The poet, critic, and translator Stanislav Kostka Neumann (1875-1947) founded his first magazine Nový kult (The New Cult) in 1897. In the early twentieth century, Neumann concurrently edited the eclectic magazine Kmen (Clan) and the literary journal Cerven (June). Cerven ran from 1918 to 1921 with masthead mottos like “Proletkult—Communism—Literature—New Art,” publishing the first Czech translations of Apollinaire and Kafka.
According to Derek Sayer’s The Coasts of Bohemia, Neumann was a perpetual enfant terrible of Czech letters. In addition to his own poetry, he was behind two of the key modernist manifestos, both influential in their day, the Almanac of the Secession (1896) and the Almanac for the Year 1914.
See also: Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). Firestone Library (F) DB2063 .S28 1998
I wrote about this editor and Cerven's sister publication, Kmen--a project I started while a student at Princeton, but had to go to Prague to do it. Neumann is fascinating, a kind of Zelig of the Prague scene for several decades. I went back to look more closely at Cerven--stunning graphics, a real forgotten moment of leftist aesthetic and literary interest. Neumann becomes very hardline after this period. So glad to see Princeton has gotten this. I've always worried these will crumble and no one will ever see them.