Doc. PhDr., PhD. Martin Zlatohlávek

* 1954

  • "We sensed in this a kind of further submissiveness of church and faculty leaders to the current regime, and we just wanted to point out that not all believers think this way. The action was very simple in a way. We took part in a service at the Salvator in the Old Town and we each wrote a Bible verse on a piece of paper. I wrote the verse 'Two masters cannot be served' and during the speech of the then dean of the Comenius Evangelical [Theological] Faculty, Amedeo Molnar, I put the paper on the lectern. It could have all ended quite simply that the speakers might not have noticed it at all. But Amedeo Molnár got angry, he was affected." - "He got angry right in the middle of his speech?" - "Yes, he got angry during the speech. He interrupted his speech and said that here we see the current manifestations of fascism and Nazism in these young people who don't understand the historical context."

  • "I was interrogated in Bartolomějská Street by two gentlemen who were in charge of my father-in-law, Jakub Trojan. The interrogation was very long. Of course, the main topic was Jakub Trojan, the underground university, the evening seminars that I attended, which were also organized by Jakub Trojan, but not only him, also Ladislav Hejdánek, Milan Balabán and others. They were very interested in that. They were very interested in me naming who was organizing it, where it was being held, who was going there, and so on. That was probably the main topic. It was tedious, long. There were two of them, one was good, one was bad, as it happens. They were trying to get me in different ways, but in the end they didn't succeed. Then they just let me go."

  • "The main role in the investigation was then taken over by Professor Ondra and Professor Opočenský, who had returned from his stay in Switzerland and was at the faculty at the time. They then drew up, I have it somewhere, four points and they wanted us to sign it. There was basically not a word about Christianity, so to speak, but the main idea was that we should sign that we would observe socialist legality. Because they read it to us and said it would be good if we declaratively agreed to it, absolutely best if we signed it. When the word 'socialist legality' came up, I don't know who asked: 'Please, can you explain what you mean by the word 'socialist legality'?'

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    Praha, 20.07.2022

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    Praha, 18.08.2022

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    Praha, 09.11.2022

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Suddenly I understood that an undiscovered dimension was dormant in me

Martin Zlatohlávek in 1976
Martin Zlatohlávek in 1976
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Martin Zlatohlávek was born on 25 April 1954 in the Central Bohemian village of Velim into the family of an evangelical pastor, Jan Zlatohlávek. He grew up alongside his three older siblings in the Evangelical parish in Velim. He never joined Pionýr and did not participate in ideologically oriented events, because of which he experienced bullying at school from the teaching staff. From childhood he was convinced that he would follow in his father‘s footsteps and become a parish priest. In September 1969, he entered the Grammar School in Kolin. In January 1973, he applied to the Comenius Evangelical Divinity School. Despite difficulties, he finally got into the faculty and in October of that year he entered. After the first semester, the students decided to express their opposition to the withdrawal of state approval for the exercise of clerical activity. They wrote a petition letter to the Secretariat for Ecclesiastical Affairs in support of clergy without state approval, which was signed by twenty-two students, including Martin Zlatohlávek. In the end, he was expelled along with four other classmates because of this. Martin Zlatohlavek refused to simply give up, so he tried to find representation from other church congregations and the Synod Council of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, but to no avail. In October 1974 he started working as a salesman in a bookshop in Na Příkopě Street, where he worked for two years. In the spring of 1975 he took part in a protest action with Michael Kocáb and Aleš Březina during a thanksgiving service for the victory over Nazism. In February 1976 he married Blanka Trojanová. From 1976 to 1978 he was on basic military service in the command company in Pardubice. He was supervised by military counter-intelligence and his correspondence was checked (VKR); the files of the Security Forces Archive show that many of his fellow soldiers wrote reports on him. During the normalisation period, he attended housing seminars, for which he was interrogated at the State Security Bureau (StB) in Bartolomějská Street. From 1979 he worked as a depository manager at the National Gallery. In 1985, a daughter, Eliška, was born to Mr and Mrs Zlatohlávek. From 1988 to 1992 he studied at the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. During November 1989 he participated in a number of demonstrations. From 1990 to 1995 he studied at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Amsterdam (Universiteit van Amsterdam). From 1994 to 1998 he served as director of the National Gallery. In 2022 he lived in Prague.