Wilhelm Przeczek was a Polish teacher, poet, writer, and activist from Zaolzie

Zaolzie

Zaolzie is the Polish name for an area now in the Czech Republic which was disputed between interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia. The name means "lands beyond the Olza River"; it is also called Śląsk zaolziański, meaning "trans-Olza Silesia". Equivalent terms in other languages include Zaolší in...

 region of Cieszyn Silesia

Cieszyn Silesia

Cieszyn Silesia or Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia, centered around the towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín and bisected by the Olza River. Since 1920 it has been divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic...

. He is considered one of the most important Polish writers of his generation from Zaolzie.

Przeczek was born to a coal miner's

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 family. He studied at a teachers' seminary in Orlová

Orlová

Orlová is a town in the Karviná District, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic. It lies in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia.- History :...

 and then at a college 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...

. He worked as a teacher in Polish schools in Zaolzie, e.g. in Jablunkov

Jablunkov

Jablunkov is a town in Frýdek-Místek District, Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has a population of 5,750 , 23% of the population are Poles. Jablunkov lies between the Silesian and Moravian-Silesian Beskids mountain ranges, in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia, and is the...

. Przeczek was later briefly a journalist for the Głos Ludu newspaper. He was also an activist within the PZKO (Polish Cultural and Educational Union) and member of many Polish literary organizations. Przeczek also translated Czech

Czech literature

Czech literature is the literature written by Czechs or other inhabitants of the Czech state, mostly in the Czech language, although other languages like Old Church Slavonic, Latin or German have been also used, especially in the past. Modern authors from the Czech territory who wrote in other...

, Slovak and Sorbian

Sorbian languages

The Sorbian languages are classified under the Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. They are the native languages of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority in the Lusatia region of eastern Germany. Historically the language has also been known as Wendish or Lusatian. Their collective ISO 639-2 code...

 poetry to Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

 and Polish poetry

Polish poetry

Polish poetry has a centuries old history, similar to the Polish literature.Three most famous Polish poets are known as the Three Bards: Adam Mickiewicz , Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński ....

 into Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

.

During the Prague Spring

Prague Spring

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...

 of 1968, Przeczek supported the reformist wing of 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....

. His stances led to ban of his works from 1969 to 1989 in Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

. His books were therefore published mainly in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

.

Poetry

• Czarna calizna (1978)
• Wpisane w Beskid (1980)
• Śmierć pomysłu poetyckiego (1981)
• Szumne podszepty (1982)
• Księga Urodzaju (1986)
• Nauka wierności (1986)
• Tercet (1986)
• Przeczucie kształtu (1989)
• Notatnik liryczny (1990)

• Rękopisy nie płoną (1990)
• Promlčený počet štěstí (1991)
• Dym za paznokciami (1992)
• Na ubitej ziemi (1994)
• Mapa białych plam (1995)
• Małe nocne modlitwy (1996)
• Intimní bedeker (1998)
• Smak wyciszenia (1999)
• Stoletý kalendář (2001)

Prose

• Skrzyżowanie (1969) (together with Władysław Sikora)
• Břečťan a jiné strašidelné povídky (1992)
• Kazinkowe granie (1994)
• Bienále pivní pěny (1996)