Читать книгу Seven Czech Women - Josette Baer - Страница 10

In the last decades of the 19th century, Ema Destinn (1878–1930) was a famous opera singer whose international career peaked when she got a contract with the New York Metropolitan Opera. Destinn was a Czech patriot and supported the movement for an independent Czechoslovakia.

Alice Garrigue Masaryková (1879–1966), the future president’s daughter, studied history and philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague and worked as teacher at a high school for girls. She was the chairwoman of the Czechoslovak Red Cross and died in US exile.

Eva ‘Mimi’ Jiránková (1921–2015) was a witness to the democracy of the First Republic and the protectorate under Nazi occupation. She was born in Prague and fled Czechoslovakia with her husband Miloš and their little daughter Martina in 1948. After she retired from her work as fashion consultant for Liberty’s in Great Britain, Mimi and Miloš moved to Devon. Until her death in April 2015, Mimi regularly visited her native Prague.

Milada Horáková (1901–1950), a lawyer and politician, member of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (ČSNS) and close to President Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), was accused in the Stalinist show trial of 1950 as a traitor. The Communist government executed her. During WWII she had been active in the Czech resistance movement.

Věra Čáslavská (*1942), a gymnast, became known to the world when she won Olympic gold in Mexico City in 1968, just two months after Warsaw Pact troops had occupied her country. She is the most successful female athlete in Czech history.

Nataša Lišková (*1948) was born in Prague and brought up her children in the difficult years of the normalization. Nataša is a retired freelance journalist and spends her time with her grandchildren in the countryside.

Tereza Maxová (*1971) is a world-famous top model and one of the first Czechoslovaks who conquered the world of fashion and beauty in the early 1990s. She is the founder of the Tereza Maxová Foundation for children that changed Czech society’s perception of neglected and homeless children. Her foundation is a crucially important contribution to Czech civil society, the self-organization of citizens.