There was no going back, it would have meant signing up for the devil
Jan Hadrava was born on 30 January 1955 in Ostrov nad Ohří. His parents came from Jihlava and moved to western Bohemia in the 1950s. In the late 1950s the family settled in Sokolov. Hadrava’s father was a businessman, his mother worked as an accountant. After primary school in Sokolov, Jan studied at the textile industry school in Dvůr Králové nad Labem, where he graduated in 1976. He then returned to Sokolov and worked in the textile company Krajka. In Sokolov he met his future wife Marcela. Together they founded the Kolovrátek poetry club in 1978, which attracted the attention of State Security. In the 1980s, Jan Hadrava worked as a cultural officer at the Sokolov cultural centre, where he organised jazz evenings and artists’ exhibitions. Later, he moved with his family to Loket, where he became publicly involved in meetings of the town’s national committee. Hadrava gradually came into conflict with the regime. He refused to vote and was regularly monitored and interrogated by State Security. In the second half of the 1980s, he worked at the sewage treatment plant in Slavkov. In the days after 17 November 1989, he participated in demonstrations on Budovatelů Square in Sokolov, where he was elected to the local Civic Forum. In 1990 he became mayor of the town of Loket and held this position until 2000, when he was elected senator for the Freedom Union. In 2006-2007, he was the chairman of the US-DEU, and in the following years he was a representative of the Karlovy Vary Region.