Města a městečka I. a II. díl – Komárek Stanislav (2019)

This Czech-language two-volume set of Stanislav Komárek’s memoirs begins with his recollections of the South Bohemian towns of Kardašova Řečice and Jindřichův Hradec in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on his grandparents’ accounts, the first volume also describes life in the South Bohemian countryside from the beginning of the twentieth century onward, including traditional farming, livestock breeding, the use of forests and ponds, local folk knowledge of animals and plants, traditional family roles and views of children’s place and duties, local folklore, eating habits, folk medicine and the course of the church year. It follows how these traditions were transformed by the upheavals of two world wars and the Communist coup into a collection of Communist customs that sought small joys even in frustrating everyday life. The second volume recounts Komárek’s biology studies at Charles University’s Faculty of Science in Prague at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, portraying the university world and the normalized city that have since disappeared. It then describes his emigration to Austria in 1983, its sometimes exciting twists and turns, the life of an emigrant and the Czech émigré community there, his travels around the world, his enthusiasm at the outbreak of the 1989 revolution in Czechoslovakia, and his return to the Faculty of Science in 1990, where he helped establish the Department of Philosophy and History of the Natural Sciences with Zdeněk Neubauer. The memoirs evoke the unforgettable and turbulent atmosphere of Prague’s “golden nineties” and end in 2000, when the rapid changes gradually subsided and a long, calm and somewhat monotonous period began.