Karel Baxa

Karel Baxa (* June 24, 1863 in Sedlčany, Bohemia, † January 5, 1938 in Prague) was a Czech lawyer, politician ( Member of the Landtag ) and first Lord Mayor of Prague.

Life

Karel Baxa, nephew of Karel Havlicek Borovský, visited in his youth the academic gymnasium and studied from 1881 at the Law Faculty of Charles University in Prague. After passing the state exam 1888 he works at the court in Tábor and Cheb and from 1891 in Prague. His name appears in two major processes, for example as an opponent of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.

In political life, he took part in 1893 when he defended at the time of martial law in Prague politically awkward journalists in court.

Politically, he distinguished himself as a member of the radical progressive movement and in 1895 was elected as a deputy in the Czech parliament, whose member he remained until 1913. From 1901 to 1918, he was elected to the Vienna Imperial Council. Previously, after the accession of Joseph Kaizl who was seen by the Czech intellectuals as capitulation to Vienna, he was with Alois Rašín, Jaroslav Preiss, Karel Stanislav Sokol and others on February 19, 1899 co-founder of the State Legal Radical Party ( Státoprávní radikální strana ), a patriotic movement, which called for an independence of Bohemia. By 1908 Baxa caught the presidency of the party. In 1908 the party split and Baxa founded with his followers, the Czech party constitutional progress (Česká strana státoprávně pokroková ). In 1911 he left the party and joined the National Social Party (Česká strana národné sociální ) in which he belonged until his death.

After the founding of Czechoslovakia ( Československé strana národné socialistická ) for Mayor of Prague ( Primátor ) he was elected to the Czechoslovak People's Socialist Party. He held this position until 1937. As mayor, he acquired great contributions to the development of the city. The traffic was expanded, created new settlements and built many social and cultural institutions such as the Municipal Theatre Prague. In addition, however, his regular nationalist expressions for an intensification of the tensions between Czechs, Germans and Jews in Prague were also responsible. Became famous for his support of Czech demonstrators in several days of violent anti- German language sound films in 1930, which he described as " worthy manifestation to protect the Slavic character of Prague ".

In 1920 he was appointed Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Czechoslovak Republic ( Czechoslovak Ústavní soud Republiky ) and 1923 Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Czech bank. From 1922 Baxa Chairman of the Central Administrative Commission of the united municipalities and Prague from 1928 to 1937 member of the Czech national representative was ( zemské zastupitelství ).