František Lorenc

František Lorenc was born on the 9th of January 1937 in Žebrák to the family of Václav and Marie Lorenc. His father was born here as well and was trained as a foundryman, his mother worked in a shoe store in Žebrák and stayed in the household after getting married. František Lorenc grew up with his five years older brother Václav. The family lived in Litvínov in the late 40s and early 50s, where his father worked on restoring the Stalin company (which was renamed to the Chemical Company of Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship in the 60s). František Lorenc studied at the Middle School of Applied Art in Prague and worked in the marketing department of the company Machine Tools Factory [Továrna obráběcích strojů (TOS)] and at ČKD. His life passion was volunteer theater. In the Ensemble of K. J. Erben in Žebrák he was active since the year 1954 as an actor, director, scenographer, and as the head of the ensemble. From the year 1961 he was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and at the request of the party he studied at the Evening University of Marxism-Leninism (VUML). With the advent of normalization the communists criticized him for handing out paint and paper during the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies, on which people wrote anti-occupation slogans, and that he took down excerpts from pro-Soviet newspapers from the noticeboards. He was bothered by the hypocrisy of those, who were against the occupation in the year 1968, and then later politically questioned others. He refused to leave the party after the year 1968, but due to an agreement he no longer had to organize with the other party members or to attend party meetings. After the revolution in the year 1989 he criticized the communists who had left the part for profiteering and “changing coats”. After the year 1989 he continued in his work as the head of the cultural club, in theater, and he was active in the representation of the town of Žebrák, he was chosen as vice mayor three times. In the year 2023 he lived in Žebrák.