I have been a split personality due to my father’s emigration
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Jan-Christopher Horak was born as one of twins to a Czech father and a German mother in Bad Münstereifel on 1 May 1951. His Czechoslovak relatives include his great-grandfather Josef Koula, who was the chief director of ČKD from 1919 and his grand-uncle Brigadier General Josef Kohoutek executed by the Nazis in 1942. His father Jaromír Horák experienced a dramatic youth as one of the students arrested by the Gestapo on 17 November 1939 and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the end of the war, his father joined the anti-communist resistance and took part in the escape of former Deputy Prime Minister Petr Zenkl abroad after the February ‘48 coup. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in Czechoslovakia for this. He left the country and later moved to Chicago in 1951 with his entire family and young sons. Jan-Christopher grew up there, among other things, in the Czechoslovak community. In 1964, his father got a job in Germany and the family moved back to Europe. Jan-Christopher graduated from high school there and then returned to California where he completed graduate studies in film. In the 1980s, again in Germany, he received his doctorate. He has served as director of the Film Museum in Munich, archivist at Universal Film Studios in Los Angeles and as chief archivist at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he still teaches film history. In 2024, he was living in Los Angeles with his wife Marta.
