Petr Melichar

* 1967

  • “When I was working in a boiler room in Prague, I used to go to the Černýs and several other pubs. I had amazing nights there, it was much of a school for me. One Hebraist was sitting there, giving lectures on the oldest Jewish history, but also on more recent history. That was what we actually discussed in pubs! It was not like today, when the TV and gambling machines make noise in pubs. Those were wonderful evenings. One learned interesting things. Other times the people around Charter 77 came, they were also mostly educated people. Every night there was someone interesting and there was always a topic to discuss. I always wrote down the titles of the books that they recommended us to read. Then I learned from the books to make my picture of the world. That was my college.”

  • “So we were looking for a typewriter. It was also quite an anabasis. In Prague I found out through a few acquaintances that someone was selling a typewriter. Then I dragged it in my backpack to Havířov. Eventually Lumir got another, so we had more of those machines. And the first numbers were created by rewriting texts on a typewriter. We loaded ten papers with photocopiers into the coil. We did ten copies of the magazine. The tenth copy was still legible. Later, we were already doing it with a roller frame, it was printed over the film. I sometimes bought the membranes in Prague. That's what Franta Stárek advised us to do when we became interested.”

  • “I was carrying backpacks full of books to Havířov. With my friend from Havířov, Lumír Salzman, and several other people we read it enthusiastically and eagerly. And it was circulating among people. It was still: 'When you finish reading it? It was great, but it was not enough. There were a lot of people hungry for information and reading. We also had to be a little wary of who we lend it to. So we thought we could make a similar magazine too. Lumir came up with the idea that it was nothing, that a typewriter was enough to learn to work with too. So we rocked out brains about it for a while, speculating what it would be about. And we found out that we know a poet who writes without being published, that we know bands with lyrics, and that there are people who can write, but of course it would not get printed.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    v Ostravě, 20.02.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 02:30:37
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

We must preserve freedom all the time

Petr Melichar in 1986
Petr Melichar in 1986
photo: Archiv Petra Melichara

Petr Melichar was born on 30 March 1967 in Karviná and grew up in Havířov. His father was an electrician on the shaft, later he was a teacher at a vocational school, earning a living as a bar musician. Mother was selling sporting goods. After being expelled from high school, he trained as a locksmith, mechanic and repairer of machines and equipment. At the age of eighteen he went to Prague. He worked as a cleaner at the Main Station and then in the Book Wholesale Boiler Room in New Town. He was in contact with dissidents and chartists, obtaining samizdat magazines, books and anti-regime petitions from them. At the end of the 1980s he produced his own illegal magazine named Cloth with his friends from Havířov. He was regularly detained and interrogated by the state police, kept as a hostile person in the archives. After November 1989, he briefly joined the activities of the Civic Forum in Havířov. He is a holder of an anti-communist resistance certificate. At the time of the interview Petr Melichar lived in Těrlicko and worked as a porter and night watchman.