František Gellner was a Czechoslovakian poet, short story writer, artist and anarchist.
Background
František Gellner was born to a poor Jewish family in Mladá Boleslav (Jungbunzlau), Bohemia. His father was a seller and a keen socialist. His student room above his father’s shop was the place of his first writing attempts – he covered the walls with his provocative poems and caricatures.
Education
He studied at the gymnasium in Mladá Boleslav where he contributed to the student journals Lípa, Lucerna, Pêle-Mêle and Mládí with poems, translations and drawings.
Career
He went to Vienna to study at the Polytechnic Institute but left after two years with just one exam in drawing. Gellner"s Bohemian lifestyle brought him to the anarchist movement. His flat was searched several times by police.
He wrote to Nový kult journal.
In 1901 he started studying at the Mining Academy in Příbram and often went to Prague to join anarchist parties with South.K. Neumann, Karel Toman, Fráňa Šrámek and Marie Majerová. He started compulsory military service in 1904 but dropped out after a year.
He went to Munich to study painting in 1905 and a year later to Paris where he drew caricatures for such journals as Rire, Cri de Paris, and Le temps nouveau. In 1908 he returned to Bohemia (his father was ill) and in 1909 went to Dresden and again to Paris.
In 1911 he settled in Brno and started to work for Lidové noviny as a caricaturist and a reporter.
At the beginning of World War I Gellner was recruited to the Austro-Hungarian army and went to Galicia. The last report about him was that he was relaxing on a path between Zamość and TomaszóWest On September 13, 1914 he was claimed missing and never foundation
Views
The next collection Radosti života (Joys of Life) shifted the point of view from subject to object and throws the disbelief more on society.