Karel Sabina

Born Dec. 29, 1813, in Prague; died there Nov. 9, 1877. Czech public and political figure and journalist.

Son of petit bourgeois parents of modest means, Sabina studied philosophy and law at the universities of Prague and Vienna. He was influenced by K. H. Mácha and by romanticism. During the 1830’s he took part in sociopolitical activity, he was one of the organizers of the secret political society Repeal Český (1844), which opposed the absolutism of the Hapsburgs and favored a democratic republic. During the Revolution of 1848–49 in Bohemia, he was a member of the Svatovátslavsky Committee (the organ of revolutionary power), the National Committee, and the societies Svornost and Lípa Slovanská, as well as a deputy to the Czech parliament. Sabina was the ideological leader of the radical democratic trend. He edited a number of radical journals and newspapers.

During the 1848 Prague uprising, Sabina fought on the barricades and was arrested; he remained in prison until the autumn of 1848. In the spring of 1849 he took part in preparations for an uprising. He was arrested and in 1853 was sentenced to death; the sentence was commuted to an 18-year prison term. He was freed by an amnesty in 1857. Ill and demoralized, Sabina was recruited by the Austrian police in 1859 as a paid informer. In 1872 he was exposed; by the decision of a court of Czech patriots he was banished from Bohemia. He returned to Prague secretly and engaged in literary activity.