Josef Štogr

* 1957

  • "Then they investigated me. Then they invited me to the national committee and there they said, 'Were you at the manifestation?' I said, 'No, no, no, I was at the demonstration.' I said 'demonstration'. He said, 'Well, did you hear that you had to leave Wenceslas Square?' I said, 'Yeah, they said, 'Disperse.' He says, 'And you were...?' I said, 'And I dispersed. ' Every time I heard the word 'disperse,' I dispersed." Exactly in the spirit of the Regule."

  • "The Regule, unlike many other communities, had a very clear mandate. Namely, that it was unambitious. Everybody in this world wants to achieve something, and everybody has ideas about how to apply themselves. And this community was extraordinary in that it didn't actually want to apply itself at all. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Viktor had come back from America. He said to himself, 'It's worth it to me to go back and be there since they don't kill and murder like they did in the fifties. So I just want to be at home there. But I don't want to achieve anything anymore. I don't want to be that American who pretends and smiles spasmodically all the time, and I don't want to be that Swede who doesn't make any faces but gets drunk alone at home, and I don't want to be that Italian who only screams.'"

  • "We are from a Charter background. That's why we organized these things actually. Jarmila went to Němecs, so she knew the Němec family. I knew Jiří Brabec. Of course, so I brought things from Jiří. Then, we distributed it around Bohemia because we had friends all over the country. Because I'm talkative, I would always meet somebody, and then we'd put it together somehow. So I was very much involved with the Charter and samizdat stuff outside Prague. It was understandable - I'm not going to bring owls to Athens, so for me, Olomouc, Tábor, Ostrava, and Pilsen regions were much more interesting."

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    Praha, 03.03.2022

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Our community had no ambitions

Josef Štogr in 2023
Josef Štogr in 2023
photo: Post Bellum

Josef Štogr was born on 24 May 1957 in Kladno, in the former Czechoslovakia. He graduated from primary school and then worked in a factory as a worker. In 1980, he married Jarmila Štogrová, née Doležalová, a signatory of Charter 77, and in the same year, he began publishing and distributing the samizdat magazine Možnost (Opportunity - transl.). Various philosophical and cultural seminars were held in his apartment in Dejvice, Prague, and his dissident activities included the distribution of samizdat magazines and books. In 1981, he and his wife considered emigrating but later rejected this option. In 1989, he participated in Palach Week and the Velvet Revolution and was arrested and interrogated during those days. In February 1990, he became secretary of the district national committee. Together with Viktor Faktor, he founded Regule Pragensis, where various lecture series were held. In 2022, the publicist and poet Josef Štogr lived in Litoměřice.