František Lorenc

* 1937

  • "I remained [in the KSČ] and I used the opportunity to be listed as an individual member. That means, that I did not have to be in the organization and to mandatorily attend meetings. They told me back then, that individual membership exists, so that I would not fall under any organization, which would have had the requirement of attending meetings. And I had also never in my life been at a meeting."

  • "When I met people, who had provocatively started handing back party IDs, when the first Citizens' Forum came together, oh how I was sick of it! When they were proposing, that there should not be Svazarms in factories and so on, that people should only work there, I voted for it. I voted for it, that it should be like that - what was a Svazarm for in a factory, and doing meetings in work hours... In the end I remained despite all of the problems and immediately, since that year 1990, I was in the council. It was the best council, which had ever been here. I was vice mayor three times, for five terms. And my being there, whether I had been or in the KSČ or not, never bothered anybody."

  • „...And so we worked on it together and from that point on I made scenes for all of the plays, and I am working there to this day, I have been making backdrops for 66 years, building, demolishing. And when it was the 150th anniversary of the theater I started directing. 150 years of the theater was in the year 1962. And you know, what we accomplished? He [colleague] rehearsed Zapadlí vlastenci, the first play from the year 1812 Krejčí Divíšek, I rehearsed the play Irkutská historie and the play Svatba sňatkového podvodníka. I wrote him a brochure for the 150 years of the theater and he met with Zdeňek Štěpánek from the National Theater, who had added thhe introduction to it. I also remember, that he wrote us: '150 years is 150 years, that is almost three human lives, and to play theater for over 150 years means having a great love for theater...'“

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    Žebrák, 15.03.2023

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I was not very interested in politics. Theater was what mattered to me

František Lorenc was born on the 9th of January 1937 in Žebrák to the family of Václav and Marie Lorenc. His father was born here as well and was trained as a foundryman, his mother worked in a shoe store in Žebrák and stayed in the household after getting married. František Lorenc grew up with his five years older brother Václav. The family lived in Litvínov in the late 40s and early 50s, where his father worked on restoring the Stalin company (which was renamed to the Chemical Company of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship in the 60s). František Lorenc studied at the Middle School of Applied Art in Prague and worked in the marketing department of the company Machine Tools Factory [Továrna obráběcích strojů (TOS)] and at ČKD. His life passion was volunteer theater. In the Ensemble of K. J. Erben in Žebrák he was active since the year 1954 as an actor, director, scenographer, and as the head of the ensemble. From the year 1961 he was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and at the request of the party he studied at the Evening University of Marxism-Leninism (VUML). With the advent of normalization the communists criticized him for handing out paint and paper during the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies, on which people wrote anti-occupation slogans, and that he took down excerpts from pro-Soviet newspapers from the noticeboards. He was bothered by the hypocrisy of those, who were against the occupation in the year 1968, and then later politically questioned others. He refused to leave the party after the year 1968, but due to an agreement he no longer had to organize with the other party members or to attend party meetings. After the revolution in the year 1989 he criticized the communists who had left the part for profiteering and „changing coats“. After the year 1989 he continued in his work as the head of the cultural club, in theater, and he was active in the representation of the town of Žebrák, he was chosen as vice mayor three times. In the year 2023 he lived in Žebrák.