Miluše Prokůpková

* 1947

  • "What has changed after 1989" “Well, what's changed - when I started [teaching] in the '80s, it wasn't exactly the best time, because there were a lot of bans at school - not explicitly, but you had to be careful. It is true that in my field of biology it was not so terrible, but anyway, every hour must have had an educational goal of raising a socialist man. We were constantly under control, constantly filling out some questionnaires, there were being written evaluations on us, and one was worried if he would be able to teach at all. After the year 1989, in that period of euphoria, enthusiasm, even at school it was obvious, I was no longer a comrade teacher, but the children gave me a more convenient nickname - they called me Mother Nature."

  • "What was the era of normalization?" “Well, it's been a long period, full of bans, orders, questionnaires, lack of freedom, when you really couldn't do what you wanted to do, and even more often you had to do what you didn't want to do. So it wasn't a good time. Even though one had also pleasant, joyful moments in life, this was actually always present. One kept realizing that there was no freedom, that terrible things were happening here that shouldn't happen.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    nevíme, 29.02.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 23:13
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I remember that feeling of horror, anger, hopelessness. Something you don’t even want to believe that is happening, and that signals that bad times are coming.

High School graduation photo of Miluše Prokůpková (née Janurová).
High School graduation photo of Miluše Prokůpková (née Janurová).
zdroj: soutěž

Miluše Prokůpková was born on June 15, 1947 in Teplice. Her mother was a business assistant, and her father finished his studies as an engineer at Bata shoes factory. Both of her parents had different places of birth, but after the war they moved to Teplice, where there was enough work - her father managed glass kilns in Podkrušnohoří. Miluše spent her childhood in Teplice, going to Káranice for the holidays with her grandfather. She graduated from the Faculty of Education in Ústí nad Labem, majoring in biology and chemistry, and worked in primary schools all her life. In 1975, she got married and together with their husband, due to the bad air in Teplice, after the birth of their second daughter, they decided to move to the region of Kutná Hora in 1979, where they lived at the Rákosov mill. Today she lives in Štipoklasy with her husband, she takes care of the garden and her six grandchildren. The interview with was recorded by her grandson Šimon as part of the Stories of the 20th Century competition.