The story of a vanished world. The White Unicorn Pharmacy in Prague, its destiny and the destiny of its owners (not only) into the twentieth century
Abstract
The fate of the famous pharmacy "At the White Unicorn" at the Old Town Square in Prague reflects in some ways the complicated history of Bohemia and Central Europe in the first half of the 20th century. The pharmacy has existed since the beginning of the 15th century and was definitely destroyed after the strike of the German grenade during the Prague uprising in May 1945.
PhMr. Max Fanta, owner of the pharmacy in 1884-1925 and his family, made pharmacy "At the White Unicorn" famous.
Max Fanta himself was a prominent pharmacist (he became famous, especially in Germany, as the inventor of a pharmaceutical small bowl from melamine resin, the so called Fantaschale), but his wife, Berta, born Sohrova, who came from the rich Jewish family from Libochovice, was still more famous in the Prague society. Berta Fantová organized a sociable and artistic party in the their salon above the pharmacy before 1914, attended by Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Hugo Bergmann or Albert Einstein (the so called Fantakreis).
Max Fanta's wife was interested in those days the popular theosophy at that time, and was also in personal contact with the founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner. Their daughter, Elsa Fantova, was the first woman, who finished the study of pharmacy in the Czech lands (1908).
She married prominent philosopher and Zionist Hugo Bergmann. Husbands with their children moved to Jerusalem in 1919.
Berta Fantova wanted to leave with her daughter and her family, but she died at the end of 1918. The husbands divorced in the 1930s, but constantly both lived in the Mandatory Palestine (and late in the State of Israel).
Their son Martin was a recognized psychoanalyst in the New York, their daughter Eva finished medicine's studies and became a psychiatrist, and his son Uriel worked with his wife for the UN. Husband Fanta had a son Otto too.
Otto Fanta escaped from Prague before Nazism to England, where died in 1940. The widow after him, Johanna (born Bobasch), was an intimate friend of Albert Einstein in Princeton in the years 1945-1955.