“I graduated from school in 1972 with a secondary school-leaving exam. Then I wanted to get into university, I wanted to study restoration. I did the entrance exams three times. (I did) the first one, when my father was still alive. I evidently messed up the first exam. The spicy fact about the second exam is that professor Raimund Ondráček, who was back then in charge of the Faculty of Restoration, gave me a hard time when examining me in different strikes - Svárov strike, Most strike. He attacked me in a way that said, 'I would expect you to tell me that the workers here were shooting the masters,' and that kind of nonsense."
“Was it again because of your family background?
“Yes. So I did not pass the second entrance exam either. During the third one, there was an assistant who I knew there and he helped me and when professor Ondráček left for lunch, he took me to a committee and I passed the exams. Coincidentally, the rector at the time was Jiří Kotalík and Josef Vágner was his secretary and he immediately called us at home to tell us that I had passed the exams as fourth and that we could celebrate. So we celebrated it and in fourteen days I got a document saying I did not meet the requirements for admission. It was clear to me that it was not worth trying to pass the entrance exam. The points were not counted there, I had points only for the exams, but not for my background."
“He [father, Mikuláš Medek] did not drink when he was painting. He could not do it, he had to be completely sober. There were periods of time where he was intensively painting and painting and painted a tremendous amount of paintings. And then he fell back and needed a break that he solved with alcohol. It was relaxation from work and sometimes it took a long time before he managed to start working again after the drinking period.”
“You mentioned that Viola Fischerová was talking to you… do you remember any other people that used to visit you or that your parents used to meet? For example someone who was important to you.”
“That is the problem, I always tell myself that I should remember something of historical significance. Most of the time, one more likely remembers some marginal interesting things and I feel a bit sorry because of it but it is like that in life. I remember that Čestmír Krátký used to visit us and I was a very cheeky child, so I would always comment on the person who came. I said about Čestmír Krátký that he looked like a rat and he was offended by it. Josef Topol also used to visit us. I did not like Josef Topol back then because he used to come and stand quietly there and said nothing. He would quietly stand in one spot. My dad for example promised me that we would go somewhere and do something together - and Topol stood there and was quiet. I was extremely annoyed, so I took a knife and threw it at Topol. The knife stuck in the stepladder and Topol was standing still and didn't say a word. He was just standing and looking. I was then of course given a good dressing-down. Unfortunately, my memories are of this type.”
“I stayed with them at home for a year, until actually through the revolution. My youngest son was born exactly on 17 November 1989. It was a beautiful thing because when I arrived at the Provincial maternity hospital, there was not almost anybody there because they all went to the demonstration in Albertov. My son was born at quarter to five in the afternoon. Well, it was almost empty there and the evening was amazing because the nurses distributed little flags and everyone was listening to Voice of America. Suddenly I could hear Ivan Medek loudly reporting about what happened in Prague, the atmosphere was amazing. Just my husband was quite upset because a lot of demonstrations were happening and he was home with three children and one day when he went to a demonstration, people almost trampled them. After it, he was afraid to go to the demonstrations. He was just waiting for me to be at home so that he could go out.” - “It was a feeling of great euphoria.” - “Well, great euphoria. It was beautiful. We all expected many unrealistic things from it.“
“And when the situation concerning Charter arose, well, even before it when normalization started, the atmosphere started to be really tense and Ivan gave us some advice after Charter to start a group competing for the title Brigade of Socialist Labour because when people, who signed Charter were in the group, they could not fire them. And we started a group competing for the title Brigade of Socialist Labour. It laid in the fact that I had a beautiful chronicle that I decorated in the style of medieval Hebrew prints and we would go on trips together and we would work in each other´s cottages and I used to write everything down in the chronicle and I used to glue there photographs and then they fired all of us anyway. Because we found out that it had to be a group that had already won the title Brigade of Socialist Labour, not only a group competing for it. It was very cruel because over time they sacked all of us over time. When they removed Lída Kybalová, they gradually employed various people in senior positions who were supposed to crash us so that we would leave. Our group fell completely apart: someone emigrated, someone left somewhere else. They wanted to fire me and give me a horrible reference so that they would not employ me even to wash windows. Back then, my mum reached to Dagmar Burešová who defended various dissidents and she solved it. She sent them a letter saying that I would leave on my own but they would have to give me a good reference. Finally, they happily agreed. Back then, Kotalík who was a director in the National Gallery employed me. An exhibition on Charles IV was being prepared at that time, it was in 1978 and I prepared documents concerning the exhibition."
“Someone dropped Charter in our post box. Me and my mother read it and Ivan Medek came the following day and started to explain us what it was about. It was after my father’s death and me and my mum immediately said that we would sign it. ‘No, under any circumstances no. First of all, you cannot imagine the consequences and secondly, whole families are not supposed to sign it, it would seem that the whole thing is a family business.‘ There should not be too many same names from one family. So that it would not be said that the signatures are only in families. And really, a horrible situation arose everywhere. That is why they gradually started to eliminate us in the museum. Even though I did not sign Charter, there were two women in the museum who signed it, both of them spent years interviewing witnesses that had survived holocaust and they gradually fired them as well. Then, the Anticharter was signed there and I was the only one from the museum who did not sign it. I think that it was the worst, almost physical experience because everyone came to see me, my friends included. They persuaded me to sign it, that it did not matter anyway, that it was not worth it, but I confirmed myself and said that I would not sign it under any circumstances. Well, I would go to interrogations about it, I would go to the Tile House or to Bartolomějská street, but the last time I went to an interrogation was in 1978 when I was pregnant and they somehow decided that I did no longer spend time with people that I could tell them something about. And they let me be. Then I went to interrogations only when I went abroad. Such classic interrogations about whom you met and so on.”
Eva Kosáková was born on 1 April 1952 in Prague as Eva Medková to the family of a painter Mikuláš Medek and a photographer Emila Medková. In her extended family, she is related to President T. G. Masaryk, painter Antonín Slavíček and Ivan Medek, Václav Havel´s chancellor. The Medek family belonged to a nonconformist group of artists, they kept in touch with many others figures of that time who thought similarly. Eva started to have problems already after the elementary school when she did not get recommendations for other education. Later she managed, facing many issues, to graduate from Art History and the Italian language as an extra-mural student. Her work experience includes the National Jewish Museum, the National Gallery and the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design (UMPRUM) and at the end again the Jewish Museum. She was specialized in Jewish textile and she participated in the preparation of many exhibitions - for example Karel IV and his age, Herbert Masaryk and The Golem walks through the Jewish Town. She is the author of the Dictionary of Judaica. She was fired from the Jewish Museum after she refused to sign the so-called Anticharter in 1977. She converted to Judaism in the 1990s after the tragical death of her husband. Nowadays, she is an administrator of her parents‘ artwork. She has been working for many years in various volunteer organizations - e.g. the Burial Society, WIZO and Metráž. She pains and does experiments - for example, she creates jewellery and decorations from waste materials.
With the surrealists, Mr. and Mrs. Effenberger. From the left Eva Kosáková, Eva Effenbergerová, Emila Medková and Vratislav Effenberger on a trip near Šternberk in 1975
With the surrealists, Mr. and Mrs. Effenberger. From the left Eva Kosáková, Eva Effenbergerová, Emila Medková and Vratislav Effenberger on a trip near Šternberk in 1975
Wedding of Eva and Petr Kosák, Petr´s father MUDr. Viktor Kosák is next to Eva, Eva´s mother Emila Medková is behind him, Petr´s sister Eva is next to him, Prague 1978
Wedding of Eva and Petr Kosák, Petr´s father MUDr. Viktor Kosák is next to Eva, Eva´s mother Emila Medková is behind him, Petr´s sister Eva is next to him, Prague 1978
