In 1969 she emigrated to Switzerland with her husband Evžen Jokl
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Marie Cron, née Dlabajová, was born on August 1, 1945 in the village of Huslenky in the Vsetín region, she had four older brothers. Her parents were practicing believers, the children grew up in an evangelical environment in a remote part of Wallachia, where collectivisation took place only in the 1960s and where old folk and religious customs and traditions survived for many years. After graduating from high school, Marie Cron was unable to study at university because of her faith. In the mid-1960s, she therefore went to Prague to study at a secondary vocational social school. In the capital she met and later married the artist Evžen Jokl, who was condemned and imprisoned in the Jáchymov region in the early 1950s for his political views. In the autumn of 1969, a year after the August invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, the couple decided to emigrate in view of the coming normalisation. They came to Switzerland via Austria, where they applied for asylum and settled in Lucerne, where their son Dalibor was born in 1970. The beginning of their emigration was marked by existential problems, Evžen Jokl did not catch on as an artist in Switzerland and supported his family with more or less menial manual labour. The marriage eventually broke down and Evžen Jokl returned to Czechoslovakia in 1975, where he was pardoned by the regime for his open criticism of the conditions in the West. After the divorce, Marie adopted her original maiden name and found a stable job in the tourist industry. During the 1970s and 1980s she maintained contact with her family living in Moravia. Her mother died before her daughter left Czechoslovakia, and her father was never allowed by the regime to visit his daughter and grandson in Switzerland. In 1980 Marie Dlabajová married Swiss lawyer Paul Cron and for many years helped to keep the Cron Edition music publishing house running. After the death of her husband, she took over the management of the company. In Lucerne, she was also involved in the activities of the local exile organization Sokol. She regularly visits the Czech Republic.
