Dvůr Králové nad Labem (dv
r` krä`lôvā näd lä`bĕm), Ger.
Königinhof, town (1991 pop. 16,976), N central Czech Republic, in Bohemia, on the Labe (Elbe) River. Among its manufactures are linen textiles and beer. Founded in 1139 as a ducal palace, the town was given by King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia to his queen, Elizabeth, in the late 13th cent. In 1817 several manuscripts purported to be early medieval Czech poems were "discovered" at Dvůr Králové nad Labem; one of the scholars who exposed the poems as patriotic forgeries was Thomas G. Masaryk, later the chief founder of independent Czechoslovakia.