Adolf BRANALD
His original first name was Karel Adolf. Born in Prague on 4 October, 1910 into an acting family, Branald spent his childhood travelling with theatre companies and acting small roles in theatre and film. Then he worked in a number of positions, including fourteen years as an economist and then a press manager with the national railway company, and seven years as an editor in a publishing house. From 1959, he was a professional writer. Some of Branald's works have been made into films (Old Man Motor-Car – Dědeček automobil; Ward Round – Pozor, vizita; Nurses - Sestřičky). Adolf Branald died no September 28, 2008.
On 4 October, 2005, writer, the playwright and screenwriter Adolf Branald celebrated his 95th birthday. This extraordinary event confirmed his foremost position among the leading men of letters in the Czech Republic. Branald was almost eighty years old when the Velvet Revolution took place in 1989. Shaped by fading avant-garde movements and their spiritual and intellectual stimuli, he established himself as an artist as early as the 1930s, when he published his first novels (and plays). In the decades to come, he repeatedly influenced Czech literature with outstanding works of art, which strengthened his reputation as a fine writer and storyteller. Branald's success was based on the tradition of classic storytelling, in which story and characterisation are crucial. However, the style and genres of his books changed quite often, serving as fine examples of both European and Czech literature. Branald would distance himself "far from the madding crowd", from the contemporary – often utterly misled – circles of Czech society, both during Stalin's era and the periods that followed. He did not, however, reject society as such and actively tried to shape its art and philosophy. This is also why he was able to come up with a book that mirrored the lives of ordinary people, and would often go beyond the limits to testify about "life around us" and "life in us". Sometimes, these stories would even resemble new journalism or art documentary styles. The finest books by Branald include The North Station (Severní nádraží) and its sequel, Hospital Train (Lazaretní vlak), The Old Man Motor-Car, and a somewhat neglected book of crime fiction, A Reason to Kill (Důvod k zabití). Theatre and the lives of people connected to it were also a prominent topic of Branald's writing, also due to the fact that it was the world of his youth. Branald would explore this topic throughout his life and a great number of his books are built around his memories. Nostalgia mingles with sentiment, respect for the values of the past enters the vivid times of the world of today – all this one can find in novels like The Silver Wig (Stříbrná paruka), The Makeup Cabinet (Skříňka s líčidly), The Lohengrin Waltz (Valčík z Lohengrina), or books of stories depicting the world of film and theatre. Branald had a special gift for depicting sudden and violent changes in time and space. He was able to make times long past vivid through the use of subtle details that would characterize, or at least illustrate, historical periods, now long lost in the labyrinth of human memory. An experienced, life-long actor, Branald liked to "stage" his memories of periods of national history as "living pictures". In the late 1970s and early 1980s (and especially after 1989), he would stop writing traditional stories and switch to memoir writing, which dealt both with his own life experience (the Prague of his childhood and youth), and Czech culture. In spite of his age, Branald often left his voluntary seclusion and commented on the literary world of today, especially when he wanted to remind others of things usually not talked or written about. In his last years, Branald used his cultural memory to present himself not only as a "silent witness", but also as an epic artist. Adolf Branald died on 28 September, 2008.
