Happy 250th Birthday to Matěj Kopecký, the patriarch of Czech puppetry!
Matěj Kopecký, who performed throughout Bohemia in the early 19th century, was a Czech puppeteer who became a symbol of the Czech language, identity, and patriotism. Today Czech children learn about him in history classes.
To celebrate his birthday, the Czech government just issued a stamp with his iconic portrait: a jutting chin, a grizzled beard, a scarf around the neck. The classic look for a Czech puppeteer.
But how much of this legend is based on reality?
We will start with his portrait. It was fictional, drawn by leading Czech painter Mikoláš Aleš, who was born five years after Kopecký’s death. It adorns a monument in a cemetery where he was buried, although no one knows exactly where his body lies (he died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the vicinity). Aleš' illustration included a series of drawings portraying Kopecky’s life as a travelling puppeteer (which also had an incorrect date of birth):
As for Matěj Kopecký’s real life story, it was probably similar to the many other travelling Czech puppeteers of his time. There were over 200 registered puppeteers in the Czech lands in the mid-19th century, and the profession overlapped with “comedians” who performed circus acts. It was a family business, passed down from one generation to the next. The patriarch was the solo performer, and the rest of the family offered support as they travelled from town to town to eke out a living. Kopecký’s father was registered as a “comedian”, and young Matěj spent his years traveling in a performer’s wagon with him like the one pictured above. When he grew up, he trained as a watchmaker and then spent ten years fighting as a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1818 he got a license to perform as a puppeteer. It was not an easy life. Of his 14 children, only 6 survived to adulthood. He died in 1847 at age 72, supposedly while he was drumming to announce an upcoming performance.
So how did he become worthy of a national stamp?
Kopecký, like all of the traveling puppeteers of the time, performed in the Czech language. Because the Czech lands were part of the Austrian Empire, “official” theatre was in German and performed in opulent Baroque theatres in cities. Puppeteers, who were forbidden from performing in urban areas or spa towns, took their shows to Czech audiences in small towns and villages. The puppeteers often produced the same shows that were on classical European theatre stages – e.g. Faust or Don Juan – but with one actor, with a caravan, and with wooden marionettes instead of actors. After all they were much cheaper to feed and easier to travel with.
And a Czech National Uprising was brewing
So puppet shows were the first theatre in the Czech language of any kind.
In the mid-19th century, Czech intellectuals and patriots started to take an interest in suppressed Czech culture, which led them to cultivate a national uprising – an effort to uplift the Czech language, arts, and folktales. Theatre was an important part of this. Indeed, one of the most important moments of the movement was the opening of the Czech National Theatre in Prague in 1881.
Aleš’ illustration of Kopecký helped promote the idea that Czech puppeteers had kept the Czech language and stories alive, that they were true Czech patriots. While puppeteers had been performing in Czech for practical reasons, and their repertoire was similar to their counterparts in other parts of Europe (not to mention that many of them also sometimes performed in German depending on the makeup of the audience), the legend stuck.
Why Matěj Kopecký ?
In 1862, fifteen years after Kopecký’s death, his son Václav compiled and published his father’s plays in a book called The Comedies and Plays of Matej Kopecky (there were 61 in the book, although later it was determined that probably half of them were not actually performed by Kopecký). Mikoláš Aleš, who was friends with Václav, illustrated the plays. At the same time he also created the romantic image of Kopecký’s life pictured above.
Aleš’s illustrations made Matěj Kopecký an icon. He became the representative of all Czech traveling puppeteers and a hero of Czech patriotic folklore. He was later said to have performed plays with patriotic themes and to have been in touch with some of the leading Czech patriots of his time, but there is no documentation or witness accounts to confirm that. Like his portrait, no one really knows how closely the stories taught in school sync with reality.
His legacy
The picture might be fictional, but certainly the legacy in his own family is real. Today, the tenth generation of his direct descendants continues to carry on the tradition of the travelling puppeteer/comedian.
His granddaughter, Arnoštka Kopecká (1842-1914), was one of the first female Czech puppeteers. She performed with her father starting at age 15 and continued to perform the family repertoire for the rest of her life. She was an acclaimed puppeteer. While most likely illiterate, that did not prevent her from being recognized by the highly-educated Czech elite. In 1912 and 1913 she was invited to Prague to perform the plays of her grandfather for Mikoláš Aleš and an audience of Prague intelligentsia.
Like Matěj Kopecký four of his great grandsons had to go to war. During WWI they became part of the Czechoslovak Legion, who fought against the Austrian Empire. To promote an independent Czechoslovakia, the brothers performed puppet shows for fellow soldiers during the war. In 2021 the Minor Theatre in Prague created an award-winning puppet show inspired by their story.
Six generations later another Matěj Kopecký (1923–2001) was an acclaimed Czech puppeteer performing for the world-renowned Drak Theatre, and then one generation after that another Matěj Kopecký (1953–2020) studied puppetry at Prague Theatre Academy (DAMU) and joined the Naive Puppet Theatre. Their sons also became puppeteers, as did another direct descendent, Anna Nováková. Her son Rosťa Novák, the great great great great great great great great grandson of our first Matěj Kopecký, is among the most influential contemporary Czech theatre artists today. He founded a company that creates original shows combining new circus, theatre, dance, and yes, puppetry.
We will never know what Kopecký really looked like, nor how much truth there is to the stories that have become a part of Czech folklore. But we do know that his personage inspired countless people who embraced and identified with puppetry, making Czechoslovakia a “puppet superpower” where UNIMA was founded in the 1920s, and later the first country to offer a university degree in puppetry.
Whatever the reality of his life, 250 years later the Czech postal service remembers him as the father of Czech puppeteers. And thanks to thousands of Czech puppeteers and artists who followed him, the art form continues to thrive, adapt, develop, evolve. Somehow the legacy has stuck.
And not only on our envelopes.
Sources:
World Encyclopedia of Puppetry https://wepa.unima.org/en/matej-kopecky/
Czech pupppetry still has a large impact oday, Interview with Katerina Dolenska, head of Czech UNIMA, on Czech Radio České loutkářství má venku dodnes obrovský zvuk, říká odbornice Kateřina Dolenská | Vltava:
https://www.kudyznudy.cz/aktuality/rodinne-klany-loutkar-matej-kopecky-a-deset-genera
250 years ago Matej Kopecky was born, Czech Radio, Pardubice Před 250 lety se narodil Matěj Kopecký. Poslechněte si příběh slavného loutkáře | Pardubice
Minor Theatre, https://www.minor.cz/repertoar/bratri-nadeje
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