COURAGE

connecting collections

Mario Fabekovac was born in Zagreb in 1975 and has lived all his life in Samobor. In 2001, he graduated from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. Since 2003, he has been employed as an archivist at the Croatian State Archives (Political Parties and Associations Division of the CSA’s Department for the Preservation and Arrangement of Archival Records), where he is currently an archivist-specialist. In 2008 he arranged and incorporated the newly found material of the Matica hrvatska Collection.

The concept of cultural opposition was not known to him before the COURAGE project, but he assumes that it refers to "the action of people in the field of culture who through their basic activity and in their own way expressed some negative or critical attitudes towards the authorities or the complete socialist system" (Interview with Fabekovac, Mario). In that sense, he also sees the influence of intellectuals within Matica hrvatska.

Because of his popularity among the youth, he was not promoted to a parish priest but remained only an administrator of the parish of Vinné near the town of Michalovce. From 1980 to 1989, he was an administrator in Hýľov in the Košice-okolie District. In 1980, along with priest Július Chalupa, Anton Fabian established a recording studio in Hýľov where they used to record and distribute gospel albums. After 1989, he continued his studies in Lublin and Rome.

Following graduation from studies in the field of electronic data analysis, Jan Faktor worked as a programmer in Prague. Together with his wife, he moved to East Berlin in 1978 for personal reasons and found employment as a locksmith and kindergarten teacher, but also engaged heavily in the independent literary scene. Through his numerous experimental texts, Faktor enriched the group of authors belonging to the “Prenzlauer-Berg-Connection”.

Although the German language was foreign to him, he gradually gained his own perspective on its usage and challenged its artistic and political conventions as well as those of the independent literary scene. In 1983, he published his four part “Manifest of Trivial Poetry” (Manifest der Trivialpoesie) and one year later, together with Papenfuß and Stefan Döring, another manifest  “Zoro in Skorne”. He became a regular at apartment, studio and courtyard readings and he released his writings in Samizdat form.

Jan Faktor's texts often parodied techniques which are utilized linguistically to enhance meaning. These include repetition (for emphasis) and the usage of comparatives. Faktor's techniques are on display in his 23-page long poem "George's Worries about the Future" ("Georgs Sorgen um die Zukunft") from the volume "George's Attempts at a Poem and Other Positive Texts from the Poet's Garden of Horror" („Georgs Versuche an einem Gedicht und andere positive Texte aus dem Dichtergarten des Grauens“). Through the inclusion of meaningless albeit grammatically correct suprelatives ("the eight-hour working day becomes more eight hourly", etc.), the nonsense of the ideologically motivated and delusional degrees of comparison present in the official language of the GDR are laid bare. In other poems, the author constructs sentences without regard to German conventions for doing so thereby producing comical results.

In 1989, he became a member of the New Forum (Neuen Forum) and later an employee of the first GDR Civil Rights Movement weekly, The Others (Die Andere). Since the 1990s, Faktor has reflected retrospectively on the character of the independent literary scene of the GDR on multiple occasions in his own writings as well as in interviews.

Polish actor, comedian and by background – graphic artist. He was involved in the Solidarity movement from its beginnings. In the 1980s he thought against the socialist regime with his humour as a weapon. He produced numerous posters, comics, graphics and illustrations that were humorously discrediting the authorities. His works were commonly recognised and illegally distributed by the underground opposition. He also opposed the state propaganda during illegal performances of a stand-up nature.

Jacek Fedorowicz is a member of the Historic-Programme Council of the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk. He donated to the institution a wide collection of his graphics (along with stamps and patterns) and video recordings of his illegal performances.

Alexander Fedynsky served as director of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in the years 1977-1981. Like his predecessor, Leonid Bachynsky, Fedynsky was a refugee and immigrant from Western Ukraine. Arriving in the U.S. with a Ph.D. in law, he worked in management at a factory, while actively amassing a private collection of Ukrainian books and other printed material. Under his guidance, the UMA continued to function as an institution that worked toward the goal of a free Ukraine and in service to the local community, which meant actively preserving the heritage and history of Ukraine and Ukrainian-Americans.

In addition to actively acquiring periodicals, Fedynsky’s major contribution was his work in compiling bibliographical indexes of the Ukrainian press outside of Ukraine, which were published by the UMA. During his tenure, the UMA published nineteen titles, while also collecting most of the UMA’s émigré literature via Fedynsky’s wide network of acquaintances around the world. In 1981, Fedynsky resigned as director due to ill health.

Andrew Fedynsky was born in 1947 to political refugees living in displaced persons camps in Innsbruck, Austria. He was 8 months old when the family came to America. His older brother George was born in Poland and spent his formative years in a warzone. His younger brother Peter was born in Pennsylvania after they had already emigrated to America. The family moved to Cleveland, OH, when Andriy was 7 years old, where he attended Cleveland Public Schools. Later he graduated from the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in English and German. One of the primary reasons, Andriy went to Notre Dame is because they had a sophomore study abroad program in Innsbruck, which he attended in 1966-1967.  

After graduation in 1969, Andriy taught in the Cleveland Public School system for nine years. During that time, he became involved with the Ukrainian dissident movement, Helsinki group and the publishing house Smoloskyp, which published samizdat materials smuggled out of the Soviet Union. He translated Ukrainian dissident literature, gave lectures at various universities, lobbied for human rights, and was even arrested in Belgrade in 1977 at the first Helsinki follow-up conference. He and a few friends had organized a press conference to bring attention to the plight of Ukrainian dissidents, specifically Mykola Rudenko and Oleksa Tykhyj, in order to demonstrate to signatory countries that citizens of Soviet Ukraine that had volunteered to help their country implement the Helsinki Accords were now being arrested and put on trial. Fedynsky was arrested, put on a plane and thrown out of the country, a much milder fate than that faced by many of his contemporaries. Within a year he was offered a position on Capitol Hill to work as a speechwriter and foreign policy aid for Bob Dole in 1978. After going back Cleveland to get a masters degree in history at John Carroll University, he returned to Washington to work for the Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar who represented Cleveland. As a senior legislative assistant, he worked on issues important to the city of Cleveland, such as development, transportation and foreign policy, as well as the Ukrainian community. Fedynsky was involved in the creation of the Congressional Famine Commission in 1983.

While Fedynsky was working on Capitol Hill, his father Oleksandr became the director of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland. It was during that time that Andrew became aware of the scope and value of the collection there. When his father passed away in 1987, Andrew returned to Cleveland to straighten out the collection. What was meant to be one year stretched into thirty. His boss Mary Rose Oakar allowed him to work half days for her in the district office in Cleveland and then half days at the museum. During that period, Fedynsky oversaw the stabilization of the collection, repairs on the house, and the acquisition of a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant to construct an archival building. Now, Tremont is one of the premier neighbourhoods in Cleveland, with million dollar properties. For instance, the hall of the Ukrainian American Youth Association was sold for $40,000 and its worth upwards of 2 million now.

The Ukrainian Museum-Archives was also under pressure to move the museum to the suburbs, but Fedynsky resisted that outcome with the help of a number of dedicated people—helpers, colleagues, co-workers—all of whom were all of the opinion that Ukrainian culture belongs at the center of influence, which is the city, where banking, economics, politics, and culture thrive. If the museum was moved to the suburbs, that would have been akin to moving to the village. According to Fedynsky, that has been Ukraine’s problem historically. Ukraine was a rural society with a thriving farming culture, which is wonderful, yielding beautiful handicrafts, Easter eggs, and deep traditions. Citing Mykola Khvylioviy, who saw in the development of the city an opportunity to create an urban Ukrainian culture, Fedynsky believes that maintaining a presence in the city of Cleveland is important for the UMA and further integration into the fabric of a reviving neighbourhood is one of the guiding principles shaping future projects and plans.

Christine Panchuk Fedynsky grew up in Chicago where she attended Ukrainian schools and participated in Ukrainian organizations.  She was particularly active in the Plast Scouting organization where she served as counsellor and Head Counsellor in summer comps. 

Christine received her undergraduate education at the University of Illinois in Chicago with a degree in Pharmacy.  She received a Masters of Business Administration degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.  She married Andrew Fedynsky in 1988 and settled in Cleveland where she continued to volunteer in community organizations, including Plast, the Ukrainian-language Saturday school, Ridna Shkola as well as the Ukrainian Museum-Archives.  She was the inspiration and, for at least a decade, chief organizer of the annual UMA Easter Bazaar, now in its 25^th year. 

Christine also helps with the preparation of exhibits, lectures and receptions at the UMA, maintains membership rolls and assists with accounting.   

Ladislav Karel Feierabend was an important Czechoslovak politician and economist. From 1938 to 1939 he was the minister of agriculture. After he went into exile in London in 1940, he held the post of Czechoslovak finance minister in the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. Feierabend was a member of the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants and after the war he joined the Czech National Social Party. After the Communist coup in February 1948, Feierabend decided to emigrate from Czechoslovakia. First of all, he went to London and then to the United States of America, where he actively participated in the radio station, Voice of America, between 1965 and 1969. He was also involved in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in Washington.

Ferenc Fejtő (1909–2008) was a Hungarian-born French historian, journalist, writer and political scientist. He was born in Nagykanizsa, to a Jewish-Hungarian family of booksellers and publishers. He studied in both Zagreb and Nagykanizsa. Fejtő applied to the Science University of Budapest and at Eötvös Loránd University, but because of the anti-Semitic, “Numerus Clausus” law, he could not attend those schools and instead studied Hungarian, French and German language and literature at the University of Pécs from 1927. Following the abolition of “Numerus Clausus”, Fejtő studied Hungarian and German language and literature at the Science University of Budapest from 1929. He was a member of the Bartha Miklós Society, and joined the illegal communist movement. In 1932, Fejtő was sentenced to one year in prison for organizing a Marxist study group. He diverged from the communists and became a social-democratic journalist. In 1935, together with the poet Attila József and the publicist Pál Ignotus, he founded the anti-Nazi and anti-Stalinist literary periodical Szép Szó. In 1938, following a six-month prison sentence for an article criticizing the German-sympathetic government, he left Hungary and moved to France. In 1943–1944 he took part in the French Resistance.

Ferenc Fábri is a journalist. He started to attend the experimental summer camps organized in Bánk in the 1930s and continue to do so until the 1960s. Fábri is one of the old campers who is personally dedicated to preserving the heritage of the founder, reformist pedagogue Eszter Leveleki. A part of Leveleki’s bequest was handed over to him (e.g. diaries, picture albums, posters). Ferenc Fábri safeguards this heritage and draws on it in the various activities (organizing camps, founding the Eszter Leveleki Foundation). He also wrote many articles and edited books on the festivals.

Poet Ferenc Juhász (1928–2015) was born in Bia, a village near Budapest. After World War II, he published his first poems and was hailed as a prodigy of Hungarian poetry.

From 1951 to 1974, Juhász served as an editor for Szépirodalmi Publishing House, which published literature in Hungary. In the 1950s, Juhász began to suffer political attacks because of his poetry.

A leading figure of West Bohemian underground culture and leader of the artistic group the Pathological Orchestra of the City of Marianske. He was also the author of its chronicle. He was known as a “mad” poet, artist and performer. The nickname “Mad” refers to his wild and vivacious nature and his unchained and energetic performances. His companions considered him a Czech form of the accursed poet, who lived according to his own rules during any regime. He was a lifelong “alternative” person and freedom-seeker. At end of his days he lived as a homeless person in Marianske Lazne. He died of a heart attack.

Józef Figiela is an unconventional figure connected to the underground post of the strike in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk in August 1980. For many years Figiela manoeuvred between two passions and two vocations: he was a captain of maritime shipping and a graphic artist. In 1950 he graduated from the State Maritime School in Szczecin and in 1964 he also gained a Master’s degree in the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Gdansk. For almost three decades he alternately sailed and worked as an artist.

In August 1980 he was supposed to go for another cruise, when the strikes in the shipyard broke. Figiela eagerly joined the protests. In order to support the strike’s ideas, the sailor-artist decided to use his creative abilities. On 20 August he created his first linocut. It presents a hand clenched into a fist (symbolising a fight), Gdansk’s coat of arms, and some nautical motifs. The copies in the form of a stamp were done on the envelopes and postcards in the white-and-red, Polish national colours.  

During the strikes, Figiela created 4 seals, which were copied on a couple of hundreds of cards and envelopes. All the linocuts are characterised by a remarkably precise execution and high artistic values. The artist also drew his daughter (by that time a 15-year-old) Dąbrówka into the oppositional activity. She created her own seal (also very interesting graphically), as well as she helped her father with creating the copies for dissemination.

Dąbrówka Figiela-Miadziółko is a daughter of Józef Figiela who created stamps of the underground post during the strikes of August 1980 in Gdansk. At the time of the protests Dąbrówka was just a 15-year-old girl, but she engaged in helping her father with disseminating the stamps, as well as she created her own linocuts. She was responsible e.g. for getting the dates sealed on the enveloped in the post offices, which was a complicated task, as she had to visit the offices in the evenings and convince the post workers to put the seal with the tomorrow's date. This enabled her father to share the copies with the current date in the striking Shipyard the next day. Disseminating materials connected to the protests was illegal, so Dąbrówka had to use some tricks not to reveal the real cause of her visit – e.g. she often changed the visited post offices.

In August 1980 Dąrówka created her own linocut, which was of a particularly sublime content and nuanced graphic form, as for a teenager. The seal shows the Polish flag above the protesting mass of people. The text was supposed to say: “Only through strike we will win the just government”, however the first word did not work out and was cut out from the seal, accordingly to her father’s advice. Her linocut was copied onto the envelopes and post cards, and – along with the other materials produced by Józef Figiela – it was disseminated among the protesters in the Gdansk Shipyard.

In later years Dąbrówka Figiela-Miadziółko continued her artistic career. She graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Gdańsk and worked i.e. as the books’ illustrator.

Emil Filla was a Czech cubist painter, graphic designer and sculptor. He was influenced by the work of Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He was a member of the Osm (Eight) group, who he exhibited with in 1907 and 1908. From 1909 he was a member of the Mánes Association of Artists. Before the First World War he travelled to Paris and spent the war in the Netherlands. During the interwar period he was one of the most important representatives of the Czechoslovak avant-garde. He spent the Second World War in German concentration camps in Dachau and Buchenwald. After the Second World War he worked as a lecturer at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague.

Olivija Fištrović was born in the village of Reka near Koprivnica in 1931. She is the daughter of Ustasha soldier Stjepan Fištrović, who, along with his son, left Croatia and settled in Peru at the end of World War II. Olivija remained with her mother in their homeland. She studied medicine, and occasionally worked for a publishing company. After receiving permission to visit a book fair in Greece on the behalf of the publishing company, she legally left Yugoslavia in the mid-1950s. For several years she lived with her father and brother in Peru, and then went to the United States and settled in Chicago, where she still lives today. She has been variously employed in her life, among other things as a librarian at the St. Mary Hospital, developing a love for books that is best reflected in her library, most of which she donated to the Fran Galović Library and Reading Room in Koprivnica.