Zdeněk Šorm

* 1959

  • "We were putting together the farm [in Zbytov], we got together there - and it was a very open community. Anyone could honestly come there. It didn't even matter if they were from the evangelical church or not. And at the same time, both of those pastors [Jan Keller and Vojen Syrovátka] later signed the Charter. And through them, we got into such an unofficial environment of the church, which was a community of precisely those pastors without consent called Libštát. The name is after the rectory where one of them, Petr Brodský, worked and where State Security, for the first time, selected this meeting and interrogated the priests and so on. But then they met alternately in different places, and at that time, we started going to these meetings of dissidents, these Libštáty."

  • "In such a stealthy way, it closed the whole church only within itself. Moreover, because religious people are people same as others, they always somehow try to justify their positions, including theologians. That's how it led in theology, in preaching, and in the approach of the church hierarchy to theologizing that fear. To the point that there was a great emphasis on the fact that the church and politics are two different things, that the church should not interfere in public life, and that it should preach the gospel, which was limited to such an inner spiritual reality. And the public dimensions of faith were completely omitted. It led to some division in the church."

  • "When I joined České Budějovice as senior vicar, it was the first time they called me to the regional committee. The regional secretary, together with another one, I think his name was Bláha, were yelling at me and screaming at me to get my house in order. I said I have my house in order. My wife doesn't do anything illegal or unconstitutional, and that made them even angrier. Cyril Horák, a senior member of our church, was there with me at that time, and he kind of vouched for me so that they gave me the approval in the end. He was completely taken aback by the way they acted. And that was the first time, and since then, I've been called there like that about three times. But Ruthka, because she then left before those anniversaries to de facto hide somewhere, so they didn't pick her up after that."

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    Praha, 25.07.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:00:11
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
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    Praha, 28.11.2022

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
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    Praha, 08.12.2022

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    délka: 01:15:10
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I have been a parson for over thirty years, yet sometimes I do not understand the Bible

Zdeněk Šorm, Puppet Kingdom, circa 1979
Zdeněk Šorm, Puppet Kingdom, circa 1979
zdroj: witness archive

Zdeněk Šorm, an evangelical pastor and artist, was born on 1 October 1959 in Prague. He grew up near the forest in the Hodkovičky district of Prague with four brothers, a mother, a father, a grandmother, and a grandfather. Father Zdar Šorm was expelled from the Faculty of Arts in 1948 for his faith and political activity with the National Socialists. At the secondary technical school, where Zdeněk Šorm studied the design of toys and puppets, he became acquainted with alternative culture, founded his band Soubor Dalibor, and held musical performances on the school steps - for example, by Jaroslav Hutka. The normalization of the church, which distanced itself from politics and public life, led him to the Zbytov estate. In the second half of the 1970s, it was an important center for parish priests without permission to operate. There he met pastors Jan Keller and Vojan Syrovátka, who became crucial figures in his life. In 1985, he completed his studies in evangelical theology. And most likely because of his ties to the Lipštát district, the so-called „dissenters“, he did not receive state approval to perform clerical work. In December 1985, he married Ruth Eisler, a signatory of Charter 77 and later a member of the Federal Assembly. At the military service in Kostelec nad Labem, he refused to vote and was eventually forced to vote. After the military service, he came to Soběslav through České Budějovice, where he worked from 1988 to 2005 as senior vicar, vicar and subsequently as parish priest. He participated in the organization of events and gatherings of the Velvet Revolution. He was active in municipal politics. In the 1990s, he was the editor-in-chief of the magazine Cesty víry. He and his wife adopted three children. In 2019, he published a book of illustrations, Nakresli mi Bibli... (Draw my Bible...). At the time of filming in 2022, he lived in Prague and worked as a priest in Vinohrady.