Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948)

Egon Erwin Kisch was born on April 29, 1885 in Prague in the house „Zu den zwei goldenen Bären“ at Melantrichova 475/16. He grew up there with his four brothers; his father Hermann Kisch's cloth shop was on the ground floor

In 1897, as a child, he experienced the infamous nationalist-motivated ‚December Storm‘, which began with an attack on German-speaking institutions, but then turned into anti-Semitic terror. Only the intervention of soldiers put a stop to the mob.

In 1913, Kisch moved to Berlin, where he worked as a reporter, writer and dramaturge. After the Reichstag fire in Berlin, he was arrested on February 28, 1933 as a communist and Jewish intellectual. Two weeks later, at the intervention of the Czechoslovak Republic, he was deported to Prague. After the occupation of the remaining countries of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany in 1939, Kisch fled via France to Mexico, where he lived in exile until the end of the Second World War.

In 1946, Egon Erwin Kisch returned to Prague, where he lived and worked until his death on March 31, 1948.