Somehow, everything kept going, but not as it should have
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Radim Kolář was born on 9 March 1956 in Prague. His father Miloslav Kolář was sent to forced labour in Germany during the war. His grandparents lost their property after the communist takeover in 1948. Grandfather Bohumil Kolář came from Šumava and although he trained as a bricklayer, he became a successful builder in Prague during the First Republic. After 1948, his professional career was ended by the communist coup and he eventually had to pay rent to live in his own house. Radim Kolář did not join Pioneerr at primary school, he perceived the difference between propaganda and reality. He lived through the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 in Mladá Boleslav and as a twelve-year-old attended the funeral of Jan Palach in 1969. After completing his primary schooling, he graduated from the Secondary Technical School of Mechanical Engineering and instead of the army he completed three years of alternative military service at ČKD Prague. Afterwards, he started working as a shift foreman at the Central Telecommunications Building (ÚTB) in Žižkov, where he encountered the absurd conditions of normalisation. By November 1989, he was already married and had two children. On the evening of 17 November, he took part in a student demonstration, was hit with a stick on Národní třída and hid in a flat in Mikulandská Street. Afterwards, he enthusiastically attended large demonstrations on Letná and Wenceslas Square. In 1993 he decided to leave the ÚTB and set up his own glassworks in Prosek, which he ran for 15 years. He divorced and remarried in the 1990s, and had two more children with his second wife and one stepchild. In 2025 Radim Kolář lived in Prague.
