Vladimír Hanzel

* 1951

National minorities, Art and censorship
21. 8. 1968 - Invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, 1989 - The fall of the iron curtain, 1948 - 1955 - Politic lawsuit in the Stalin age, 5. 1. - 21. 8. 1968 - The Prague Spring
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    Teacher Dlouhý listened to the confiscated records in his office

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    “During maths class one of my classmates hissed at me to give her the Beatles records I’d borrowed. With a heavy heart I pulled them out of my satchel and passed them to her. Teacher Dlouhý noticed it, ran up to us, took the record and said: ‘Confiscated, will be returned at the end of the school year.’ I was aghast. I thought I couldn’t do that to Lenka. During the break I plodded despondently to the maths office, thinking: ‘I have to soften him up somehow, explain that the records aren’t mine but Lenka’s, that her Dad brought them to her from Paris, that it’s a terribly awkward matter for me.’ I was preparing my speech, and on my way to the office I heard familiar sounds. When I came closer, I found out that the teacher was sitting there with a gramophone player, listening to the records. I knocked, he started a bit and looked at me guiltily. I bleated out a part of what I had ready, but he stopped me and said: ‘Can I keep them till tomorrow?’”

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    Peace song at the Lipnice festival

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    “The Unionists called the festival ‘Songs for Peace’. When I criticised that to my future wife, she told me: ‘If you think the title’s dumb, the festival will be called differently.’ And I retorted: ‘It’s not all that dumb. On the contrary! We just have to take it literally. Halfway through the festival there’ll be a peace song.’ The following year I played Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance from tape, people joined in and sang with him, that was good. A year later I played Sun City, a song against the apartheid in South Africa. That was connected to an article I wrote for Gramorevue, in which I whimsically compared the apartheid to the situation in Czechoslovakia - in 1948 a handful of people in South Africa usurped the right to rule, which was quite a parallel to what had happened here. People were used to reading between the lines back then, and I know a lot of readers were intrigued by the text.”

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    His parents spoke in German or Yiddish when discussing political matters

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    “When the political trials were taking place and the radio presenter was saying of someone that they had betrayed the nation, disappointed us, and so on, Mum would protest: ‘But we know him, and he’s a decent person!’ And Dad just went: ‘Psst! Don’t speak about it in front of the children.’ And they switched to German or Yiddish, so we wouldn’t understand them.”

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    Praha, 31.03.2015

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    duration: 02:14:31
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“The nobs deprived me of the music I loved”

Vladimír Hanzel (2015)
Vladimír Hanzel (2015)

Vladimír Hanzel (born the 27th of January 1951 in Bratislava) comes from a family with Jewish roots. When he was thirteen he began building his own radio sets, and while listening to foreign broadcasts he discovered rock and big beat, which became his main hobby. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, he joined the Prague club Olympic, after it was dissolved he entered the Jazz Section and the Young Music Section. He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University; he was briefly employed at the Federal Office of Statistics, he then earned his living as a programmer and private tutor of mathematics. In the 1980s, he co-organised a music festival in Lipnice nad Sázavou. After the Velvet Revolution he became Václav Havel’s personal secretary and, among other things, the main organiser of music events at Prague Castle.

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