ThMgr. Erwin Kukuczka

* 1944  †︎ 2022

  • "Ale jednou se stalo, to už byla noc. Tma. Telefon. Večer. Neznámý hlas, že mě pozdravuje jeden známý, kterého nebude jmenovat a jeden známý by se chtěl se mnou setkat, ať přijdu do antického muzea v Hostinném. Tchyně říkala, ať tam nechodím. Šel jsem tam. Nějaký člověk mi řekl, pojďte, já Vás povedu. Šel jsem tím muzeem, klášterem, do kanceláře ředitelky. Seděl tam Václav Havel a Vladimír Komárek známý malíř. Havel mi řekl jede na Hrádeček, že se zastavil v Hostinném,že o mě slyšel v Praze a že by mě rád poznal. Byli jsme tam asi do 3 ráno nebo 4 ráno, protože Vladiír Komárek nejde vypnout, ale vždycky vyprávěl úžasné historky. Tak došllo k mému prvnímu setkání s Václavem Havlem. "

  • "Třetí den od okupace roznášeli jsme časopis Mladý svět, který měl jen dvě stránky, byly tam zobrazeny i ty hořící tanky a ty zprávy o okupaci. Nabral jsem balík, abych to mohl rozdávat. Ráno před barákem byli sovětští vojáci s obrněným transportérem a sovětský důstojník na mě zakřičel: ‚Što ty sdělaješ zděs?‘ Pak se mě zeptal, co to mám pod rukou, vzal to a viděl ty hořící tanky a protiruská hesla. A pak proběhla mezi námi konverzace: ‚Arestovať. Pačemu? Gde eto pečajetsja? Neznaju. Ja ne z Pragy. Otkuda? Ja iz goroda Trinec. Ja zdes na prazdnike. Što ty rabotaješ? Ja stalevar. Ty stalevar, ja tože stalevar. Nearestovať.‘ Podstatné pro něho tehdy bylo, že jsem pracující třída a ne intelektuál.“

  • "Můj první zažítek ze sovětské okupace byl, když jsme šli a Radimem Vašinkou a Stanislavou Vránovou od automatu Koruna, směrem ke Koňovi. Dolů běžel zkrvavený chlapík středních let, běžel od vrchu, v ruce československou vlajku zkrvavenou, byl v šoku. Pořád hovořil, ‚Bratia Češi pod touto zástavou zomrela prvá obet této špinavej okupacie,‘ pořád dokola. Šli jsem nahoru a tam už byly ty tanky, opravdu viděl jsem ten autobus, který chtěl zabránit tomu tanku, který byl prázdný, byl tam jeho řidič a pamatuji si dodnes ty vytřeštěné oči, kdy on věřil, že ho ten Rusák nepřejede tím tankem. On couval a zase popojížděl.Tam jsem viděl ty velmi tragické události s tím přejetým autobusem. A pak jsem šli k rozhlasu a viděli jsme něco podobného před rozhlasem."

  • “I got involved very actively right after November 1989. I gave a speech to the nation on the square of Ústí nad Orlicí. I stood as a candidate in the first elections and I ended up seventh. I was third in the second elections. I also worked for the city council. That’s why I had almost no time for poetry, because we were on the road or in meetings all the time. I was on the ballot of OF as a nonpartisan in the first elections and on the ballot of ODS as a nonpartisan again in the second elections. That’s why the people here know me.”

  • “I can attest that it was Bondy who brought me to the studies of theology. There was a period in my life when I thought that I could no longer just act in the theater and walk the earth. I was eager to study and learn. I felt attracted to journalism and some even thought that I should study acting. At that time, Brdečka was coming to Orfeus to see one of our colleagues, an actress who was my friend. We were sitting at one table and he told me that he could arrange it, that he preferred talent before knowledge. I told Bondy about my decision to study acting and he said that he had read my poems and that it was the work of a deeply religious man. He recommended me to study theology, not philosophy, journalism or acting. He told me that he could arrange it for me. At that time there was under way a lively dialogue between the Marxists and the Christians and he immediately called his acquaintances Dr. Trtík and Dr. Ebertová. So it’s true that he recommended it to me and got directly involved in it.”

  • “Let’s get back to Bohnice - that was an important period in my life because I started with the Samizdat there. I’m notorious for my penchant for staying up in the night and taking a nap during the day. I’ve had it like that since my early childhood. My father told me that when I came back from the concentration camp that I stayed up all night playing with my toys while they were sleeping. I was accustomed to the dark because everything was blacked out in the camp. I’ve stayed a night bird ever since. There was a guy in Bohnice who hated night shifts so I swapped my day shifts for his night shifts. My friends and colleagues there loved to be on night shifts with me because they knew that they could go somewhere and drink while I was reproducing books. They had no idea what I’m writing. I told them that I was copying my poems while I was copying books. There were enough typing machines there. I was there with the writer Zdeňek Mareš who was writing his novels. He was a figure that helped me enormously. He directed me what literature to read if I wanted to become a good prose writer. He told me what I didn’t have to read even though it looked interesting at first glance. He liked me and helped me to gain insight into literature like Bondy. So that’s where I started to do the Samizdat. I remember that the first thing I did was the Column of Pestilence by Seifert.”

  • “Once it happened that Bondy was at my place and he was going through my books admiring my wonderful collection. He spent a week or two here. We went to the pub for a beer to celebrate our work. When we came back Bondy was a bit tipsy, he looked at my collection and said: ‘shit, shit, shit!’ In one of my reflections, I’m writing that maybe it’s shit but how is it then possible that this shit has made me a man? So it’s not shit but literature.”

  • “I was born in Polish Istebno, which is close to Jablunkov where I spent my youth. It was German at the time. My mother was seriously sick, she was suffering from tuberculosis and therefore they had to remove me from her so that I don’t get infected. My father was very unhappy because the doctor told him that I would probably not get very old, so he wanted me to be baptized. I was the third child and the nuns advised my father to give me a German name, that the Germans would win the war anyway and that it would make it easier for me. They recommended names like Adolf or Erwin. The opposite was true. By a concurrence of circumstances I was taken to a German camp from where I returned in 1946. My father told me that I was taken to an institute in Germany where they did experiments with artificial nutrition on us, on the babies. From that time on I’m suffering from digestion problems – I have to take pills constantly. My father had to come and pick me up in Czech Těšín. From about 300 kids only twelve came back. The rest died or froze.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Ústí nad Orlicí, 02.07.2009

    (audio)
    duration: 02:40:08
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Studio ED Hradec Králové, 27.08.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 02:14:36
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
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“How come that this shit has made me a man? So it’s not shit but literature.”

divadlo Orfeus 1968.jpg (historic)
ThMgr. Erwin Kukuczka

Erwin Kukuczka was born on May 27, 1944, in Istebné in Poland that was part of Germany at the time. As his mother was suffering from tuberculosis her son Erwin was taken away from her and was put in a German camp. Before he was separated from his mother, his father followed the advice of a nun and gave him the German name Erwin. He came back home to his father in 1946. His father afterwards told him that in the institute where he was placed with other 316 children, they were used as Guinea pigs for German experiments with artificial nutrition. Only twelve of those children had returned home. Since that time on Mr. Kukuczka has been having digestive problems throughout all of his life. He spent his youth in Jablunkov but it wasn’t a happy time for him. His stepmother was very hard towards the children and so Erwin started to run away from home. He also spent some time living with his aunt who was a devout catholic. That’s where he started to learn about faith and religion for the first time. At the age of thirteen, his step mother moved away and his father soon followed her to Třinec. He lived alone for a year and after he graduated from elementary school he started to study a vocational college in Třinec in the field of steel industry. He started to do a lot of sport at about that time - above all mountaineering. He also made a lot of friends who were interested in literature and the arts. In 1961 Erwin finished his professional training and was called up for military service. He started to work in the Třinec metal works in 1964 where he also met his father. After working three years for the works he was thrown out of his job for his appearance in a gathering of the staff of the works. He left to Prague where he became an actor in the cult theater Orfeus. The actor and producer Radim Vašinka showed him the world of the Prague bohème and introduced him to one of the most prominent figures of the so-called Prague “underground” (the non-conforming artists, writers, intellectuals and dissidents of the Communist regime - note by the translator) Egon Bondy. Their relationship developed into a life-long friendship that helped Erwin to orient himself in literature and also in philosophy. Kukuczka occupied himself more intensely with his poetry. He was also plagued by his personal hardships and feelings of loneliness and estrangement. These feelings gradually drove him into a mental asylum in Bohnice. One day before the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw pact, he was celebrating his return from the asylum with his friends from the Orfeus theatre. In the morning, still under the influence of alcohol, he and Radim Vašinka set out to join the demonstrations against the foreign intervention. He was distributing some leaflets and was nearly arrested by Soviet soldiers. He was aided by his worker profession and the knowledge of the Russian language. With the advent of the Normalization in Czechoslovakia the position of his friend Bondy became untenable in Prague (he was identified as the intellectual originator of the revolution) and therefore they left to Jablunkov, where Bondy wrote his famous book Buddha on Erwin’s rectory. Bondy later also wrote his philosophical work The Shaman. Erwin Kukuczka’s person appears in that book as a real person. Kukuczka was meanwhile searching for the meaning of his life. Although his friends advised him to study acting or journalism, Bondy, who read his poems and discovered a deep-seated spiritualism in it, advised him to study theology. Therefore Erwin started to study the Jan Hus Czechoslovak theological faculty in Prague in 1969. His activities outside the school resulted in his expulsion from the school in 1970. He left to Svitavy where he worked as a manual worker and read. His lifelong love became - according to his own definition - the “holy trinity” of the writers Jakub Deml, František Bílek and Otokar Březina. He came to Prague to perform in Orfeus from time to time. After a year he returned to Prague and started to work in the mental asylum in Bohnice. This is when he started his Samizdat-publishing activities. He would copy and reproduce the works of prohibited authors like Seifert, Skácel, Mikulášek, Achmatovová, Bondy - to name just a few - during his night shifts in the asylum. Since the beginning of the seventies until today he’s been publishing his own and adopted works in an edition called LOUČ. In 1974 Erwin Kukuczka got married and followed his wife to a rectory in Hostinné, where he worked as a nurse. He began to publish in the official press - the CČSH, Czech Struggle or Blahoslav. Already in the middle of the sixties was he contributing to the Třinecký Hutník. Bondy stimulated him to translate the works of the Polish catholic poet Roman Brandsteatter. He also befriended Václav Havel and was invited for several of the notoriously known Hrádeček sessions. He mediated the first meeting of Bondy and Havel that took place in his rectory. The bishop Pochop of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church managed to get Kukuczka as a preacher into his parish. He seconded his wife in the religious community of Hostinné. He was transferred to Hlinsko by the bishop because of his contacts to people of the so-called “second culture” and the “underground” (the bishop was threatened with the loss of state approval for the providing of spiritual services). In 1982 Mr. Kukuczka and his wife moved to Ústí nad Orlicí where he became a preacher of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church in Žamberk and Nekoř. At the same time he was under surveillance of the secret intelligence services that started a file on him code-named “Kukačka” (cuckoo). Besides his own works he also published works by Škvorecký, Ladislav Klíma, Fischls interviews with Jan Masaryk etc. In the end of the eighties, Mr. Kukuczka was called upon by professor Salajka to finish his studies which he did. The time was right and so Mr. Kukuczka finished his theological studies and in 1989 he was ordained a priest in Žamberk. Since 1989 he’s been serving as a priest of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church in Žamberk and Nekoř.  After the November events of 1989 he immediately got engaged and spoke out publicly on the orlickoústecké square. He also got engaged in the OF (Občanské fórum - civic forum, a political platform formed after the revolution - note by the translator). He was representing the city for two electoral terms. He regularly publishes his sermons in the regional press and organizes his “Soul Pilgrimage”. The first pilgrimage was dedicated to the multi-confessional personality of Přemysl Pitter. He still manages his edition that has grown to include new authors. The haste of the times and lack of time to devout himself to poetry has led him to occupy himself more with collage. Since 1995 he’s organized over ten exhibitions. According to his own words, his life has been most thoroughly influenced by faith and literature.