![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/Bacilinek-1929-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Karel \u0160tapfer, painter, illustrator and head stage designer of the National Theater in Prague, designed the first Bacil\u00ednek puppets as well as the cover of the first print edition. Karel Driml, Bacil\u00ednek: vesel\u00e1 tragedie pro mal\u00e9 i velk\u00e9 o zdrav\u00ed a nemoci o \u010dty\u0159ech jedn\u00e1n\u00edch s p\u0159edehrou [Bacilinek: A Cheerful Tragedy for Children and Adults on Health and Disease] (Choce\u0148: Tisk\u00e1rna “Loutk\u00e1\u0159e” spol. r.o., 1929). National Medical Library\/ Medical Museum Library, MA 4381<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
Object of the Month: January 2021<\/span><\/h1>\nBacil\u00ednek<\/span><\/h1>\nOn its web pages and on facebook, the Chrudim Puppetry Museum<\/a> has shared the stage music composed by Milo\u0161 Smatek<\/a> (1895-1974) for Jan Mal\u00edk’s 1950 production of Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>. Thank you!<\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.puppets.cz\/cs\/aktuality\/nahravka-z-archivu-bacilinek<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nIn the second half of the 19th century the work of John Snow<\/a>, Louis Pasteur<\/a> and Robert Koch<\/a> (1843-1910) demonstrated the role of germs as agents of infection. The turn of the century saw also an unprecedented expansion of campaigns of disease prevention and public and private hygiene, driven by public welfare organizations, state agencies, as well as makers of cleaning products for the home, the body and the mouth. Health education took up all available media<\/a>. Images and stories of monstrous bacteria as villains and health workers or detergents as heroes<\/a> fought tuberculosis and sold toothpaste. Readers and viewers related to human beings the monsters attack and the heroes save, teach and lead.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/1924-obrazek-cut.jpg\")
<\/a>What did the bacteria see through the keyhole: from the film Jinks, M\u011bs\u00ed\u010dn\u00edk dorostu \u010cerven\u00e9ho k\u0159\u00ed\u017ee<\/em> [Red Cross Youth Monthly] 4\/5 (1924), 67.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\nEarly in the new century, germs entered both the silver screen and the stage. In the 1920s and 1930s, the London Health and Cleanliness Council fought infection and promoted clean homes with rotoscoped films featuring Giro the Germ<\/em><\/a>. Aboard a fly, Giro enters homes, multiplies and does harm. Already in 1919, the New York Bray Productions<\/a> studio produced an animated film titled Jinks<\/em><\/a> for the Brooklyn Committee on Tuberculosis. The title character loses his job due to disease, is rejected for life insurance and visits a doctor only when compelled by his wife. When he returns, he has a terrifying dream: a \u201csportive germ\u201d of tuberculosis named Mike Robe decided to settle in Jinks\u2019s lungs and start a family. The germ and his fianc\u00e9 marry in a discarded tomato can and with their progeny, numbering thousands, set off towards their new home. Jinks wakes in terror and begins his reform right away: inhaling deeply by the window, exercising strenuously and getting a thorough physical exam. When the bacteria see this, they explode in panic. The National Tuberculosis Association distributed the film through commercial theaters, schools and public lectures, as well as travelling productions using a projection truck. The League of Red Cross Societies lent the film to Czechoslovakia and beginning in 1920, the Red Cross and the Masaryk League against Tuberculosis screened it at health education events and in schools under the title \u201cPan Brou\u010dek\u201d (Mr. Bug). The film does not seem to have survived in the US or in Europe and the names of its makers are unknown today.<\/p>\nThe Czechoslovak 1920s drive against TBC made use of other films as well, but for the countless puppet theater enthusiasts in pre-war Czechoslovakia, educational theatre performances held much greater appeal. A key author of \u201eplays with purpose\u201c on health themes was the hygienist Karel Driml (1891-1929), whose 1922 Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> (Little Bacillus) play remained a fixture of professional, amateur and school puppet stages at least until the 1960s. After graduation from the Czech Medical Faculty in Prague and war service in the navy, Driml received a Rockefeller scholarship to study public health at the Johns Hopkins University. Having returned from Baltimore, he became an official of the Ministry of Public Health. He was a dedicated puppeteer from his high school years. Driml wrote dozens of plays: both Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> and Za\u010darovan\u00e1 zem\u011b<\/em><\/a> (The Enchanted Land, 1922) deal with tuberculosis, a play titled Brok and Flok<\/em> (dog names) with preventing rabies (1923), \u0160pirit\u00e1r aneb pekeln\u00fd alchymista<\/em> (Spiriter, or, the Alchemist from Hell, 1929) with alcoholism. Other plays directly promote soap brands, life insurance or Thymoline toothpaste. His characters and plots develop those of traditional puppet theater, but reflect the contemporary world and introduce new objectives. Puppet germs appear both in Bacil\u00ednek and the toothpaste promotion play Budul\u00ednka bol\u00ed zoubek<\/em><\/a> (Budul\u00ednek has a toothache, 1924).<\/p>\nDriml also wrote the screenplays for several films on health subjects, directed by Josef Kokeisl (1894-1951): Procitnut\u00ed \u017eeny<\/em> (Awakening the Woman, 1926, \u201ean unique epic on female hygiene\u201c), Pern\u00edkov\u00e1 chaloupka<\/em> (Hansel and Gretel, 1927), Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek a Budul\u00ednek<\/em> (Punch and Budul\u00ednek, 1927) on dental hygiene, V blouzn\u011bn\u00ed<\/em> (Enraptured, 1928) on the benefits of insurance, the comedy Pramen l\u00e1sky<\/em> (Spring of Love, 1928) promoting the Pod\u011bbrady spa, St\u00edn ve sv\u011btle<\/em> (Shadow in the Light, 1928) on trachoma, as well as Popelka<\/em> (Cinderella, 1929).<\/p>\nDriml may have recognized the value of puppets for health education during his time as a Rockefeller scholar. The campaigns to fight alcoholism and tuberculosis financed by the foundation in the US and, since 1919, in France, did use puppet shows as well as travelling exhibitions, brochures or films. The French performances featured the traditional Guignol (Punch): a play written by Henri de Gressigny<\/a> on the dangers of TBC and alcohol use was performed across France between 1919 and 1923 and was seen by hundreds of thousands of children. According to Driml, however, the Jinks<\/em> film was the direct inspiration for Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>. In the play, the witch Jedubaba summons Belzebub, the Devil, asking him to create a curse that will harm humankind in the epoch of modernity and progress. The Devil creates Bacil\u00ednek, a creature so small to be invisible, and The Fly, which will carry him, as it did Giro, into every home. The character of the Fly, which appears also in the 1922 Enchanted Land<\/em>, links infection to dirt, oblivious to most common means of TBC transmission.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Vit-Skala-Bacilinek.jpg\")
<\/a>V\u00edt Sk\u00e1la, Bacil\u00ednek (Bacil\u00ednek: Poh\u00e1dka<\/em> (Praha: Vojt\u011bch \u0160eba, 1930)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\nThe wife of the poor cobbler Dratvi\u010dka (\u201cTwine\u201d) from Hloup\u00e1 Lhota (Sillyham) fell ill with TBC. The whole family with four children lives in dirt in one room, lacks money for a doctor or good food, trusts harmful potions sold by a quack, and what money the cobbler makes, he spends on drink. Just like Mike Robe, Bacil\u00ednek plans to settle in Dratvi\u010dka\u2019s lungs with his wife and kids. A long dialogue between Dratvi\u010dka and \u0160krhola (a classical simpleton puppet character), full of mishearings and puns familiar from traditional puppetry, demonstrates the dullness of both villagers. At that point, a puppet troupe arrives with Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek (Punch) at the helm, who tries to show them the right path. From the papers, Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek has learnt on Robert Koch\u2019s discoveries, visits the scientist in Berlin and makes the acquaintance of the tiny animals that cause consumption. The Punch and the Doctor then set out to spread enlightenment \u201eto the people, to schools, towns and simple dwellings, to air their rooms, to teach them to live well, to drink milk and to love fresh air and sun. \u201c The third act returns to the cobbler\u2019s shack: his wife has died and the quack woman tries to impose the harmful regime that killed her on Dratvi\u010dka as well. Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek and the Doctor enter, Koch examines the cobbler and prescribes clean water from the pump, the scent of the wood (fresh air), enough milk and eggs in place of brandy and cleanliness. In the last act, Dratvi\u010dka is \u201eall new\u201c: he drinks milk, sits in the sun and exercises in the \u201eSokol\u201c gym. When Bacil\u00ednek sees his metamorphosis, he despairs and commit suicide, followed by his wife, as well as the witch Jedubaba.<\/p>\n
The play premiered on August 16, 1922 at the Social Care Exhibition in Brno co-organized by Driml and was published the next year by the Loutk\u00e1\u0159<\/em> (Puppeteer) journal in Choce\u0148. Follow-up social care exhibitions<\/a> in Moravian cities featured the play as well. With a 1923 decree, the Ministry of Public Health recommended using the play and other works of Driml for promoting public hygiene, giving Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> an official stamp of approval. The play was published again in 1925 and translated into Slovak<\/a>, German<\/a>, Serbian and Dutch<\/a> languages. In Serbian, a version for blind readers was brought out as well. In Czechoslovakia, hundreds of theaters and troupes put on Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>: Sokol<\/a>, school or military ensembles, local Red Cross and Red Cross Youth units and local sections of Ochrana matek a d\u011bt\u00ed (Mother and Child Protection), but also semi-professional theaters including Loutkov\u00e9 divadlo Um\u011bleck\u00e9 v\u00fdchovy<\/a> (Art Education Puppet Theatre) in Prague with Jan Mal\u00edk (1904-1980) in 1935, the Ka\u0161p\u00e1rkova \u0159\u00ed\u0161e (Punch Kingdom) in Olomouc in 1937 or the Divadeln\u00ed studio (Theater Studio) of Anton\u00edn Turek in Brno beginning in 1938. In 1929, the Red Cross- affiliated Divadlo ml\u00e1de\u017ee (Youth Theater) performed Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> with living actors, under the direction of Miloslav Jare\u0161 (1903-1980).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Loutkar-12-6-1926-Kromeriz-1024x487.jpg\")
<\/a>Production of the Sokol theater troupe in Krom\u011b\u0159\u00ed\u017e, 1926. Loutk\u00e1\u0159<\/em> 12\/6 (1926), 122<\/p><\/div><\/p>\nTheaters, including the Turek studio in Brno or the Theater of Anna Sedl\u00e1\u010dkov\u00e1 in Prague, continued to stage Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> in the years of the<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/Bacilinek-I-683x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>
Bacil\u00ednek, a marionette by an unknown maker after Karel \u0160tapfer’s design, Moravia, 1920s-1930s. Collection of the Moravian Museum. We thank dr. Jaroslav Blecha for making the pictures available to us.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
Nazi occupation. In the summer months of 1944, the play in German translation was performed by girls living in the TBC housing for children in the Theresienstadt ghetto (Kinder Erholungsheim S\u00fcdstrasse 1<\/em>), directed by the pediatrician Arno\u0161t Podvinec (1900-1948). Most actresses that appeared in this Bacil\u00ednek did not live for another year. Of this version of the play, only the prologue has survived<\/a>. According to this fragment, the play, put into verse by Driml, was adapted by another doctor (Podvinec) \u201eproperly to target our current situation. \u201c<\/p>\nThe interest in Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> did not drop after the war either: the puppet stage of the Central Army House staged it in 1947 for the benefit of flood victims and in 1950, Jan Mal\u00edk took up again his pre-war productions in the Central Puppet Theater in Prague. The premiere took place on June 25, 1950. In 1951, the Olomouc New Puppet Stage followed. The original 1922 puppets of Bacil\u00ednek, his wife and the Fly, figures not readily available on the market, were designed by the stage director of the National Theatre, the painter Karel \u0160tapfer (1863-1930) and his drawings inspired many later marionettes, without limiting the puppeteers\u2019 invention. Mal\u00edk\u2019s 1950s productions used wayang puppets moved from the bottom, common in Czechoslovak professional puppetry in that decade. The problem of Bacil\u00ednek\u2019s size, easily solved in animated cinema, gave rise to many creative arrangements. Usually, the puppet was smaller than its fellows, but big enough to communicate with them. Driml recommended framing the germ with a circular light on the wall, suggesting microscope images. Mal\u00edk presented changes in size by combining the puppet with projections and illuminated props.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/Loutkar-VII-Stapfer-detail-1024x607.jpg\")
<\/a>Karel \u0160tapfer, n\u00e1vrhy Bacil\u00ednka, Bacil\u00ednky a Mouchy, Loutk\u00e1\u0159 VII\/7 (1923). Karel \u0160tapfer, designs of Bacil\u00ednek, his wife and the Fly, Loutk\u00e1\u0159 VII\/7 (1923)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
During half century of Czechoslovak history and the development of health education, Driml\u2019s \u201epuppet tragicomedy: underwent many changes as well. We know only little about revisions made by directors. In the third print edition<\/a> published in 1929 Driml himself made small changes and added a lecture for schoolchildren titled \u201cYour worst enemy: tuberculosis.\u201d Later editions published by Jind\u0159ich Vesel\u00fd (1885- 1939) and Jan Mal\u00edk were much more substantial.<\/p>\nThe spiritus movens of pre-war Czech puppetry Jind\u0159ich Vesel\u00fd brought out Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> in prose, with many verse dialogues. The book came out in 1930 in the Prague Vojt\u011bch \u0160eba publishing house, with illustrations by painters and puppeteers V\u00edt Sk\u00e1la (1883-1967) and Ota Buben\u00ed\u010dek (1871-1962), intended as a tribute to recently deceased Driml. Vesel\u00fd inserted passages from other plays<\/a> by the hygienist, his publicity slogans, stories of his educational work and plots of his films, as well as chapters from history of medicine and hygiene \u201efor older schoolchildren\u201c and a short history of Czech puppetry. Driml appeared in the narrative itself, taking the place of Robert Koch.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Vojtech-Cinybulk-Frontispis-Bacilinek-1950-749x1024.jpg\")
<\/a>Vojt\u011bch Cinybulk, frontispiece, Karel Driml, Jan Mal\u00edk, Bacil\u00ednek: Vesel\u00e1 tragedie pro mal\u00e9 i velk\u00e9 o zdrav\u00ed a o nemoci<\/em> (Praha: Um\u011bn\u00ed lidu, 1950)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\nIn his 1935 production, Jan Mal\u00edk introduced, besides Bacil\u00ednek, germs of children’s diseases such as diphtheria, typhus, influenza or smallpox, highlighted the educational tone of several dialogues by extra verses and added an optimistic quatrain at the end of the play. In the new print edition published in 1950<\/a>, he followed Vesel\u00fd in replacing Koch with Driml and added interludes with a narrator\u2019s commentary. Smaller changes in the text reflected \u2013 not enough for some reviewers – the new social atmosphere of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The character of the Devil sheds any religious connotations, the Punch finds reports of medical discoveries in an unspecified newspaper, rather than the rightwing N\u00e1rodn\u00ed politika stopped in 1945, and presents himself to the doctor as \u201ePunch, the young pioneer!\u201c Gone is the remark on expensive medical care as the cobbler\u2019s reason for going to the quack; on the other hand, the play mentions farmers accused of feeding milk to pigs instead of meeting obligatory milk deliveries. Villagers have debts \u201eat the pub, \u201c rather than \u201ewith the Jew\u201c: the expression may have become intolerable to Mal\u00edk after the war. In his concluding technical remarks, Mal\u00edk proposes puppet designs and scenic and sound innovations derived from his own practice, but also accents ideological changes: \u201cDratvi\u010dka is a type of village proletarian, who arrives at consciousness in the course of the play. \u0160krhola, on the other hand, should have the features of a nagging village prattler and perhaps even a reactionary kulak.\u201d<\/p>\nFor some early 1950s critics, Mal\u00edk\u2019s revisions were far from satisfactory. A post-<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/Bacilinek-II-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Bacil\u00ednek, a marionette by an unknown maker after Karel \u0160tapfer’s design, Moravia, 1920s-1930s. Collection of the Moravian Museum.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
performance discussion among artists, writers and teachers, organized in the Central Puppet Theater in 1950, opened a politically charged debate. Vlasta Brychtov\u00e1 reacted to the play\u2019s publication with a scathing review in the cultural section of the Lidov\u00e9 noviny<\/em> paper. In her view, both Driml and Mal\u00edk ignore the social context that gives rise to infections and with \u201ebourgeois hypocrisy\u201c seek their origin in illiteracy and alcoholism. Young viewers are shown the village as a world saturated with superstition, a world of ignoramuses and drunks, at a time when it begins \u201eprofoundly to change, when culture, intentionally withheld by the bourgeoisie, begins to pervade the countryside. \u201c With little justice, Brychtov\u00e1 attacks the characters of the witch and the devil, the episodes of conjuring and charming (which, to Driml, often represent science in the genre of fairy tale) as well as macabre scenes that terrify the young audience. (In his commentary, Mal\u00edk emphasized that Bacil\u00ednek and his wife must remain negative characters, but there is \u201eno place for terror, no frightening tone or spectacle can appear in the play\u201c.) Erik Kol\u00e1r (1906-1876) defended Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> in Lidov\u00e9 noviny<\/em> in 1951. He admitted that the play passes over social causes of tuberculosis, but appreciated the continuing role of Driml\u2019s play in the struggle for healthy way of life, its display of contemporary milieu, science and the scientist in puppet theater, as well as the place of Mal\u00edk\u2019s productions in the making of new 20 century theater. Kol\u00e1r suggested continuing the debate: it is, however, unclear to what extent Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> remained the object of open controversy.<\/p>\nThe Central Puppet Theater staged the play at least until mid-1950s; in the early 1960s<\/a>, the play remained on the repertoire of amateur theaters. Did various stages continue to put on Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> later? Did the 1950s debates influence the shape of later productions? We will be thankful to our readers for their recollections of Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>, from whatever time they may come.<\/p>\n\u0160imon Kr\u00fdsl<\/p>\n
On its web pages and on facebook, the Chrudim Puppetry Museum<\/a> has shared the stage music composed by Milo\u0161 Smatek<\/a> (1895-1974) for Jan Mal\u00edk’s 1950 production of Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>. Thank you!<\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.puppets.cz\/cs\/aktuality\/nahravka-z-archivu-bacilinek<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n In the second half of the 19th century the work of John Snow<\/a>, Louis Pasteur<\/a> and Robert Koch<\/a> (1843-1910) demonstrated the role of germs as agents of infection. The turn of the century saw also an unprecedented expansion of campaigns of disease prevention and public and private hygiene, driven by public welfare organizations, state agencies, as well as makers of cleaning products for the home, the body and the mouth. Health education took up all available media<\/a>. Images and stories of monstrous bacteria as villains and health workers or detergents as heroes<\/a> fought tuberculosis and sold toothpaste. Readers and viewers related to human beings the monsters attack and the heroes save, teach and lead.<\/p>\n What did the bacteria see through the keyhole: from the film Jinks, M\u011bs\u00ed\u010dn\u00edk dorostu \u010cerven\u00e9ho k\u0159\u00ed\u017ee<\/em> [Red Cross Youth Monthly] 4\/5 (1924), 67.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Early in the new century, germs entered both the silver screen and the stage. In the 1920s and 1930s, the London Health and Cleanliness Council fought infection and promoted clean homes with rotoscoped films featuring Giro the Germ<\/em><\/a>. Aboard a fly, Giro enters homes, multiplies and does harm. Already in 1919, the New York Bray Productions<\/a> studio produced an animated film titled Jinks<\/em><\/a> for the Brooklyn Committee on Tuberculosis. The title character loses his job due to disease, is rejected for life insurance and visits a doctor only when compelled by his wife. When he returns, he has a terrifying dream: a \u201csportive germ\u201d of tuberculosis named Mike Robe decided to settle in Jinks\u2019s lungs and start a family. The germ and his fianc\u00e9 marry in a discarded tomato can and with their progeny, numbering thousands, set off towards their new home. Jinks wakes in terror and begins his reform right away: inhaling deeply by the window, exercising strenuously and getting a thorough physical exam. When the bacteria see this, they explode in panic. The National Tuberculosis Association distributed the film through commercial theaters, schools and public lectures, as well as travelling productions using a projection truck. The League of Red Cross Societies lent the film to Czechoslovakia and beginning in 1920, the Red Cross and the Masaryk League against Tuberculosis screened it at health education events and in schools under the title \u201cPan Brou\u010dek\u201d (Mr. Bug). The film does not seem to have survived in the US or in Europe and the names of its makers are unknown today.<\/p>\n The Czechoslovak 1920s drive against TBC made use of other films as well, but for the countless puppet theater enthusiasts in pre-war Czechoslovakia, educational theatre performances held much greater appeal. A key author of \u201eplays with purpose\u201c on health themes was the hygienist Karel Driml (1891-1929), whose 1922 Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> (Little Bacillus) play remained a fixture of professional, amateur and school puppet stages at least until the 1960s. After graduation from the Czech Medical Faculty in Prague and war service in the navy, Driml received a Rockefeller scholarship to study public health at the Johns Hopkins University. Having returned from Baltimore, he became an official of the Ministry of Public Health. He was a dedicated puppeteer from his high school years. Driml wrote dozens of plays: both Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> and Za\u010darovan\u00e1 zem\u011b<\/em><\/a> (The Enchanted Land, 1922) deal with tuberculosis, a play titled Brok and Flok<\/em> (dog names) with preventing rabies (1923), \u0160pirit\u00e1r aneb pekeln\u00fd alchymista<\/em> (Spiriter, or, the Alchemist from Hell, 1929) with alcoholism. Other plays directly promote soap brands, life insurance or Thymoline toothpaste. His characters and plots develop those of traditional puppet theater, but reflect the contemporary world and introduce new objectives. Puppet germs appear both in Bacil\u00ednek and the toothpaste promotion play Budul\u00ednka bol\u00ed zoubek<\/em><\/a> (Budul\u00ednek has a toothache, 1924).<\/p>\n Driml also wrote the screenplays for several films on health subjects, directed by Josef Kokeisl (1894-1951): Procitnut\u00ed \u017eeny<\/em> (Awakening the Woman, 1926, \u201ean unique epic on female hygiene\u201c), Pern\u00edkov\u00e1 chaloupka<\/em> (Hansel and Gretel, 1927), Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek a Budul\u00ednek<\/em> (Punch and Budul\u00ednek, 1927) on dental hygiene, V blouzn\u011bn\u00ed<\/em> (Enraptured, 1928) on the benefits of insurance, the comedy Pramen l\u00e1sky<\/em> (Spring of Love, 1928) promoting the Pod\u011bbrady spa, St\u00edn ve sv\u011btle<\/em> (Shadow in the Light, 1928) on trachoma, as well as Popelka<\/em> (Cinderella, 1929).<\/p>\n Driml may have recognized the value of puppets for health education during his time as a Rockefeller scholar. The campaigns to fight alcoholism and tuberculosis financed by the foundation in the US and, since 1919, in France, did use puppet shows as well as travelling exhibitions, brochures or films. The French performances featured the traditional Guignol (Punch): a play written by Henri de Gressigny<\/a> on the dangers of TBC and alcohol use was performed across France between 1919 and 1923 and was seen by hundreds of thousands of children. According to Driml, however, the Jinks<\/em> film was the direct inspiration for Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>. In the play, the witch Jedubaba summons Belzebub, the Devil, asking him to create a curse that will harm humankind in the epoch of modernity and progress. The Devil creates Bacil\u00ednek, a creature so small to be invisible, and The Fly, which will carry him, as it did Giro, into every home. The character of the Fly, which appears also in the 1922 Enchanted Land<\/em>, links infection to dirt, oblivious to most common means of TBC transmission.<\/p>\n V\u00edt Sk\u00e1la, Bacil\u00ednek (Bacil\u00ednek: Poh\u00e1dka<\/em> (Praha: Vojt\u011bch \u0160eba, 1930)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n The wife of the poor cobbler Dratvi\u010dka (\u201cTwine\u201d) from Hloup\u00e1 Lhota (Sillyham) fell ill with TBC. The whole family with four children lives in dirt in one room, lacks money for a doctor or good food, trusts harmful potions sold by a quack, and what money the cobbler makes, he spends on drink. Just like Mike Robe, Bacil\u00ednek plans to settle in Dratvi\u010dka\u2019s lungs with his wife and kids. A long dialogue between Dratvi\u010dka and \u0160krhola (a classical simpleton puppet character), full of mishearings and puns familiar from traditional puppetry, demonstrates the dullness of both villagers. At that point, a puppet troupe arrives with Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek (Punch) at the helm, who tries to show them the right path. From the papers, Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek has learnt on Robert Koch\u2019s discoveries, visits the scientist in Berlin and makes the acquaintance of the tiny animals that cause consumption. The Punch and the Doctor then set out to spread enlightenment \u201eto the people, to schools, towns and simple dwellings, to air their rooms, to teach them to live well, to drink milk and to love fresh air and sun. \u201c The third act returns to the cobbler\u2019s shack: his wife has died and the quack woman tries to impose the harmful regime that killed her on Dratvi\u010dka as well. Ka\u0161p\u00e1rek and the Doctor enter, Koch examines the cobbler and prescribes clean water from the pump, the scent of the wood (fresh air), enough milk and eggs in place of brandy and cleanliness. In the last act, Dratvi\u010dka is \u201eall new\u201c: he drinks milk, sits in the sun and exercises in the \u201eSokol\u201c gym. When Bacil\u00ednek sees his metamorphosis, he despairs and commit suicide, followed by his wife, as well as the witch Jedubaba.<\/p>\n The play premiered on August 16, 1922 at the Social Care Exhibition in Brno co-organized by Driml and was published the next year by the Loutk\u00e1\u0159<\/em> (Puppeteer) journal in Choce\u0148. Follow-up social care exhibitions<\/a> in Moravian cities featured the play as well. With a 1923 decree, the Ministry of Public Health recommended using the play and other works of Driml for promoting public hygiene, giving Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> an official stamp of approval. The play was published again in 1925 and translated into Slovak<\/a>, German<\/a>, Serbian and Dutch<\/a> languages. In Serbian, a version for blind readers was brought out as well. In Czechoslovakia, hundreds of theaters and troupes put on Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>: Sokol<\/a>, school or military ensembles, local Red Cross and Red Cross Youth units and local sections of Ochrana matek a d\u011bt\u00ed (Mother and Child Protection), but also semi-professional theaters including Loutkov\u00e9 divadlo Um\u011bleck\u00e9 v\u00fdchovy<\/a> (Art Education Puppet Theatre) in Prague with Jan Mal\u00edk (1904-1980) in 1935, the Ka\u0161p\u00e1rkova \u0159\u00ed\u0161e (Punch Kingdom) in Olomouc in 1937 or the Divadeln\u00ed studio (Theater Studio) of Anton\u00edn Turek in Brno beginning in 1938. In 1929, the Red Cross- affiliated Divadlo ml\u00e1de\u017ee (Youth Theater) performed Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> with living actors, under the direction of Miloslav Jare\u0161 (1903-1980).<\/p>\n Production of the Sokol theater troupe in Krom\u011b\u0159\u00ed\u017e, 1926. Loutk\u00e1\u0159<\/em> 12\/6 (1926), 122<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Theaters, including the Turek studio in Brno or the Theater of Anna Sedl\u00e1\u010dkov\u00e1 in Prague, continued to stage Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> in the years of the<\/p>\n Nazi occupation. In the summer months of 1944, the play in German translation was performed by girls living in the TBC housing for children in the Theresienstadt ghetto (Kinder Erholungsheim S\u00fcdstrasse 1<\/em>), directed by the pediatrician Arno\u0161t Podvinec (1900-1948). Most actresses that appeared in this Bacil\u00ednek did not live for another year. Of this version of the play, only the prologue has survived<\/a>. According to this fragment, the play, put into verse by Driml, was adapted by another doctor (Podvinec) \u201eproperly to target our current situation. \u201c<\/p>\n The interest in Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> did not drop after the war either: the puppet stage of the Central Army House staged it in 1947 for the benefit of flood victims and in 1950, Jan Mal\u00edk took up again his pre-war productions in the Central Puppet Theater in Prague. The premiere took place on June 25, 1950. In 1951, the Olomouc New Puppet Stage followed. The original 1922 puppets of Bacil\u00ednek, his wife and the Fly, figures not readily available on the market, were designed by the stage director of the National Theatre, the painter Karel \u0160tapfer (1863-1930) and his drawings inspired many later marionettes, without limiting the puppeteers\u2019 invention. Mal\u00edk\u2019s 1950s productions used wayang puppets moved from the bottom, common in Czechoslovak professional puppetry in that decade. The problem of Bacil\u00ednek\u2019s size, easily solved in animated cinema, gave rise to many creative arrangements. Usually, the puppet was smaller than its fellows, but big enough to communicate with them. Driml recommended framing the germ with a circular light on the wall, suggesting microscope images. Mal\u00edk presented changes in size by combining the puppet with projections and illuminated props.<\/p>\n Karel \u0160tapfer, n\u00e1vrhy Bacil\u00ednka, Bacil\u00ednky a Mouchy, Loutk\u00e1\u0159 VII\/7 (1923). Karel \u0160tapfer, designs of Bacil\u00ednek, his wife and the Fly, Loutk\u00e1\u0159 VII\/7 (1923)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n During half century of Czechoslovak history and the development of health education, Driml\u2019s \u201epuppet tragicomedy: underwent many changes as well. We know only little about revisions made by directors. In the third print edition<\/a> published in 1929 Driml himself made small changes and added a lecture for schoolchildren titled \u201cYour worst enemy: tuberculosis.\u201d Later editions published by Jind\u0159ich Vesel\u00fd (1885- 1939) and Jan Mal\u00edk were much more substantial.<\/p>\n The spiritus movens of pre-war Czech puppetry Jind\u0159ich Vesel\u00fd brought out Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> in prose, with many verse dialogues. The book came out in 1930 in the Prague Vojt\u011bch \u0160eba publishing house, with illustrations by painters and puppeteers V\u00edt Sk\u00e1la (1883-1967) and Ota Buben\u00ed\u010dek (1871-1962), intended as a tribute to recently deceased Driml. Vesel\u00fd inserted passages from other plays<\/a> by the hygienist, his publicity slogans, stories of his educational work and plots of his films, as well as chapters from history of medicine and hygiene \u201efor older schoolchildren\u201c and a short history of Czech puppetry. Driml appeared in the narrative itself, taking the place of Robert Koch.<\/p>\n Vojt\u011bch Cinybulk, frontispiece, Karel Driml, Jan Mal\u00edk, Bacil\u00ednek: Vesel\u00e1 tragedie pro mal\u00e9 i velk\u00e9 o zdrav\u00ed a o nemoci<\/em> (Praha: Um\u011bn\u00ed lidu, 1950)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n In his 1935 production, Jan Mal\u00edk introduced, besides Bacil\u00ednek, germs of children’s diseases such as diphtheria, typhus, influenza or smallpox, highlighted the educational tone of several dialogues by extra verses and added an optimistic quatrain at the end of the play. In the new print edition published in 1950<\/a>, he followed Vesel\u00fd in replacing Koch with Driml and added interludes with a narrator\u2019s commentary. Smaller changes in the text reflected \u2013 not enough for some reviewers – the new social atmosphere of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The character of the Devil sheds any religious connotations, the Punch finds reports of medical discoveries in an unspecified newspaper, rather than the rightwing N\u00e1rodn\u00ed politika stopped in 1945, and presents himself to the doctor as \u201ePunch, the young pioneer!\u201c Gone is the remark on expensive medical care as the cobbler\u2019s reason for going to the quack; on the other hand, the play mentions farmers accused of feeding milk to pigs instead of meeting obligatory milk deliveries. Villagers have debts \u201eat the pub, \u201c rather than \u201ewith the Jew\u201c: the expression may have become intolerable to Mal\u00edk after the war. In his concluding technical remarks, Mal\u00edk proposes puppet designs and scenic and sound innovations derived from his own practice, but also accents ideological changes: \u201cDratvi\u010dka is a type of village proletarian, who arrives at consciousness in the course of the play. \u0160krhola, on the other hand, should have the features of a nagging village prattler and perhaps even a reactionary kulak.\u201d<\/p>\n For some early 1950s critics, Mal\u00edk\u2019s revisions were far from satisfactory. A post-<\/p>\n Bacil\u00ednek, a marionette by an unknown maker after Karel \u0160tapfer’s design, Moravia, 1920s-1930s. Collection of the Moravian Museum.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n performance discussion among artists, writers and teachers, organized in the Central Puppet Theater in 1950, opened a politically charged debate. Vlasta Brychtov\u00e1 reacted to the play\u2019s publication with a scathing review in the cultural section of the Lidov\u00e9 noviny<\/em> paper. In her view, both Driml and Mal\u00edk ignore the social context that gives rise to infections and with \u201ebourgeois hypocrisy\u201c seek their origin in illiteracy and alcoholism. Young viewers are shown the village as a world saturated with superstition, a world of ignoramuses and drunks, at a time when it begins \u201eprofoundly to change, when culture, intentionally withheld by the bourgeoisie, begins to pervade the countryside. \u201c With little justice, Brychtov\u00e1 attacks the characters of the witch and the devil, the episodes of conjuring and charming (which, to Driml, often represent science in the genre of fairy tale) as well as macabre scenes that terrify the young audience. (In his commentary, Mal\u00edk emphasized that Bacil\u00ednek and his wife must remain negative characters, but there is \u201eno place for terror, no frightening tone or spectacle can appear in the play\u201c.) Erik Kol\u00e1r (1906-1876) defended Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> in Lidov\u00e9 noviny<\/em> in 1951. He admitted that the play passes over social causes of tuberculosis, but appreciated the continuing role of Driml\u2019s play in the struggle for healthy way of life, its display of contemporary milieu, science and the scientist in puppet theater, as well as the place of Mal\u00edk\u2019s productions in the making of new 20 century theater. Kol\u00e1r suggested continuing the debate: it is, however, unclear to what extent Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> remained the object of open controversy.<\/p>\n The Central Puppet Theater staged the play at least until mid-1950s; in the early 1960s<\/a>, the play remained on the repertoire of amateur theaters. Did various stages continue to put on Bacil\u00ednek<\/em> later? Did the 1950s debates influence the shape of later productions? We will be thankful to our readers for their recollections of Bacil\u00ednek<\/em>, from whatever time they may come.<\/p>\n \u0160imon Kr\u00fdsl<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
Bacil\u00ednek, a marionette by an unknown maker after Karel \u0160tapfer’s design, Moravia, 1920s-1930s. Collection of the Moravian Museum. We thank dr. Jaroslav Blecha for making the pictures available to us.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>
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