ROB CAMERON

By the time Ai Weiwei unveiled his epic ‘Law Of The Journey’ at Prague’s National Gallery, Europe’s refugee crisis had largely disappeared from the front pages. But the flow of people continued, and with it opposition – especially in Central Europe – to providing shelter. The Czech government’s attitude, the artist said, was unacceptable, “because it’s morally wrong.”

Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Ferdinand Porsche … most of us would describe these well-known personalities as ‘German’ – and we’d be half-right; German was their mother tongue. But they weren’t born in Germany or even Austria – they were born here in what is now the Czech Republic. A new exhibition is trying to correct the country’s rather cold relationship to them.

A fierce legal struggle is under way in the Czech Republic over the fate of 20 enormous paintings by Alphonse Mucha, creator of the style known as art nouveau. The paintings – entitled the Slav Epic – have spent the last half a century hanging in a chateau in the Moravian town of Moravsky Krumlov. But officials in Prague now want them moved to the capital.

The former Czech president Václav Havel has fulfilled a lifelong dream – directing a film adapation of his latest play Leaving. The work – an absurdist comedy – deals with a theme close to Mr Havel’s heart; a recently retired politician struggling to adjust to life after politics. “It is built on an archetypal experience of a world that is collapsing,” Havel told reporters.

The global financial crisis has forced companies around the world to make difficult decisions, and many have gone under. In Hradec Králové, the leading Czech piano manufacturer Petrof (founded in 1864) has developed a new sideline in luxury fitted kitchens, as demand for baby grands and uprights falls. But the company was confident it can survive this latest crisis.

A court in the Czech city of Olomouc is to deliver its verdict in one of the oddest legal disputes in the country’s history. A comedian is suing his former business partner over the intellectual rights to the fictitious Wallachian Kingdom. The court must now decide whether the comedian is the true “king” of the fairy-tale realm … or merely an imposter.