Grandma Stazi goes to Prague (A more personal American's Guide to Czech Movies) (Patreon)

Prague cinematographer Jan Kříženecký was one of the first filmmakers in Česko. After seeing the Lumière Brothers’ cinematograph in 1896, he became obsessed with the burgeoning medium of film. Once he acquired his own camera, he became a great early documentary filmmaker, capturing turn-of-the-century Prague like no other artist. One early film, shot on a tram, sweeps into the city, giving a truly gorgeous and unique perspective of Praha in the waning days of Austria-Hungary, before the Nazis and the Soviets marched in.

Jan Kříženecký: Jízda Prahou otevřenou tramvají

Yet like most great contributors in history, Kříženecký died forgotten. Many of his accomplishments faded with him. One lost film of Kříženecký’s particularly wounds me with its absence. He shot Vinohrady, a historical district of Prague, in 1898, just 12 years after my Grandma Stazi visited it. That film is now lost, like many documents that would help me piece together my personal history. Kříženecký could have given me a head start, but history was against both of us. It’s up to me to puzzle out Grandma Stazi’s story.

My second great-grandmother Anastazie Princová didn’t see much city life in her early days. She was born the third of a farmer’s 13 children in Blatná, a rural village 100 miles southwest of Prague. When she emigrated alone at the age of 16, I think she passed through Ceské Budějovice and Prague on her way to Hamburg — it’s hard to piece these stories together with no family lore to consult. Upon her arrival in New York, she probably set out to Cleveland straight away, where she settled on the less urban outskirts of the industrial Midwestern metropolis.

Grandma Stazi brought some Czech culture with her. As Anastazie Urbanová, a wife and mother, she participated in Sokol Cleveland, the local chapter of an international Czech gymnastics/cultural preservation movement. The Sokol was founded in Prague in the 1860s, spreading across the Czech lands and then to the Czech diaspora across Europe. By the 1880s, there was a healthy collection of Sokols in the United States, including Sokol Cleveland, in which Grandma Stazi and my Aunt Alma (really my first cousin twice removed) participated for decades. Sokol Cleveland’s successor, Sokol Greater Cleveland, is still active today. When she died, Aunt Alma requested that instead of sending flowers to her funeral, mourners should donate to the Sokol.

Four decades after she immigrated, Grandma Stazi got another look at city life thanks to the Sokol. In 1887, she set out for New York as one of 14 representatives of Sokol Cleveland. I don’t know if Grandma Stazi participated as an athlete — she may have. Either way, she was one of more than 3,000 people who gathered for the fourth triennial tournament of the U.S. Bohemian Gymnastics Association (as the New York Times called the Sokols — they still don’t have much respect for Czech names, as their descriptions of Czech cuisine demonstrate). The competition occurred in Union-Miles Park, now called Pulaski Park, located in the South Bronx. Visit it today, and you’ll have no idea it was ever

200 delegates participated in the competition. 50 of them then traveled to Prague to compete against rowers in Prague. Grandma Stazi was one of the travelers who boarded the Werra. Four years before, she had turned away from her homeland, spending four weeks in the squalor of transatlantic steerage. Now she returned to the country of her birth, bringing home a little of her culture with her.

To date, I haven’t found many records of Grandma Stazi’s time in Prague. Research is slow, and I think this project will take up years more of my life. What I know for sure is that she carried a letter from Josef Čermak, secretary of the Sokol’s expedition, and that she stayed in čislo 438 in Vinohrady. As far as I can tell, this is where she sojourned.

That’s a good two miles from Purkyně Square, where Kříženecký shot his film. And he was 12 years too late to capture Grandma Stazi’s time in Prague. But Kříženecký did leave us films of Sokol tournaments in Prague, some of the best we have. He may not have met Grandma Stazi, but he preserved her work and her joy in a way only another member of her global community could. In lieu of a traditional signoff, I’d like to let Kříženecký play us out with these films.

Jan Kříženecký: Fifth All Sokol Rally in Prague

Jan Kříženecký: Sokol Rally in Prostějov

To learn more about Grandma Stazi, read my university award-winning article about her in The Statesman. If you want to support my continuing multimedia project about Grandma Stazi’s life and legacy, please support my Patreon. Děkuji!