Songwriter, cabaret artist, filmmaker
Hashler was a well-known figure in the First Republic’s art and “fun-popular” scene. Although he originally studied crafts, specifically gloves, he never made a living from this work and before teaching he began to devote himself to the theatrical career. He started as an amateur at the end of the 19th century in Prague-Zlíchov and briefly visited the Pavel Švanda Theater Company. In 1897 he went to the countryside and passed on the Choděrov and Dobrovolný nomadic theater companies.
In October 1941, the arrest of Czech resistance fighters culminated. It started by shooting in the toilet
From 1900 he performed at the National Theater in Brno, from where he returned briefly to Volunteer, but in the same year he became a member of the Slovenian Provincial Theater in Ljubljana. Upon his return, he was offered an engagement in drama by the director of the National Theater in Prague, Jaroslav Kvapil. Hasler accepted and worked in the Golden Chapel from 1903 until 1915.
During this time he also wrote and composed “Old Prague songs” which he published himself (since 1919 he also had his own publishing house). Although his catchy melodies and sometimes pathetic lyrics did not always reap the best criticism, they gained a wide audience, which gradually resulted in his deep interest in cabaret art. After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, he performed in a number of revuis and was a leading representative of a number of cabaret, such as the Lucerna, Rococo, Varieté and other cabaret.
In the second half of the 1920s, the film gained its increasing attention, and this trend intensified significantly after the advent of sound film in 1929, in which Hasler was able to use the full breadth of his talent. And, as in theatrical activities, he did not stay with just one profession here – he wrote screenplays for films, directed them, starred in them and also let his songs be heard in them again. His best-known and most quoted song to date, our Czech song, comes from a film by director Svatopluk Innemann The Songwriter from 1932, for which Hasler wrote a screenplay (de facto his biography) and in which he also played the title role.
Executions on Heydrich’s orders: The victims had to go to the sand or to the knee gallows
He is also known for his contribution to the famous film by director Martin Frič Jánošík from 1935, which was the only First Republic film to be successfully sold to all major European and non-European countries – it was screened in 32 countries. Coincidentally, however, it was Hashler’s influence on this film that was sometimes criticized for capturing the drama of the story to folk songs.
As an actor, Hasler played more than 20 roles on the screen in sound films, which, surprisingly, were not as highly regarded by contemporary critics as his two silent film creations: Dr. Uher in the first film adaptation of Josef Hais Týnecký’s novel and play Batalion and Organist in Fričov Organist at Svatý Vít.
Ambitious fascist director
After the German invasion of the rest of truncated Czechoslovakia in March 1939, followers of fascism and anti-Semitism began to claim a greater share of power in the art world, as was the case with the film studios in Barrandov. Already a day after the Nazis arrived in Prague, the Czech fascists under the leadership of General Radola Gajda (who, somewhat paradoxically, the Czech patriot Hasler admired) tried to control Czech cinematography.
Gajda entrusted the studios of Barrandov’s assistant director Josef Kraus, who, with the help of other Czech fascists, was to overthrow the current director of the studios, Lavoslav Reichl, and immediately dismiss all Jewish employees. However, the plan failed because Kraus was so insignificant that practically no one talked to him in the studios.
However, the attempt at the Barrandov coup was associated with another name, which later very significantly intersected with the fate of Karel Hašler – Václav Binovec.
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This skilled film director, but at the same time an ardent fascist and anti-Semite, was one of the few Barrandov employees willing to support the coup. His task was to be the so-called Aryanization of the studios, in other words he was to compile a list of Jewish employees of Barrandov and achieve their expulsion. However, members of AB Barrandov’s board of directors also refused to discuss anything with Binovec and expelled him, thus ending the attempt to take control of the studios.
However, the aspiring director did not give up his prospects for a better position in the changed political situation. Already in 1939, he became the vice-president of the Czech-Moravian Film Headquarters, ie the new central film body, which included both protectorate filmmaking and the film trade (the forerunner was the Imperial Film Chamber). In the same year, Binovec also joined the Vlajka organization. As his career began to rise, many of his former colleagues found themselves at risk, either because of their origins or because of their anti-fascist attitudes.
Hashler v. Binovec
This also applied to Karel Hasler, who began to write new satirical anti-fascist texts more and more often to his earlier melodies Our Czech song: “This is the Czech song we sing today. Listen, folks, drop your forks, there’s nothing left to eat anyway. They took everything from us, ate everything for us, left only the protectorate.”)
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The brave singer did not take napkins and did not hesitate to play his parody adaptations in restaurants to his friends and other people who were willing to listen to him. However, given its popularity, it was not possible for something like this not to be heard by the Germans. The attention of the German security service Sicherheitsdienst (SD) focused on Hashler.
In 1941, Binovec and Hasler met over the already mentioned film The Town on the Palm – Binovec directed it, Hasler was assigned to him as an more experienced creator as an artistic advisor. It was filmed on hot August days in Ronov nad Doubravou and in nearby Třemošnice, where the actors and other filmmakers often spent their evenings in the inn. Even here, Karel Hasler did not miss his songs, which he amused his friends with.
The Gestapo didn’t like it and arrested the singer. During the interrogation, the investigators then read not only songs, but also poems published in the magazine Venkov, in which they found anti-German ideas. But he was still released, and the singer returned to the film. However, he did not let himself be intimidated and continued to entertain his friends.
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On September 2, 1941, the Gestapo came for him again, this time to Ládví, where other exteriors were filming. Two “secretists” in proverbial long leather coats picked up the songwriters right in front of the other actors during the filming of a scene that took place in the middle of the field, loaded him into a car and took him away. None of those who had watched this short silent mourning had ever seen Hasler again.
To this day, there is speculation that Hasler was arrested at Binovec’s report, but the director always rejected such accusations even after the war. However, for collaborating with the Germans, he was sentenced to three years in prison, which he served in labor camps. In 1966 he emigrated with his son to West Germany, but when he did not find a job there, he returned. He died in 1976 in Prague.
Death under the ice shower
After his arrest, Hashler ended up in the Pankrác remand prison in Prague and later in Dresden, after which he was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. At first he was assigned to work in a hosiery, but the block hood had him transferred to hard work in the quarry.
The testimony of Hashler’s fellow prisoner, the staff captain of the former Czechoslovak army Antonín Kramář, who had been imprisoned in Mauthausen since October 1941 and was liberated, has been preserved about what followed. He testified about the last weeks of the famous singer’s life after the war: considerably weakened, he had to return to work. He stood beside me as he always counted, with his head brave and his head held high. “
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After the SS beating, however, Hasler’s open wound remained on his leg, and a purulent phlegmon gradually developed from it. Instead of treatment, the camp’s chief physician drove the songwriter to disability number 13, which, according to Kramář, was famous for sending prisoners destined for liquidation in the shortest time. On December 21, the SS dragged Hashler to the penalty block, where he was forced to undress, and then he was seated tied to a chair under a shower, from which he let ice water on him.
“On December 22, my fellow prisoner Monsignor Černý (provost of the cathedral chapter and participant in the resistance Jan Černý, who perished in 1944 in Würzburg, ed. Note) and I tried to visit him to give him one last consolation. We were not allowed in. we saw on the bare concrete floor lying the limp naked body of our singer, emaciated to bone. He died bound after repeated ice showers, “Kramář described Hasler’s last moments in this world.
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