Cooperation must be mutually beneficial
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Svatava Vynal was born on 2 August 1930 in Prague, growing up in the Vinohrady quarter. Her dad Josef Pisinger was the chief operating officer of dining and sleeping cars of international railway expresses. Her mom Marie, née Preslerová, was an actress in E. F. Burian’s theater, also publishing in various magazines and newspapers. The family was in intense contact with Svatava’s great-aunt, First Lady of Czechoslovakia Hana Benešová who was also the godmother of Pisinger’s other daughter Hana. During the war her father was a member of the resistance organization Obrana národa, and was in contact with Karl Kutlvašr. He therefore had to go into hiding. Her uncle, Lt Col Václav Pisinger was imprisoned in several concentration camps whereas his wife died in Auschwitz, all because of their help to the family of Karel Klapálek. For all of her youth Svatava Vynal played and produced theater, recited, wrote poetry and was a straight-A student. She became fluent in French, English, and German, spoke Russian and later learned Italian. She also exercised in a team lead by Božena Matějovcová, which trained to do a juniors’ choreography for the XI. Sokol gymnastics festival. In 1948 under dramatic circumstances she escaped to Germany. She soon left the integration camp in Regensburg, accepting a job in the American army’s HQ in Nuremberg. She later secretly left Germany for France. She lived in Paris and studied at a local catholic university, at a university in the Hague and at Ecole nationale d’administration. She made her living by cleaning, teaching and translating, later getting employed as a secretary of the CEO for Europe in an American firm focused on the production of textile fibers and fabrics Joseph Bancroft and Sons Company. She received the necessary education at textile school in Saint-Étienne. She published in newspapers and magazines, and also designed logos. She got married to a painter, a Czech exile František Vyhnal and gave birth to two sons. Later she broke up with him and left with her sons to Milan where she continued in her successful career. Soon after their moving to Milan, František Vyhnal returned back to Paris. Svatava worked as a fashion and marketing executive in the Bayer company. Her office was located in the newly-built Grattacello Pirelli skyscraper. She had a valet and a maid to help her take care of the household and of her sons’ upbringing. However, she didn’t find the firm’s operation convenient, and therefore after two years left to work in Czegos, one of the first consultant companies focusing on textile, fashion and marketing. A year later she had founded her own office Vynal snc., Marketing, Promotion, Press. Since the beginning of the 1960s she participated in Milan’s rich social and cultural life which reached out to the whole world. She served as test driver for Alfa Romeo. Also, she was a member of an advisory commission of the directorate of Teatro alla Scala where she got thanks to Ladislav Vachulka. She collaborated with DMI - German Fashion Institute. She regularly published in ZOOM magazine, Moda Revue, Sports ware, International textiles and others. She cooperated among others with Mary Quant, Liben Torres, Milan Daňek and companies such as Bayer, Marzotto, Faliero Sarti, Grignasco. The Latin Union had sent her to Peru and Bolivia where she consulted representatives of the government and local industry on questions related to the organization of product exhibitions, fairs and their promotion. She helped numerous Czech exiles (among her friends were Karel Kryl, Ladislav Dydek, Arsén Pohribny) as well as Czech firms and Czech culture to break through abroad. After 1989 she resettled to Prague, helped with the setting up of a press office of Karlín Musical Theatre and was active in the organization Bohemia Nostra.
