"Both of my grandfathers came from very poor backgrounds, and thanks simply to the fact that the situation was favorable and they were diligent and they were such self-made men, one became the director of a glass factory and the other became the director of a bank. They simply grew out of working-class conditions. But by the fact that they got into this category, my father already thought that he was from a bourgeois background, which was bad, because as a result of this and his other activities, he was then kicked out of that university. And when my parents actually worked in clerical positions, you can say yes, which at the time was like a big minus, so I was already in that category, officially it was called working intelligentsia, but as a clerk. And that was bad, it was already a little harder for us. In addition, we had a variety of things there, as far as, I don't know, the grandfathers and parents were religious and so on. And that, those were simply minuses, when we applied to school, it was simply approved by someone over there."
"That was the secondary general education school in Kralupy, today it's probably a real gymnasium. I went there for three years. And it was also quite beneficial, because there was a good group of people there, and I think both in terms of the students and in terms of the professors. Again, for the sake of our conversation, I remember one thing that was a paradox, yes. The professors there were very helpful and I would say enlightened, because they taught us the right values. But nevertheless, she was still watching over us, and the director was subordinate to the communist party. So when we wrote the graduation papers, we all had to come wearing uniform shirts. Whether we were in the youth union or not, we had to wear a union shirt. And it was, let's say, basically an agreement as well as a verbal one, that the director said to us: "Look, I would have problems. You will come to the papers in those uniform shirts and you can graduate in a suit, and I won't force you to do anything anymore."
Martin Štifter was born on July 7, 1949 in Prague, but spent most of his childhood growing up in Roztoky. Both of his grandfathers were directors, one of a glass factory, the other of a bank. In addition, he came from a religious family, so he did not have a good personnel profile. He graduated from an agricultural college, specializing in microbiology, specifically plastic waste processing. In 1968, he joined the renewal of the scout movement in Roztoky, in 1970 the unit was disbanded and re-established after 1989. He refused to join the Communist Party several times, even though it would have meant a more interesting job for him. After the Velvet Revolution, he became involved in communal politics. In 2021 he lived in Roztoky. He died on September 22, 2023.
