Michal Matzenauer

* 1947

  • “For a while I stayed at home. My wife was a Protestant priest. We lived in Horní Počernice where the police started to follow us. Since 1975 there was a car parked in front of our house now and then. Because at that time plenty of people paid us a visit. Protestants would gather there, as would Catholics. Father Bonaventura among others, but also other professors – Protestant and Catholic alike. Milan Balabán and others. We had held some Passion plays there. Vráťa Brabenec wrote the script and we would play it there. Václav Havel had already attended at that time. The policemen were increasingly concerned about it. I remember reading the Hobbit when it was published. The beginning of the book when everyone comes to visit the hobbit was just the same as when the Plastic People of the Universe came to visit us. They would also make a big mess. This was happening in 1975-76 and we had already known each other. I knew them from Prague as did my wife. Vráťa Brabenec, Sváťa Karásek… I used to say that this was all one rabble, that this was good.”

  • “I have my principles. One day we were sitting somewhere with Václav Havel – it was in 1983 or around that time. He was just out of jail, Jiří Němec was about to emigrate. I told Havel back then: ‘I will join forces with you for as long as the communists are in power. After that I want to be at home, work and do my own stuff. I don’t intend to engage in politics ever since.’ It is always necessary to fight evil, be it Nazism or Communism. This is a duty of every person of character and of thought.”

  • “On 21 August I arrived to Prague. I left work and went to Prague and thus had witnessed the whole occupation on the spot. At Wenceslas Square, by the Czech Radio, in Národní třída, at Příkopy, near the National Museum… I was at all these places. I had felt the horror intensely. Airplanes were flying over my head, those huge ones which transported tanks. I do not know what the first place I went to was. I remember being by the Czech Radio building when it exploded there. I was right by the car. I remember some guys climbing on the top of the car, messing around and setting it on fire. The Russian officer jumped out of it and started to shout: ‘Don’t be stupid, there are shells in there, it will go off!’ They just started to laugh. They were laughing and he was desperate, it was horrible. At one point the tank shell had exploded. Next to me a boy was standing and the shell hit him in the stomach. At that moment they began shooting. We ran down the street but the boy was left lying there. I remember hiding into some door, there was a printing office there. But we couldn’t reach him. There was crossfire from up there down the street. They were also shooting in Italská street. So there was no way to reach the boy. He lay there and his abdomen was torn apart. Or was it a gun wound? I don’t remember, it was too much of mayhem. We waited in there, then an ambulance showed up, the firing had ceased but as far as I remember they didn’t save him anyway – it was too late.”

  • Full recordings
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    Praha, 10.04.2015

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    duration: 01:54:15
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    Praha, 16.04.2015

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    duration: 01:14:11
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They closed the border and my plans were over

Michal Matzenauer.jpg (historic)
Michal Matzenauer
photo: VONS.cz

Michal Matzenauer was born on 20 November 1947 in Prague. His father worked in Vsetín in a brewery owned by the Thonet family who ran a large furniture factory. Michal had spent all of his childhood in the brewery. Already back then did he enjoy drawing and writing. However, in the ninth grade he had fallen for chemistry and decided to continue his studies at a chemical engineering school located in Zlín. He established his own studio, attended the local priest’s lectures on theology and philosophy and discussed art with his friends. As he was growing up, poetry became his main passion. At high school he co-founded a student literary magazine. Following Michal’s graduation from high school, a friend of his helped him get a medical statement which allowed him to avoid compulsory military service. Instead, he had taken a job in a chemical factory in Kralupy nad Vltavou near Prague. In August 1968 Michal was an eye-witness of Prague’s occupation by the Warsaw Pact armies. The next year he intended to go study at Oxford University. He and his friend already set out but on the way Michal found out that his mum was dying. Upon his return to Czechoslovakia the communists closed all borders. He then went through numerous jobs before settling for the work of a hydrogeologist, travelling throughout the country in a trailer for fifteen years, writing poetry and drawing. In the 1970s he had married a Protestant priest and established contacts with the dissidents. In 1977 he became one of the signatories of Charter 77, and ever since was followed and interrogated. His wife eventually decided to emigrate while he stayed in Czechoslovakia. After the Velvet Revolution his work was finally fully appreciated and ever since he had numerous individual exhibitions. At present he is finishing two collections of poems.