Jaroslav Rudiš: Everything is connected in Central Europe
After decades as one of Czechia’s best-known authors, Jaroslav Rudiš is about to see the first ever publication of one of his novels in English. However, Winterberg’s Last Journey was actually written in German, rather than Czech, reflecting the Berlin resident’s deep immersion in German culture. Ahead of the release of the English version of the novel – which traces a 99-year-old Sudeten German’s sometimes bizarre trip through Central Europe – I managed to catch up with the extremely busy Rudiš outside a Prague café.
What was the original spark for Winterberg’s Last Journey?
“I like trains and I wanted to be a train driver, but I got these great big glasses so I had to change my plans, so I studied German Studies and History.
“In my books, in my stories, in my literature I try to connect both railways, trains and the history of our part of Europe – let’s call it Central Europe, Mitteleuropa.
“And I have a friend who travels through this former Austro-Hungarian Empire with a guidebook, with a Baedeker, from 1913.
“That’s the last edition of this book before the Great War started, and this war of course changed everything: borders, and I think the soul of Central Europe as well.
“In my books, in my stories, in my literature I try to connect railways and the history of our part of Europe.”
“I was travelling with him a few times, with this book, and he’s a great storyteller. What I really like about him is he gets lost in time. So we are travelling with this very old book through these parts of Central Europe – and you are discovering what is still there.
“For me the idea behind this book is to connect, in a very strange way, the present with the past.
“And for me as a writer, and also I think for lots of readers, sometimes you don’t know where you are: in the past or in the present.
“But what I think is that the past is still a big, important part of the present in the cities, like Prague, but also in Budapest, Vienna and the small cities, like Jičín in Bohemian Paradise; I’m from this part of the Czech Republic. That everything is so connected, the past and the present, and maybe also the future.
“It’s still somehow with us. We are part of this past, still.”
The protagonist Winterberg himself “sees through history” and he is frustrated that other people don’t also see the past around them.
“That’s right [laughs]. That’s completely write. But Wenzel Winterberg, almost 100 years old, is a very complicated person.
“The idea behind this book is to connect, in a very strange way, the present with the past.”
“Actually he is obsessed with history, but also obsessed with himself. He didn’t go to university, he didn’t study history, he was travelling on trams, or Strassenbahnen, in Liberec, in Reichenberg, where actually he came from, and later in West Berlin.
“But because the trams were moving so slowly he had the chance to read everything about history.
“Of course, he probably thinks he knows everything and that all other people are somehow idiots. And he’s completely lost in history. He’s a very strange, complicated character.
“But what was also very important for me was – I like humour – that the novel has a humoresque note. Otherwise, it would not be a Czech book.
“The novel has a humoresque note. Otherwise, it would not be a Czech book.”
“I wrote it in German actually. That’s very strange. But I have lived for ages between two languages, between Czech and German. I actually come from the countryside, from the borderlands, very close to the German border, so from my very childhood I was in contact with the other language; and then I studied History.
“And I think for us Czechs… If you into history, or if like Winterberg you are looking through history, you have to notice that everything is connected. And in this former empire there were so many languages, but there was of course one language that connected everything and it was German.
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“So 100 years ago it was very normal that the Czechs spoke here in Prague German and Germans spoke Czech, like Franz Kafka – the best example.
“He wrote in German but his second language was Czech and it was very good Czech.”
In the book there are so many great details. Like the fact that Leopold Lojka, who was the chauffeur of the car that was carrying Franz Ferdinand Sarajevo in 1914, ended up Brno, running a pub. You also have the fact that Henlein had a Czech mother. Are all these details stuff that you already knew? Or did you do research for the book?
“I did quite a lot of research, but maybe for 30 years. And in the moment when I was finishing the novel, everything I knew about this topic was actually in it, in my point of view.
“I like travel books and I also like fiction books where you learn something.
“I like fiction books where you learn something.”
“And I’m very happy that there are lots of readers – from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland – who travel with Winterberg. “They go to Liberec, they go on the battlefields of 1866 at Königgrätz, or Hradec Králové. They go to Brno [laughs] to look for the grave of Leopold Lojka, and they even go to Vienna or to Sarajevo, which is just great.
“There will be a few hundred people who’ve done that, actually. It’s just amazing.
“Of course I was working on this book by travelling, a little bit. I bought this edition of Baedeker from 1913 and I was travelling quite a lot, on trains. Because it’s also written in the rhythm of the Eisenbahn, of the railway.
“So the repetition that Winterberg is using – like ‘sad, sad’, ‘traurig, traurig’ in the original – the sound, the music, all comes from the railways.
“I write novels and also theatre pieces and radio pieces, for Czech Radio, but I also do music. We connect music with literature with one project called Kakfa Band.
“But I do that also with my texts – I have one or two musicians and we are connected and we look for the music in the text.
“That’s why I think also Winterberg is a musical novel.”
By a very big coincidence, the first place where I spent time in this country, in 1992, was Vimperk. In German it’s called Winterberg and when I saw the name Winterberg I got the connection. When you travel around the country, do you have a kind of clear vision of the German past of so many places? For example, for you is Hradec Králové also Königgrätz? Is Liberec also Reichenberg? Do you see the German history everywhere?
“No, I see our common history. Liberec, Reichenberg, was mostly a German-speaking city. Königgrätz, Hradec Králové, was Czech speaking, but not 100 percent of course – everything was connected in Central Europe.
“Everything was connected also with the railways in this Austrian Empire. So you will find in Triest [in German], in Trst [Czech], Trieste now, in Italy, Czech roots – you will find a very great beer culture there like you probably know from Prague or České Budějovice, from Budweis.
“On the opposite side, we have in the Czech Republic cuisine from Sarajevo, from Bosnia, like čevabčiči. You don’t have this in Germany but you do have it in Slovakia and Austria – and you also have it here in every second pub on the daily menu.
“These common roots that we have in Central Europe are the roots I wanted to write about.”
Winterberg’s Last Journey was the first book you wrote in full in German. Did switching languages affect your actual writing? Do you write differently in German?
“That’s a very interesting question. It was first novel of mine that was really like a bestseller in German-speaking. It was a big surprise, also for me, that I was able to do it.”
It was a big success in German-speaking countries, as you say, and it also helped you receive the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany – even the German president is an admirer. You’re based in Berlin. Is it fair to say that you have a kind of position as “Germany’s Czech writer”?
“[Laughs] Maybe it is like this. Or ‘a Czech writer living in Germany’.
“The authors I admire are from this very multi-cultural part of Central Europe.”
“I’m somehow always connected with the Czech Republic, or with Bohemia of course. Even when I am writing something in English, I feel this connection.
“But, you know, the authors I admire are from this very multi-cultural part of Central Europe: Robert Musil, Thomas Bernhard, Franz Kafka, Bohumil Hrabal or Jaroslav Hašek. And many of them were also between two languages, like Kafka, like Max Brod.
“I don’t know what Winterberg would say about it, but also for Wenzel Winterberg it would be kind of normal that there is an author writing in two languages.
“Maybe he would ask me why I don’t write in Hungarian. Because as a Czech I speak German, I understand of course Slovak and Polish and Slovenian and Croatian and Ukrainian, but there is one language I cannot understand, and this is Hungarian.
“And there is one moment in Winterberg’s Last Journey where Winterberg says, Actually, without Hungarian you cannot Central Europe.
“This is a kind of island and I would like to learn Hungarian a little bit, in my next life.”
The question of Czech-German relations is obviously a big one. There are old resentments that Czech people have towards Germans, but still it seems to me that in recent years there have been some moves to improve relations, to apologise for some Czech excesses of the past. Is that something you have observed?
“Yes, definitely. And also I think culture – music, literature, cinema – could help us to understand the history and help us to go through this history, through this very not pleasant part of our common history.
“I think the Czech-German relations of today are very OK. There are not big problems any more.
“What I really appreciate is that I have readers on both sides. It’s also the literature that connects them.
“I know I have some German readers who also speak Czech and I have, of course, plenty of Czech readers who travel to Germany or go to Austria very often and they speak very good German.”
Do you think Germany is considered cool by many young Czech people today?
“Yes, I think especially Berlin. Germany is such a big country and there is no one Germany. That’s a small mistake when you observe this country from Prague and when you don’t know so much about it.
“I think I could say that I know Germany quite well now, because of my readings and travels, and Berlin is not Germany, like London is not the United Kingdom.
“That’s what you feel very strongly in Germany. There are big cultural differences between the north and the south, the Catholics in the south and the Protestants in the north.
“Also the cuisine is different and the humour is a little bit different. The Czechs have very much in common with the people living in Bavaria or Saxony. Yes, it’s very close, indeed – it’s just 300 kilometres to Munich, which is nothing.
“If you go to Düsseldorf or to Dortmund, it’s a big journey. When I do a reading there, in Dortmund or in Essen, I have to explain much more than when I do a reading in Regensberg or Dresden or Leipzig.
“They know the places. They know Königgrätz, or Hradec Králové. They know Liberec: Reichenberg. They travel every month to Prague.”
Jaroslav Rudiš has just released this song in connection with the publication of Winterberg’s Last Journey in English.
On social media you’re always posting from trains, from train stations. I’m curious, are you in some way sponsored by Deutsche Bahn or České dráhy [Czech Railways]? Do you get free travel or anything like that?
“[Laughs] Czech Railways gave me a card and I can travel on Czech trains in the Czech Republic for free, promoting the railways. I don’t have to do anything special [laughs], just travel.
“Yes, I really like trains. I also drive a car, but I cannot imagine that I would go to a reading from Berlin to Munich or from Berlin to Warsaw by car.
“I think the train is the perfect means of transport in Central Europe.
“But I also like big, long journeys. A few weeks ago I was travelling through the UK on trains and I will go to England on the train at the beginning of July, to celebrate with my publisher Mike [Tate of Jantar Publishing] and with my great translator, Kris Best, the English translation of Winterberg’s Last Journey.
“And in the fall I will have some readings in the UK and I will be travelling by train as well. That’s just great.”
Winterberg’s Last Journey by Jaroslav Rudiš, translated by Kris Best, comes out on the Jantar Publishing imprint on July 1.
