Recording Voices and Documenting Memories in Prague

Prague Castle, 1938 (photo: Thomas Hasler)

In September, the NCSML went to Prague to interview a number of Czech émigrés who returned home following the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The oral history team also took the chance to meet a couple of other Czechs (and indeed Americans) with interesting stories to tell. Watch our web pages for biographies and clips from the interviews over the months to come. Here, however, is a taster of what to expect:

Eva Eisler moved to New York City with her husband and children in 1983. It was there that she became particularly well known for her jewelry design. She moved back to the Czech Republic some twenty years later and now teaches at Prague’s VŠUP (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design). When Recording Voices & Documenting Memories visited Eva, she was in the process of installing an exhibit of her students’ work entitled Treasure Hunt at the Czech capital’s Rudolfinum Gallery.


Eva Eisler installing an exhibit, Prague, September 2011


Detail from Treasure Hunt exhibit

Gene Deitch is an American animator (born in Chicago in 1924) who describes himself as “the only free American in Prague during 30 years of Communism.” He moved to the Czechoslovak capital in 1959. Gene and his team of animators at Prague’s Barrandov Studios subsequently won an Oscar for their film Munro. Gene spoke to Recording Voices & Documenting Memories about his decision to move and his time in Central Europe at his studio in Prague’s Malá Strana.


Altered passport photo of Gene Deitch

Meda Mládková went to Geneva, Switzerland as a student in 1946 and decided not to return to Czechoslovakia following the Communist coup in 1948. After more than half a decade in Switzerland, she moved to France where she studied art history and married her husband, Jan Mládek. At the beginning of the 1960s, the pair came to Washington, D.C. on account of Jan’s job at the International Monetary Fund. In 2001, Meda (now widowed) opened a gallery on the Prague island of Kampa where the couple’s collection of Communist-era Central European art could be displayed. Meda now spends her time between Prague and Washington, D.C.


Meda Mládková at Kampa Museum, September 2011


Book published by Meda Mládková (née Sokolová) in exile in Geneva, early 1950s

For full biographies and interview highlights, visit the NCSML's oral history web pages over the months to come.