Ludvík Vaculík
Ludvík Vaculík (born July 23, 1926 in Brumov , † June 6, 2015 in Prague ) was a Czech writer .
Life
Vaculík was trained as a shoemaker in the Baťa shoe factory in Zlin from 1942 to 1943 , where he continued to work until 1946. From 1946 to 1951 he studied at the Prague School of Politics and Social Sciences.
He worked as an educator in apprentice homes, from 1953 to 1957 as an editor in the department for political literature at the party organ Rudé právo , then as an editor for youth programs at the Czechoslovak Radio . Finally, in 1965, he started working for Literární noviny magazine . His literary breakthrough came with the novella Das Beil (1966), which, along with Kundera's Der Scherz, was one of the most discussed Czech publications of the second half of the 1960s. At the 4th Congress of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union in June 1967, he did not hold back with his criticism of the social development in Czechoslovakia. “Vaculík's speech caused a shock to the writers gathered in the room, although the majority shared his views. He had broken all the taboos that he and his colleagues had observed so far in order not to endanger the limited freedom of their association and their press. The KPČ had not been so clearly criticized in public since February 1948. ”He was then expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), to which he had been a member since 1945.
In the Prague Spring he emerged through the 2000 Words Manifesto , a general public analysis of totalitarian power. Later he was one of the co-founders of “ Charter 77 ”, the Czech human rights group formed following the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe ( CSCE ). As a dissident, Vaculík was persecuted and personally defamed by the state security authorities until the fall of the Wall.
In the 1970s he founded the Samizdat publishing house Edice Petlice (publishing house behind bars), in which he distributed almost 400 works by banned authors on his own until 1989. Daydreams also appeared in it . Every day of the year (Petlice 1981, Toronto 1983, Brno 1990), which is one of his most important works.
After the fall of the Wall, Vaculík mainly wrote feature sections on daily problems.
Works (in German translation)
- The hatchet , translated by Miroslav Svoboda and Erich Bertleff, with a foreword by Peter Kurzck and an afterword by Eckhard Thiele. DVA, Munich 2006 ( Czech Library ), ISBN 978-3-421-05949-9 (original title: Sekyra , 1966).
- The guinea pigs , translated by Alexandra and Gerhard Baumrucker. Bucher, Luzern / Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-7658-0129-1 ; New edition: Diaphanes, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-03734-178-0 (original title: Morčata , 1970).
- Daydreams - every day of the year , translated by Alexandra Baumrucker. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg / Reich, Luzern 1981, ISBN 3-455-08690-X (original title: Český snář , 1980).
- Oh, donors , with Peter Becher , foreword by Ota Filip , translated by Franz Peter Künzel (from the Czech) and by Ivan Binar (from the German), bilingual edition, A 1, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-927743-04-6 ( German / Czech ).
Awards
- 1975 George Orwell Prize
- 1978 Egon Hostovsky Prize
- 1992 Bern Freedom Prize
- 1996 Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (3rd grade)
- 1997 Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize
Memberships
- Obec spisovatelů (Czech Writers' Union)
literature
- Rudolf Urban: The daring spirit. The IV Czechoslovakian Writers' Congress and its consequences, in: Osteuropa, 3 (1968), p. 180 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Ludvík Vaculík in the catalog of the German National Library
- Literature and other media by and about Ludvík Vaculík in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
- Portrait in the Leipziger Volkszeitung [1]
- Speech at the writers' congress 1967 [2]
- "The memories of a disappointed man" (Berliner Zeitung, May 24, 2008)
- Konstantin Kountouroyanis: "The network of censorship" - On the death of a timeless critic - An obituary for Ludvík Vaculík , in prag aktuell, 13 June 2015
Individual evidence
- ^ Slovník české literatury po roce 1945 (Lexicon of Czech Literature after 1945), Czech
- ^ Alena Wagnerová : The skeptical optimist from Moravia. On the death of dissident Ludvík Vaculík . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 10, 2015, international edition. P. 49
- ↑ Reinhard Veser : The Prague Spring 1968 ( Memento from October 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). State Center for Civic Education Thuringia, Erfurt, 2nd, revised edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-937967-31-8 , p. 33.
- ↑ Much more than 2000 words - On the death of Ludvík Vaculík . Radio Praha , June 8, 2015.
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Vaculík, Ludvík |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Czech writer, co-founder of the Czech human rights movement Charter 77 |
DATE OF BIRTH | July 23, 1926 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Brumov |
DATE OF DEATH | June 6, 2015 |
Place of death | Prague |