Jaroslav Stejný

* 1957

  • "And they came in 1990 to cut down the arboretum, the rest on January 2. And then I've seen it, I got completely green with rage, the gamekeeper Lískovec told me and said, 'Look, they're going to cut down the arboretum.' The cells were already moved in. Well, I went to the director of the forests, completely enraged, and I said, 'Well, he'll fall there,' because he was a communist, of course, I say, ' And they were terribly scared [well, I said it like that, I said it like that, you weren't there] And he normally... we had an hour, they had permission, they had all permits, the removal of monument care, everything in their hands, but as the revolution came, all the communists were afraid, trembling like hares. And he picked up the phone and said, 'Look, just cancel it.'"

  • "Like this, when I was in Jezeří, the Sudeten Germans went there after the revolution. And actually Jezeří is all they have left, they went there as if to remember and they said... [and cry, they were showing, where their home was, and then we had some who lived directly in the castle, so they crawled around our apartment again showing whereabout their stuff was.] And how cold they were using the heater. [And one lady actually, that she grew up with those Lobkovice children, right?] Well, they sleighed there, and so on. You also went down to school on sleghs and let them down there and the miners stole them. I did that at [Červený] Hrádek, when I was working at Hrádek, I invited the Sudeten Germans to it, because they wanted to see their friends, the communists could go crazy, there was so much anger in them, and then the documentary Dispute about nothing and actually they... no one had anything, but here in the communists - it remained in them all the time, because of all the hatred for the Sudeten Germans… that was horrible."

  • "You basically saved the castle and it didn't get demolish it because of you. Or why didn't it demolish it?" - "It's quite complicated. Not because of us, but a lot of people were involved, it's not the work of a single person. It's always that there are more people when you do something, because you can't do much yourself. But it happened under strange circumstances. Because I came there in 1984 and received a contract from conservationists only for a year before it was demolished, so then it was another year from 1985 to 1986. And then the ideological secretary of the KNV KSČ from the region began to come to us. He always came, he let the driver sit in the car, he came to have coffee with us. He said, 'I'm so nice to you.' So I didn't talk about politics, because it was very thin ice, and he always came to us for coffee to rest, and now the district communists, they were in Most and the regional ones, they were in Ústí, so the district was actually fighting against the region. That was all, it was like a coincidence of everything. He came to us, this guy named Šenkýř, and said, 'Then I have it on the table, my signature is enough.' And now the problem is that if you demolished the Lake, the largest layer of coal there would be right at that foot, the coal is the most, so the more they dare, the more they get to the coal. Then there was the minor option that the Jezeří would be demolished and that it would be dredged in. And so in that year 1987 the Šenkýř said what we would do with it. Led by Rudolf Hegenbart, it was such a gray eminence, and there were some Czech ministers, but they were there as if in number, they were such elders, and the Hegenbart, he was deciding there, and then I pulled him out on the terrace, because I understood that [I hope you are recording it]. And the Hegenbart, whose full name was Rudolf Hegenbart, came out on the terrace and suddenly, as if he was enlightened, he said: ´I will not allow this get ruined."

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    Kadaň, 22.04.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 59:41
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

You live in a castle, it is your home, so you defend it

Jaroslav Stejný (en)
Jaroslav Stejný (en)
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jaroslav Stejný was born on March 21, 1957 in Jičín. After teaching and changing several professions, he settled in 1984 at Jezeří Castle in the Northern Bohemia. It was originally to be demolished due to opencast coal mining, but thanks to Jaroslav, it was saved and still stands today. After the revolution, he began to hold a meeting of the Defunct Village, where the original inhabitants of the villages defunct due to mining came together. He also organized this event at Červený Hrádek, where he worked as a warden from 1994 to 2004.