Ivan Olbracht (January 6, 1882 in Semily

Semily

Semily is a town in the Semily District, Liberec Region, of northern Bohemia in the Czech Republic. It has about 9,000 inhabitants. One important landmark is the St Peter and Paul Church, from the beginning of the previous century. The town has two notable museums: the Museum and Regional Gallery...

 - December 20, 1952 in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

) was a Czech

Czech people

Czechs, or Czech people are a western Slavic people of Central Europe, living predominantly in the Czech Republic. Small populations of Czechs also live in Slovakia, Austria, the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile, Argentina, Canada, Germany, Russia and other countries...

 writer, journalist and translator of German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 prose.

The son of writer Antal Stašek

Antal Stašek

Antal Stašek , was a Czech writer and lawyer. He was born in the village of Stanový in the Liberec district of northern Bohemia. From 1877, Stašek was a successful barrister in Semily. His work is mainly set in the area around the Krkonoše mountains that straddle the today's border between the...

, Olbracht studied law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 and philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 and Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. In 1905, he first began editing a social-democratic

Social democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...

 workers' newspaper in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 (Historical papers, Dělnické listy), and later he did the same in Prague (The people's right, Právo lidu). In 1921, Olbracht joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, in Czech and in Slovak: Komunistická strana Československa was a Communist and Marxist-Leninist political party in Czechoslovakia that existed between 1921 and 1992....

 and began working as a journalist, primarily for Rudé právo

Rudé právo

Rudé právo was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia....

. He was twice imprisoned due to his excessively revolutionary political opinions, first in 1926 (in Silesian Ostrava) and later in 1928 (in the Prague Pankrác prison

Pankrác Prison

Pankrác Prison, officially Prague Pankrác Remand Prison , is a prison in Prague, Czech Republic...

).

Olbracht wrote stories concerning the legends and people of sub-Carpathian Ruthenia

Carpathian Ruthenia

Carpathian Ruthenia is a region in Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast , with smaller parts in easternmost Slovakia , Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramureş.It is...

, as well as reports concerning his journeys into the Soviet Union.

Selected works

• Anna the Proletarian (Anna Proletářka
  Anna Proletárka
  Anna Proletářka is a 1953 Czechoslovak film based on the novel by Ivan Olbracht. The movie was filmed on location in Osek, and Prague. It was released on 20 February 1953. It describes proletarian life in the Czech Lands after World War I....
  
  )
• The Strange Friendship of Jesenius the Actor (Podivné přátelství herce Jesenia)
• Nikolai Schuhaj, Highwayman (Nikola Šuhaj loupežník)
• Grilled mirror (Zamřížované zrcadlo)

Films

• Olbracht & Kolochava {2009}, director: Sergey Gubsky (Ukraine), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMOvM8lFsAY,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGLxUkciXMo