In England, I had a taste of what democracy is
Download image
Jiří Boreš was born on 5 March 1948 in Prague. After finishing primary school, he entered the Budějovická Secondary School of General Education. He graduated in 1966. He then studied at the University of Economics in Prague, where he lived through the Prague Spring. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, in the autumn of 1968 he left for Great Britain, where he wanted to stay. He did not get a scholarship and returned to Czechoslovakia after a year. On his return, he met people from the dissident milieu. In 1972 he was tried for distributing the magazine Listy (Letters), but was acquitted. In the same year he was expelled from the university. To avoid basic military service, he pretended to suffer from schizophrenia and spent a year in a mental hospital. In 1976, he entered into a marriage of convenience with a German woman. In early 1977, he signed Charter 77. In March 1977, he attended the funeral of Jan Patočka. In May 1977, he and his wife travelled to West Berlin, where he participated in the publication of the quarterly magazine Informační materiály (Infomat). Until 1992 he worked at the Freie Volksbühne theatre. In 2023 he was living in Berlin.
