I’d go to Austria to look, but not to spy
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Oldřich Loveček was born on 3 July 1934 in Dolní Dvořiště near Český Krumlov into the peasant family of Antonín Loveček and Marie, née Jandová. He grew up with his sister Růžena, two years older; during the war, two more siblings were born. He spent his childhood in the Czech-Austrian border area. In 1938, he experienced the mobilisation and subsequent German seizure of Dolní Dvořiště. His family was one of the few Czech families to remain in Dolní Dvořiště after the German occupation. Oldřich Loveček attended a German school and, after 1945, a Czech town school in Horní Dvořiště. He finished his primary education in 1948 and, at his father’s request, continued to work on the family farm, where he had worked hard since early childhood. In 1953, the family farm was taken over by a unified agricultural cooperative. His father served as its chairman for some time. Oldřich Loveček worked as an electrician from 1950, but he did not receive his apprenticeship certificate until 1952-1954 at the South Bohemian Power Plants. In 1954-1956, as “politically unreliable”, he served military basic service in the Technical Battalions. He then worked and lived in Kaplice, where he married Marie Perousová in 1960. They raised four children together. In the mid-1960s, the family moved to Český Krumlov, and Oldřich Loveček served as a shift worker - electrician at the substation in Větřní. Here he experienced the occupation of 1968, but he was not interested in political events. He valued his job, which he did not want to lose. During the communist regime, he received proposals to collaborate with the VKR (Military Counterintelligence Service) and, according to him, was also contacted by the StB (State Security Service), but he refused. From the late 1970s onwards, he was able to occasionally travel to Germany or Austria to visit relatives. He is a practising Catholic; his wife copied religious texts during the period of normalisation, and they regularly attended church. His passion since his youth has been playing the accordion. He retired in 1994, working three years overtime. In 2025, he lived in Dolní Třebonín.
