Miroslav Studený

* 1930

  • "Of course, I was forced to go to a so-called business academy. Guys, I didn't enjoy it, you can't imagine, not that I failed, fortunately I always passed somehow, but I didn't enjoy it. And when I started to think what I should do, and I found out that at that business academy we were taught by, let's say, economists, engineers of economics, or others who taught us, let's say, shorthand, accounting and these like professional things, right, business people, well, things like that, so I thought at that time - I might have like the teaching a little bit after that teacher (but delete this then, yeah this), thanks to Sokol, you'll be surprised. I've been coming here to Sokol since I was a kid. This building was built by our ancestors in 1926, completed, well, more or less on their own, and I'm not going to belabor the point, and I don't want to dilute it again, how they built it, anyway, they built it, and we as boys went there, of course, a great line-up of grown-up people, like I bow to their work, and then they picked out the more skilful ones when we were about seventeen or eighteen and sent us to what they called the remedial school. Well, what was it? They just showed us some exercises and so on, we learned how to organize the physical education class and so on, and we became helpers. Suddenly I was always put in charge of a group of boys here in Sokol, and I had to chase them around, show them how to do exercises, and I said, that might not be bad, but when the economists are the cantors at the academy, like, when my dad wanted me to go on after graduation, he talked me into going to college of economics, back then they meant college of business, right, but I wasn't interested in that field at all. So I thought I'd go to the faculty of education, but my parents were sensible, they said: 'You're crazy, cantors are the lowest paid group of people in the state, it won't do you any good.' I told my poor dad, he never found out till the day he died, that I didn't get into the economics college, so I applied to the teaching college, yeah. That's how I got into the department."

  • "When it looked like war, mobilization was announced, and I remember that was in September 1938. And there was a scramble, they announced it over the radio. Not many people had a radio, so it was just communicated by neighborly means. At that time it was like a swarm of bees. All the guys who were under the age of mobilization, they all got on or went to their units during the night. Well, I remember my childhood experience that my dad came to my cot at night, I didn't sleep of course, because it was impossible, it was just such chaos, such tension. My dad was there saying goodbye to me and he said, 'Look, I'm leaving, I might not come back, take care of your mommy.'"

  • Full recordings
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    Praha, 28.03.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:34:06
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Don’t talk to anyone you don’t know, and if you do, be careful what you say

Miroslav Studený
Miroslav Studený
photo: Stories of our neighbours student team

Miroslav Studený was born on 6 April 1930 in Prague-Jinonice, his parents moved here from the countryside to work. He remembers the war years, he experienced the air raid on Prague on 14 February 1945 in Jinonice. He graduated from the business academy, then from the pedagogical faculty and taught all his life - initially in a rural location, later in Prague. From childhood he attended Sokol and was a Sokol member at the time of the interview in 2019.