Milan Kodejš

* 1933

  • "I actually started from nothing, there was no school for it, for the copies, and no literature about it either, so I actually learned everything gradually, you know, and what is written, that for example the Devil's Chronicle, that they made it overnight, it's a mad job to make one sheet or piece of that parchment the size of those papers, because writing parchment is made by sanding the skin, first you have to get rid of the hair, right, the seam and all that stuff, and you sand it with what's called a scraper, I made that, and it's like cleaning parquet floors. You know, and also the parchment has to be perfectly made for the writing, otherwise the copy just wouldn't come out."

  • "And there is another story connected to this, that was already then, the revolution was actually over and there was a collection camp for captured Wehrmacht [members] in Motol. And they were being led down Plzeňská Street, the prisoners... they were boys and old men, they were such a bunch of soldiers, poor people. And across Plzeňská Street those parades went up to that Motol and they were led by our heroic RG, that was the so-called Revolutionary Guard, they had these red bands on their sleeves, there they had the RG and they were armed, but they were the ones who joined this only. And I also went there to see how they were going, where they were going, and I went to Plzeňská Street, where the Mlynářka pub used to be, it was a famous pub called Na mlynářce, there was a party, a slap would fly, a dude would fly, that's where the Košíře dudes would go to dance. And I was standing there watching them being led upstairs and suddenly I always look, like there's this soldier in the crowd, and they were serving him like this and they put him on the side of the road. Then it was only then that I saw and realized the horror that those heroic Revolutionary Guards from the waist up were shooting into that crowd with those rifles and just randomly killing whoever they could. I know it was just the Germans, that there was a war on, but even then this seemed like unnecessary horror."

  • "And then another huge experience was the revolution in '45, barricades were being erected everywhere and a huge barricade was erected right in front of our house. The roads were still cobblestone, so the cobblestones were being torn up, all kinds of stuff, everything was put up on those barricades, and after a hundred meters, all the way down to Černý vrch, there were barricades everywhere. And there was a terrible incident, my dad was dead, but there was a gentleman living in our house who was friends with our family and with my dad. Lojza Náprstek, a divorcee, a great guy, my mother married him later and he was such a nice guy that he tried to replace our father. I was still, when my dad died, I was eleven, my brother was three, but it was just a family tragedy. And he was the only one in the house who got a rifle and fought the whole revolution and was on Strahov."

  • Full recordings
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    Praha, 12.03.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 02:03:22
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 14.03.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:51:11
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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Happiness is the feeling of a job well done

Milan Kodejš, 2024
Milan Kodejš, 2024
photo: Post Bellum

Milan Kodejš was born on January 8, 1933 in Prague-Košíře to František Kodejš and Vítězslava, née Petrova, who had a bookbinding workshop and a stationery shop. The extended family was engaged in business, the Kodejš grandparents ran a barber shop, and the mother came from a family of tailors. All of them were active members of the Košíře Sokol and practiced at the last XIth All-Sokol Meeting. His father died unexpectedly in 1944, his mother ran the shop alone until 1948, when the communists nationalized it. At the end of the war, Milan Kodejš witnessed the building of barricades and acts of violence against German prisoners of war in Košíře. After finishing primary school, he trained as a bookbinder, then studied artistic bookbinding at the Secondary Graphic Industrial School. He completed his compulsory military service in Cheb, where he played league basketball. In 1956, he joined the State Central Archive, and after two years he joined the Memorial of National Literature (PNP), which was crucial for his professional direction. He began to prepare literary exhibitions in a modern spirit, was engaged in restoration, making copies of valuable documents and typography. In 1962 he was accepted into the Union of Czech Visual Artists (SČVU), which allowed him to work “freelance” in parallel. He collaborated with many museums and cultural institutions, invented new restoration methods, and his works were presented at world exhibitions in Brussels and Montreal. In 1980 he left the PNP and worked independently until he was eighty. In 2024 he lived in Prague, devoted himself to free graphic art and was still active in sports.