Dalibor Mierva

* 1959

  • “I remember as well as if it was today the 21st of August. We had a telephone at home. And it woke my father up. I also heard it at night, so I ran out of the room to see what was going on. It could have been after midnight, one or two o´clock. A colleague from work or an uncle, one of my father´s brothers, was calling him that there was an occupation. We were standing there and did not know what was happening. My father turned on a tape recorder and started to record the broadcast. I still feel the atmosphere, I remember it - the horror what is happening, what is going on, will or will not there be war? Then I have one more memory when my voice starts to tremble. I have a memory of my father leaving for work, when he and mum kissed when they were saying goodbye. They had not done it before.”

  • “I was in the Cheb theatre when the artists went on strike. It might have been the very first week. I was there when Civic Forum in Cheb was organized, when they hired a room there and needed to have it opened the whole day because promotional materials were coming from Prague. Leaflets that were brought by students or various people, artists. It was necessary to share the information with people. Therefore, I also took part in it. I was there in the morning when they did not release. They released mainly in the afternoon. So, in the morning it was an information centre or a coordination centre of Civic Forum. It was quite fun. It was quite self-contradictory when I took them... I was not wearing a uniform but plain-clothes. Then I returned to quarters where I got changed. But I was wearing tricolour on uniform which was a sign of sympathy with the Velvet Revolution. They were looking at me in quarters. -What´s up? -What do you mean?”

  • “I didn´t have a conflict but I was once summoned to interrogation because of my membership in the Jazz Section even though I was a basic member who enjoyed advantages of a membership in the Jazz Section. I do not know about other people who were not members, but I got information about new releases, so I saved money in advance. Once I got summons to State Security, it was sometime in the middle of the 1980s. I even did not know what it was about. Then I realized that it had probably been state security when they started to ask me about the Jazz section. - Are you in the Jazz section? - Yes, I am. - And why are you there? -Because I am interested in information that I can´t find elsewhere... Other documents, Melodie or Gramorevue or other magazines only have a limited scope and I am interested in music a bit more...and there were interesting things. They asked about people, how I got there, how I got to know about it.”

  • Full recordings
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    ED Hradec Králové, 16.02.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 02:29:53
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
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Put together what one likes to do and offer it to someone else if they like it

Dalibor Mierva, 16 years old
Dalibor Mierva, 16 years old
photo: archiv Dalibor Mierva

Dalibor Mierva was born on the 4th of January in Ostrava. Even as a small child he liked to do sports and he started to play basketball at elementary school. He has a fundamental childhood memory of occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 when they recorded the radio broadcast. He went for a short time to a scout unit in 1969 - until its abolition. He went to Secondary technical school of mechanical engineering in Bruntál and he and his friends started a band together. He studied at Faculty of Physical Education at Military University in Prague. Except of sport, music was his other significant hobby and he started to organized evenings where people listened to music during his university studies. He was a member of a Jazz section and he was summoned to interrogation by State Security in the 1980s because of it. He became a candidate for the Czechoslovak Communist Party at University. He was placed to Radio Electronic Fight Unit in Kolín where he moved with his wife and they had two children. In army he was in charge of Physical Education for professional soldiers, organization of sport competitions, preparation of Spartakiad and he was also in charge of a volleyball team for five years. He did not like party meetings and political schooling. In 1989, he was in Cheb and he took part in revolutionary activities and he helped in Civic Forum. He returned a party membership card and he stayed in the army for other eight years. He organized Festival of Southern rock in Kolín and later he organized South rock and blues Festival Kolín. He lived in Nové Dvory with his second wife in 2020.