Jan Kaliba

* 1944

Svědci lokálních událostí z éry komunismu, Art and censorship, Artists
5. 1. - 21. 8. 1968 - The Prague Spring, 21. 8. 1968 - Invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, 17. 11. - 29. 12. 1989 - The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia
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    Take Matuška off the wall

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    duration: 01:56
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    “We were visited by an interior official with a general’s cap, because we were making some materials for, nowadays we’d say the town council, back then it was the national committee, so we were printing some materials, newsletters - simply, printed stuff that praised Prague 4, the developments and so on. This lieutenant colonel, he was a lieutenant colonel, generals didn’t visit places like that, when he saw we had Matuška on the wall, he got into a fit: ‘How dare you put something like that up there? Don’t you know that there’s no Matuška in Czechoslovakia any more?’ ‘Really? We don’t know about that,’ we said. ‘We’ve gotten used to it, it’s like a tapestry.’ Such banalities. When he mentioned to the director that we had Matuška on the wall, they told us to take him off. We didn’t. Those were the Eighties. At one point we printed the Revolver Revue [a famous underground culture magazine - trans.] there.”

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    State Security didn’t get us

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    duration: 02:29
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    “We kept to the plan. Everything that maintained enterprise services protected us from being destroyed by State Security. If it had occurred to them that [illegal] things could be made in this way, using offset, with quality. The interesting thing is they were much more harsh with cyclostyle printers. They destroyed hundred-copy print runs, but we could produce thousands of copies, but they saw us as a state enterprise that must not be endangered with failing the plan. Fulfilling the plan, that was their mantra. If they’d have locked us up, and we produced in large volumes, it would’ve meant they’d endanger other parts of the enterprise’s organisation. But we weren’t directly anti-state. We printed for the Jazz Section, an organisation that was interested in music. Just that the musicians had ran away and weren’t allowed to publish, that could have been called an undesirable publication from their perspective. For instance, [a publication] which mentions Matuška. So perhaps we were doing something dangerous there, but the Eighties were coming up, and nowadays it’s more for a laugh, really.”

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    Praha, 21.10.2015

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    duration: 01:42:19
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They didn’t lock us up, because we were fulfilling the plan

Jan Kaliba, 2015
Jan Kaliba, 2015
photo: Eye Direct 2015
photo: Eye Direct 2015
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Jan Kaliba was born on 19 April 1944 in Prague, his father and mother came from the families of small businessmen and traders. During nationalisation his father lost his leather goods wholesale company, and had to earn a living as a puppeteer. The witness’s background profile barred him from studying at university. He graduated from grammar school and trained as a cartographic lithographer. He became an expert in drawing maps and in graphics. From the late 1960s he worked at the printer’s in Vodičkova Street in Prague, where he helped print illegal literature. And so, for example, he produced the Jazz Section’s magazine, or Bohumil Hrabal’s book Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I Served the King of England), the publication of which was not officially allowed. He also printed the obituary of Pavel Wonka, the last Czechoslovak political prisoner to die in prison. In his work as a printer and graphic designer he balanced on the edge between that which was legal and that which the Socialist regime forbade.

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