Then Call Them Roboti
By Amber Willard
Born in Bohemia, the land of art and innovation, were two brothers.
One was Karel Čapek (b.1890), who grew up to become one of the most beloved Czech authors. The other brother, slightly older, was Josef (b.1887), a creative painter and poet. The two were devoted to one another in childhood, but weren’t treated equally by their parents. Karel was pampered, his mother’s favorite. Josef was ignored, even abused, by his mother. Some might imagine this would have bred resentment between the brothers, but the opposite occurred.
Throughout their lives, Josef never left Karel’s side.
From an early age, Karel suffered from spinal ailments and was exempted from military service in World War I as a result. These problems grew worse as he got older. Later in life, Karel could only walk short distances before being in so much pain he would have to sit. (Before his death, Karel couldn’t turn his head from side to side. He had to move his whole body to see at different angles.)
Josef was also exempt from serving in the war because of his poor eyesight. Together in Prague, they witnessed the conflict at a distance and felt the aftershocks firsthand when their birthland transformed from Austria-Hungary into the independent country of Czechoslovakia.
The Brothers Čapek: Josef (left) and Karel (right).
The first time Josef and Karel became separated was when Karel left Prague for Berlin to study philosophy. During this time apart, Josef was forced to go to a textile school to prepare for factory work.
He often protested that he wanted to be a painter, but his family ignored his desires. Josef would exchange letters with Karel, and in these personal writings the latter gave Josef the courage to pursue his artistic passions. Josef finally joined the School of Applied Arts in Prague, where one of his teachers apparently told him outright that he’d never become successful as an artist.
Nevertheless, he completed all of his classes and graduated. Still, Josef was not satisfied and was ultimately disheartened by his time there. It was at this time, when he had reached an emotional and mental limit, that he decided to flee to Paris to join the famed Académie Colarossi art school. When Josef wrote to Karel about what he had done, Karel quit his studies in Berlin and came to be with Josef in Paris. He finished his degree there while Josef practiced his craft.
After the end of their university days, Josef and Karel returned to their home and became respected members of the Prague artistic and intellectual community. While making their mark in social circles, they lived together, but later on they bought a split house to live as neighbors.
Even as adults, Josef and his younger brother were inseparable, never outgrowing their childhood bond.
Their relationship as adults was so close that they co-wrote plays. It is hard to pick out who wrote what when you read their books. The two often traveled together on holidays and worked for the same newspaper, Národní listy (The National Newspaper)—Karel as a journalist, and Josef as a cartoonist and art critic.
While Karel was better known as a writer, Josef was a strong storyteller in his own right, and also wrote and published his own novels and plays. Like Karel, his work routinely incorporated undertones of philosophy and political satire in the plots. Karel directed Josef’s The Land of Many Names at the Vinohrady Theatre where he worked, and Josef’s Shadow of a Fern crime mystery novella was turned into a 1985 Czech movie.
Indeed the brothers were like two minds of the same person, mirroring everything the other did. Karel and Josef complemented each other not only as artists and writers, but also because they believed in the same ideas.
Despite Josef being a private introvert and Karel being a social extrovert, they shared the same world, created together. They lived in a prosperous, newly-formed country, constructed from the ashes of World War I. This ideal life, rich with creativity, was also fragile. Across the border was Germany, an unhappy neighbor growing stronger and stronger.
When Josef was fired over his political ideas at the newspaper, Karel left with him. Karel was later offered a new job at Lidové noviny (The People's Paper). He refused to accept the position unless Josef worked there as well. Josef’s outspokenness was not uncommon for the times. There was a shadow of political unrest, especially from across the border. Germany was increasingly gaining attention because of its new government, and some of the Czechs were worried. Among the people who were concerned were groups of journalists, artists, politicians, and social intelligentsia, including the Čapeks.
Karel and Josef Čapek.
Together with Karel safe by his side in Prague, Josef was content being one half of the creative pair. He was the scenographer who brought to life the images that his brother created in his successful theatre plays. He was the cartoonist who drew illustrations for Karel’s books. He was the subject of Karel’s experimental photography. He was the voice of reason, the man who stood behind Karel no matter what.
Beyond all of this, when Karel got writer’s block or couldn’t find the correct words, he would ask Josef for advice. In fact, it was because of this that Josef would change the world of science fiction and technology forever.
Karel came running to Josef one day while he was working in front of his canvas. Karel was freshly inspired by riding a tram in Prague, so overcrowded that people couldn’t fit inside. These passengers traveled from home to work and back again like a form of human automation. This scene was a catalyst for Karel to begin brainstorming his newest play.
He remembered the time Josef went to work at a textile factory for three years, the industrial boom at the turn of the century. In the factories the working conditions were horrendous. Many were injured, leaving without fingers or limbs. Sometimes even worse accidents happened. Deaths occurred. People not only ran the machines, but they were also becoming machines themselves, all for mass production and profit.
Karel told Josef his idea: a new play based on machines and factories, but with an added element. A creature that is mass-produced inside one of these factories. These creatures would look like humans, but would be called something else, they were workers. That said, Karel wanted a fresh idea. He did not want to use the word laboři (workers) for the new creatures in his story. He wanted something different.
Josef quickly replied, “Then call them roboti.”
Roboti is the Czech word for slave, inferring forced labor and drudgery. It was the perfect solution, and perhaps unsurprisingly. Josef always understood Karel's way of thinking. (He also knew that this idea of Karel’s likely referred to his own time spent in a factory.)
Once Karel finished the play, Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots or R.U.R), it became an international hit. It was translated and performed in many languages and nations.
The play revolves around thousands of robots created in a factory, and shows how, by the year 2000, they are used for industry. At the same time, there is a declining human birth rate. The robots become able to think for themselves and eventually revolt against the humans they were once happy to work for. During the climax of the story, the robots storm the factory where they were created, killing all but one human inside.
The only human life that they spare is the company clerk, because he “works with his hands.”
The story was a warning of our future, surprisingly relevant today, amid increasing human reliance on technology. Yet it was also a commentary on the times that Josef and Karel lived in. Although the Industrial Revolution predated World War I, many factory companies thrived during the interwar period. Men left the countryside in droves after the war to work in the cities. It was easy to acquire a job in a factory, doing manual labor. As long as someone could use their hands, they were hired. These companies only cared about profit, not the quality of their products or the men who helped make them.
R.U.R.’s success wasn’t the only triumph for Karel and Josef. The interwar period was a wildly creative and prosperous time both. Josef continued to paint, adding over one hundred and forty pieces to his portfolio. But after the 1938 Munich Agreement, the creative world in which Josef lived — so delicate and calm — was no more. Czechoslovakia was forced to surrender the Sudetenland border to Germany. The natural barrier it had with Germany was taken from them, without Czechoslovakia ever being in the meeting to defend itself against German head of state Adolf Hitler’s demands.
Many refugees from Vienna (Austria) told the Czechs the horror that waited for them when the Nazis crossed into their country. Josef started to create political cartoons in an act of defiance, and Karel wrote darker political satires. The infamous plays The White Plague and Mother reflect his uneasiness about the situation.
The Nazi invasion came a year later, in March 1939. With the invasion came a list of names of people the Gestapo wanted to arrest and send to concentration camps. Many were artists, journalists, and those who they were certain would oppose the new regime. Those who thought for themselves or were intellectuals were quickly disposed of. At the top of the list were Josef and Karel, along with many others in their circle.
When the Gestapo officers went to arrest Karel, they were shocked to find that he was already dead. Karel’s health had suffered after the signing of the Munich Agreement and his mind was shattered. He succumbed to his frail health on Christmas Day 1938, with Josef heartbroken at his side.
Now alone and without his brother, Josef retreated to the countryside where the two had spent happier days. It was in vain. The Gestapo hunted him down. The arresting officers escorted him to Pankrác Prison in Prague, where he was interrogated for eight days before being thrown on a train on September 9 and sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp in German Bavaria for processing.
Josef was later shipped to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, where he remained for two years. It was here that he was assigned to work in a calligraphic workshop, forced to paint family trees for SS officers. He showed his defiant spirit by secretly painting Czech and Slavic symbols on their pedigrees. He was also made to copy works of art for the officers (which he wholeheartedly despised, often throwing his paint or brushes across the room). When he could, Josef would sit and write poetry or sketch in a corner. His fellow prisoners would often finish the paintings for him, in a show of support.
Josef tried his best to keep his mind and hands busy. He wrote poetry and translated secret writings for other prisoners. For these fellow prisoners, Josef was a great comfort. Just as he was beloved by Karel, and was always by his side, Josef was appreciated by the communities at both Dachau and Buchenwald.
With the Second World War intensifying in 1942, things again changed for Josef, and they shipped him to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, infamous for its typhus outbreaks. Josef kept his artistic spirit there and continued to write and translate for other prisoners. But the five-year imprisonment weakened him.
In 1945, he fell ill for the final time, dying shortly before the camp's liberation. No one knows exactly when he passed away and joined his brother in death, and no one knows where (or if) he was buried. Some prisoners who knew him said they saw him just days before they were set free by the Allies. All that was left behind was the poetry Josef wrote while confined.
In a poem dedicated to his brother Karel, Josef wrote he could not accept his death. Karel’s death was a deep tragedy for Josef, who never got over the loss. It was a devastating shock to him, because he lost half of himself. Many who knew the pair said it was like they were one person, they would know what the other was thinking, finishing each other’s sentences. When Josef was arrested and sent to the concentration camps without Karel, it was like he was torn in half.
What Josef would have felt, had Karel survived long enough for the brothers to be confined together, is unknown.
Karel would have first had to survive the torture during the Gestapo interrogations. Not many were as hardy as Josef, who weathered eight days of brutal torture. Over 30,000 Czechs were tortured while Prague was under Nazi occupation, and many were killed in the process. Once at Dachau, Karel’s health issues would have pre-selected him for the gas chambers, while Josef would have been selected for labor.
What might that situation have led to? Two inseparable brothers, ordered into different lines? Perhaps Josef would have argued and protested out of fear, not for himself, but for Karel. He probably would have refused to leave Karel. They would have likely gone side by side into the gas chamber, together to the last.
Regardless of the international acclaim Karel’s R.U.R. play achieved, he was always sure to correct anyone who said he invented the word robot. “It was my brother Josef!” he would say. “It was my brother Josef, always by my side.”
Ironically, it was Josef who became the word he created. He never knew that, after giving Karel a suggestion, he would one day be a robot himself, locked inside a prison of death, forced to work until his spirit could no longer take the torture. The pain of being a prisoner was likely only matched by the pain of losing half of himself. His writings from this time reveal that his thoughts were not on his own pain, but always on Karel.
These thoughts kept his spirit comforted, soothed until he could finally join his late brother in death.
Amber Willard is an English teacher based in Prague, Czech Republic. She enjoys traveling to historical places around Europe to glean inspiration for her research and writing. This is her first article for Dead Foot.
