Moravia

Moravia (Czech: Morava; German:  Mähren ; Polish: Morawy; Latin: Moravia) is a historical country in the Czech Republic and one of the historical Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. It was also one of the 17 former crown lands of the Cisleithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1867 to 1918 and one of the five lands of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1928. It has an area of over 20,000 km² and about 3 million inhabitants.

It takes its name from the Morava river, which rises in the northern tip of the region and flows southward to the opposite end, being its major stream. Moravia's largest city and historical capital is Brno; before the Thirty Years' War, Olomouc was another capital.

Though officially abolished by an administrative reform in 1949, Moravia is still commonly acknowledged as a specific land in the Czech Republic. Moravian people are considerably aware of their Moravian identity and there is some rivalry between them and the Czechs from Bohemia. However, by nationality (or ethnicity), most of the Moravian Slavs recognize themselves as Czechs, not Moravians.

Great Moravia

Great Moravia (Latin: Moravia Magna, Greek: Μεγάλη Μοραβία – megale Moravia, Czech: Velká Morava, Slovak: Veľká Morava) or Great Moravian Empire,; both are historiographical terms, formal name is unknown, simply Moravia, was the first, predominantly Slavonic, major state to emerge in the area of Central Europe". Its core territories were located on the northern Morava River along the present-day border of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. However, its extent and location have been called into question. The rival theories place its centre at the south of the river Danube or the Great Hungarian Plain. The exact date of the founding of the Moravian state is controversial, but it is supposed that the state building process was completed in the early 830s under Mojmir I (r. 820s/830s–846), who is the first known Moravian ruler.

Mojmir and his successor, Rastislav (r. 846–870), initially acknowledged the suzerainty of the Carolingian monarchs, but their fights for independence caused a series of armed conflicts with East Francia beginning in the 840s. Moravia reached its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I (r. 870–894), who was occasionally styled as king in contemporaneous sources. Although the borders of his empire cannot be exactly determined, he controlled the core territories of Moravia as well as other neighboring regions, including Bohemia and parts of present-day Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine, for some period of his reign. Separatism and internal conflicts emerging after Svatopluk's death contributed to the fall of Moravia, which was overrun by the Hungarians. The exact date of Moravia's collapse is unknown, but it occurred in the period between 902 and 907.

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic (ⁱ/ˈtʃɛk rᵻˈpʌblɪk/ CHEK-rə-PUB-lik;Czech: Česká republika [ˈt͡ʃɛskaː ˈrɛpuˌblɪka]) is a landlocked country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the southeast and Poland to the northeast. The capital and largest city, Prague, has over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the historical territories of Bohemia,Moravia, and Czech Silesia.

The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire. After the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslids. In 1004, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1212, and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. The King of Bohemia ruled not only Bohemia itself, but also other lands, which together formed the so-called Crown of Bohemia, and he had a vote in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor. In the Hussite wars of the 15th century driven by the Bohemian Reformation, the kingdom faced economic embargoes and defeated five crusades proclaimed by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and organized mainly by the emperor and princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

Alberto Moravia

Alberto Moravia (Italian pronunciation: [alˈbɛrto moˈraːvja]; November 28, 1907 – September 26, 1990), born Alberto Pincherle, was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism.

Moravia is best known for his debut novel Gli indifferenti (published in 1929), and for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista (The Conformist), the basis for the film The Conformist (1970) directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Other novels of his adapted for the cinema are Agostino, filmed with the same title by Mauro Bolognini in 1962; Il Disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon or Contempt), filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Le Mépris (Contempt) (1963); La Noia (Boredom), filmed with that title by Damiano Damiani in 1963 and released in the US as The Empty Canvas in 1964; and La ciociara, filmed by Vittorio de Sica as Two Women (1960). Cedric Kahn's L'Ennui (1998) is another version of La Noia.

Moravia once remarked that the most important facts of his life had been his illness, a tubercular infection of the bones that confined him to a bed for five years, and Fascism, because they both caused him to suffer and do things he otherwise would not have done. "It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will." Moravia was an atheist. His writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie. It was rooted in the tradition of nineteenth-century narrative, underpinned by high social and cultural awareness. In his world, where inherited social, religious and moral beliefs were no longer acceptable, he considered sex and money the only basic criteria for judging social and human reality. Moravia believed that writers must, if they were to be successful in representing reality, "assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude" but also that, ultimately, "A writer survives in spite of his beliefs."