Copyright in Czech Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Jirásek’s Quarrel Over Psohlavci

Abstract

The article examines the unauthorised stage adaptation of Alois Jirásek’s novel Psohlavci (Dogheads) produced by Jan Baptist Kühnl (1849–1904), a dramatist, translator, and one of the earliest plagiarists in the late nineteenth-century Czech literature who in 1899 adapted and without authorisation staged the play Jan Sladký Kozina (published as a book in 1901). Kühnl’s adaptation was completed without the permission of Jirásek, who intervened against the play’s illegal enactment at Švanda’s Theatre in Smíchov through his lawyer Ladislav Klumpar (1863–1930), an imperial deputy. Jirásek won the 1899 trial by virtue of Act #197/1895, which continued the 1846 Imperial Patent, defining the nature and realisation of artistic creations (whose wording was partially incorporated into the Copyright Act of independent Czechoslovakia). In 1920, the play Jan Sladký Kozina was republished on behalf of Kühnl’s descendants, his widow Marie Kühnlová and daughter Marie Luisa Kühnlová (1891–1945), a translator from Romance languages who only modernised the original 1899 epigonic adaptation for amateur actors. The second lawsuit in 1921 was not only Jirásek’s victory but it fully demonstrated that copyright was a relevant manifestation of intellectual intangible assets which must be legally protected. From a literary perspective, the case offers an interesting illustration of the contemporary concept of plagiarism as uninventive imitation, borrowing “thoughtlessly the whole structure, storyline and even individual elements” of a work.