"I remember, in Germany, we were at a tennis tournament, and I watched the Berlin Wall come down on TV. I lived near the highway from the GDR to Nuremberg, and I still remember when the borders got opened and every citizen of the GDR got a hundred marks if he visited a post office or a bank in Germany, everything was open on Saturdays and Sundays, and if he showed his passport he got a stamp so he wouldn't go twice, and he got a hundred, so a family would get four hundred for example. They took the four hundred, bought a radio and went back. The town was full of Trabants and Wartburgs, and everybody was happy, flying in and shopping."
"I got a travel clause for a trip to Yugoslavia, there was a possibility, you had to go there via Slovakia, Hungary by car. And in Zagreb, at the Austrian embassy, you could apply for a one-day visa to Austria, the reason being that you ran out of money and were unable to take this detour back. This reason was known to everybody, that it was an operetta, but it was used, this trick, that you got a one-day visa, and that's how you got from Yugoslavia to Austria. That's how I got to Germany and worked my way into Nuremberg."
"He [meaning father] came from the Hlaváček brewing family, in which he was the fourth generation. His father was a very well-known brewing expert, František, which marked his story. He graduated from the chemical technology school just like we did. Unfortunately, his father, František, was removed from his position as General Director of Czechoslovak Breweries in 1948. I will briefly return to him. His grandfather František was a brewer all his life, among other things, he spent his executive life in Plzeňský Prazdroj and Gambrinus. After the Second World War, President Beneš decided that the big companies would be privatised [meaning nationalised]. At that time, my grandfather was given the position of general manager of all the breweries. He moved to Prague, but in 1948, he was of course fired for being the bourgeois class, so he lost his job. So my father, when he went to the army in 1950, he went to the PTP [Auxiliary Technical Battalions] in Komárno, where he spent two years. I just want to say that he started with this political problem, but then when he came back, he joined the Pilsen breweries from sub-brewer to general manager."
Ivan Hlaváček was born on 30 September 1952 in Pilsen into the fifth family of brewers. His father, Ivo Hlaváček, worked in the Pilsner Prazdroj brewery, as did his grandfather František Hlaváček. He graduated from the grammar school in Pilsen and the Faculty of Food and Biochemical Technology of the University of Chemical Technology in Prague. After graduation in 1977, he joined Plzeňský Prazdroj as a sub-manager. He played tennis from an early age and, thanks to his mother, Jiřina, studied languages. In 1981, he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany via Yugoslavia and Austria, where he worked as a tennis coach. He obtained German citizenship. After 1989, he helped German businessmen expand into Czechoslovakia. With his close friend and businessman Günther Zembsch, they built the InterCora development group based in Pilsen, which builds shopping centres.
