As she walked out of the cottage, policemen in helmets stormed out of the fog
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Michaela Othmani was born on 28 December 1967 and lived in Chlumec nad Cidlinou until the age of eight. Her parents then moved to Dobříš and later to Prague. Her father was a rocker and Michaela went to concerts from the age of fourteen. She liked rock, metal and punk. She graduated from secondary telecommunication school and then she found a job in Liberec, she worked at many post offices. In 1987 she married Leoš Mayer, who worked in a machine workroom at the Liberec train station together with dissident Jiří Fajmon. In February 1988, the Mayers signed Charter 77 in the flat of Petr Uhl and Anna Šabatová. From August 1988 they participated in anti-totalitarian demonstrations, and in January 1989 they went to Všetaty to pay tribute to Jan Palach at his grave. They were arrested several times by State Security and spent time in a pre-trial detention cell. Michaela was saved from being fired from her job by Josef Pohlreich, then director of the Czechoslovak Post in Liberec. During the Velvet Revolution, the Mayers were in Liberec, Michaela was pregnant with a child and she and her husband were delivering Lidové noviny to households. After 1989, the couple withdrew from politics and joined the church. The Mayers had two children and they divorced later. Michaela married a second time, divorced again, and by 2021 she was living in Frýdlant, Bohemia, with her third husband. Her story could be recorded thanks to the support of the Statutory City of Liberec.
