Josef Čapek (1887 – 1945)

Josef Čapek was a Czech artist, writer and poet and brother to author Karel Čapek. Josef Čapek was a student of Cubism, which combined with his own playful style, exhibited a primitive note in his paintings. Josef Čapek collaborated with his brother on numerous occasions, which produced many plays and short stories. Josef Čapek is also famous for penning the Czech children’s classic Doggie and Pussycat. Although his brother Karel is usually noted as the man who coined the word Robot, it was actually Josef; Karel introduced the word Robot into literature. Due to his and his brother’s negative attitude towards Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Regime, Josef was arrested shortly after the German invasion in 1939, and was sent to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where he died in 1945. While in Bergen-Belsen he wrote a collection called Poems from a Concentration Camp.