When Antonín Dvořák was a young man, he gave piano lessons to make ends meet.
One of his students was a young woman named Josefína Čermáková. She was very beautiful and talented and would become one of the best-known theatre actresses in the country. Dvořák fell in love with her, but she didn’t return his affection.
While visiting the Čermák household, Dvořák eventually started falling in love with Josefina’s younger sister, Anna. Dvořák was thirty-two, and Anna was nineteen.
Anna got pregnant in the summer of 1873, and that November, Dvořák married her in St. Peter’s Church in Prague.
Although she wasn’t as famous as her sister, Anna was also very talented: she was a singer, and she performed her husband’s works in public.
Today, we’re looking at the story of the Dvořák family and Antonín and Anna’s children.

Anna and Antonín Dvořák
Their First Three Children
The Dvořáks welcomed their first baby in April 1874, naming him Otakar. Another baby came in September 1876, who they named Růžena.
In between, in August 1875, they had a daughter who only survived for three days.
The loss of their newborn daughter was hard enough, but additional tragedy struck the family in August and September 1877. Růžena died of accidental phosphorus poisoning in August, then a few weeks later, their firstborn son Otakar died of smallpox.
After the deaths of his three children, Dvořák wrote his Stabat Mater, a setting of the Stabat Mater, a hymn describing Mary’s suffering watching her son Jesus die by crucifixion. He wrote the final draft in October and November 1877 in the weeks after Otakar and Růžena’s deaths.
Dvořák: Stabat Mater
These three deaths left the Dvořáks childless. However, they did continue having children, and happily, all of them survived into adulthood.
Here are their names and what we know about them:
Otilie Dvořáková Suková (1878-1905)

Otilie Dvořáková Suková
Otilie Dvořáková (known as Otilka) was born in June 1878.
She started her music studies at the Prague Conservatory when she was a child. However, in September 1892, when Otilka was fourteen, her life was turned upside down when her family moved to New York City after her father was offered an astronomical salary to head the National Conservatory of Music.
Once in New York, she started studying piano with a woman named Adele Margulies who taught at the Conservatory. She also started composing.
By early 1895, the Dvořák family had had their fill of America. “I will thank God when I am among my own people once more and perhaps sitting somewhere in the woods of Vysoka,” Dvořák wrote. The family returned home that year. Otilie was seventeen.
Dvořák: Czech suite in D major
Upon her arrival back in Bohemia, she married composer and violinist Josef Suk, who was a talented student of her father’s.
Suk later wrote in a tribute to his wife published in the music magazine Zlatá Praha: “Once, after my return from travelling, [Otilie] confessed to me that even she had composed several ‘little pieces for piano.’ Initially, she felt embarrassed to play them for me, but when I finally persuaded her to play, it caused her great joy when, during her second play-through, I stood up with a pencil in my hand and wrote down everything just as I had heard her play it. She clapped her hands and laughed a great deal when I advised her on something, and she was very surprised it had not occurred to her.”
In 1898, she and her husband had a son named Josef.
Dvořák & Suk: A Journey with Jakub Hrůša
Tragically, Otilie died in 1905 of a heart issue. Four of her songs are extant. Maybe future scholarships will unveil more.
Her grandson Josef (1929-2011) grew up to become a well-known solo violinist. Here’s a video of him playing his great-grandfather’s violin concerto:
Dvorák: Violin Concerto A minor Op 53
Anna Dvořáková (1880-1923)
We know relatively little about Anna Dvořáková, aside from the fact that she was likely named after Dvořák’s wife and his mother, both of whom were named Anna.
Magdalena Dvořáková (1881-1952)
Magdalena was born in 1881 and was nicknamed “Magda.”
Like so many other members of her family, Magda was musically talented. She studied in Prague between 1898 and 1902 and was a talented soprano. She would often sing works by her father in concert.
Magda married, but she never had any children.
Antonín Dvořák II (1883-1956)
Little is known about Dvořák’s namesake, Antonín Dvořák II.
Otakar Dvořák (1885-1961)

Dvořák with family and friends in New York in 1893
Antonín Dvořák was famous for his quirky interests; for instance, he was deeply obsessed with trains.
His youngest son, Otakar Dvořák, also had his own special interest: stamp collecting.
In 1946, he got in contact with an American woman named Mrs. Emil Hess to be his pen pal. They started writing to each other for the stamps but became friends, and they wrote to each other for fifteen years until his death in 1961.
Mrs. Hess loved classical music, so Otakar sent various pieces of family memorabilia to her, including family photographs and his father’s pince-nez spectacles!
After Otakar’s death, Mrs. Hess donated the collection to the Cleveland Orchestra, which is why there’s an unexpectedly important Dvořák archive in Ohio.
In 1961, Otakar wrote reminiscences about his dad. He turned it into a book called Antonin Dvorak, My Father.
The work helped to paint a more detailed picture of Dvořák as a human being. The book’s exploration of Dvořák’s depression in New York, a circumstance that encouraged the family to leave America, is especially interesting.
Otakar wrote the epilogue and died just a few days later.
Aloisie Dvořáková (1888-1967)
The Dvořáks’ youngest daughter was named Aloisie. She’s another child we don’t know a lot about. She married a man named Josef Fiala and was the last Dvořák child to pass away.
Dvořák’s Death
In 1904, when his youngest child Aloisie was sixteen, Dvořák died, possibly of a stroke. We wrote about his death and funeral here.
His wife Anna Dvořáková died in the summer of 1931.
Although there are still holes in the scholarship surrounding them, it is undeniable that Dvořák’s marriage and the lives and deaths of his children impacted his music in very direct ways. They’re worth remembering the next time you hear one of his gloriously heartfelt melodies. Hopefully, English-speaking scholars will learn more about them soon!
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