Interesting facts about Karel Capek

The word ROBOT was first used in Karel Capek's play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots). The word robot was invented by Capek's brother Josef. It is derived from the Czech noun robota - labour, so a robot is somebody or something the excercises labour. This word has become worldwide known and is still used today very frequently. (more on the origin of the word robot here)

Karel Capek was the third person on Gestapo's list of people that were to be arrested after the annexation of whole of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Karel Capek was informed about this but he decided not to leave for London but to stay in Prague with the rest of the nation. The Gestapo never got him because Karel Capek died on December 25, 1938, Three months before the invasion. His older brother Josef, also viewed as a very dangerous individual was arrested by the Gestapo on September 1, 1939 and died in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in April 1945 (and not in Terezin asi I stated previously by error).

Karel Capek almost received the Nobel Prize for literature but in the end didn't receive it because Sweden didn't view it as favorable to award it to an anti facist at the advent of WWII of fear from Hitler's reaction.

Arthur Miller on Karel Capek: "There was no writer like him. . . prophetic assurance mixed with surrealistic humour and hard-edged social satire: a unique combination"

Capek's obituary in Newsweek (January 2, 1939) said of R.U.R.: "Although he believed it the least interesting of all his works, it brought him greatest fame."

more interesting facts can be found in the comprehensive presentation on Karel Capek