Karel Hynek Mácha

Karel Hynek Macha ( born November 16, 1810 in Prague, † November 6, 1836 in Leitmeritz ) was a Czech poet of the Romantic period.

Life

Karel Hynek Macha was born in 1810 as the son of a miller in Prague. At the Charles University, he studied law, but also played in a theater group to the actor, theater director and writer Josef Kajetán Tyl ( 1808-1856 ). There learned Macha booksellers daughter Eleonora Somková, with whom he fathered a son born out of wedlock.

Already during his studies took Macha numerous trips to North Bohemia, to the Giant Mountains and also to Venice. From this period also dates his poetic work, which in his lifetime, however, found no large following. The first edition of the " Maj " was released in April 1836 Self-published and was first recorded by the negative criticism. Only since the second half of the 19th century was Macha as the most important and most respected representatives of Czech Romanticism. In the fall of 1836 Macha went to an internship at a law firm in Leitmeritz. Only a few weeks later he died shortly before his 26th birthday - probably from the effects of hypothermia, he is likely to have sustained in the fire-fighting operations at a large fire.

Mácha Maj main work is in German in the following translations: Siegfried Kapper (1844 ), Alfred Waldau (1862 ), Karl Müller ( 1882), Eduard Neumann ( 1933), Otto F. Babler (1983) Ondřej Cikán (2012 ).

Biography and texts to his works

• Bohumir Mráz: Karel Hynek Macha: Hrady spatřené, Prague 1988
• Karel Sabina Upomínka na K. H. Machu
• úvod povahopisný