“In the morning I said to my wife: This is history. This is history and I want to see it. I want to see it, and thus I hitchhiked along those convoys and I got to Prague. I returned home about a week later and I ran a fever when I had temperatures of 40°C. I ran a high fever and the Russians wanted to shoot me on the Old Town Square. I was shocked by it. I discussed with them. In 1968, too, I was going to protest rallies in Prague and I had another unique opportunity to see what we were about. When a cop appeared there, everybody ran away. Everybody ran away and I stayed there, I refused to run away.”
“I had to a chance to see how politics worked here. There was no left wing and right wing here. It was basically at the very beginning here. The script had been already prepared. Although we in the parliament voted in a relatively democratic way, we still did not stand a chance. That was because the system of political parties had been set up at the beginning in such a way that there were more of them. To put it simply, when there was a vote on some important issues, there were more of them. The only thing that got out of this system - by the way nobody apart from me has ever said it - was the Czech constitution. The Czech consultation, as it is, would never have had a chance to pass.”
“I climbed up on a water fountain and I said: ‘People of Telč, very few generations get so lucky that they can influence their own destiny. That they can interfere with their destiny. We are now this fortunate!’ I said: ‘For God’s sake, those of you here who are honest people, go out and assume responsibility for this little town of yours. If you don’t do it, when the emotions and passions disappear, these bastards will get out again and you will again only curse them at home or in the pub.’ I also quoted Lenin to them at that time, too.”
Čestmír Hofhanzl was born October 9, 1941 in Borovany. His family owned a field and a farm. Čestmír’s father was pressured to join the Unified Agricultural Cooperative after 1948, and he became interned in a labour camp as a result of his refusal. The communist regime tried to make it impossible for Čestmír and his three siblings to study further, but in spite of this, Čestmír eventually managed to graduate from the secondary school of agriculture in Tábor and later he continued with his studies at the Agricultural College, whence he transferred to Prague to the Faculty of Science of Charles University, majoring in biology. He found his career mainly in healthcare, in a biochemical laboratory. During the Velvet Revolution at the end of 1989 he became active in politics. He was involved in the establishment of the Civic Forum in Telč and Jihlava and he became a member of the Civic Democratic Alliance. He served in the Czech National Council for several years, in the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. In 1998 he was one of the co-founders of Party of Conservative Pact.
