500 Korun Karel Jaromír Erben

Karel Jaromír Erben was commemorated on this issue in the bicentennial year of his birth — he was born in 1811 in Miletín, Bohemia. A archivist by profession and a poet by vocation, Erben spent decades collecting Slavic folk songs and fairy tales, work that culminated in his 1853 poetry collection Kytice, which remains a fixture of Czech literary education. The Czech National Bank's commemorative program has a long habit of honoring figures whose cultural weight is unambiguous even if their international profile is modest.