The Tatra 600, named the Tatraplan, was a rear-engined large family car produced from 1948 to 1952 by the Czech manufacturer Tatra. The first prototype was finished in 1946.
Tatra is a Czech vehicle manufacturer from Kopřivnice. It is owned by the TATRA TRUCKS a.s. company, and it is the third oldest company in the world producing motor vehicles with an unbroken history. The company was founded in 1850 as Ignatz Schustala & Cie. In 1890 the company became a joint-stock company and was renamed the Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft. In 1897, the Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft produced the Präsident, which was the first factory-produced automobile with a petrol engine to be made in Central and Eastern Europe. The First Truck was made a year later, in 1898. In 1918, the company was renamed Kopřivnická vozovka a.s., and in 1919 it changed from the Nesselsdorfer marque to the Tatra badge, named after the nearby Tatra Mountains on the Czechoslovak-Polish border.
Future Systems was a London-based architectural and design practice, formerly headed by Directors Jan Kaplický and Amanda Levete.
The Slánský trial was a 1952 antisemitic show trial against fourteen members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), including many high-ranking officials. Several charges, including high treason, were announced against the group on the grounds of allegedly conspiring against the Czechoslovak Republic. General Secretary of the KSČ Rudolf Slánský was the alleged leader of the conspirators.
Hans Ledwinka was an Austrian automobile designer.
Jan Kaplický was a Neofuturistic Czech architect who spent a significant part of his life in the United Kingdom. He was the leading architect behind the innovative design office, Future Systems. He was best known for the neofuturistic Selfridges Building in Birmingham, England, and the Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground in London.
The Tatra 77 (T77) is one of the first serial-produced, truly aerodynamically-designed automobiles, produced by Czechoslovakian company Tatra from 1934 to 1938. It was developed by Hans Ledwinka and Paul Jaray, the Zeppelin aerodynamic engineer. Launched in 1934, the Tatra 77 is a coach-built automobile, constructed on a platform chassis with a pressed box-section steel backbone rather than Tatra's trademark tubular chassis, and is powered by a 60 horsepower (45 kW) rear-mounted 2.97-litre air-cooled V8 engine, in later series increased to a 75 horsepower (56 kW) 3.4-litre engine. It possessed advanced engineering features, such as overhead valves, hemispherical combustion chambers, a dry sump, fully independent suspension, rear swing axles and extensive use of lightweight magnesium alloy for the engine, transmission, suspension and body. The average drag coefficient of a 1:5 model of Tatra 77 was recorded as 0.2455. The later model T77a, introduced in 1935, has a top speed of over 150 km/h (93 mph) due to its advanced aerodynamic design which delivers an exceptionally low drag coefficient of 0.212. Sources claim that this is the coefficient of a 1:5 scale model, not of the car itself, so the actual drag coefficient may have been slightly higher.
Rudolf Margolius was a Czech lawyer and economist, Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade, Czechoslovakia (1949–1952), and a co-defendant in the Slánský trial in November 1952.
The Tatra 87 (T87) is a car built by Czechoslovak manufacturer Tatra from 1936 to 1950. It was powered by a rear-mounted 2.9-litre air-cooled 90-degree overhead cam V8 engine that produced 85 horsepower and could drive the car at nearly 100 mph (160 km/h). It is ranked among the fastest production cars of its time. Competing cars in this class, however, used engines with almost twice the displacement, and with fuel consumption of 20 liters per 100 km. Thanks to its aerodynamic shape, the Tatra 87 had a consumption of just 12.5 litres per 100 km. After the war between 1950 and 1953, T87s were fitted with more-modern 2.5-litre V8 T603 engines.
The Tatra 97 (T97) is a Czechoslovak mid-size car built by Tatra in Kopřivnice, Moravia, from 1936 to 1939.
The Tatra 80 is a Czechoslovak luxury full-size car built by Tatra between 1931 and 1935.
Heda Margolius Kovály was a Czech writer and translator. She survived the Łódź ghetto and Auschwitz where her parents died. She later escaped whilst being marched to Bergen-Belsen to find that no one would take her in. Her husband was made a deputy minister in Czechoslovakia and he was then hanged as a traitor. As the wife of a disgraced man she married again and she and her husband were treated badly. They left for the US in 1968 when the country was invaded by the Warsaw Pact countries. She published her biography in 1973. She and her husband did not return to her homeland until 1996.
Erich Übelacker was a German automobile engineer.
A Trial in Prague is an 83 min colour documentary film directed by Zuzana Justman, about the Slánský trial, a high-profile show trial in 1952 Communist Czechoslovakia.
The Tatra V570 was a prototype 1931-33 car developed by a team led by Hans Ledwinka, Erich Ledwinka and Erich Übelacker. The aim of the construction team was to develop a cheap people's car with an aerodynamic body. The first T57-V570 prototype with rear air-cooled two-cylinder engine placed in the former rear luggage compartment of conventional T57 two-seater dropped head coupe was completed late in 1931. However, the company's management decided that the revolutionary ideas introduced in the prototype should be introduced in large luxurious cars, and therefore the team abandoned the project of small cars in favour of the Tatra T77, the world's first serially produced aerodynamic car. The project of a small car was later continued and led to introduction of the Tatra T97. The second, now streamlined V570 four-seater was built in 1933, two years before the first Volkswagen, which bears a strong resemblance to the Tatra – it was misappropriated in the opinion of Tatra, by Adolf Hitler and Dr. Ferdinand Porsche in circumstances about which the German company remains intensely sensitive.
The Präsident was an automobile manufactured by the Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesellschaft, since 1919 Tatra, in 1897. It was the first practical, factory-produced petrol engine automobile built in Central and Eastern Europe. It was constructed by Leopold Sviták and Hans Ledwinka. The automobile was more of a carriage without horses than a car in modern sense. The car is steered via handlebars. The wooden bodywork is placed on an iron frame. It has four seats and a convertible top that would cover only the rear seats. Both axles have suspension of semi-elliptical leaf springs. The wheels were similar to the ones of a horse carriage, but had rubber tyres. The car had a two cylinder spark ignition Benz engine placed by the rear axle.
The NW Elektromobil is an automobile from the veteran era manufactured by the Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesellschaft (NW), now Tatra, from 1900–1901. Only two cars, which were ordered by Emil Kolben's company, Elektrotechnická a. s., based in Vysočany, Prague, were produced. The two Elektromobils had factory numbers 77 and 83.
Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 was published first under this title by Plunkett Lake Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1986. The memoir was written by Heda Margolius Kovály and translated with Franci and Helen Epstein. It is now available in a Holmes & Meier, New York 1997 edition (ISBN 0-8419-1377-3), in a Plunkett Lake Press 2010 eBook edition and in a Granta, London 2012 edition (ISBN 978-1-84708-476-7). Prague Farewell was the book title in the UK in previous editions. The memoir was originally written in Czech and published in Canada under the title Na vlastní kůži by 68 Publishers, a well-known publishing house for Czech expatriates, in Toronto in 1973. An English translation appeared in the same year as the first part of the book The Victors and the Vanquished published by Horizon Press in New York. A British edition of the book excluded the second treatise and was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson under the title I Do Not Want To Remember in 1973. The book is also available in Chinese (ISBN 978-7-5360-6942-8), Danish (ISBN 978-87-7467-106-0), Dutch (ISBN 90-254-6826-8), French (ISBN 2-228-88397-2), German (ISBN 3-87134-035-9), Romanian (ISBN 978-606-8653-57-0), Spanish (ISBN 978-84-15625-26-1), Italian (ISBN 978-88-459-3164-2), Persian (ISBN 978-964-209-360-1) and the original Czech editions (ISBN 978-80-200-2038-3). Additional background information to the book is available in Heda Margolius Kovály and Helena Třeštíková: Hitler, Stalin and I: An Oral History, DoppelHouse Press 2018, Los Angeles, (ISBN 978-0-9987770-0-9), (ISBN 978-0-9978184-7-5).
Joseph Ledwinka was an automobile engineer.
The Škoda 932 was an experimental prototype small four-seater car prototype made by the Czechoslovak manufacturer Škoda. The streamlined body was made of mixed wood/steel construction, the engine was installed at the rear. Only one unit was made.
