Rut Kohnová

“After that I had a huge exhibition in, I digress a lot, in 1983 in Munich, there were over one hundred paintings and it was dedicated to Franz Kafka. At that time, it was one hundred years since his birth. Additionally, I have to say that even back in Czechia I loved Kafka’s The Castle and always when I had some problems, I admired how brash K. is, how brave he is, and how Frieda tells him: ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’ and then she tells him to go and he still encounters so many obstacles on his way… And in general, his aphorisms and diaries are fantastic and so on. So, a really huge set of these paintings was created and it was acknowledged as… Süddeutsche Zeitung, these are the most famous German newspapers in the Bavarian area, wrote about it. Then I got a curious water lily prize awarded by the city of Munich, I think it was in 1990, but I do not remember it precisely. And the prize was not for young people to support them to continue, this prize was awarded for lifework. For a certain huge collection of paintings and so on. I regularly exhibited in Kunstsalon in Munich, then there were the exhibitions in Switzerland and I was in France as well, and I do not know, in Stuttgart and in Basel. I even was at the artistic Basel Messe. And one thing was truly marvellous – that Pavel supported me greatly.”

“And one more story happened. Our last travel to Israel where we were… Pavel actually wrote the first biography of Přemysl Pitter because in 1995 when the 100th anniversary of his birth was, he was announced as a significant figure by UNESCO and Pavel wrote this biography which was later translated into German. And the first one that is also… which cover was designed by me. And Přemysl Pitter later began to be very… during the time when Pavel was in the so-called retirement which actually never happened – he was always terribly hardworking and he was writing and so on – he was asked to write profiles of children, Jewish children, who stayed with Přemysl Pitter after 1945. So, we were in Israel, I think it was in 1999. The book was published in 2000 and Pavel shot interviews with the former children. We were there, I do not know, three weeks, we travelled by buses as well, to Beersheba and everywhere, to those who did not come to Tel Aviv. And the situation was special because Pavel was almost the only possibility so that the people were willing to talk about their lives. Because Pavel experienced the same things as they did.”

“He lost everybody indeed. And it is very encrypted in the poems. But it is there. Everyone will say that it is incredible how he expressed himself through the language in his poems… And in such an age. Pavel had loads of lectures and often there was only his biography and life story projected but there was always the situation… he always wanted me to be there. Sometimes David managed to accompany him on the piano in the pauses and I always had such a feeling that… - he always read it, he never said it spontaneously - that he reads it as if it was a literature, as if it was not his fate. And I do not know, Pavel claimed that he actually does not have… many people… even much later on they were not able to put up with it and those are the cases when much later on, years later, they committed suicide or… right? But well, I do not know. I do not want to exaggerate but maybe, perhaps it much… it is there. That his life with me helped him a lot to find that kind of a new positive way.”