Art historian and educator István Bibó Jr. was born in Budapest in 1941. His father, István Bibó, at the time worked as an officer in the Ministry of Justice. His mother, Boriska Ravasz, daughter of a Calvinist Reformed Church bishop, was a teacher at the Baár-Madas grammar school in Budapest.
Bibó belonged to the generation that was born during World War II, witnessed the 1956 Hungarian revolution and the reprisals as teenagers, had reached adulthood by the time the Kádár regime launched its program of consolidation, and was most intellectually active and creative at a time when the system of state socialism was beginning to dissolve, demoralizing much of the society. These experiences (especially those of 1956–1957), had a profound influence on his later life too, all the more since his father, a member of Imre Nagy’s revolutionary government, was the last person to remain at his post after the Soviet military invasion, for which he later had to spend years in prison, separated from his family.
István Bibó Jr. completed his final grammar school exam in 1959 at a Budapest school named after prince Ferenc II Rákóczi. Although he had done very well in school, he was not allowed to enter an institution of higher education, since his father was still in prison, serving a life sentence. He worked as an unskilled laborer for two years in the Aquincum Ceramic Factory. He then reapplied for admission to university and was successful. In 1961, he began his studies at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and in 1966, he completed his MA in Art History and Hungarian Language and Literature. By the end of his studies, he had married Judit Lipcsey, a secondary school teacher of the French and German Languages and Literatures. They later had four sons.
With the support of art historian professor Anna Zádor, Bibó Jr. managed to get a job in the last year of his studies at the Monument Building Department of the Budapest I District Real Estate Maintenance Company. He was responsible for doing historical research and documenting monument buildings in the Buda castle district that needed special expertise before being restored or renovated. In 1980, he began to work at the Art Historical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where he continued pursuing research on and documenting monument buildings for another ten years. In 1985–1986, together with his wife Judit he initiated a citizens’ movement to reclaim from the state “Baár-Madas,” a once flourishing Reformed Church secondary school in Budapest which had been “nationalized” or, rather, confiscated in 1952 by the Communist state, together with dozens of other traditional church schools in the country, which had been built and maintained by different nominations and monastic orders. Reactions among Church leaders were quite ambivalent. Although they did not oppose the initiative, they seemed cautious and tried to slow down the movement in order to avoid provoking the authorities. By the turn of 1988–1989, encouraged by the winds of major political changes, they urged that the necessary preparations be made for the change in status. The building of Baár-Madas was given back to the church, and the voluntary teaching staff, led by István Bibó, was assigned to renew the educational program of the once famous Reformed Church school.
István Bibó Jr. remained active as the director of Baár-Madas for five years. However, in 1995 a group obsessed by extreme right-wing ideas managed to take over the key positions in the top hierarchy of the Church, and finally Bibó Jr. himself had to leave the school. Since most of the teachers also left when he did, they decided to establish a more independent new school with a similar Reform methodology elsewhere in Budapest. This school, the János Sylvester Protestant Grammar School, was founded in 1997. For the first ten years, Bibó Jr. served as the director. In the meantime, he himself taught art history, and he worked as an expert for the National Office for Monument Protection. In 1996, he completed his Ph.D. in Art History, and in 2011–12 he taught as a lecturer in the Doctoral School of the ELTE Art History Department.
By the end of 2001, he had retired. In 2002, his wife passed away. He has four sons and ten grandchildren. He is the Chairman of the European Protestant Hungarian Free University Association and the curator of Árpád Göncz Foundation. In addition to pursuing his own research and publications, he dedicated much of his time over the course of the past forty years to the preservation and publication of his father’s oeuvre and personal memories. (István Bibó, 1911–1979, politician, political theorist, and scholar on the philosophy of law)
His Prizes:
The “For Budapest” prize (1993), the “Hungarian Republican Order of Merit. Officer Cross” (1995), the “György Várhegyi” prize (2001), the “Pannon Exemplary” prize (2008), the “István Bárczy” prize (2013), and the “Lorántffy Zsuzsanna” prize (2017).-
Lokalizacja:
- Budapest, Hungary
Gyula Juhász was an eminent Hungarian historian, who focused in his scholarship on the 1930s and 1940s. His works deal primarily with diplomatic and intellectual history. During the period of Stalinism in Hungary, he joined the armed forces and led the history department of the Stalin Military and Political Academy (which was renamed after Stalin's death). In 1956, he left the army in protest against the reprisals which were taken in the wake of the 1956 Revolution. In 1958, he completed a degree in history from Eötvös Loránd University, and he became an employee at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Because of his involvement in the Revolution, he initially had limited access to archives, but he still decided to train himself as a professional historian. He practically relaunched his career. He became one of the historians who renewed the discipline beginning in the 1960s, and he was a target of criticism by officials for his “objectivism” (meaning that his research was based on the thorough study of primary sources). In 1985, he founded the Institute of Hungarian Studies, and he became its first director. From1986 until his death in 1993, he served as the director of the National Széchényi Library. He also co-presided over the World Association of Hungarians from 1989.
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Lokalizacja:
- Budapest, Hungary
Juozėnaitė was born in Vilnius in 1988. Juozėnaitė was invited by Birute Vagrienė, the director of the museum, in 2011. The director of the museum knew Juozėnaitė as a specialist in the poetry of Tomas Venclova. She had studied Venclova's family history, and was especially interested in Venclova's activities. Tomas Venclova was an anti-Soviet dissident, and a close associate of Viktoras Petkus. Juozėnaitė took part in the international project 'Landmarks of New Europe'.
According to Juozėnaitė, cultural opposition is a form of resistance to official Soviet ideology. It is how the intelligentsia reacted towards the policy of the Soviet government, how dissidents changed the attitudes of society to the Soviet reality.
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Lokalizacja:
- Pamėnkalnio g. 34, LT-01114 Vilnius, Lithuania
Jonas Jurašas is a Lithuanian artist and theatre director. He was born in 1934 in Panevėžys. After the deaths of both his parents in 1941, he was sent to Marijampolė, and left secondary school in 1954. He started to study at the Lithuanian Agriculture Academy the same year, but in 1956 he transferred to GITIS (the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts) in Moscow. After graduating from GITIS in 1963, he started his creative work. The first theatre productions he directed were Paskyrimas (Assignment) by Aleksander Volodin (in 1963, at the Russian Theatre in Vilnius), Varšuvos melodija (A Warsaw Melody) by Leonid Zorin (1967), and Tango by Slavomir Mrožek (1967, both at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre). In 1968, he moved to Kaunas, becoming the leading director at the Kaunas State Drama Theatre. During his career up to 1972 in Soviet Lithuania, he directed 13 theatre productions. According to Jurašas, while many of these productions were very well received and welcomed in the auditorium, they were all received very critically by cultural administrators because of ideological issues. The last production he directed at the Kaunas State Drama Theatre (1972) in Soviet times was Barbora Radvilaitė by Juozas Grušas. After sharp discussions following an official preview of the performance, Jurašas wrote and sent several copies of an open letter to governmental and media organisations. This became the reason to dismiss him from his position as a theatre director. Jurašas and his family were some of the first people in Soviet Lithuania to request permission to emigrate to the West, and received it from the Soviet government.
In 1972, he was dismissed from his position as director of the Kaunas State Drama Theatre. Jurašas did not agree to accept creative work under the proposed conditions of ‘Soviet theatre director’. He expressed his own view of what kind of work conditions and rights creative workers, and specifically theatre directors, should have. His terms were rejected by Soviet cultural administrators. Jurašas became unemployed, and had to endure poor living conditions. He and his family were some of the first people in Soviet Lithuania to request permission to emigrate to the West, and received it from the Soviet government. According to Jurašas, by allowing him to go to the West, the Soviet government tried to show Lithuanian society that only the Soviet system was capable of providing good conditions for creative work. The second motive was the regime’s fear of making him and his family a convenient rallying point for opposition. After Jurašas lost his position, members of the cultural opposition, and even anti-Soviet dissidents, started to see him as an important person in the anti-Soviet movement. It is important to note that the international conditions of detente also played an important role in the regime’s decision to allow him to leave the Soviet Union.
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Lokalizacja:
- Vilnius Gedimino prospektas 11, Lithuania 01103
Msgr. Augustin Juretić was born in Martinovo Selo, today’s Municipality of Jelenje, in 1890. He earned a degree in theology and philosophy in Senj in 1914 and was ordained a priest in the Senj-Modruš Diocese in the same year. He received a Ph.D. in theological sciences from the Augustineum in Vienna and earned a degree in sociology in Leuven, Belgium. After returning to Zagreb, he served as secretary of the Croatian Catholic National Alliance, secretary of the Professional Workers Union, and secretary of the Croatian Catholic Seniority. He worked as a professor at the Catholic Faculty of Theology in Zagreb and as a vicar in the Slunj Deaconate. Pope Pius XI appointed him his secret chamberlain and granted him the title of monsignor in 1930.
In his younger days, he was close to the Croatian Popular Party (HPS), but he later became a sympathizer of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS). He went to Belgrade in 1928, where he became chief of staff of the minister of social policy (who was a member of the HPS) and head of the Catholic Religious Schools Office at the Ministry of Education of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He performed numerous functions in Belgrade and he was appointed an advisor to the Belgrade Diocese in 1930. In 1939, he returned to Zagreb, where he was appointed the honorary canon of the Senj Cathedral Chapter and the honorary assessor of the Chancery of the Zagreb Archdiocese. In the same year, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his service, Prince Paul (Pavle Karađorđević), awarded him a fifth degree medal – the White Eagle.
After the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Juretić remained engaged in several fields, and among other things he participated in caring for numerous refugee children from the war-torn Kozara area in Bosnia- Herzegovina. At the advice of his friend, Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, and Vladko Maček, he left Zagreb in 1942 to establish a liaison with the Yugoslav government and politicians from the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) in London. He first went to Rome and soon after to Switzerland. He continued doing charitable work and acted as the representative of the NDH Red Cross at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland.
Monsignor Augustin Juretić was a man of many interests (a priest, politician, journalist and charity worker) who, during his life, engaged in various fields and left his biggest mark in journalism and writing. After emigrating in 1942, he launched the magazine Hrvatski dom in Switzerland in 1947. The magazine adhered to the ideology of the Croatian Peasant Party and had a Catholic orientation. In the twelve years that he spent abroad, Juretić had contacted not only Croatian émigrés, but also foreign clergymen, journalists, diplomats and politicians. He brought news from Yugoslavia, thus underscoring the nature of the communist regime in Yugoslavia and, most importantly to him, the systematic terror against the Croatian people and the Catholic Church. Besides Hrvatski dom, he was also active in other expatriate magazines: Naša nada (Our Hope), Hrvatski katolički pučki kalendar Srca Isusova i Marijina (Croatian Catholic Folk Calendar of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary), and Hrvatski glas (Croatian Voice). His writing reflected an enormous commitment to Croatian liberation from communist rule and the collapse of the communist system in Yugoslavia, and ultimately the establishment of an independent state of Croatia.
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Lokalizacja:
- Fribourg, Switzerland
- Metropolitan City of Rome, Rome, Italy
- Zagreb, Croatia
István Jávor is a well-known photographer, the former unit still photographer for the Mafilm Hungarian Film Studios, a cameraman, and a documentary director. In the 1980s, he documented and participated in the activities of the democratic opposition: he was one of the organizers of the flying university, which was called Monday Open Universities (Hétfői Szabadegyetem), and beginning in 1979, he also hosted them for a time. He was also the founder and one of the leaders of the samizdat video magazine Fekete Doboz (Black Box), which was launched in 1987.
His family suffered under the persecution of Jews during the Second World War, and this had a significant influence on how his parents led their lives. Their credo was that one needs to accept the rules and limits of the system. Jávor summarized their viewpoint in a single sentence in an interview with his friend and fellow dissenter, Sándor Szilágyi: “If you don’t make any trouble, you will be left in peace.” As a high school student, Jávor broke with his parents’ principles and lived a less conformist life. He was expelled from the Kölcsey Ferenc High School for his conduct. At the same time, however, his lifestyle was not very different from that of many other middle class teenagers: he loved beat music, started a band, often visited the University Theatre and the Film Museum, and read Solzhenitsyn and Salinger. In other words, he was one of many consumers of the cultural products that were tolerated by the regime during the “consolidation” of the Kádár era. After having completed high school, with the help of some acquaintances, he gained admittance to the Association of Hungarian Photographers, where he started his career as a photographer.
Jávor’s relationships had a decisive influence on his life. When he was a student, he met a woman named Zsuzsi, who was the daughter of the manager of the May 1st Clothing Factory. They married in 1969. Jávor’s family them with financial security, and his father-in-law helped them gain benefits that were only available to high ranking cadres. They got an apartment in Óbuda, and they were able to travel to the Soviet Union, which was an opportunity only available to citizens who were deemed politically reliable. In 1970, they travelled to Moscow and the Black Sea. While they were travelling in comfort, Jávor saw widespread poverty. This was a disenchanting experience for him.
He was unable to fulfil his plan to become a press photographer. It was almost impossible for him to get a job at a newspaper. He took fashion and advertising photos, which was a lucrative profession. His wife was working in the fashion industry, and Jávor often accompanied her to the exhibitions she organized, so he had no real difficult getting commissions. He was thus able to remain financially independent throughout the Kádár era. He eventually got a job as a professional photographer. In 1972, he met cameraman Elemér Ragályi, who began to take him to shootings. At the beginning for fun and later as a professional unit still photographer he started to take photographs at these shootings. The logic of socialist economies made it possible for Jávor to take numerous (grayscale) photographs. One of his friends who was working as a photographer at a large construction company provided him with the necessary raw materials. Since the company would have been at a disadvantage if it had not been able to spend its entire budget under the state economic system, Jávor was practically doing it a favour by using its materials. He thus got a lot of experience in unit still photography. Thanks to this, he soon got his first official job as a photographer at Mafilm.
In 1973, he began working as a unit still photographer at the shootings of numerous movies, such as Eszkimó asszony fázik (Eskimo Woman Feels Cold, 1984), a cult film of the alternative scene, and the documentary film Dunaszaurusz (Danubesaurus, 1988), which presents the various problems raised by the Gabčíkovo–Nagymaros Dam project. As Jávor recalled in an interview given to the Oral History Archives of the 1956 Institute, “there were a great number of directors who could make movies anytime they wanted, since they were unconditional supporters of the regime. I hated these movies. Not just the directors, but the movies, loyal to the regime. So it might not have been an accident that I was found by those who I could also bear to work with.” It is thus hardly surprising that a movie which was hardly loyal to the regime had the strongest influence on Jávor. Pál Schiffer’s docu-fiction, Cséplő Gyuri (Gyuri Cséplő, 1978) exposed him to poverty and the lifestyle of members of the Roma community of Hungary up close. As Jávor noted in the aforementioned interview, “this [experience] had a strong influence on my career in many aspects. There might be some affinity between me and the young sociologists who studied under István Kemény and later become the vanguards of the democratic opposition.”
Jávor was in a unique position in the first half of the 1970s. On the one hand, he was living relative comfortably considering the prevailing circumstances and the limits imposed by the system. On the other, he opposed the system, although these feelings largely remained more a matter of reflex than reflection. He had a hard time explaining his concerns to his father-in-law, who was part of the leading cadre. In 2010, he offered the following recollection: “All problems with communism were seen by them as the mistakes or sins of individual people, but the principles, the ideas behind the system, were seen as flawless. They were thinking like religious people. We always had big debates. I tried to explain why I was against the system. It was not an ideology, it was simply revulsion. The insincerity of the system, how fake it was, how hypocritical, the closedness always bothered me. That because my sister had defected, I could not get a passport for years. I felt locked in, not just because I did not have a passport, but because the atmosphere was so depressing.” His divorce turned his life around significantly, and later, in 1978, his eyes were opened not just by Cséplő Gyuri, but also by his new partner, Mária Vera Varga.
Varga drew his attention to social and political issues, and she prompted him to search for deeper interrelations. As he recalled, “[Everything that] I did not like about the country was made clear. It became objective and plausible because we were talking a lot.” He also became a member of the democratic opposition through Varga. In 1979, he began to host the legendary “Monday Open Universities” at his apartment in Buda. They held public gatherings and lectures on various social, political, and historical issues in his residence in Óra alley, where he moved from the “inhuman” block housing residential district. These lectures drew relatively large audiences. Sometimes, as many as 100 or 150 people came to hear them. The tape recordings of the lectures were sometimes distributed as samizdat. Jávor offered the following recollection of the atmosphere of these “flying universities”: “These gatherings always had a kind of slight, tingling sensation, the mild excitement of illegality. At the time, it meant belonging to a club, an informal circle, which was a very good feeling. That I am not a part of the manipulations which were features of the lives of the unfortunate majority, so I can know a lot more than others. The romantic feel of the situation had a good effect on me.” However, because he provided the venue for the gatherings, he also attracted the attention of the authorities. He was the subject of numerous reports at the time, and the authors of these reports came to the conclusion that “he was not engaged in other opposition activities” (see the report on the flying university published in Beszélő on 19 January 1981). This information was only partially accurate, as Jávor distributed samizdats, and if necessary, he also helped with reproduction and photographing. He was quite impressed by the courage of those who were making samizdat magazines and who did not conceal their names or addresses.
Jávor was influenced by his exposure to and participation in the flying universities in other ways as well. After hearing lectures by Gáspár Miklós Tamás on Transylvania, Jávor travelled to Transylvania in 1980, and he also took a series of photos while travelling through Transcarpathia. His goal with these sociographic photos was to capture images of the social problems in these places, as he had understood them on the basis of Tamás’ lectures. He compiled three albums of these Transylvanian photos, and the photos he took in Transcarpathia during a 1981 trip to Poland were made available in the so called Rajk-boutique (the most famous samizdat shop in Budapest). Sometimes, the pictures were also presented at events held by the Foundation for the Provision of Support for the Poor (SZETA). Publishing them was out of the question for political reasons.
The closing lecture series of the Monday Open University was held by András Hegedüs in 1981. After the first session of the series, Ottó Föld, the manager of Mafilm, told Jávor he could either continue providing a venue for these events or he could keep his job. Jávor choose to keep his job, and the flying universities were no longer held at his apartment. However, the social contacts remained: he met with his children’s mother in this environment. His friendship with Görgy Berkovits was especially important to him. Berkovits had been married to Mária Vera Varga, who in the meantime had passed away. Berkovits was the editor of the sociography column of the journal Mozgó Világ (Moving World), as well as one of the editors of the Bibó Memorial Book. Jávor’s relationship with him also deepened his social sensitivity.
At this time, Jávor began to turn towards cinematography in part because of the encouragement he was given by director András Szirtes. Szirtes was a board member of the Béla Balázs Studio, so he could provide access to video cameras. Jávor started work on a documentary film based on an interview with György Berkovits. In 1983, he completed his movie Találós kérdések (Riddles), which included an interview with András Hegedüs on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Editing the film was made possible by the Pannonia Film Studio, and thanks to Jávor’s connections, he could also see footage and photos hidden from the public. However, the regime did not permit the film to be distributed. In the life history interview that was done with him, Jávor ventured the following explanation and hypothesis concerning the fate of the film: “During the projection, the party secretary of the lab walked in, and he could not believe his eyes. He quickly phoned the party directorate of the district for instructions, so they came and took the whole thing away. It was probably taken to Báthory street, where the comrades watched it until it was ruined, up until 1989.”
In 1985, Jávor bought his own camera and got a license for photographing a filmmaking: “an era of self-employment started for me,” he recalled. Compared to the prevailing circumstances in Hungary, his equipment was top-of-the-line. Jávor initially recorded art events, often close to the opposition, such as the events of the Talentum company held at the Vigadó Culture Palace. However, Jávor wanted to say more and, especially or rather more accurately about the conditions in Hungary, so he turned towards social and political issues and started the samizdat video magazine Fekete Doboz (Black Box) in 1987.
Many of Jávor’s photos are already available at Fortepan, and since 2015 the Index.hu online news portal has regularly published thematic compilations of his photographs. Thus, along with many other pictures, his photos taken during his trips to America and parts of Transcarpathia were made public, as were photos from the shooting of the legendary Megáll az idő (Time Stands Still, 1981).-
Lokalizacja:
- Budapest, Hungary
Jürgen Nagel was born in 1942 in Berlin. In 1958 he started his apprenticeship in the field of photochemistry at the VEB Fotochemische Werke Berlin. Yet his application for chemistry studies was denied. Instead 1961 he started his professional training in the field of optics and photo-techniques in West Berlin (Fachschule für Optik und Fototechnik). Following the construction of the Berlin Wall, he dropped off his studies in West Berlin and took on various jobs, among which also as a photographer in a portraits atelier from the Production Association for Film and Image in Berlin (Produktionsgesnossenschaft für Film und Bild).
Nagel started in 1968 an apprentice position as a photographer following to which he acquired the photography master title in 1970. During this period he sent his works to various publications and acquired the freelance status already in 1967. In 1976 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig (Hochschule für Graphik und Buchkunst), at the department for photo-graphics.
He joined the Union of Artists of the GDR in 1977 triggered by the motivation to change the Union from within. He also undertook several teaching positions for photography, among which also with the Local Academy for Culture in Berlin (Bezirkskulturakademie Berlin) between 1987-1989. His classes were known for his critical positions, following to which he was requested to dismiss his classes and the position. His opposition to these requests eventually did not have any repercussions on him.
Since 1967 he worked as freelance photographer for various fairs, exhibitions, cultural institutions and publishing houses, a position he carried out also after the German reunification. He was primordially interested in the artistic photography and less in photo-journalism. Occasionally he was also writing literature. Due to his literary activity, he became a subject of surveillance in 1979, yet his files have been closed in 1981. Nagel succeeded to publish not only his photo documentation but also his literary works in Western Germany together with Frankfurter Rundschau and Stattbuch-Verlag Berlin (West).
He actively contributed to the protest actions during 1989, together with the Neues Forum which he eventually also captured with his camera. Following the German reunification, he continued working as a photographer, enjoyed several scholarships and teaching position between 1993 and 1996 with the Volkshochschule Berlin-Friedrichshain. Yet according to the author without the harshness of the regime and the construction of the Berlin wall, he would have never reverted to photography. Photography and his literary activity were a medium to explore and express his own ideas and inner struggle, otherwise, he might have remained in the field of photo-technique.
Since 1999 the photographer lives and works in Altlandsberg.-
Lokalizacja:
- Berlin, Germany