Praha 5 will announce a competition for a statue of Ferdinand Peroutka

Prague – The Prague 5 City Council plans to announce an art competition next year for a statue of the journalist and writer Ferdinand Peroutka, which is to be placed in the park near the Portheimka villa in Smíchov. This was stated by the deputy mayor of the district, Lukáš Herold, to ČTK. According to him, a working group has been established to prepare the competition, which includes the journalist's granddaughter, Terezie Kaslová. Peroutka lived in Smíchov before being deported to a Nazi concentration camp.

The establishment of a seven-member working group was approved by the district council in November, and according to Herold, it is expected to meet for the first time before Christmas. Its task will be to prepare the assignment for the art competition. The deputy mayor stated that the city council does not plan to rush through the competition. "It needs to be dignified; this is something that will be there forever," he said. He added that the result could be ready by the end of next year or possibly at the beginning of the following year.

According to Herold, the city hall might also contribute to the statue within the framework of a program supporting art in public places. "If the city, for any reason, does not do this, we are definitely prepared to pay for it ourselves," he added. The representatives of Prague 5 have already granted Peroutka honorary citizenship, and there is also a memorial plaque on the house in Matoušova Street where he lived. A street in Malvazinky is also named after him.

The name of the famous journalist has appeared in public debates in recent years in connection with a statement by President Miloš Zeman, who claimed that Peroutka wrote an article titled "Hitler is a gentleman" in the magazine Přítomnost. He also attributed to him the quote "if we cannot sing with the angels, we must howl with the wolves." However, the text could not be found in the archives of the castle, and historians claim it does not exist. It has also been revealed that the author of the quote about wolves is Jan Stránský. The journalist's granddaughter, Kaslová, is demanding an apology from the state for the president's words. Her lawsuit was dismissed by the court last October, and both Kaslová and the president have appealed.

In recent years, there have been several debates in Prague regarding statues in public space. Controversies have arisen over the return of the Marian column to Old Town Square and the removal of the monument to Soviet Marshal Ivan Koněv by the Prague 6 City Council. Recently, the council unveiled the first domestic statue of Maria Theresa in the park near Pražský most. There is also a debate about the return of the equestrian statue of Marshal Radecký to Malostranské náměstí.

Publicist, writer, and playwright Ferdinand Peroutka was born on February 6, 1895, and was among the most prominent journalists of the First Republic. President T. G. Masaryk offered him one million koruna in March 1923 to publish an independent weekly, the first issue of which, under the title Přítomnost, was published in January 1924. He also wrote, among other works, the extensive piece Building the State, which describes the founding and early years of Czechoslovakia. He spent the war years in Nazi concentration camps and after the communist coup in 1948, he went into exile, where he continued his journalistic work. He died on April 20, 1978, in New York.