Helena Čapková

1886 - 1961

Helena Čapková used her own birth name as an author (after marriage, Koželuhová, after becoming a widow, Palivcová). Her youthful ambitions (piano, studying in her father’s footsteps) were suppressed primarily by her mother. Her initial small prose was emanated from her own recollections and experiences. Crucial to her work was depicting the lives of her brothers, however, the political situation after 1948 made her intentions more difficult. She didn’t live to see the first publication of her book ”My Dear Brothers.“ The recollections here are only up to 1929. Substantial facts from later years wouldn’t be allowed for publishing due to censorship. Her testimony regarding other periods of her brothers‘ lives only exists in a few handwriten variations, still not yet published. (Aleš Fetters)

Helena Čapková By date

1886 1886 - 28.1. – born in Hronov
1890 1890 - family moves to Úpice
1890 1890 - beginning of school attendance at a local common girls‘ school in Úpice
1897 1897 - accepted into Vesna, a girls‘ high school in Brno
1899 1899 - interruption of study in Brno, studies German language and piano lessons in Úpice
1899 1899 - returns to Vesna in Brno
1901 1901 - successful completion of study at Vesna
1901 - 1903 1901 - 1903 - teaches cooking, sewing, embroidery and dancing in Hradec Králové
1903 1903 - is presented into society in Brno, engagement to JUDr. František Koželuha
1904 1904 - marriage with JUDr. František Koželuha
1905 1905 - birth of daughter Eva
1907 1907 - birth of daughter Helena
1926 1926 - becomes a widow
1929 1929 - Paris, meets JUDr. Josef Palivec
1930 1930 - marriage with JUDr. Josef Palivec
1933 - 1938 1933 - 1938 - owns Prohoř farm by Žlutice
1945 - 1948 1945 - 1948 - owns the Brložec castle by Prohoř
1951 1951 - prosecution of J. Palivec, arrrested in 1944 and 1949, fully rehabilitated in 1969
1961 1961 - 27.11. – death in Prague

1886 1961

Selected artwork stories theatrical plays novels fairytales

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Full list of works

1920 Little Girl This short story is fully autobiographical. It is a short reminiscence of the author’s childhood, which she dedicated to her children. Almost the entire Čapek family appears in this story – both parents, both brothers, even the grandmother from Hronov, who always liked to tell them fairytales and tall tales. In this book she often delightfully evaluates her past life – how she imagined it throughout her childhood years, and how it ultimately was.
1920 Grandma’s Apron Fairytale The grandma from Žernov (Helena Františka, born Vítková), who’s the main character of this piece of work, died when Helena was almost two years old. She was very humble and hardworking. She lived with her husband in a little cottage which was always clean and full of joy. In their garden, besides hens, they also had a goat, a goose and a mare named Lucy (Lucka). For all of these animals, grandma’s apron was like a tablecloth with an eternally set table. In her work, she describes how grandma was preparing to visit her relatives in the municipality Světlá.

1922 Crib The main character is young Marie, who gets pregnant before her wedding. At this time before the beginning of the First World War, pre-marriage pregnancy was described as a disgrace. In this piece of work, not only is the author’s own experience from her first childbirth reflected, but also the memory of the harsh childbirth of her mother, thus a story about her own birth. Her own lifetime experiences, however, are rather a foundation for wider and more general reflections (even reflection regarding social harmony, which was common at that time) permeated by religious and historical motifs.

1924 About Living Love The central subject of this novel is the question of whether it is right to leave a family because of one‘s own happiness and true love or if it is better to sacrifice and stay a part of an unhappy marriage. Even here, most likely the author’s own experience from her childhood is displayed, when she had to give up her own dreams of following the path to become a professional musician. The main characters of the story are Marie, Anna, Růžena and Viktor. The novel confronts destiny from three different persectives of a woman.

1962 My Dear Brothers The author at first reminisces about her childhood beside her brothers and about memories of all the close relatives. Her story brings to life the grandma from Hronov, her miller husband, the grandpa from Žernov and, of course, both of the author’s parents: the father, a good, strong, loved and, until dead on his feet, hardworking doctor and the mother, oversensitively and passionately loving only one family member – Karel. The environment and atmosphere of a little town at the break of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also come alive in the book. In the second part, the author alternately tells a story about her fate and the literary beginning of both brothers.

Hronov and Žernov – how different used to be these two homes of our parents! Mom‘s, it was a table full of warmth and scents. Everything seemed to be light and rounded, even the chair, the table and the sofa had rounded corners, and the beds were made up like fluffy carriages for sleep . . .But the second house, Grandpa Farmer’s house – the house of the home-machine, it was so modestly and archaically strict, just like the peasantries from the period of Homer. Nothing inside made you feel invited for a cozy gathering, not the narrow bench next to the wall nor the skimpy chair with its sharp corners . . . (Helena Čapková

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