Josef Čapek (1887–1945)

Josef Čapek was born in Hronov, Bohemia, then in Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. His younger brother was Karel Čapek. In 1890, the family moved to Úpice, where Josef was unsuccessful at school, although his artistic talent was noted. Later he went to a German-speaking vocational school for weaving in Vrchlabí. After graduating in 1903, he worked for a year in a factory. In 1904, he moved to Prague, where he studied at the School of Applied Arts and met his future wife, Jarmila Pospíšilová. He went to Paris in 1910 to attend the Colarossi Academy. When his brother came to visit, they wrote the first draft of the play Loupežník (The Robber) together. He collaborated with Karel on a number of other plays and short stories, the most famous of which was Ze života hmyzu (The World We Live In/The Insect Play), premiered in 1922. Independently, Josef wrote the utopian play Země mnoha jmen (Land of Many Names) and several novels, as well as essays. He was named by his brother as the true inventor of the term "robot." As a painter of the Cubist school, Josef Čapek developed his own playful, minimalist style. His illustrated collection of stories Povídání o Pejskovi a Kočičce (English translation, The Adventures of Puss and Pup, 1975), first published in 1927, is a beloved classic of Czech children's literature. He worked for 18 years as a cartoonist, editor, and art critic for Lidové noviny, a daily newspaper in Prague. Due to his pointed criticism of Nazism, Josef was arrested by the Gestapo after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and deported to the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald, where he spent two and a half years. In 1942, he was transferred to Sachsenhausen, where he secretly wrote a long poem dedicated to Karel, translated English, Spanish, and Norwegian poetry, and made small pencil drawings. In February 1945, he was sent to Bergen-Belsen, where he wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp (published posthumously). He died during a typhus epidemic at the camp. In the decades since his death, several short films, television productions, and a feature film have been produced based on Josef Čapek's work. These include The Shadow of the Ferns (based on the novel Stín kapradiny), released in 1986.