Jiří Matouš

* 1950

  • "So I went through three very difficult months. I always had to borrow my French classmates´ notes. I copied them and my work was working with a dictionary. I translated that into Czech and learned it. And when we had assignments, I always wrote it down in Czech, then translated it into French with a dictionary. Well, after three months, I suddenly found out that I was already able to take notes in class by myself, even with words I didn't know, but you were just starting to guess their meaning. Well, gradually after three months it took over and it was completely, but completely about something else."

  • "The painter Jan Zrzavý lived in No. 6, whom I saw very often. And from the window of my room I looked into the backyard of house No. 6, and from that backyard Jan Zrzavý had an exit from his studio right under my window. And I often talked there - not so much with him, but mostly with his pupils or disciples, who were young men. And those houses had the peculiarity of the Castle stairs, that behind the house there was a yard, then up the stairs you went up to the first stair-like garden, then up more stairs you went up to the second garden and from there you could see all of Prague. And that last garden was separated from the castle garden by a wall about two and a half meters high.'“

  • "I found myself in a cell that was, I don't know, twenty meters, and in the evening there were over sixty of us there. Constant light on. Now, the cell, as it was small, had an entire space constantly free, and there were those iron gates, like when there are parades or when there are state visits, they are put up so that people don't get into the roads. So there it was like this and they put them in a loop to fit it in there. A black man who was there was kind enough to give me a piece of cardboard so I wouldn't lie on the tiles. I was lying like this by the wall and then I was facing that wall and now I sawthat the wall was moving. I was immediately covered in all the fleas and I don't know what."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 22.02.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:45:03
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I didn‘t want to live my life begging

Jiří Matouš in 1980s
Jiří Matouš in 1980s
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jiří Matouš was born on September 29, 1950 in Vejprty, but spent most of his childhood in Prague, where he grew up in an apartment on Zámecké schody. In 1967, he managed to go to France to the Carnot high school in Dijon. He did not return from France after finishing his studies and found a job in Paris. In the 1980s, he started working for the Journalists‘ Association, where he eventually became a director. After the Velvet Revolution, he returned to Czechoslovakia and became involved in the privatization of publishing with his firm named Strategie. In 2022 he lived in Horoměřice.