Interviews

Playwright, writer, essayist and thinker, human rights advocate, one of the first three spokesmen of Charter 77, a leading figure in the Czechoslovak opposition to totalitarian communist power and a political prisoner. In November 1989, the leader...

Gábor Demszky was born in Budapest, on August 4, 1952. His parents were economists; his sister Anna is a special education teacher. He married five times, and is a father of four. He graduated from Kafka Margit High School in 1970, and in the...

A Czech writer, translator, dissident, after the arrest of members of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted in 1979 also one of the speakers of Charter 77. As a result of persecution she and her entire family were forced to...

Czech and Slovak philosopher and literary reviewer. He graduated in Czech and Russian literature from the Faculty of Arts in Brno in 1953 and worked as an assistant at the Comenius University in Bratislava, where he lectured in Marxist philosophy at...

A Czech Christian philosopher, clinical psychologist, translator, editor, initiator and signatory of Charter 77, the husband of Charter 77 signatory Dana Němcová, with whom he had seven children. Having begun his studies at the Medical Faculty of...

Czech translator and writer. At the beginning of the Nazi occupation, she married the lawyer Rudolf Margolius, with whom she was deported to the Lodz ghetto in 1941 and further to the Nazi extermination camps. It was a miracle that they both...

György Konrád was born on April 2, 1933 in Debrecen but spent the first eleven years of his life in Berettyóújfalu. His father was a wealthy iron trader, his mother came from a middle-class Jewish family in Nagyvárad, his sister Éva is a biologist...

Elemér Hankiss was born May 4, 1928 in Debrecen. His father, János Hankiss was a literary historian and professor at the University of Debrecen. He graduated from Eötvös Loránd University as an Eötvös College student in 1950, he majored in English...

Dénes Csengey was born on January 24, 1953 in Szekszárd. He was a writer, a poet, and a politician, who died young at the age of 38 in Budapest on April 8, 1991. He is known as one of the emblematic figures of the regime change in Hungary. He...

The biography of Marlis Gräfe cannot be found.

Monika Maron was born on June 3, 1941 in Berlin. Her maternal grandfather was a Polish Jew who had converted to Baptism, who moved from Lodz to Berlin with his wife, a Polish Catholic who had also converted to Baptism, in 1907 in order to build a...

Lech Wałęsa (born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, a leading figure in the Polish opposition against the totalitarian communist power and a political prisoner during martial law, the leader of Solidarity Trade Union...

The biography of Heike Grochel cannot be found.

Film director, actor and writer He graduated from the Film School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. His very first feature film made him one of the most important representatives of Czechoslovakia’s New Wave of film in the 1960s. Closely...

Lutz Rathenow was born in Jena in 1952. From 1973 he studied German philology and history in Jena. He was the founder and leader of the opposition working group "Literature in Jena", which was banned in 1975. In connection with the expatriation of...

Economist After finishing grammar school, he enrolled at the University of Industry and Chemical Technology in Brno (1945–1949), from where he switched to the Faculty of Economics at the University of Political and Economic Sciences in Prague...

Literary and film reviewer, translator and journalist After grammar school, he graduated from the Political and Social University in 1949. After the war, he contributed to the Kulturní politika [Cultural Policy] weekly, which was later banned. In...

Jacek Woźniakowski (1920 - 2012) is a Polish art historian, journalist, writer, publisher, curator, translator of literature, a social and political activist, soldier during World War II in Polish Home Army, one of the leading figures in...

Sára Karig was born in Baja on 13 June 1914 and died in Budapest on 2 February 1999. Her parents were teachers raising three children. Her mother laid great emphasis on her children’s progressive education. Sára Karig attended schools in Baja,...

Mrs. Anna Heinrich, a widow from Kazincbarcika, started a hunger strike on Christmas Eve of 1981 to protest against social injustices, the debauchery of the rich, and the destitution of the poor. She hung a poster in her window demanding pay...

Miklós Tamás Gáspár, Hungarian philosopher, political commentator / public intellectual, was born on 28 November 1948 in Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca). He married twice and had four children. His father, Tamás Gáspár, was a Transylvanian-born...

László Antal, a world-renowned economist, was born on 22 January 1943, and died on 26 September 2008 in Budapest. He graduated from the Karl Marx University of Economics in 1967 with a degree in finance. After graduating, he began his career in the...

János Berecz, Hungarian politician, was born on 18 September 1930 in Ibrány, a small town in Szabolcs County. He married twice and had three children from his first marriage. His parents were poor peasants farming on one or two acres. He completed...

Sándor Demján, businessman and entrepreneur, was born on 14 May 1943, in Börvely, a town close to the Hungarian border, today part of Romania, and died in Budapest on 26 March 2018, at the age of 75. His father disappeared during the Second World...

Bronisław Geremek (1932 - 2008) is a Polish historian, a statesman, one of the leading figures in the Polish opposition against the totalitarian communist power and a political prisoner during martial law, expert and adviser of Solidarity...

Historian, translator, publicist A graduate in History and Slavic Studies from the University of Vienna (Dr. phil.), she worked for the Czech section of Radio Beijing (1979–1981), was a co-founder of the Helsinki International Federation for Human...

Bogdan Lis (born November 10, 1952) is a Polish politician, industrial equipment mechanic, Inter-factory Striking Committee member, Solidarity activist, an organiser of Polish underground during the martial law period, Round Table Talks...

Agnieszka Wróblewska (born 16 December 1933) - journalist, studied at Warsaw University. In 1956-1981 a member of Polish communist party PZPR, she joined after October 1956 as a student and resigned in protest against the introduction of martial law...

Journalist and translator Born in Cologne into the family of a Czechoslovak diplomat, he completed primary and secondary school in London as his father had been transferred to Great Britain in 1936. After returning to Prague in 1947, he continued at...

Andrzej Witold Wajda (6 March 1926 –  9 October 2016) - Polish film and theatre director, Oscar laureate (2000), one of the creators of the "Polish Film School". President of Polish Filmmakers Association (1978-83). He supported Solidarity...

Jacek Jan Kuroń (3 March 1934 – 17 June 2004) - Polish politician, educator and historian, in People’s Republic of Poland period activist of so-called “Red Scouting,” one of the leading figures in the Polish opposition against the totalitarian...

Vladimir Farkas, one of the chief officers of the ÁVH (State Protection Authority) in the 1950s, was born in Kassa (today Košice), then part of Czechoslovakia, on 12 August 1925, and died in Budapest, on 13 September 2002. He received his first name...

Szabolcs Bognár, domestic relations attorney and social policy expert, was born on 25 June 1947 and died on 23 June 1999 in Budapest. His father, István Bognár, was a mechanical engineer, his mother, Amália Tóth, a piano teacher. He had two...

András Hegedüs, politician, sociologist, was born on 31 October 1922 in Szilsárkány, in a peasant family with a medium-size land, and died on 23 October 1999 in Budapest. He lost his father at an early age and his mother took care of him and his...

Charles Coutts, a Scottish journalist, was born in Peterculter, a suburb of Aberdeen, on 8 January 1921, and died in Budapest, on 6 April 2000. As a British soldier, he was taken prisoner of war in Japan during World War II, spending more than three...

Béla Király, general staff officer, military historian and politician was born in Kaposvár in 1912 and died in Budapest on 4 July 2009. His father was a civil servant at MÁV (Hungarian State Railways), his mother a post office employee, and he had...

Ferenc Morvai, businessman, inventor and politician, was born on October 22, 1946 in Nagyréde. His parents were poor farmers, taking care of him and his three brothers. He had three children from two marriages. He finished primary school in...

Miklós Jancsó, two-time Kossuth Prize and Béla Balázs Award winner film director, was born on 27 September 1921 in Vác and died on 31 January 2014 in Budapest, at the age of 92. He was married three times, and had two sons and a daughter. His family...

Writer, essayist, translator and publisher of exile literature Born in Náchod, East Bohemia, he graduated in philosophy and English from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. He obtained his PhD degree for his dissertation entitled Thomas Paine...

Literary historian, writer, translator, pedagogue and politician Born in Slovakia, he graduated in German and German literature from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. During his studies he entered the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia....

Politician, lawyer, political scientist and teacher As a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Lomonosov University in Moscow and worked at the Institute of State and Law of the Czechoslovak Academy...

Poet and translator from English, French, German, Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian and, with assistance, also from Japanese and Chinese. He studied comparative literature at Charles University but was expelled from his course after the Communists seized...

At the beginning of May 1988, Lieutenant Colonel Ferenc Tóth, the head of the BRFK's (Budapest Metropolitan Police) subdivision and head of the Budapest Economic Police, was deprived of his rank by the Minister of Interior and excluded from the...

Elek Nagy was born in 1926. He began his secondary school studies at the Upper Commercial School in Győr. As a high school student he received the so-called ‘SAS’ military conscription in May 1944. He did not participate in the fighting but was...

Pál Romány, former Minister of Agriculture and university professor, was born on 17 November 1929 in Szajol and died on 16 December 2019 in Budapest. He was the fifth child in his family, his father was a control car operator and his mother a...

Róbert Gábor, social democrat politician, was born in 1919 and died on 16 October 2017 in Washington, D.C. He first encountered politics at the age of 20, in 1939, when he joined the Social Democratic Party and the Trade Union Movement. He wrote...

Gábor Fodor, lawyer, politician, former minister, was born on 27 September 1962 in Gyöngyös. His father Árpád Fodor worked as a judge and later as a lawyer, his mother Klára Révfalvi worked for the Gyöngyös City Council, retiring as a chief...

Politician, an MP for the Social Democratic Party and the Chairman of the Czechoslovak Social Democracy-in-Exile He graduated from Charles University with a degree in Law and was involved in the students’ social democratic groups. After the Nazis...

Writer and poet, translator, diplomat and politician He studied Czech language, philosophy and history. In the 1960s he was one of the founders of Tvář [Face] magazine and contributed to the establishment of Sešity pro mladou generaci [Workbooks for...

Jürgen Fuchs was born on 19 December 1950 in Reichenbach in Vogtland; he died on 9 May 1999 in Berlin. Fuchs was a German writer, civil rights activist and representative of the opposition in the GDR, who continued to be observed by the Stasi in the...

Klaus Gysi was born in Neukölln on March 3, 1912; he died in Berlin on March 6, 1999. He was active in the communist resistance to National Socialism, served as Minister of Culture from 1966 to 1973, and was the GDR's State Secretary for Church...

Claus Hammel was born on December 4, 1932 in Parchim; he died on April 12, 1990 in Ahrenshoop. Hammel was a German playwright. Claus Hammel was the son of a master saddler. The family lived in Parchim until 1934 and then moved to Demmin, where Claus...

Heinz Hümmler was born in March 1929; Hümmler was Prorector for Education and Training at the Academy of Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED until 1984, then Prorector for Research.

Jürgen Kuczynski was born in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal) on 17 September 1904; he died in Berlin on 6 August 1997. Kuczynski was a German economic historian and economist. Jürgen Kuczynski was born into a wealthy Jewish family as one of six children....

Manfred Stolpe was born in Stettin on May 16, 1936; he died in Potsdam on December 29, 2019. Stolpe was a German church lawyer and politician (SPD). He was the Minister President of the state of Brandenburg from 1990 to 2002 and the Federal Minister...

Wolfgang Leonhard was born on April 16, 1921 in Vienna as Wladimir Leonhard (since 1945 he bore the first name Wolfgang); he died on August 17, 2014. Leonhard was a German historian and publicist. His communist-minded mother emigrated with him to...

Karl-Eduard Richard Arthur von Schnitzler was born on 28 April 1918 in Dahlem; he died on 20 September 2001 in Zeuthen. Schnitzler was a German journalist. During the Second World War, as a soldier in the Wehrmacht, he was transferred to the...

Rainer Eppelmann was born on 12 February 1943 in Berlin. Eppelmann is a German Protestant pastor, civil rights activist and politician (DA, CDU). After gaining notoriety within the GDR as an oppositionist, he was Minister for Disarmament and Defence...

Stefan Heym was born in Chemnitz, Germany, on April 10, 1913; he died in En Bokek, Israel, on December 16, 2001. Heym was a German writer and one of the most important writers of the GDR. From 1994 to 1995 he was a member of the PDS in the 13th...

Leszek Kołakowski (23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a very prominent Polish philosopher and historian of ideas, writer, prominent scholar at Warsaw University and Oxford, oppositionist to the totalitarian Communist regime, political emigrant...

Leszek Henryk Balcerowicz (born 19 January 1947) - Polish politician, professor of economy and lecturer. He was one of Solidarity economic experts.  In free Poland: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finances in the government of Tadeusz...