Hedvika Köhlerová

* 1924

  • “I attended a Slovak [language] school but we were taught by Czech teachers. Slovaks couldn’t speak Czech, no, they did not speak Slovak at all, they had gone to Hungarian schools. But it was Czech teachers who taught us. She taught me German, she was from Opava, her name was Jitka Benešová, I remember, and Josef Gogela from Zlín, too, he taught me mathematics. Yes, those were all Czech teachers. Slovaks would go to Hungarian schools and they only knew Hungarian or not at all [sic]. Not even to write, there were so many illiterate people, that was terrible.” “And how were the relations between Czechs and Slovaks?” “At the beginning, it was okay, but then what, you know how it goes, when there was this Slovak State, it was… I don’t know whether I should talk about it at all.” “I would be indeed glad if you told me about this!” “Tiso was the president, and, it was awful for us, really.” “How did you feel about it? You were quite small, weren’t you?” “In fact, not really, I went to school and I had, just as the Czech teachers used to teach us, five Jewish classmates. And we were buddies. All of us could write, read, that all.” “Were they your friends?” “Yes, yes, really. And I have to tell you, that I had five Jewish friends, and even Gypsy friends, some of the were my friends and they were nice. I have to say, how people talk about them nowadays, some are horrible, but back then, a Gypsy woman worked in our garden, even in the shop, but she never took anything. I can’t say a bad word about them. At that time, they behaved very civilly.”

  • “At that time, it went like this. The Social Democratic Party just folded down. This is a party which was established 160 years ago, back in the old Austria-Hungary. My father-in-law was a Social Democrat, and back then in Austria, where he was apprenticing as acabinet maker, in that party, then, he was a Social Democrat. And then, they just summoned him, then when there were the Communists, so they summoned my father-in-law, and he said: ‘So, Mr. K… you’re a social democrat, when will you join the Communist Party?’ And he said? ‘I am sorry but no. Why should I join the Communists? I’m already member of the Social Democrats.’ So, imagine, from that time on, he, simply, had been employed in the electricity company and when he told this to those Communists, he was not allowed even to enter to the electricity company any more. And at that time, my husband’s colleague came over and asked: ‘So, how are you doing, Honza?’ [And he replied:] ‘I’m sorry but the Commies? Never in my life. I will never forget what you did to my father. He was a Social Democrat and you utterly destroyed him.”

  • “Oddly enough, we lived across the street, our windows facing, and Zdeněk used to say, at that time, my brother-in-law was still alive, ‘Go date that guy, he’s an excellent musician.’ At that time, he had been already playing in the National Theatre but he was a widower and he had a little boy. And I actually raised him as my own. His mom died young, very young, she was only twenty-three. And husband was two years younger. They had that boy very early. When we got married, he was already three. And then I cared for him. My husband did not let me get a job. He used to say: ‘Nowhere, you will look after the child.’ So I looked after him.” “So he played in the National Theatre orchestra during the Protectorate?” “Yes, in the National Theatre. But, during the Protectorate, some played in the Dresden philharmonic orchestra, some of those Czechs, they were there as forced labourers, they totally forced them to!” “He was one of those?” “We, and at that time when the Germans wanted them to play there, as the German musicians were fighting on the front, weren’t they. So they [the Czechs] were there at that time. Actually, the lady, when she died, he went to her funeral. And it was horrible there at that time, they totally… Dresden, so it was really crazy. And that’s how my husband survived, he went for her wife’s funeral to Prague so he somehow there… Many Czechs were killed there, in the air raids. It was the British who dropped the bomb there. There were many Czechs there at that time. Even in Prague bombs were falling. Total madness, it was.”

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    V Praze, 29.10.2021

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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My father was in service of Austrian nobility

Portrait of Hedvika Köhlerová. 1943
Portrait of Hedvika Köhlerová. 1943
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Hedvika Köhlerová was born on the 15th of May in 1924 in the community of Liborča (today Nemšová) in Slovakia as Hedvika Sprosečová. Her family roots are very colourful and reflect the multi-national Austro-Hungarian empire. Her grandfather, Giovanni Battista Pisetta was Italian, her grandmother, Caroline Elisabeth Wetzer, was a German from the Sudeten. Hedvika grew up in Slovakia with her mother Silvie and her father was a Czech, Arthur Sproseč. She herself feels as a Czech, she has been living in Prague since 1945. A part of her family stayed in Slovakia, other family members were forced to move to Bohemia during the rule of the Slovak State (a client country of Nazi Germany, 1939 – 1945). The history of her family is tightly interwoven with the large Brumov estate which lay on both sides of the Moravian-Hungarian border [Moravia being a separate historical, geographic and political entity] which was established by an Austrian beer tycoon, Anton Dreher, and which was later managed by Countess Edeltrud von Rainer zu Harbach. Most men in Hedvika’s family were foresters in service of the Countess, Hedvika herself worked during the last few years of war as her secretary in Brumov. During the Prague Uprising, her sister’s husband died. After WWII, the witness married into a Czech family of musicians. Her husband, Jan Köhler, was a violinist in the National Theatre orchestra. His father, Jan Köhler the Elder, was fired from work after the 1948 Communist coup d’état because he was a Social Democrat and refused to join the Communist Party. After getting married, Hedvika became a housewife, cared for her children, studied languages and was active in the Protestant church. The talent for music continues in the next generations; witness’ daughter is active in music, she used to teach guitar, her granddaughter is a violinist.