking ten years after the nation's liberation at the end of World War II
- 30 June 1945 – State security service StB is established
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Selected biography -
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and writer from Prague. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the novella The Metamorphosis and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing.
Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today the capital of the Czech Republic). He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in obscurity in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis. (Full article...)Did you know?
- ...that the Sedlec Ossuary is a chapel decorated with the bones of 40,000 people?
- ... that the Cross of Merit of the Minister of Defence of the Czech Republic is the highest award presented by the Czech Minister of Defence?
- ... that Czech international footballer Patrik Gedeon went to play club football in Liechtenstein in the middle of his career?
- ... that Czech actress Anna Letenská was killed by the Nazis for her alleged participation in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich?
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Czech lands: Bohemia • Moravia • Czech Silesia
History: Únětice culture • Boii • Marcomanni • Samo • Great Moravia • Přemyslid dynasty • Lands of the Bohemian Crown • Czech lands (1526–1648) • 1648–1867 • 1867–1918) • Czechoslovakia • Czech Republic
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Law: Judiciary • Law enforcement • Supreme Court of the Czech Republic
Politics: Administrative divisions • Government • Constitution • Elections • Foreign relations • Army • Parliament • Political parties • President • Prime Minister
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Symbols: Flag • Coat of arms • National anthem (Kde domov můj)
Lists: Outline of the Czech Republic • List of Czech Republic–related topics
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