Josef Baierl

* 1942

  • "Karel Kryl has entered. He was a free thinker and didn't take the military service seriously at all. We learned that he had escaped over the wall, even in a tracksuit, to a local pub. And he immediately wrote it in a letter to his group. 'I climbed over the wall about three metres high and went for a beer in the first pub. No sooner had I got in than I saw that there were officers like flies on a shi...' I quote because this letter was confiscated. He didn't know they could check letters before the military oath, but not after the the military oath. It came to a debate and they called us in. It was an affair, a big one. Not because he used a bad analogy, but because he climbed over a three-foot wall. And in doing so, he gave away a military secret. Nowadays it's a laughing matter, because in the West they had everything mapped out before Kryl came to us."

  • "We didn't sing until January. I sent it in good faith to my superiors at the school district office as an invitation. They turned it into something else. There was a new inspektor. She invited school principals, cultural workers and me to the meeting hall in Susice. I had no idea what was going on. I came there, they gave me a chair opposite them. She started that she had received this invitation and that we had songs inappropriate for children to sing. I asked what kind. 'You sang Heavenly Cavaliers.' - 'Okay,' I said, 'but that's a piece from the Adam Michna cycle from Otradovice, which has been sung for [a long time], he was also the greatest Baroque poet.' - 'But that's a religious piece! And then here, what about this Rorando Coeli...!' - 'That's a Latin piece, I heard it on the radio yesterday' - 'Let them play it, but it won't be sung here!'"

  • "I was there until 1968, and the party started talking to the youth. It was a great political action. A comrade from Klatovy came and got all the members of the Youth Union together and got the young teachers to join in, it would be good for them to be there. But they miscalculated. At the meeting we took the floor one after the other. We definitely assessed that the party had lost confidence, and so. Even one member of our choir, to this day he's still a Communist, even he spoke like that. Whereupon the comrade from Klatovy dissolved the meeting, he kept us there. And he said, 'Comrades, you have studied pedagogy and psychology and you don't know that you mustn't talk like that in front of young people?' The first to leave the school was the headmaster. He was sent to Nýrsko as a representative of the school. I applied to Sušice, where I wanted to start a choir. So they sent me to Petrovice. Only two remained there."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Plzeň, 16.10.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 02:22:56
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
  • 2

    Plzeň, 23.02.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 53:17
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
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Every man should care not for himself, but for others

Josef Baierl at home
Josef Baierl at home
photo: Archive of the witness

Josef Baierl was born on 19 February 1942 in Ondřejovice in the Klatovy region. After the tragic loss of his father, he grew up in modest circumstances. Despite his undeniable talent, he was not admitted to the conservatory and became a teacher. Already during his studies he was active in the West Bohemian Teachers’ Singing and Orchestral Association under the direction of the well-known conductor Bohumír Liška. During his military service in Dobřany he became friends with the singer-songwriter Karel Kryl. At his first workplace in the village of Strašín, he and his colleagues tried to limit the influence of political officials during the Prague Spring. He was transferred as punishment. In 1969, he founded the Sušice Children’s Choir and later went through normalization checks in the education system. In 1976 he took over the leadership of the declining male singing association Svatobor in Sušice. Both choirs were involved in sacred music, and the witness struggled with restrictions on repertoire and bans on travel abroad by the local regional committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Through dedication and cooperation with the greatest choirmasters and lyricists of his time, he managed to bring the Sušice Children’s Choir to the top of the best regional singing associations. After 1989 the choir won several international awards and travelled all over the world. The witness has won several national awards. He continues to be involved in choral activities.