Friedrich or Bedřich? Novel highlights Smetana’s complicated background

Bedřich Smetana has been in the spotlight recently in connection with the 200th anniversary of the Czech composer’s birth. Smetana is also the subject of a new novel, Friedrich řečený Bedřich (Friedrich, Known as Bedřich), by Milena Štráfeldová. One focus of the book is the music great’s complicated German and Czech background.

Hundreds of earlier books have been devoted to Smetana, says writer Milena Štráfeldová, but there is still plenty of material about him that is not widely known. For instance, his diaries, which he began keeping aged 16, have never been published in full.

“What’s interesting is that he wrote them in German. And that could be one reason why people rather tiptoe around this issue. Because in reality how was it with his Czechness and his Germanness?”

'Friedrich, Known as Bedřich' by Milena Štráfeldová|Photo: Ikar

Speaking to Czech Radio, the author of the novel Friedrich řečený Bedřich (Friedrich, Known as Bedřich) herself goes on to provide an answer to this question.

“He told his librettist Eliška Krásnohorská that he had been completely germanised as a young man. From first grade until his school leaving exams he went exclusively to German schools. He wrote his diaries and love letters in German and he probably communicated with his classmates in the language.”

Milena Štráfeldová, who previously worked at Radio Prague International’s Czech section, said that Smetana’s father had been a successful brewer and that if he himself had gone into the business, as the Czech family expected, having perfect German would have been an advantage.

It was later in life, when he became active in the 19th century Czech National Revival, that Smetana attempted to become more fluent in the language.

“He started writing Czech in the 1860s, with a massive number of mistakes. But by then he was 36 or 38 years old. That was completely deliberate. It was linked to the patriotic sentiment of the time, when Czechs decided that they would speak Czech and write Czech. But even then when he wrote to his second wife during a marital crisis it was in German. He just didn’t have the vocabulary.”

Milena Štráfeldová|Photo: Agáta Faltová, Czech Radio

Milena Štráfeldová also says that Smetana gave up great success in Sweden’s Gothenburg – where he had received a conducting post in the 1850s – to return to his beloved Bohemia.

“While there he enjoyed, let’s say, European or world success. A lot was written about him, they really respected him there and they paid him very handsomely. The only thing was that his goal was to become the creator of Czech national music. So he returned to an uncertain situation here in the Czech lands.”

Though he may not have known it then, Smetana was following the correct path. Two centuries after his birth he is virtually synonymous with the country’s classical music and remains one of the best-known Czechs ever.