Dagmar Strnadová

* 1956

  • "We were living with my parents, as I told you, it was a short walk to the school fro me, we were living in the building of today's municipal office on the second floor, and from there we could see into Germany, from our window we could see into Germany and we could see into the village of Mähring, which is actually the first village across the border. And we could see the little church there and we could never go there because there was an iron curtain, there were wires everywhere, there were soldiers everywhere. So we basically felt that Germany was incredibly close, but for us incredibly far away."

  • "In 1986, during the time of deep totalitarianism, I came to the United States to visit my relatives. And I actually found myself in a completely different country, where people treated each other decently, nobody had to be afraid to say what they thought, there was complete freedom. And when I came back after a month, I could see from the plane how grey the Czech country was behind the border. How closed we were behind those wires. Here we still saw Germany, the colours, the beautiful landscape, and here it was greyness, nothing. We arrived at the airport in Ruzyně, and there again it was grey, dirty, unpleasant people, police, customs officers treated you as if you were the biggest criminal because you were coming back from America. I was completely depressed at first. Then when the '89 happened, the Velvet Revolution, November 17, it was a challenge for me. Now everything has to change."

  • "I come from a Czech family, which has a strange fate, because my parents, grandparents and their parents had to leave for what is now Poland, which was then Prussia, because of their faith. And because they were Protestants, and the Czech lands were purely Catholic at that time, and the Protestants were persecuted, so they actually went to what was then Germany in the seventeenth century, because Frederick the Great offered them religious freedom. So they left, they founded Czech villages there, my parents were born in Husinec - named after the master Jan Hus, a Czech village. And all those centuries they kept their faith there and it was tradition that the seventh generation would return to Bohemia. So my parents actually had German citizenship, they were originally Czechs who lived for several centuries with their ancestors in another country and only after World War II did they return to Bohemia. And I was born here."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Řezno, 18.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 30:25
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We could see Germany from the window, but we could never go there

Dagmar Strnadová, 2023
Dagmar Strnadová, 2023
zdroj: Post Bellum

Dagmar Strnadová was born on 30 November 1956 in Mariánské Lázně. She came from a Czech family, but her ancestors left for Prussia in the seventeenth century, from where her parents returned after the World War II. Dagmar Strnadová spent her entire life in the village of Tři Sekery, which was located only a few kilometres from the border with West Germany. Although she had wished to be a teacher since childhood, in the end her dream did not come true. The communist regime only allowed her to study at an apprenticeship school. So she trained as a letterpress artist, which she did for a living until the Velvet Revolution. In 1986, she spent a month in the United States, where her relatives lived. She became involved in the Velvet Revolution in Tři Sekery and founded the local Civic Forum (OF). In April 1990, she then became mayor of the village. She served in her position for thirty-three years. In 2014, she won the competition for the best mayor of the Karlovy Vary Region. In 2023, she was still living in Tři Sekery and served as the deputy mayor of the municipality.