The realization on which side you stand makes you feel free
Přemysl Janýr was born on December 18, 1949, in Prague. Except for a few breaks, he spent his childhood in České Budějovice. His father, Přemysl Janýr sr., who was a social democrat, was imprisoned in the 1950s. The mother together with her son resettled in Prague. Přemysl graduated from school in 1968, spent the August occupation of Czechoslovakia in Prague and got involved in the dissident movement in the following years of the so-called “Normalization”. His father emigrated in 1968 and was actively supporting independent activities. Přemysl briefly studied nuclear physics in 1969 but soon changed his field to journalism. He studied at the Faculty of Journalism of the Charles University. However, he was dismissed from the studies for his political views. As the son of an émigré and later the signatory of the Charter 77, he faced reprisals by the secret state police and thus he and his wife finally decided to apply for the permission to move to Austria. They were allowed to resettle and in July 1978 they moved to Vienna where he completed his studies of journalism. Since his secondary school studies, he had also been keenly interested in information technologies and during the 1980s he began to make a living as a software developer in Austria. Today, he’s doing business in the IT sector. At the same time, he’s publishing and he’s also engaged in civil-society initiatives. He’s the president of the Forum for the Czech-Austrian Dialogue, the chairman of the Archives Association and the vice-president of the Association of the Thaya Region of Nations.
