Jitka Chaloupková

* 1943

  • "I couldn't give up the organ, even though Mrs Růžičková persuaded me to go to the Academy of Performing Arts to teach harpsichord, to be her assistant. I couldn't refuse her. I knew that I was in no danger if I applied, because a Soviet citizen was applying with me. I knew I wasn't taking any risks. I wanted to stay at the conservatory, where I could teach both. I'm not saying that I wanted to give up the harpsichord completely, I never did that either, but I couldn't give up the organ, I would just miss it. And nobody would have got me into the Communist Party, I would have preferred to go sweeping the streets. But fortunately that didn't happen, nobody offered me that. It was the sensible management of the local conservatory - they knew that organists would hardly... there you could expect a religious person."

  • "That is the merit of Director Seidl, he was very keen to have the organ repaired, he loved music. Now what to do with it, since it's already been repaired and the conservationists got the money for it. Director Seidl's other idea was to start doing concerts, but for that we needed the approval of the party, the church secretary. He didn't like it very much, he argued that it was in the church and Director Seidl said to him quite jokingly, 'I'm not going to take the organ on my back and put it in the square.' In the end, he confirmed it, the concerts began to take place there and were successful. We always had the church completely full."

  • "Prior Heřman Josef Tyl was originally in the New Reich and then he was sent to Teplá because the German Premonstratensians had to leave, it was Czech-German. Even the monastery, they didn't talk to them there, he wanted to go, he didn't want to go, he just had to go, they left only the librarian, who was almost ninety years old. And this Mr. prior Tyl was in trouble because he wanted to give them food for the journey. He wanted them to leave politely, normally, because they were spiritual people. So then he stayed there and tried to keep the monastery going, which he managed to do for those few years, for those almost five years, because he was a wonderful organizer, and he knew how to deal with people, so he could get them easily. But he also had his own experiences, he was in Auschwitz and Buchenwald during the war. I talked to one person there who was in prison with him, he was a communist. He said to me, 'You know, he kept us all there, otherwise we wouldn't have survived.' Well, after the war, and after the monastery was closed down, he went back to prison at Mírov and Leopoldov, and he was sentenced to 15 years for nothing, just because he was a priest and he tried to send those poor German comrades away politely. He was then released on amnesty, I think eight years later, I don't know exactly."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Plzeň, 27.07.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:00
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I preferred to lock the church choir after leaving at a certain time

Jitka Chaloupková, 1975
Jitka Chaloupková, 1975
zdroj: Archive of a witness

Organist, choirmaster and harpsichordist Jitka Chaloupková was born on 23 November 1943 in Dolní Kralovice, which later had to give way to the construction of the Želivka water reservoir. In 1948 the whole family had to move to Teplá in the West Bohemian border region for political reasons. The Chaloupkas briefly attended mass in the Teplá monastery, which was closed down in 1950 in the violent Aktion K. In the local church, Jitka Chaloupková was attracted by the sound of the organ, and she developed her musical talents at the music school in Bečov nad Teplou. She later studied at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts, and spent two years on a scholarship in Weimar. In the summer of 1968 she witnessed a student protest in Leipzig against the demolition of the Gothic church, and spent 21st August at home in Teplá. From the 1970s she worked at the conservatory in Pilsen, and from the 1990s also at the conservatory in České Budějovice. At the time of the interview in 2023, she was still looking after the organ of the Plzeň diocese as an organist and leading the church choir.