Zdeněk Jirotka
Zdeněk Jirotka (7 January 1911 – 12 April 2003) was a Czechoslovak writer of radio-broadcast plays and author of humorous novels, short stories, and feuilletons. He was born in Ostrava (Silesia), sat for the leaving examination at the secondary industrial school in Hradec Králové in 1933 and then joined the Army where he served until 1940. After the Nazis had annexed Czechoslovakia, Jirotka worked for the Public Works Ministry and in 1942, when his most famous novel Saturnin earned him great success, he became a full-time writer.
Also recorded as Zdenek Jirotka
Zdeněk Jirotka
Mladý svět: týdeník. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1961, 3(52), s. [16]. ISSN 0323-2042. Online: https: ndk.cz/uuid/uuid:40e51c80-69ed-11e4-85f4-5ef3fc9ae867 · Public domain
- Born
- 1911 · Ostrava.
- Died
- 2003 · Prague.
- Nationality
- Czech Republic
- Occupation
- writer · playwright · journalist · screenwriter · editing staff · radio editor
- Fields
- literature · drama · journalism · opinion journalism
- Languages
- Czech
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Zdeněk Jirotka. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q168990 · wikipedia · Zdeněk Jirotka
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
The documentary record
Statements marked “Documentary record” are set in the article beside the passage they confirm. Each is read from the authority records of the institutions named here; select “Prove” to see the record it was read from, where in that record, and when.
Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Complete reading chain (JSON)In this article
Works
Works
Among other newspapers and magazines that Jirotka contributed to were: the Lidové noviny (1940-1945), the Svobodné noviny (1945-1951), and the Dikobraz (1951-1953 and after 1962). • Illustration — Zdeněk Jirotka (Mladý svět, 1961)
• Saturnin, originally published in 1942 (translated into English in 1970), a humorous and satirical story of a charismatic servant, Saturnin, who carries out tasks given by his young employer, but not in the way one would expect. The book plays upon words and meanings of Czech proverbs. Its characters and events reflect the author's nostalgia for the epoch before World War II.
Documentary record
Zdeněk Jirotka appears in the authority records of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek as a writer and humorist (7 November 1911 – 11 April 2003).
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1911
Zdeněk Jirotka born at Ostrava.
2003
Zdeněk Jirotka died at Prague.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Ostrava.
Birth place
Prague.
Death place
Literature
• Sehnalová, Kamila. 2013. Comparative analysis of Czech, English, and German proverb in Jirotka's Saturnin. BA thesis, Charles University, Prague. Link to thesis
Documentary record
Zdeněk Jirotka was born on 7 November 1911 in Ostrava. Zdeněk Jirotka died on 11 April 2003.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Zdeněk Jirotka, revision 1354278072 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q168990: Zdeněk JirotkaWikimedia Foundation
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Zbigniew HerbertAuthor
- Zbigniew JankowskiAuthor
- Zbigniew MorsztynAuthor
- Zbyněk HejdaAuthor
- Zdeněk KalistaAuthor
- Zdeněk MlynářAuthor
- Zdeněk NejedlýAuthor
- Zdeněk RotreklAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Zdeněk Jirotka?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.