"We said we had to do an event on May Day so that we could be seen a little bit. I decided and agreed with Radek Hrdlička that we would make banners and go to May Day. I wrote a sign saying 'Let's open the frontiers of knowledge' and Radek had an exclamation point. We thought it was normal, nobody could say anything. We'll go there with it and let everyone interpret it in their own way. I got some boards, a handle that we nailed to it, and we made banners. Excited about going there in the morning, some people were still sleeping at my place, so we'd go there together. In the morning, someone noticed that there was a car still parked at our house in an unusual place where cars never stood, and it wasn't moving at all. Or someone had gotten out of or into the car, we didn't know. We thought it looked like we were being followed because I had phoned Karel Mrazek the day before and he must have had his phone tapped. That's probably how they found out. We said it doesn't matter, we have the banners, we're going to go out. They will see that we are not carrying anything, then we will come back and go to the square. We went out, I said we will walk about 100 metres, then we will come back. Suddenly the police passed by, stopped us and said we would go with them."
"We had no experience with interrogations and didn't know, Karel gave us the legal minimum at the time, how it should be done, what we could do, what they couldn't do, and vice versa. There was an incident, the police picked me up, made me wait there for a few hours, then they took me in for questioning. They started asking me some questions, and since I had been briefed by Karel, I said I had been there for more than four hours and I was entitled to get a snack. The officers tried to block it out, but finally one got up and went and got the snack and brought it. Incidents like that happened too. The number of times I've been at work, I've gotten a call that someone was waiting for me, and there were police officers there and they took me away. Everybody was watching what was going on, and nobody knew. I guess they had some awareness that I was different and had problems with the police."
"In high school, we went to concerts, had musical role models, perceived the people around us, so I had a desire to grow my hair long. At home it was problematic, it was such a struggle: 'It's longer - you have to go to the barber.' Once, we were sitting in Zahradní, and I started talking to Pláštěnka, a guy from Chomutov who had hair down to his waist. We began discussing long-haired youths, how things were back then. He told me how determined those guys were, that they wouldn’t give up, no matter what, even if anything had to happen, they kept growing their hair. As he was telling me this, I thought to myself: 'This is exactly what I want. This is how it should be.' In that moment, I decided I wouldn’t get my hair cut, no matter what. That was the turning point, I let my hair grow long."
Vladimír Lichtenberk was born on 24 January 1963. The family first lived in Zákupy, then moved to Chomutov in 1970. After finishing primary school in Chomutov, he enrolled at the Secondary Industrial School of Construction in Kadaň. There he noticed boys from the upper grades wearing long hair as an expression of personal freedom. Together with friends and classmates, they began to attend cultural events, especially concerts. Influenced not only by his musical role models, he also grew his hair long and joined the Chomutov community of Máničkas (men with long hair) musicians. Together they participated in many events, some of which they even organized themselves. He worked in Agrostav and in his free time he went to Horní Blatná to do part time jobs to support VONS (Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted). On 28 October 1988 and 1989, he participated in unauthorised demonstrations on the anniversary of the Republic in Prague, including the first authorised one on 10 December 1988 on Škroup Square. After the Velvet Revolution, he joined the Chomutov municipality. In 2013 Vladimír Lichtenberk completed his university studies in social and mass communication. In 2024 he lived in Chomutov.
