We have freedom in the Czech Republic today, even though some people don’t think so
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Jan Jakub Outrata was born on August 12, 1948 in Washington, D.C., where his father, JUDr. Vladimír Outrata, worked as an ambassador. In 1951 the family returned to Czechoslovakia. He grew up with his younger brother Matěj. His maternal grandfather, Ludvík Strimpl, was an artist who participated in the Resistance movement during World War I and also introduced Beneš to Štefánik in France. During the First Republic he worked as an ambassador in Benelux. His grandmother Jiřina Strimplová spent the war years in exile in London near her friend Hana Benešová. His uncle Eduard Outrata was the exiled Minister of Finance during the war, and after 1948 he was sentenced to 12 years by the Communists in a mock trial. His parents Eva and Vladimír Outrata spent the war years in France, England and the Soviet Union. In the early 1950s, Vladimir Outrata was prematurely removed from his diplomatic post in the U.S., presumably because of his brother’s accusations of alleged treason. His parents were expelled from the Communist Party, but his father was allowed to teach international law at the Faculty of Law. Jan Jakub Outrata graduated from grammar school in the 1960s, studied art history from 1968 to 1973, and then worked his entire life at the Institute of Historic Preservation. In March 1969, he witnessed the celebration of the victory of Czechoslovakia over the USSR at the World Ice Hockey Championship, during which provocative actions took place on Wenceslas Square. He was also somewhat involved with dissent, for example with Janek Mlynárik, and he also remembers the so-called Palach Week in January 1989. He devoted all his life to saving architectural monuments. In 2023 he lived in Prague.
