Samizdat Collection of Czechoslovak Documentation Centre

http://courage.btk.mta.hu/courage/individual/n22332

This unique collection of samizdat literature (1972-1989) contains samizdat books by Czech and Slovak authors whose works could not officially be published in socialist Czechoslovakia, as well as a collection of samizdat periodicals and individual texts.

Location

Na Zátorách 6, 170 00 Praha 7 - Holešovice, Czech Republic
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Languages

Czech

Name of collection

Samizdat literature

Provenance and cultural activities

This collection of samizdat publications was created by historian Vilém Prečan in 1976 when he moved to Germany. He had gone into exile with a clear idea of how to help independent writing and friends in dissent. Immediately upon his arrival, he began to work on building a documentation center as a place to preserve everything that was, at home, constantly threatened with seizure by the State Security. Thus he began systematically archiving documents about the resistance movement and samizdat documents of all kinds. These were books, periodicals, and individual texts that had been reproduced predominantly on typewriters, later on the mimeograph, the ormig, and even on a computer printer. The samizdats came from Czechoslovakia through various smuggling channels, in which Prečan was still involved during his own time in domestic opposition. In the early eighties, German diplomat Wolfgang Scheur had the greatest credit for smuggling literature. He was succeeded in 1986 by Canadian diplomat Peter Bakewell. This is how the largest collection of Czech and Slovak samizdat was launched. After ten years of hard work, Vilém Prečan's plans for the establishment of an archive, documentation and information center were carried out. In January 1986, the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington NGO, provided a subsidy to the project of a documentation center in exile. Vaclav Havel's appeal on June 29, 1985 to support the birth center, played a major role in awarding the grant. Václav Havel pointed out the unique importance of the work of Vilém Prečan, who operated the center without an institutional background, under his own direction and with the help of only his closest friends, "almost as a private hobby". The Czechoslovak Documentation Center for Independent Literature was founded in March 1986, and beginning in November 1986, it was based in Schwarzenberg in Bavaria in Scheinfeld, on the property of Karel Schwarzenberg, at his own expense. Prečan handed over all his collections to the newly-established center. Many samizdat creators supported the center and completed its samizdat collections, including Ludvík Vaculík and Václav Havel, who founded and ran two of the most important samizdat publications. In September 2000, the Documentation Center and its collections were moved to the Czech Republic. In 2003, ČSDS made an agreement with the National Museum in Prague; the CSDS collections, including the samizdat collection, were donated to the National Museum.

Description of content

This collection contains hundreds of book titles published in samizdat editions, such as Petlice Edition, Expedice Edition, Kvart, Czech Expedition, Kde domovů můj, Popelnice, SE Edition, Nové cesty myšlení, and dozens of others, as well as a series of samizdat books. A significant part of the collection is made up of samizdat periodicals, such as Information about the Charter (Informace o Chartě), Critical Proceedings (Kritický sborník), Content (Obsah), Vocno, Central Europe (Střední Evropa), Revolver Revue, About Theater (O divadle) and others. The samizdat collection is supplemented by a collection of study copies of samizdat periodicals and a selection monographs issued in samizdat format, which was copied and bound for ČSDS by Josef Jelínek of Erlangen, a member of the board of the Exile Association.

Content

manuscripts (ego-documents, diaries, notes, letters, drafts, etc.): 1000-
publications (books, newspapers, articles, press clippings): 1000-

Operator(s)

National Museum of Czech Republic

Owner(s)

Geographical scope of recent operation

national

Topics

Founder(s)

Prečan, Vilém

Date of founding

1976

Place of founding

Hanover, Germany
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Creator(s) of content

Collector(s)

Important events in the history of the collection

Donation of Collections of Czechoslovak Documentation Centre to the National Museum of Czech Republic

Access type

parts are closed to the public

Publications

Hanáková, Jitka. Edice českého samizdatu 1972-1991. Praha: Národní knihovna České republiky, 1997.

Author(s) of this page

Hanáková, Jitka

References

Prečan, Vilém , interview by Hanáková, Jitka, September 28, 2017. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection

Last edited on: 2020-01-07 13:59:02

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