Ludvík Reindl

* 1964

  • "I remember it very well, because at that time they had a concert by Elan in České Budějovice - when it was after 17 November, when the students were going around the towns and distributing leaflets and informing people who didn't know what had happened in Prague - so there was supposed to be a concert by Elan. And I was waiting for the Elan concert, and suddenly these girl friends that we were friends with came and told me that the concert was cancelled, that the students had been beaten up in Prague. And because of that, in protest... instead we went to the square and I think there was Zalman Lohonka sitting by the fountain with a guitar and there were only a few people there, maybe ten or so. And he was playing the guitar, and amongst them were some two or three students who were talking about this and saying that they were going to demonstrate and they were going to meet in the square. There was the first information about what actually happened there and the first demands that came out of that. So I think the very second or third day the series of - demonstrations started one after the other, of course I was at all of them because I felt that something was starting to move. I was worried, of course, I was waiting for the Lysa commando to run out from some side, from every corner of that square, there was a trained unit there to suppress these... there was a Plastic People of the Universe concert sometime in the sixties where this unit intervened, so I was waiting for this unit to run out and just disperse it..."

  • "The formation of that opinion, for me in life... I consider myself a free-thinking person and I like freedom, for me freedom is the most. So it was formed gradually. It's connected to that faith. The fact that faith was taken as something bad, one got this label, and then when the revolution came, that things had broken down, that we didn't have to run anywhere anymore, that I could stay here and that there would be something completely different here. That here nobody would check me on the train and ask me for my ID when I take the train from Budejice, because... when I wore my hair long and I was in a jersey with patches of English bands and when I was coming from Budějovice, before I reached Horní Stropnice I was legitimized three times, the first one was legitimized on the train, it was the guard who was walking through the train, who checked all these people who were not according to the template of the regime, so they were checked, so that they didn't just run away. So they checked me on the train, then I got off the train and at the station in Nové Hrady I was checked by the so-called contras, they were guys in civilian clothes who had served in the infantry, and they checked me again, and when I got home and I was out of the army and the contras didn't know me yet, so they checked me for a third time. So that's what I knew, that everything was going to fall into place, that I would be able to listen to the music that I liked, I would be able to watch the movies that I liked, so it all kind of built up gradually."

  • "I considered all the consequences. I was aware that I would probably not see my parents, my friends, my brothers, that I would probably not be able to come back here. It was a time... no one could imagine... we thought it was here forever. That communism would always be here, that nothing would move here, after 1968, how it was tied up and intertwined with propaganda. We were still able to see how in the West... because we had Austrian television... and there we saw how people live. But... I couldn't imagine that a revolution would come and that things would change here."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    České Budějovice, 23.01.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:04:15
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The Lord has a plan for everyone.

Border Guard, Suchdol nad Lužnicí, 1984
Border Guard, Suchdol nad Lužnicí, 1984
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Ludvík Reindl was born on April 24, 1964 in České Budějovice and grew up in Horní Stropnice. He came from a family that preferred not to talk about politics because of the different opinions of its members. However, he was strongly shaped by his religious faith, especially his clear anti-communist stance. He trained as a bricklayer, then served briefly in the Border Guard in the early 1980s, after which he was transferred to a tank battalion. He considered emigrating, but he says the Lord had other plans for him. He worked on the construction of the Temelín Nuclear Power Plant, later gained valuable experience in a plastering company and stayed with this profession, which he truly sees as a blessing. He entered the post-revolutionary era with it, when he started his own business. He is politically active, believing that one should actively change things for the better. He is also active in the historical association Jednadevadesátníci. He and his wife raised son and daughter. In 2023, he lived in the village of Nedabyle, where he also served as deputy mayor for the KDU-CSL.