COURAGE

gyűjtemények hálózata

Václav Havel’s correspondence is an important and valuable part of the Václav Havel Library collection as it reflects not only his thoughts and visions, but also the atmosphere of the times. The library’s collection includes digitized forms of his famous “Letters to Olga” (the original letters are stored in the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature), as well as an electronic version of Václav Havel’s correspondence with other important figures, including representatives of Czechoslovak exile before 1989. It contains correspondence with the historian Vilém Prečan, the physicist František Janouch (the original letters are stored in the František Janouch Archive) and the writer Josef Škvorecký (the letters are deposited at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, United States). Since 1989, Václav Havel’s correspondence has been published several times.

The manuscripts of Václav Havel’s plays and essays have great historical and cultural value. In addition, these texts remain relevant today, which is why his essays are still published and his plays still performed in many theatres in the Czech Republic and abroad. The Václav Havel Library collection includes a digitized version of the manuscript of Havel’s play “The Memorandum” (Vyrozumění) from June 1960 (the original manuscript is deposited in the National Archives of the Czech Republic). This black comedy based on the motif of an artificial, totalitarian language called “Ptydepe” was premiered in July 1965 at Divadlo na Zábradlí (Theatre on the Balustrade). The play was directed by Jan Grossman.

Krzysztof Skiba, ‘Komisariat naszym domem. Pomarańczowa historia’, Warsaw: Narodowe Centrum Kultury, 2015.
Tomasz Sikorski, Marcin Rutkiewicz, 'Graffiti w Polsce 1940-2010', Warsaw: carta blanca, 2011.

The book gives voice to musicians like Robert Brylewski (bands Brygada Kryzys, Izrael, Armia), Tomasz Lipiński (Brygada Kryzys, Tilt) or Paweł „Kelner” Rozwadowski (Deuter, Izrael), but also Paweł „Konjo” Konnak from the Gdansk artistic group TotArt or the organizer of the Jarocin festival Walter Chełstowski. Jarosz also managed to reach former authorities like Jerzy Urban (press secretary of Polish government in 1981-1989) or Aleksander Kwaśniewski (back then a Minister for Youth and an editor the youth magazine Sztandar Młodych, later a president of Poland).

Ha! Art., the publishing house form Krakow, describes the project in a following way: „« Generation» (…) presents a new imaginarium of the Polish popular culture in the 1980s (…) The new pantheon clears the field of culture from the mastodons like bands Perfect, Lombard, TSA, Turbo etc. [mainstream rock groups of the 1980s.].”

In the book one can also find a timeline of the most important events of the 1980s which influenced the punk scene, as well as detailed description of photographs. Jarosz’s text is included both in Polish and English version.

The informative file on the creator of The Club of the Free Kings, Puiu Apostolescu, contains five photographs of two badges made of wood. They were carved by Apostolescu and sent to his friend, Eugen Mircea, in Târgoviște. The insignia were confiscated by the Dâmbovița county branch of the Securitate on the occasion of a search at Eugen Mircea’s home. The badges were one of the distinctive elements of a member of The Club of the Free Kings. They were supposed not only to differentiate the Free Kings from their peers but also to underline the hippy character of the group. Thus, on one side, the badges contained the name of the group, and the word “hippy.” The word “free” is written twice in the combination, with “The Free Kings” and “The Free Club.”On the reverse, the badges are individualised, as they contain the English nicknames of Eugen Mircea (Christ) and Puiu Apostolescu (O’Brien McHarrison) as a way of stressing their friendship and membership of the group (ACNSAS I 3032, ff. 128–132).

Petko Ogoyski in his collection holding the wooden shoe with a secret hiding-place in which his wife, Jagoda, put medicines and a small pencil and so brought them to the forced labor camp in Belene on Persin Island.  
During the communist period, the materials showing the repressive nature of the communist regime in Bulgaria were hidden at the birthplace of Petko Ogoyski, in the village of Ogoya, located between Sofia and the city of Vratsa. They were openly shown and made known to the public after the political turn in November 1989. After the end of the socialist state, numerous events were organized in which Petko Ogoyski participated and used materials of his collection (s. Events).

There are three wraps in the collection. These wraps were used by Paulis Kļaviņš and other activists in Hilfsaktion Märtyer-Kirche (HMK) and the 'Action of Light' in street actions in West Germany and France in 1983. Two are made from brown-coloured fabric, the third is made from black-coloured fabric. On the wraps are printed portraits of Soviet political prisoners: Dmitry Minyakov, Vytautas Skuodis and Lidija Doroņina-Lasmane, and inscriptions such as: 'Die Verfolgten in der Sowjetunion berätingen unsere Solidarität'. These wraps are used by the museum in a multimedia exhibition.

After her return from Czechoslovakia on 10 February 1946, Mērija Grīnberga had to submit several accounts of her journey to the authorities. After she was forced to leave her position as acting head of the Ethnography Department of the Historical Museum, she had to submit an explanation to the Ministry of State Control of the Latvian SSR as to why she did not hand over the collections of the department to her successor, according to the rules. Although Mērija Grīnberga was born in St Petersburg and her spoken Russian was good, her written Russian was a little clumsy, but the draft is written very expressively, and describes in detail the attitude of the museum administration towards the museum collections and her personally. The drafts of the accounts written by Mērija are also interesting because they show how she gradually adopted the ideological language of the Soviet regime.