Maria Wiesner studied at the Conservatory in Bratislava (1970-1976). From 1976 to 1989, she worked as a teacher in the town of Partizánske and a year in the town of Topoľčany. As teachers in music schools, they were under the surveillance of the school director and the city police because their recordings were circulated among the people. Maria Wiesner said: “Once we were called to the staffroom by the director where the district inspector of education, the head of education, the director of the police and the director of the school were waiting for us. They played our own recording on the tape recorder and they wanted us to tell them the names of all the participants. We didn’t give the names of anyone except ourselves. Then we were interrogated “why we believed such delusions” and we were threatened by being dismissed. A few days later, I was called to the director where he gave me an already written application for the termination of my employment. I didn’t agree. The next day, he gave me a letter, transferring me to another school, to Topoľčany, for ideological and political reasons. In the next school year, I commuted 20 km daily to my workplace. Besides me, another colleague of mine was transferred for the same reasons to the music school in Chynorany. Their aim was to “break up” the band so that we could not be in touch. The National Security used to follow me, at times a police car used to accompany me on my way home from work, or to our meetings up to the house of my friends. It was a very unpleasant mental pressure.”The leader of Radostné srdce, Maria Wiesner, as well as the other members of the band, used to distribute their illegal cassettes and songs during their performances in various Christian communities and religious denominations from 1980 to 1989. Their subsequent albums, Čakám v nádeji [I’m Waiting in Hope] and Vianočné koledy [Christmas Carols] (1990) were recorded in Miloš Sládečka’s private studio in the town of Partizánske, and their Malý Dávid 2 [Little David 2] album in the P.S. Publisher 2002 studio. Since 1989, they have continued to perform in Partizánske, they play in public concerts, most often in Partizánske but abroad as well – in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.

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Hely:
- Partizánske Dukelská 4, Slovakia

Wilson, Paul

Paul Wilson is a Canadian translator, writer and musician. He studied English at the University of Toronto and University of London. In 1967 he moved to Czechoslovakia. He taught English at language schools in Prague and Brno, later he worked as a translator. In Czechoslovakia, he met unofficial visual artists, writers and musicians and he even performed as a singer with the Czechoslovak underground rock band the Plastic People of the Universe. He translated works by unofficial Czechoslovak authors, for example, texts by Jindřich Chalupecký, Ivan Martin Jirous or Milan Knížák. These texts were also smuggled to the West. In 1977, after his association with underground musicians and the creation of Charter 77, he was expelled from Czechoslovakia. His wife, Czech photographer Helena Wilson (born Pospíšilová), could join him later, after many administrative delays. After his deportation to Canada, Wilson founded a record label “Boží mlýn” (God’s Mill) and released recordings of Czechoslovak underground bands. Moreover, he translated Czechoslovak samizdat or exile works by Václav Havel, Josef Škvorecký, Ivan Klíma, Bohumil Hrabal and others. He worked also as a journalist, editor and literary critic and he contributed to many American and British magazines. He is still translating Czech literature to this day.

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Hely:
- Brno, Czech Republic
- Kanada
- Praha, Prague, Czech Republic

Xenia, Dennen

Xenia Dennen is Director of the Keston Institute since 2002.

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Hely:
- McLennan County, Waco, United States of America

Yezerska, Iryna

Iryna Yezerska is a historian, archivists and curator of the museum’s holdings. Yezerska received her masters and PhD from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Her research interests include the Ukrainian liberation movement in the second half of the 20^th century, historical demography, source studies, church history, socio-cultural ties, and biography studies. She has authored a number of popular and scholarly articles on these subjects.

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Hely:
- Lviv, Ukraine

Zabka, Reinhard

Reinhard Zabka, born in Erfurt in 1950, is a self-taught artist. During the 1970s he took various jobs and began engaging himself with the arts. Zabka counts among the many whose application for departure from the GDR was denied in 1972. During the 1980s, he moved to Berlin and joined the Prenzlauer Berg artists’ community, experimenting with various materials and media, focusing on installations and performance and experimental arts. In 1979-80 Zabka was accepted as a candidate of the Artist Association of the GDR, and in 1982 he became a member, allowing him to officially work as an artist, and thus rehabilitating his status as an “anti-social element”.

He exhibited during the GDR period at the Sophienstr. 8 Gallery in Berlin, the School of Arts in Dresden (Kunsthochschule Dresden), Gallery for Young Arts in Frankfurt Oder (Galerie für Junge Kunst), White Elephant Gallery (Galerie zum Weissen Elefanten), and the Palace of the Republic, among others. Following his exhibition in 1984 at the Palace of the Republic, his installation Psychedelica Maschinka was confiscated and later returned to the artist.

By 1980, he had retreated to Babe, where he set up a summer atelier which eventually, in 1984, became an art house and a place for artistic engagement. Following the regime change, the art house was turned into a museum, moving in 1997 to Gantikow, Brandenburg, where the artist has actively engaged in organizing exhibitions, international arts festivals, summer camps, workshops, and symposia. The period of the foundation of the museum corresponded with the foundation of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Zabka's new museum was an artistic response to the official engagement with the recent past, which is the reason why the museum was envisioned as a German Historical Museum of Lies (Deutsches Historisches Lügenmuseum).

Currently, the artist manages the Museum of Lies and continues to participate in various exhibitions and projects in Germany and internationally. Among his international projects, one can note his contribution to the Arts Biennale in Venice (1990), the installation Labyrinth of Faith (Labyrinth des Glaubens), which included memorabilia from the GDR and sought to be a reflection of the decay of the regime.

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Hely:
- Radebeul, Germany