"I was under surveillance even before my husband signed [Charter 77], because I was in contact with Bonaventura Bouš, who was an old man at the time, he was a priest and lived alone. And he telephoned me, which of course we did very reluctantly, but he telephoned me that he was going to be questioned. And he was very nervous about it. And so I said, 'Well, come to lunch before the questioning.' So he came to my place for lunch and he went to the interrogation from there. And then I was kept under surveillance for three days. For example, when I was walking with the baby carriage, there was a man standing there with a hood on. I didn't see him, I don't know who he was. And he went to the house and sent someone else. And then there was a man who was following me very obviously, and I found out that he was Slovak, because when I went to the pharmacy, he stood by the baby carriage with my daughter in it - he was looking into it. So I ran out in a hurry, and I took the baby and I took her with me to the pharmacy. Whereupon he followed us, and I was there getting something, and it was his turn as he was behind me, and he said he wanted rumanček (camomile). And obviously he was Slovak. But who was he, I don't know, I never saw him again. And for three days he followed my every step. So I couldn't get anywhere. But that was the end of it."
"I got a phone call from a friend of mine at about three in the morning. He was a classmate of mine in art history and he was working as a night watchman at the Belvedere at that time. And so he called me at about three o'clock at night and said that there were tanks driving by. And then my sister and I, I was still living with my parents at the time, so we were writing and posting posters all that time. And I actually had an interesting experience doing this, because I remember that there were tanks on Dělostřelecká Street all the way from the Powder Bridge, and I was running around with this Russian text and I was posting it there - and a young soldier leaned out of one of the tanks and shouted, 'Děvuška, davaj, prečitaju.' (Girl, let me read it.) So I gave it to him and it was obvious that he was a person who understood a little bit of what was going on."
Hana Hlaváčková was born in wartime Prague on October 11, 1940. Her father, Jan Urban, worked as a cardiologist, while her mother, Hana, did not finish medical school due to the closing of universities and so she helped her father in his office. Hana’s maternal grandfather was Juraj Slávik, an agrarian who held several positions in the First Republic government. After the war he went to the USA as ambassador, and he stayed there after the 1948 coup. This created significant problems for his children from his first marriage, i.e. Hanna’s mother and her older brother Dušan. Hana’s uncle Dušan was arrested in 1949 and sentenced to life imprisonment; he was released in 1961. As a child from an “enemy” family, Hana was not supposed to study at all. However, thanks to the headmaster of her primary school, she got into a chemical technical school, where she got her high school diploma. After three years of working in blue-collar professions, she was accepted to study art history at the Faculty of Arts. There she met her future husband Ludvík Hlaváček, who later signed Charter 77. The family was thus under constant surveillance by the State Security. Hana Hlaváčková regularly attended Jan Patočka’s lectures and after his death she and her husband began to hold regular meetings of his students in their apartment. Professionally, the contemporary witness focused on medieval book and plate painting, Byzantine art and iconography. She is the author of numerous scholarly studies, essays and catalog entries. Since 1995 she has worked as an assistant professor at the Institute of Art History of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University and has found fulfillment in teaching. Currently (2023) she still occasionally publishes and lectures. She lives in Prague.
