COURAGE

connecting collections

In August 1990, there was a Rolling Stones concert at Strahov Stadium in Prague. More than 100,000 people were in attendance and the band were introduced by President Václav Havel: “From the starry sky, the Rolling Stones descended to our republic.” Before the concert, there was an informal audience of the group with President Havel at Prague Castle. The concert became one of the iconic events following the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and was then seen by a considerable part of the public as a symbolic, definitive confirmation of the change of political and social situation. Karel Haloun, an important Czech artist connected to the music scene who produced posters and LP covers for Czechoslovak music bands in the 1980s and 1990s, was a non-playing member of the music bands Jasná páka and Hudba Praha (very popular bands of the Prague club scene in the 1980s), created a poster for this concert. The poster in a typical “Haloun” style was not, however, from business-legal reasons used to promote concert in the end. It is now a rare item in the collection of the Popmuseum in Prague. The poster was presented to the public in 2011 in the exhibition “Přišli včas (i s křížkem po funuse)” (They came in time, they even locked the barn door after the horse bolted) about concerts of famous foreign bands in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic between 1990 and 1995.

Just few days after he was elected president, Václav Havel travelled to Ostrava on 3 January 1990. The so-called “Steel Heart of the Republic” therefore became the first city (besides Prague) visited by Havel as the president. Havel’s first steps led to Jaromír Šavrda’s grave at the Ostrava-Hrabová cemetery. There he paid tribute, by taking a bow and laying flowers, to the significant Ostrava writer, journalist, dissident and his own friend who died in May 1988 shortly before the Velvet Revolution. Havel’s symbolic gesture helped to spread awareness of Jaromír Šavrda; many Ostrava citizens first heard of him thanks to Václav Havel’s visit. The iconic pictures of the event are now part of the Jaromír and Dolores Šavrda Collection in the Ostrava City Archive.

On 30 May 1990, just a few months after Ceausescu’s tyranny was overthrown by desperate street fights, a severe earthquake hit the counties of Vrancea and Covasna (Háromszék) in central Romania. Among the losses were fifty heavily-damaged, older church buildings (many built before AD 1300) in Háromszék, the easternmost region of Transylvania with an 80% Hungarian majority. A group of volunteers formed among the activists of the relief organization, ETE-Transcar, and the architects of the National Historical Monuments Protection Authority. They made an overall survey of the damaged churches in order to inform the wider public and acquire the help needed for repairs. An international relief campaign was launched, and detailed documentation of the damages was published as “Pro Domo Dei”. It was edited by Budapest-based monument architect István Varga, with the collaboration of Hungarian co-authors and specialists: János Gyurkó, József Sebestyén, Béla Nóvé, László Nagy and others. The illustrated report contained a number of case studies, lists, maps and photo documentation of the damages, together with English and French summaries.

The aims and spirit of the relief campaign were much the same as those of Deadline Diaries – Transylvanian Monitor, ETE-Transcar, S.O.S Transylvania, and Hopes and Doubts by Bálint Homoród (Béla Nóvé); helping people in need and helping traditional cultural values survive. This profoundly humanitarian and democratic spirit is reflected in the forward to Pro Domo Dei:

Pro Domo Dei is a neutral project from the point of view of religious and ethnic groups. TRANSCAR relief organization will help both the Hungarian Catholic and Protestant parishes, in their grave situation, as well as the Orthodox Romanian parishes in Covasna (Háromszék) County. […] The ‘Pro Domo Dei’ project is organized first and foremost for monument protection. Our main focus of support is for the historical value; among the heavily damaged churches in the county there are some which are more than 700 years old. […] In addition to financial assistance, it is also important that, after the failure of communism, this region in Europe that has suffered so much has some moral support from the international community and readiness to help.

One of Árpád Göncz’s first trips abroad in May 1990 as newly-elected President of the Hungarian Republic was to Indianapolis, US in order to receive a Honorary Doctorate from the Senate of Butler University. On this occasion, he first read his essay “The nameless Hungarian,” a brief historical overview of twentieth century in Hungary and East Central Europe. (The speech held at the ceremony was somewhat longer than the essay, but only the Hungarian draft survived in a later book publication, without the final English version. Here, all the three texts can be read attached.)
This somewhat “bitterly optimistic” summary reflects Göncz’s charmingly brave and honest character, his wisdom, his deep empathy, and his sense of humor, as well as his sincere conviction that all the pains, failures, and losses of a horrible century can only be surpassed by the powerful collective reserves of freedom and liberty.

The 34-minute long documentary film ‘Danube-gate’ by Black Box is an event tracking documentation of the secret spying scandal that exploded in Hungary in January 1990. Police Major József Végvári, an active member of the infamous III/3 secret department, in late 1989 called on the cameraman of Black Box to help to reveal the fact that months before the free elections, the ex-communist ruling party, renamed MSZP, was still surveilling the activists of the democratic opposition, just as it did for several prior decades.