"The bell needs to be removed, disassembled and taken to a workshop. In the workshop, the bell must be prepared in this way. The preheating itself takes quite a long time because the bell metal has poor thermal conductivity, so heating it locally results in the extension of an existing crack or the formation of a new crack. The whole bell must therefore be heated very slowly. When I say slowly, I mean over the course of days or even weeks. My grandfather welded the four-tonne Vondra bell, which is in Klatovy on the Black Tower and cracked in 1936 due to using a too heavy heart. The crack was over a metre long. My grandfather was welding the bell in 1940, they had to take the four-tonne bell down from the tower and carry it ot the shop in Brno. A kind of chamber was built around the bell, in which it was heated for more than a week. Then it was possible to weld the crack and again it had to cool down for more than a week. Then they cleaned up the burrs, sanded it, touched i tup and took the bell back to Klatovy where they hung it in its place."
"We're talking the 1970s or 1980s. At that time I had to borrow a Škoda 1203 - a flatbed pickup, which I got for a bribe. I bought a coal basket from the coal sellers, the one you carry on the back, and I drove in overalls to the quarry and to a hole in the ground. I parked it there and I'd walk around with that basket on my back, dig dirt for casting molds, and I'd always carry it out to the truck and dump it on the flatbed. Well, cops drove by. They saw a guy in dirty overalls with a coal basket dumping stuff onto a truck, and they sure stopped. They wanted to know what I was doing there. I briefly explained the truth, and was told that it couldn't be done that way and asked if I paid someone for the dirt. I said I had no idea who I should pay. I had no idea who owned the hole in the ground. So they said it was a theft of socialist-owned property. As I was in my overalls, they took me to Bartolomějská. Dirt was falling off me because it was raining. They interrogated me there until the evening and came to nothing. Then I said yes, I was obliged to find the owner and pay, and I said I would do it. They didn't know what else to do with me, so they threw me out."
"Dad didn't want to talk about it too much. I understand; it was such a bitter part of his life and he didn't want to dwell too much on bad memories. I have to say that a lot of gratitude and credit for us knowing those things at all goes to my mom. As I say, my dad didn't want to recall it and refused any questions, both my mom's and mine. We worked as a trio. My parents and I would go to towers and inspect and assess and fine-tune the bells and things like that. This means that I was the driver, my dad sat next to me, and my mom sat in the back seat and peppered him with questions. Since he couldn't escape in the car, she literally pried the answers out of him and I'm extremely grateful for that. Mum wrote it down quickly; she could stenograph. She wrote it quickly on paper and I still treasure those manuscripts to this day. I then put together the whole history, the narrative from those sheets of paper."
Petr Rudolf Manoušek was born on 5 May 1957 in Prague into the bell-ringing family of Květoslava and Rudolf Manoušek, the younger of two children. His sister Olga devoted her whole childhood to figure skating. Until the age of ten, Petr had a classic, carefree childhood and had little idea of his grandfather’s or father’s problems with the bell-making trade. His grandfather started casting his own bells around 1900 in Brno, Cejl, and his son Rudolf Manoušek Jr. learned the craft there. As it happens, young people often have different opinions about the management of a business, and so in 1934, his father set up his own workshop in Česká u Brna. Both plants survived the Second World War, even though they had to adapt their production to it, but they did not survive the rise of the communists to power. In 1948 both workshops, my grandfather’s and my father’s, were nationalised. In 1951, his father was transferred to Prague and was given only external supervision of the bell casting in Brno. In the 1960s the production of bells there ceased completely. But the enterprising father was not discouraged and in 1967, when the pressure of the regime began to ease, he established a bell factory in Zbraslav, Prague, where his wife worked with him. There, he visited his parents and slowly began to learn bell-making. When he was seventeen, his father was unable to work after an accident, and young Petr, with a mixture of youthful courage and boldness, took over his craft. He was the head of the bell factory in Zbraslav until 2002, when it was completely flooded. He was offered a helping hand by many bell-makers in Europe, and eventually began casting bells in a workshop in Holland and never stopped. He has several unique pieces to his credit, including saving bells using a method his grandfather patented. He has a daughter and a son from his marriage. He is a bell-ringer, restorer and also plays Europe’s largest mobile bell-ringing machine, which he built himself. In 2020 he converted his house in Zbraslav into a museum of bells and bell-making. In 2024, the memorialist was living in Prague.
Rudolf Manoušek Jr with son Petr in the bell shop in Zbraslav, 1974. Petr had no idea he would have to run the bell workshop himself within a short time
Rudolf Manoušek Jr with son Petr in the bell shop in Zbraslav, 1974. Petr had no idea he would have to run the bell workshop himself within a short time