Vladimír Veit

* 1948

  • "The father Opasek lived in Germany, who was the youngest superior of a Benedictine monastery in Bohemia before the Second World War. His was called Abbot Hooligan. Once a year he organized a meeting of Czechs and Slovaks in Ruhr, where he later served as superior of the monastery. For the second time in the year, he organized a meeting in Franken, which lies near Cheb just a short distance from the Czech border. It was such an excursion area with cottages and a canteen. There were three-day seminars on various topics. If I remember correctly, one of the topics was: February 1948 through the eyes of winners and losers. So, he invited the communists, who carried out the coup and then had to leave, and at the same time he invited people who were fleeing across the border at the same time, and they were being shot. Everyone then sat at one table and discussed. In the evening we went to sit for a beer."

  • "When I left to Austria, I had not yet been filed as a Chartist, who would have absolute certainty that he would be accepted and given asylum. I wanted to travel to Sweden to see Jirka Pallas, but the process took a long time there. I also wanted to go to America or Canada, but my wife and children refused. I already held an emigration paper in my hand, which identified me as a stateless person staying in the territory of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, but I had nowhere to go. So, I called Pavel Kohout in Vienna. He went to the then Austrian Chancellor and the next day I was called from the embassy to come for the papers."

  • "I do not know what we lived on. For one crown we bought bones, which we boiled, added some vegetables to them and we had soup. Sometimes Jarda's later wife Zorka Růžová brought us something to eat. We didn't even have a plate, so he always had to put it on a piece of plastic bag and we ate it from it. Bread and milk were also delivered to shops in the morning. We caught the right moment when we could steal two bottles and some rolls or buns. We received two crowns for the returned glass, which was our only money."

  • "When the break came and we applied for a visa to the Czech Republic after the 1989, they treated us at the embassy so arrogantly that you would slap them. One man there also reached for the clerk in the window, pulled him out and slapped him. The next day, the same people acted like totally different people. They told us, 'Please sit here. You'll have it settled in a minute.' So, we sat outside, where such an uncle was moving and asking people,' Is this all right? Are things happening to your satisfaction? I asked him if it could be made faster. He looked at me and said, 'I will definitely do something about it. I'm the ambassador here.'

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    Praha, 12.08.2020

    (audio)
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They didn‘t know about us because they didn‘t even think anyone could actually be so cheeky

Vladimír Veit at the singing festival in Wrocław, 1989
Vladimír Veit at the singing festival in Wrocław, 1989
zdroj: archive of the Galen publishing house

Vladimír Veit was born on February 13, 1948 in Prague. He spent most of his childhood in Malá Strana in the U Tří pštrosů house. As a child, he played the guitar. Among other things, his father strongly supported him in that. As he was a professional musician. Under the influence of the western folk scene of the 1960s, Vladimír decided to start his own work. From the mid-1960s, he gave concerts together with Hvězdoň Cígner, later forming a temporary folk duo with Jaroslav Hutka. The occupation of Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 led him and his wife to make an unsuccessful attempt to emigrate. Vladimir was sentenced to fourteen months in prison for alleged embezzlement of money for which they used to travel abroad. He was released after the half of the sentence. In the following years, he worked on the railway and as a security guard at the then-based housing estate Jižní Město in Prague. It was right there, after years, that Hutka found him again and offered him a membership in the established song association Šafrán. Vladimír, who at that time was returning to his own work, accepted the offer and he was giving public concerts until 1981, when, after signing Charter 77, he went into exile in Austria. For the next eight years he lived in Vienna and occasionally participated with Karel Kryl in the broadcasting of Radio Free Europe from Munich. In 1990 he moved to Czechoslovakia and for the next few years he was regularly returning to the Austrian capital for work. Today, he lives in the Prachatice region, gives concerts, occasionally writes music for Hutka‘s lyrics and releases his own records.