Lubomír Zaorálek

Lubomir Zaorálek

Lubomír Zaorálek (born September 6, 1956 in Ostrava ) is a Czech politician ( ČSSD ). Zaorálek has been a member of the House of Representatives since 1996 and was Foreign Minister in Bohuslav Sobotka's cabinet from January 29, 2014 to December 13, 2017 . Zaorálek has been the incumbent Minister of Culture since August 2019.

Life

Lubomír Zaorálek studied at the Masaryk University in Brno . He then worked as a dramaturge for Czech television , after which he was politically active in the Československá strana socialistická (ČSS) block party from 1986 to 1989. Zaorálek was one of the co-founders of the Citizens' Forum in Ostrava and was briefly a member of the Czechoslovak Parliament for this in 1990 in the course of the Velvet Revolution .

In 1994 Zaorálekin joined the Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). In the 1996 parliamentary elections , he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic for the Social Democrats . From July 11, 2002 to August 14, 2006 he was its President and 2010-2013 Vice-President. After the 2013 elections , he joined the Bohuslav Sobotka government as Foreign Minister .

After Bohuslav Sobotka announced on June 14, 2017 that he would renounce the new top candidacy in the 2017 House of Representatives election due to poor poll ratings, Zaorálek was named as the new top candidate of the ČSSD and candidate for the office of Czech Prime Minister after the elections. However, the party only achieved a result of 7.3 percent.

On August 27, 2019, Zaorálek was appointed Minister of Culture in the Andrej Babiš II cabinet. As such, he intervened in a conflict between the director of the Lidice Memorial , Martina Lehmannová, and descendants of the victims of the Lidice massacre . Ms. Lehmannová had suggested that the memorial site also remember a Jewish woman murdered in Auschwitz who was initially able to hide in Lidice until a woman from Lidice reported her to the police shortly before the massacre. By publicizing the denunciation , some of the descendants of the victims of the massacre saw the honor of their murdered ancestors tainted. In January 2020, Zaorálek gave the director of the memorial the choice of resigning or being dismissed. She then stepped back. Ten employees went with her.

Zaorálek is the chairman of the Masarykova Demokratická academy .

He is divorced and has three children.

Web links

Commons : Lubomír Zaorálek - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

↑ ^a ^b Viktoria Großmann: The Legacy of Lidice. Memorial loses its director in a dispute . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 6, 2020, p. 11.
↑ ^a ^b Press Statement of Martina Lehmannová, the Director of the Lidice Memorial, on her Resignation , January 21, 2020, accessed on February 8, 2020.

personal data
SURNAME	Zaorálek, Lubomír
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Czech politician (ČSSD), member of the House of Representatives
DATE OF BIRTH	September 6, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ostrava

[Viktoria_Großmann-1] Viktoria Großmann: The Legacy of Lidice. Memorial loses its director in a dispute . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 6, 2020, p. 11.

[Martina_Lehmannová-2] Press Statement of Martina Lehmannová, the Director of the Lidice Memorial, on her Resignation , January 21, 2020, accessed on February 8, 2020.