"It went like this: I went to the Communist organisation of Prague 5 and they asked why I wanted to join the Party and I told them that I have reasons of ethics. They thus asked what reasons and I told them that I would want that all citizens be really equal because I consider it something that is good for ethics. The true reason was different, I was divorced and I was left alone with my daughter. I got a job for a year and I need to work after that. Back then, the head of the local Party cell at the technical school [where I taught] told me: 'If you want to teach, you have to [join the Party].' In fact, I failed. I was not strong. When I was at the Communist organisation of Prague 5, they asked me again: 'Do you know that there's also Masarykian ethics?' And I answered that yes, I do know. I was raised in its spirit. My grandpa was a legionnaire and I lived with him for a long time. Maybe they sensed it but otherwise, it went smoothly, they needed young people."
„[The committee] did not ask me about anything at the end. They just let me be. I was in the revolutionary committee and the students stood on my side; it was nice. I was at those meetings, I listened to the questions and I still remember answers of some people. It was pretty… [pause], then, well, it was ugly indeed. Pretty often, it was quite a bit so… [pause] cowardly. I don’t like to bring those memories back. Even some experts had to leave at the end.”
„I have to add, the comission on which Pavel Kouba and the other man whose name I cannot recall now sat, there were many good people. There was no desire for vengeance, no hatred. It was… [pause], they talked to us in such a way that we felt we had done nothing. It was a great thing on their part. Later on, I got to know many people from the undergroud culture and they were really nice to us. They were not angry at us. I thought they would be angry at us but they would invite us to their birthday parties.”
„ Then there was the excellent Svěrák, he taught us Czech. He was a young beautiful man who arrived from Prague where he had studied. In our place, it was his second teaching job and the first thing he did, he started a theatre troupe where many of my schoolmates played. He did not invite me to join them, he said that I’m too atomic. Then, all my schoolmates started to call me Atomic Anna, my name was Anna Tomanová, that is, A. Tomanová, which got shortened to Atomová, atomic, maybe because I was always very fast in all the things. Sverak said that I speak too fast and that’s why he did not want me in his theatre. His explanations of the workings of the Czech language later brought me to studying it at the arts faculty.”
Anna Hogenová was born on the 23rd October of 1946 in the community of Fláje in Krušné hory, which was later flooded by the waters of a dam of the same name. Due to complicated family situation, she spent several years in her childhood with her grandparents in Příbram. Later in her youth, she lived in Žatec. During her high school studies, she was greatly influenced by her teachers, namely Zdeněk Svěrák and Karel Hlad. In 1964, she enrolled the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports of the Charles University, several years later, she enrolled the Faculty of Philosophy as well. There she gained her doctorate in 1978. At that time, she had already been a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia which she joined in 1975. Until 1989, she taught modern philosophy and Marx-Leninist philosophy at the sports faculty. From the early 1980’s, she was drawn rather to phenomenology where she sought solace from the atmosphere of the normalisation. During the Velvet Revolution, most of the students of the sports faculty stood at her side, she thus did not need to be questioned by the ethics committee and joined the teachers’ revolutionary committee. In 1992, she became an associate professor. Currently she is teaching at the Hussite Theological Faculty and at the Faculty of Education.
Fotografie (23)
Current photograph of Anna Hogenová made during the recording in the ED Studio in Prague on the 7th of May, 2019.
Current photograph of Anna Hogenová made during the recording in the ED Studio in Prague on the 7th of May, 2019.
