Jiří Bauer

“My name is Jiří Bauer and I was born in Prague. Because I was an ailing child, my father who worked as a dentist and had his surgery in Podolí, decided that we would move to the countryside near Mladá Boleslav. So I spent my childhood and my youth in Bezno near Mladá Boleslav where I attended basic school and also was introduced to the teachings of The Czechoslovak Hussite Church.”

“Those were really hard times. Once I came back home from the mine. I had lunch and somebody rang the doorbell. I opened the door and there was a man and he started explaining with bad Czech: ‘Please trust me, this used to be my house. We had to leave in a hurry and I left a treasure up in the attic. I know exactly where it is. Could help me to take the planks off, I want to take it with me.’ So I told him to come inside and we came up to the attic. He said: ‘It’s here. It’s here. Could you bring an axe or something else?’ So I went downstairs and my wife was suspicious as if she knew. She told me: ‘He’s a snooper.’ So I called the police and told them we had a spy in the house. A car full of officers came within three minutes. My wife was coming down the stairs with him. I opened the door and heard the policemen say to him: ‘Damn, you’ll get us into trouble.’ So this happened during the normalization period.”

“There was no way of discussing with the state secretary for churches. But you could feel that you could dare a bit more that before. She had an atheist lecture at an economic school in Kraslice and I found out about it. So when she came, I was already sitting among the students. I wanted to hear what she was going to tell them. And when she saw me, she stood up and said I can’t be there as a priest. And the students went absolutely crazy. But I didn’t want to do her any wrong, I didn’t come to discuss with her, I just wanted to hear the speech. And in the 60s, I had conflicts with this secretary all the time. I had a lot of lectures at the faculty and in various congregations and she found out about it and said to me: ‘I want to know about every step you take, where you were, what you did and so on.’ And I told her: ‘We are not living in the times of Maria Theresa. You have to understand that the times have changed.’”

“I told my wife that we were going to attend congregation meetings. At that time it wasn’t very common to hold Bible seminars. Once we came to Bráník where we first saw father Václav Mikulecký and he made a profound impression on us. He was like a prophet when he preached and read from the Bible. I can still recall how he read from Jeremiah: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord’ (Jeremiah 9:23-24). As we were leaving, he shook our hands and we talked a bit. He also announced a biblical seminar and my wife agreed to come. He was lecturing about minor prophets and their lives and my wife was really charmed by his lectures. That was in fact the beginning of our friendship. We started visiting the Mikulecký family. Václav was active in the religious community and he also lectured at the university under prof. Rutrle so we had a lot in common. And when me and my wife were getting married, the ceremony took place in Braník, where I had been ordained a priest by bishop Arnošt Šimšík from Pilsen. So our relationship got even tighter.”