5 Extraordinary Czech women You've Never Heard Of (Who Changed How We See the World)
Prague loves its Kafka. Its Mucha. Its astronomical clock and its beer. But wander a little off the well-worn tourist script and you'll find a quieter, fiercely potent lineage. Behind every great man you can find an extraordinary Czech woman, but these women did not need to hide behind any man. They carved out a space for themselves - women who raced against men on horseback and in grand prix cars and won, who painted under male pseudonyms to say the unsayable, and who fought relentlessly for their own rights and those of their sisters.
Here are five of them. None of them are on a postcard. All of them should be.
1. Eliška Junková: The Queen of the Steering Wheel
Born Alžběta Pospíšilová in 1900, the legendary racer changed her name to Eliška Junková upon marrying bank colleague Čeněk Junek, who unwittingly ignited her passion for cars and Ettore Bugatti’s iconic machines.
Despite her petite height requiring a seat lined with cushions just to reach the pedals and steering wheel
Eliška quickly began out-driving male masters of the wheel across Europe, culminating in her iconic 1928 performance at the grueling 540-kilometer Targa Florio in Sicily, where she briefly held the lead and finished an astounding fifth place despite a failing water pump.
Tragically, her glittering career ended that same year when Čeněk was killed in a fatal crash at the German Grand Prix; refusing to race again, Eliška nevertheless remained a towering figure in Czech motoringh, helping establish the famous Masaryk Circuit and developing tires for Baťa.
Eliška lived to the age of 93 and will be forever remembered as an eternal symbol of elegance, grit, and unprecedented racing brilliance.
Source: Škoda Motorsport
Eliška Junková Eliška Junková Eliška Junková
Eliška Junková - Czech automobile racer
2. Milena Jesenská: The Woman Kafka Needed More Than the Other Way Around
Most people who've heard the name Milena Jesenská know her as a footnote: Kafka's translator, Kafka's lover, the recipient of the Letters to Milena. That framing does her a massive disservice.
Born in Prague in 1896, Milena Jesenská was far more than just Franz Kafka’s literary muse and romantic correspondent;
Milena Jesenská Czech journalist and writer
she was a fiercely independent journalist, feminist, and resistance hero whose sharp pen tackled everything from politics and war to female fashion and domestic life.
After breaking free from her father's rigid expectations, which included a forced stint in medical school and a stay in a psychiatric facility to stop her from dating her first husband, Ernst Polak, Jesenská went on to launch a brilliant journalistic career in Vienna and Prague, becoming a prominent voice for publications like Tribuna, Lidové noviny, and Přítomnost.
Though her life was plagued by turbulent marriages, financial hardship, and a long battle with morphine addiction, her unwavering moral compass led her to reject communism and join the anti-Nazi resistance (V boj) during World War II, helping dissidents flee the country.
Known for her courage, poetic prose, and deep empathy, "Mother Milena" ultimately paid the ultimate price for her patriotism, offering warmth and moral strength to her fellow prisoners in the Ravensbrück concentration camp before tragically dying of kidney failure in 1944.
Source: idnes.cz
3. Toyen: The Artist Who Refused to Be a Woman on Paper
Long before "gender fluidity" entered our vocabulary, Marie Čermínová completely erased her past to invent someone entirely free: Toyen.
At sixteen, she walked away from her family forever, working in a Žižkov soap factory before taking the avant-garde world by storm.
She stripped away her given name, adopted a mysterious, gender-neutral pseudonym (likely derived from the French citoyen, meaning "citizen"), wore tailored men’s suits, and spoke using male Czech grammatical endings, a radical act in a language where gender is baked into nearly every sentence.
Toyen wasn't attempting to spark a debate on gender theory; she simply refused to inhabit any category she hadn't carved out herself.
Together with her lifelong artistic partner, Jindřich Štyrský, she joined the 1920s avant-garde movement and helped reshape it.
After moving to Paris, the duo birthed Artificialism, a poetic alternative to Surrealism that bridged raw abstraction with dreamscapes.
Entrenched in André Breton’s inner circle, Toyen explored taboos, lesbian desire, and visceral eroticism with an unapologetic honesty decades ahead of her time.
When the Nazi occupation swept across Prague and banned Surrealism, Toyen’s defiance turned toward survival. In secret, she hid the Jewish surrealist poet Jindřich Heisler in her apartment for years, right under the Gestapo's nose. Foreshadowing the totalitarian shadow of the 1948 communist coup, she packed her entire life into crates in 1947 and escaped to Paris permanently, remaining dedicated to her easel until her final days.
Source: wikiart.org
Toyen - czech painter and artist Toyen -The future of Freedom (1946) Toyen. Untitled. 1940. From the Shooting Gallery (Strelnice) (Prague Fr. Borovy, 1946) The Museum of Toyen, Three Dancers, 1925
Toyen - Painter and drafter
4. Lata Brandisová: The Countess Who Beat the Nazis on Horseback
In 1937, Countess Marie Immaculata "Lata" Brandisová won the Velká pardubická, the most brutal steeplechase race in continental Europe. A race so dangerous, it had killed both horses and riders.
Competing on her petite golden mare Norma, she dominated the field to win by a staggering seven horse lengths and she remains, to this day, the only woman to have ever won it.
The timing mattered as much as the win. The atmospheric dread of Nazi expansionism hung thick over Czechoslovakia, and the race was packed with elite riders from Hitler's combat units expecting an easy demonstration of German superiority.
Having fought for years just for the right to ride, initially needing permission from the English Royal Jockey Club to compete against hostile male riders, the 42-year-old Czech noblewoman who beat the Nazi officers at their own dangerous game became an instant, euphoric symbol of national defiance as forty thousand spectators went wild in the stands.
Yet, her story took a tragic turn: after surviving a horrific racing fall in 1949, the communist regime nationalized her family estate, forcing the aging countess to spend twenty-five years in a remote forest cabin without running water or electricity.
There is now an entire book about her 'Unbreakable: The Woman Who Defied the Nazis in the World's Most Dangerous Horse Race' and a dedicated race in her honor in Pardubice. Despite these achievments, her name remains tragically overlooked outside equestrian and Czech history circles.
Source: iDNES.cz
5. Františka Plamínková: The Woman Who Fought for the Vote and Never Backed Down
Decades before mid-century civil rights movements swept the West, Františka Plamínková was single-handedly constructing the blueprint for gender equality in Central Europe.
Starting her career as a teacher, she immediately took aim at a draconian Austro-Hungarian law that forced female educators into legal celibacy, arguing fiercely that educated women should be supported in becoming mothers rather than punished for it. She eventually succeeded in getting the law abolished, but her ambition didn't stop there:
she went on to found the Committee for Women’s Suffrage in 1905, established the Women's National Council in 1923, and served as a senator in Czechoslovakia for nearly fifteen years—all while holding vice-chair positions in four international women's organizations.
Her moral clarity was as fearless as her politics. At the height of the crisis in 1938, Plamínková wrote an open letter directly to Adolf Hitler, condemning his insults toward the Czech president, and later confronted the Nazi-installed President Hácha over the complete exclusion of women from public governance.
Her uncompromising defiance made her a high-value target for the regime; following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, she was arrested by the Gestapo and executed by firing squad.
Though her name is tragically omitted from most history textbooks, Plamínková remains one of the most formidable political architects and human rights warriors Europe has ever seen.
Source: Senát PČR
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