Democracy, homeland, family, and social solidarity
Bohumil Flemming was born in 1921 in Prague. He spent his childhood and youth in Žižkov (a Prague quarter) in the extensive company of his friends and classmates. He graduated from grammar school and was awarded the TGM Prize for excellent study results; he wanted to continue his studies at the Czech Technical University. When the Germans invaded, however, all universities were closed down and Bohumil Flemming was forced to hide for a short time. When the danger passed, he returned home and was employed as a worker at the ČKD factory in Prague. At the same time he attended night school, where he was lectured by professors released from the universities. Towards the end of the war he applied to a Communist resistance group, but his request was turned down. After the war he obtained a degree in high voltage engineering and began to take an active interest in politics. After the February-1948 coup, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and took up the post of head engineer at the Karolina power plant. In the 1950s he was appointed head engineer of energetics at the Ministry of Fuel and Energetics, and several years later he founded and directed the Organisation for the Rationalisation of Generating Stations. In the 1960s he headed the Institute for the Development of Fuel and Energy Resources. In August 1968 he was participating in a congress of the World Energy Council and could thus witness the reactions of representatives of Western nations to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies. After returning home, and especially during the normalisation, he was removed from his functions, and until the Velvet Revolution he held the position of deputy chief of the energetics department. After 1989 he went into business for a few years, he now lives in a care home for the elderly in Prague-Malešice.