Circle 1

The hotel "U staré pošty" (At the Old Post Office) - this place appears in the novel "The Pimp" by Egon Erwin Kisch and in Johannes Urzidil's "Prague Triptych".

The story of the novel "The Pimp" is based on a real event that took place in 1898 on the Moldaw (Vltava) river. A cruise liner whose passengers also included the wealthy businessman Karel Dušnic sank there. The villain Jan Chrapot saved Dušnic from drowning, pulled him out of the river and brought him to his modest residence in Kampa.

After waking up in J. Chrapot's apartment, Dušnic takes an advantage of his absence and sleeps with his wife. A son Jan is born, whose tragic life is the novel's main plot. The story takes place mainly in Kampa, which was inhabited by low social classes. In his story, Kisch describes the social and criminal environment of the poor in Prague, focusing on prostitution, which at the time was very common among poor girls as a source of income. Bětka gained her first experience with prostitution at the hotel "At the Old Post".

Hotel "At the Old Post" also mentions Johannes Urzidil in his literary description "The Prague Triptych", in the Weißenstein Karl section, which depicts the tragic life of the provincial writer K. W., who comes to Prague without money to start a new life as a writer. He often changes his residence, most often sleeping at the place of blind Kilián, who lives in the basement of a house on the banks of the river Moldaw (Vltava) in Kampa. One day, Karl upsets Killian by offering him money for an overnight stay. Karl has to move to a hotel if he wants to pay for accommodation. Karl will spend one week at the inn "At the old Post" on Maltézské nám (Maltesian Square). Urzidil's description mixes fiction and history with reality. Prague is a magical place that is a source of suffering, pleasure, decay, and prosperity. Here, too, one of the main motives is prostitution.

The square was a meeting place for the main characters from Kisch's novel "The Pimp".  The main character of Fana meets Bětka here to get her first "client". She will receive CZK 100 for her first paid service. Others are already cheaper.

Palace Metych from Čečov 490/1 - the residence of Gustav Meyrink (19.1.1868 - 4.12.1932), the author of the novel Golem. He lived here at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Meyrink was born in Vienna as an illegitimate child, his mother was an actress, and his father was a Minister in Württemberg. In 1883, Meyrink first came to Prague with his mother, who was engaged there. For Meyrink, Prague became a source of inspiration for his mystical literary work. Meyrink belongs to the Prague Literary Circle of German Writers, whose members, unlike him, were predominantly Jews. His life is shrouded in legend and myth. He has been influenced by spiritualism, occultism and Eastern mysticism.

The house where Jaroslav Chrapot, the main character from Kisch's novel "The Pimp", was born and died. It is here where the beginning and end of "The Pimp" story take place. The novel was very controversially accepted for its account of the Prague underworld and prostitution. It was successful among liberal circles, playing on stage, but conservatives considered the novel a misdemeanour. The novel "The Pimp" was filmed in 1919 as a silent film by director Karel Grun and ten years later by director Hans Tintner. The central part of the story was filmed on the island Kampa. 

The place described by Johannes Urzidil in the book "Prague Triptych", part - "Wardrobe" (Weissenstein Karl), - the residence where the blind Kilián lived. In these five short stories (three are connected by the fact that the main character is a writer - hence the "triptych"), Urzidil uses real characters, real places of pre-war Prague and well-known "legends" associated with Prague and the Czech Republic and creates completely new stories from them, which never happened. The author is present as a narrator in all the short stories, but he does not figure as the main character in any of them, the plot always revolves around someone else. Probably the most elaborate is the central short story Weißenstein Karl. Weißenstein tells the writer - often in a harshly grotesque way - of his life, which he did not succeed in all respects. Yet he never lost the will to live, or rather to survive. However, he thus got into a kind of provisional life, which in his case persisted even after his death.

The main plot of Meyrink's novel "Golem" (1914) takes place here. This is the original Sanytrova street and Hampejská street, which is described in the novel. It is a Jewish story about the figure Golem, created at the end of the 16th century by Rabbi Löw to protect the Jewish population from pogroms. Golem was created from clay and, using mysterious numerical combinations and Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Only its creator could control it with the help of a special scheme.

"The story goes back to the seventeenth century, they say. Following lost instructions from the Cabala, a rabbi is said to have created an artificial man - the so-called Golem - to help and serve him, to ring the bells in the synagogue and perform all kinds of menial chores. But it did not turn out as a real man, filled only with a dull, half-conscious, vegetable life. And even that, they say, was only during the day and thanks to a magical slip of paper stuck behind his teeth which tapped the free sidereal forces of the universe." (42)

Meyrink uses the character of Golem to depict a mysterious and mystical Prague and, at the same time to describe the inner mood of the main character A. Pernath. Golem here has the form of the soul, the inner life and is the key to the dark past. It becomes an expression of insanity and uncontrollable internal states. The story takes place in a Jewish town at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. (The current names of the streets  are: 17. Listopadu, Břehová, U staré hřbitova, U staré školy) It depicts para normal fantastic phenomena on a real background. The Jewish intersects here mysticism with a description of the social conditions of Prague at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The main characters are Czechs, Germans and Jews in a specific social context.

In this street, there was the residence of Master A. Pernath, Rabbi Hillel and his daughter Mirjam from the novel "Golem". The former house was demolished in 1909. In the novel, Meyrink expressively described the Jewish city before the redevelopment, which turned the Jewish quarter into its current form in the Art Nouveau style. The houses in the novel are portrayed as organic, mysterious parts of the city. The whole novel is influenced by mysticism, occult sciences and spiritualism.

"The houses all seemed to stare over at me with cunning faces full of nameless malice - the archways: gaping black mouths, tongues rotted away - maws which might let out a piercing scream at any moment, so piercing and hate-filled that it would shock us to the core." (36)

The oldest active synagoge from 1270 is an alleged place of the Golem's remains, which is described both in Meyrink's "Golem" and in Egon Erwin Kisch's short story "Golem" (1934). Meyrink:

"You see, again and again it comes to pass that a complete stranger, beardless, yellow of complexion and Mongoloid of feature, clothed in old-fashioned, faded garments, with a rrhythmical and oddly stumbling gait, as if at the point of toppling forward, strides through the Jewish Town from the direction of the Altschulgasse and suddenly - is lost to sight." (44)

In Kisch´s short story "Golem" (1934) the main character searches for the remnants of the Golem, wanting to find out if the Golem really existed. The main character gets to the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, where he finds nothing. He finds out that the Golem is buried in Žižkov, in the working district. The Golem could be beneficial to the working masses. As a modern robot, it would be used for hard work. However, man tends to abuse this power to his advantage, and therefore the Golem should not wake up to life. Kisch was a leftist writer and in his story he combined the legend with harsh reality of his present days.

In the Middle Ages, Josefov was a Jewish town, and in the street area, there was an old synagogue with the Templ school called the Old School. It was demolished in 1867, and the Spanish Synagogue was built in its place in 1868. It is the newest and most liberal synagoge in the area of Josefov and is built in Moorish Revival Style. In Gustav Meyrink's novel, there is a place where Golem is hiding.

"God in heaven, it shot through me like a bolt of lightning: now I knew where I was: A room without a door - with nothing but a barred window - the ancient house on Altschulgasse, shunned by all! - Once before, many years ago, a person had let himself down on a rope from the roof to look through the window, and - Yes: I was in the house into which the unearthly Golem had always disappeared!" (101) 

Together with Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel, Gustav Meyrink and others, Max Brod belonged to a group of writers writing in German, the so-called Prague Literary Circle. He was a very good friend of Franz Kafka and was responsible for publishing his literary work. Despite Kafka's desire to destroy everything after his death, he decided to publish Kafka's work. Max Brod's literary work is less significant. It is worth mentioning the autobiographical text "Life Full of Struggles", in which he describes the cultural events of the 1920s and 1930s in Prague. In addition to Brod´s personal experiences, impressions and opinions, a number of interesting personalities of German literature (Meyrink, Kraus, Werfel, Rilke, Th. Mann, etc.) appear in the memories and, of course, the rich times before and after the First World War are also depicted. Max Brod was intensely interested in Zionism, and he was a supporter of the so-called Prague Zionism, which was a form of cultural Zionism represented by Martin Buber. As a journalist, he contributed articles to the German newspaper "Prager Tagblatt". He left Prague by the last possible train on the night of 14.3. 1939 when German troops occupied the Czech lands. He fled to Palestine.

House "U zlaté štiky" (At the Golden Pike). It was the residence of Franz Kafka from March 1915 to February 1917. He lived in the fifth-floor apartment with a balcony. During this time, however, he created his texts in another place. He went to write to Prague Castle to the Golden Lane, no.14. At that time, he wrote most of the short stories from the collection "A country doctor".

Pub "At the Old Ungelt", at the same time "At the Golden Trumpet" (Jazz Club Ungelt). This place is described in Meyrink's novel "Golem", where the characters Cvach, Vrieslander, Prokop and Pernath met and told incredible stories. 

"Like a triad of the dead (Zwakh, Prokop, Vrieslander) they hunched at the worm-eaten old table -all three with white, thin-stemmed clay pipes between their teeth, filling the room with smoke." (176) 

In fact, German writers met here - a literary group of young writers: Paul Leppin, Victor Hadwiger, Gustav Meyrink.

The place is described in Paul Leppin's novel "Severin's Journey to Darkness" (Prague's Haunted Novel) (1914). Paul Leppin (November 27, 1878 - April 10, 1945) was a member of the Prague Circle, however he belonged to the young generation of the German writing authors. His literary style was New-romanticism. "Severin's Journey to Darkness" is a psychological novel about a young, torn man Severin. There is a description of evening Prague, inns, brothels, erotic meetings. Women play a vital role in Severin's life, and he is in their captivity. Prague is a magical city that has power over Severin.

"There was the city, enormous, with deep streets and thousands of windows. And in the center the wine bar in the back lane. The lamp over the entrance gaped like an eye and people crowded in front of the door. They came one after another, like moths to a flame - Mylada sat inside in her green dress - Out of sight, hunched beneath the curved legs of the piano, skulked a shapeless being that the people of the night called joy."(85)

The place of a former brothel from the short story "House of Mourning" (1933) by Franz Werfel (10. September 1890, Praha[2] - 26. August 1945, Beverly Hills, California)

The brothel "U Goldschmiedů" (At Goldschmied) was built by Charles IV and was allegedly connected to Charles University by an underground passage. In Werfel's short story "The House of Mourning", the brothel is the home of poor girls, whose owner represents to them a father figure who cares for them. When the owner dies after a long illness, the brothel turns into a funeral home, a house of mourning. The only survivors who mourn him are prostitutes who go to his funeral. On the day of the harlot's owner's death, Ferdinand d'Este is assassinated, and the First World War begins in Europe. The "U Goldschmiedů" house closes, the girls leave it with bad prediction for the future.

The birth house of Egon Erwin Kisch (April 29, 1885 - March 31, 1948), an other member of the Prague Circle. The short story "Ascension of Tonka Šibenice" (1921) takes place here. Egon Erwin Kisch was born to German-speaking Jewish parents living in Prague. Kisch belonged to the Prague circle of German-speaking writers and became famous as a journalist, the so-called "furious reporter". He created a new literary genre, a literary reportage that was on the borderline between fiction and reportage. In his reports, he described the Prague underworld, socially excluded groups such as prostitutes, the poor, hard-working residents and criminal cases. In his descriptions, Kisch often stands on the side of the weak, the poor and the oppressed and depicts them with deep understanding and empathy. In 1914 he enlisted in the First World War, during which he was wounded on the Russian front a year later. In 1919, he became a member of the Communist Party, from which he promised to reduce social disparities between rich and poor and eliminate anti-Semitism in society. He wrote for the most important German newspaper in Prague, Prager Tagblatt, and was active in the anti-fascist movement. He lived in Berlin in 1933, was imprisoned there in connection with the burning of the Reichstag, and was later released and expelled from Germany. After returning to Prague, he helped German anti-fascists and Jews fleeing Germany and Austria from Hitler. In the years 1937-1938, he took part in the fighting in the Spanish Civil War, in 1939, he went into exile through the USA to Mexico, where together with other left-wing intellectuals, including Lenka Reinerová, he founded the German newspaper Freies Deutschland. In 1946 he returned to Prague, where he died two years later on March 31, 1948.

The residence of Lenka Reinerová (May 17, 1916 - June 27, 2008), the last German-writing author in Prague, in 1936-38. Lenka Reinerová was born in Prague in Karlín into a Jewish language-mixed family. Her mother was German-speaking, and her father's mother tongue was Czech. Reinerová knew some members of the Prague Circle personally, such as Kisch. She worked as a journalist and translator. Before leaving for exile in 1939, she worked with Franz Carl Weiskopf for the left-wing newspaper AIZ (Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung). In 1933-1938 she helped German refugees to escape Hitler in Prague. In 1939 she fled to Paris, where she was imprisoned. Reinerová spent the following two years in prison in West Africa, from where she ran to Mexico in 1941, where she joined German left-wing writers, including E.E. Kisch. In exile in 1943, she married the Yugoslav doctor Theodor Balko, with whom she went to Belgrade after the war. She left for Czechoslovakia in 1948 when the Communists seized power. Four years later, she was imprisoned for 15 months in connection with the trial of Rudolf Slánský. She was released on the day of Stalin's death in 1953. After her release, she was not allowed to work in her field. She worked as a glass saleswoman. After political rehabilitation in 1964, she worked as the editor-in-chief of the German magazine Im Herzen Europas, published only until 1970. Due to her critical attitude towards the Soviet occupation in 1968 and the Communist Party, she was expelled from the Communist party and banned from publishing in Czechoslovakia until 1989. Since 1983, she has been allowed to publish in the German Democratic Republic. Her work, which is primarily autobiographical, was translated into Czech only after 1989 and gradually published.