Petr Brod: It could be dangerous to speak German in 1950s Czechoslovakia

Petr Brod

Petr Brod grew up in a German-speaking Jewish family in communist Prague, soon learning it was wiser to converse in Czech in public. Brod fulfilled his ambition of becoming a journalist following a move to West Germany in his late teens, and found considerable success; after a stint at the BBC that saw him work on some of its top political shows, he joined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which posted him to his hometown when the Velvet Revolution ushered in democracy in Czechoslovakia. When we spoke Brod, today 73, also discussed his friendship with protest singer Karel Kryl – and what might have happened if the Sudeten Germans had not been expelled after the war.

I’d first like to ask you about your background. You’re Jewish and I’ve been reading that your family were German-speaking. I presume that was quite unusual in 1950s Czechoslovakia?

“It was indeed, because of the large German minority that used to be there before 1945/1946; only a minute part remained in Czechoslovakia, because most of the Germans, or the German-speaking population, were expelled after the Second World War in order to make Czechoslovakia a single-nationality, or purely Slavonic, country, with two nationalities: Czechs and Slovaks.

Petr Brod's grandmother Mathilda and father Lev in 1930 | Photo: Post Bellum

“But there were a few remainders. For example, some Sudeten Germans who were so important for industry, to keep it going, that the Czechoslovak authorities did not allow them to join the big exodus in 1945/1946 and kept them.

“And then there was an even smaller minority, namely Jews who had been German-speaking before the war and who somehow either survived the concentration camps to which they were carried by the Nazis, or came back from emigration and decided to stay in Czechoslovakia.

“The latter was the case of my father, who had spent the war years in Britain.

“With my mother it was a bit more complicated, because my mother came from a mixed marriage.

“My grandfather on the maternal side was Jewish, German-speaking from northern Bohemia.

Sudeten Germans | Photo: Muzeum dělnického hnutí/e-Sbírky,  National Museum in Prague,  CC BY-NC-ND

“He had converted to the Catholic faith before the First World War and while in Austria, serving in the Austrian military, he met and married an Austrian maid from Wiener Neustadt who had a mixed background: Austrian, Sudeten German and Czech, so naturally she was German-speaking too.

“They decided to live in the border area near Carlsbad in Western Bohemia, where my mother grew up speaking two languages, the local Egerländische dialect, which I didn’t quite understand, and Hochdeutsch; normal German as it is spoken at home.

“So we had this German family background, but it was more cultural than ethnic, I would say.”

But did you, for example, walk down the street speaking German together, or speak it together on the tram?

“What a naive illusion [laughs]. No, we didn’t. In fact in those years it could be dangerous. One of my early memories is riding on the tram in 1954 – this was related to me by my mother, many years later – when I was three.

Petr Brod  | Photo: Post Bellum

“I saw all these sad faces around me, travelling to work under the heavy Stalinist regime, early in the morning, and I wanted to cheer them up so I thought I’d sing them a song.

“My first folk songs were taught to me by my Austrian grandmother and my favourite song was ‘Hänschen klein ging allein in die weite Welt hinaus’, about little Johnny going out into the wide, wide world.

“I didn’t even get past the first five notes or so when my mother slapped me in the face, because she wanted to stop me: For God’s sake, you can’t sing German songs on a Czech tram in 1954!

“I was rather upset and it turned my mind against the German language. For a few years I didn’t want to speak German or sing German or do anything German, and later on I had to learn it as my second tongue.”

Was your family affected when the Communist regime turned anti-Semitic, as seen for example in the Slánský trial?

“It was, in terms of the general atmosphere, which was very unpleasant for my father.

“But my father was in the ‘fortunate position’ of having refused to join the Communist Party in 1948, when it was suggested to him.

“My father was in the ‘fortunate position’ of having refused to join the Communist Party in 1948.”

“That immediately meant dismissal from his current job, in which he could use his legal expertise; he had been trained as a lawyer. So in 1948, after the Communist takeover, he was dismissed from his job and for the next 10 years he was a manual worker.

“And therefore, via an absurd twist of logic, he could not be considered a hidden enemy of the state and of the Communist Party, because he didn’t hide his anti-Communist feelings in 1948 by not joining the party.

“Therefore he couldn’t be treated as an enemy within the party, which is what happened to many people with a similar background: who had Jewish origins, who emigrated during the war to the West, especially, who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and came back after the war – and were now, in the early ‘50s, during the Stalinist trials, considered traitors to the communist cause.

“They were tried and many of them were sentenced to long prison sentences. So this didn’t happen to my father.”

I presume he regretted coming back here after the war, did he?

“He had a mixed feeling about that. He said that in 1948, after the events that I have just described, after his dismissal from his job, he thought of emigrating. And at the time it was easy to cross the border, because it wasn’t so fortified as it was starting in 1950, 1951.

“So he considered it, but then – he said to me many years later – he couldn’t face a second emigration within 10 years. Because the first one had happened in 1939, when he fled before the Nazis.

“He thought that starting again after such a short time, and with his profession, he would find it very difficult to establish himself in the West.

“As far as individual fate is concerned the Sudeten Germans had a much better time in the West than they would have had in Czechoslovakia.”

“And he loved Prague; he was a local patriot.

“He thought things would not be that bad, back in 1948. It only gradually grew on him that the system, the regime, would become very bad, very cruel, but by then the border was completely closed and he couldn’t go abroad again.”

But in 1969 your family did emigrate after you completed school – you moved to Munich. What did you find when you arrived in Munich? I guess there a lot of Sudeten Germans formerly from Czechoslovakia living in Bavaria at that time?

“I had no problem with that. Neither did my parents. Because they had family there, they had friends there.

“They were politically liberal. My father had voted Social Democrat and he found Sudeten German Social Democrats in Munich, for example, with whom he had good conversations and he attended their meetings and so on.

“We kept a certain distance from the more conservative part of the expellee organisations in which many former Nazis were also active.”

“I inherited that attitude. I also became close with several of the old Sudeten German Social Democrats and with their descendants and so on.

“So we had our own Sudeten German milieu and we kept a certain distance from the more conservative part of the expellee organisations in which many former Nazis were also active. We were aware of that situation and made our own arrangements.”

But you were able to return to Czechoslovakia for many years, because your family had left legally?

“We left with emigration passports in 1969 and up until the 1980s I was able to return with my West German passport as a West German student, always having to apply to Czechoslovak representation offices in West Germany for travel visas.

“It became impossible in the 1980s when I joined the BBC in London and it was clear that I would be in danger coming as a Western journalist, maybe hiding that fact from the authorities and so on.

“So there was a hiatus of about eight or nine years when I couldn’t enter Czechoslovakia.”

You became a journalist after studying in Germany and also, on scholarships, at the London School of Economics and Harvard. What was the draw of the profession for you?

“It was partly because with my experience in communist Czechoslovakia I was very curious about the world.

“Remember, in the 1950s and ‘60s it was very difficult to travel abroad, especially from the West. It was very difficult to obtain printed matter from the West. We were in conflict with the system all the time.

“And I wanted to live in a world in which I would be free to say what I wanted, read what I wanted, and because I was very interested in politics – but was not interested in entering it – I thought that journalism was the best thing to achieve, to study, to work in.

“I did all that was in my power to achieve that goal, and I did finally.”

What was the actual experience like of working at the Czechoslovak section of the BBC World Service?

“It was great, in many ways. But I stress that it was great in many ways because I wasn’t limited to being with the Czechoslovak Service all the time.

“The BBC has a wonderful internal system where you are allowed to join another department for six months, sometimes for a year, sometimes for three months, after a competition.

“If you are transferred, you are able to gain knowledge and experience in a different field of journalism, which then enables you to apply for permanent jobs in that other field.

“I also worked on the main late night news show on BBC television, Newsnight.”

“So I tried my luck with the German Service of the BBC, because I was bilingual. But I also went to the domestic services, working at Radio 3 and Radio 4. They have a joint department called Talks and Documentaries; in journalistic parlance ‘Talks and Docs’.

“I worked there twice and I also worked on the main late night news show on BBC television, called Newsnight. So I had a lot of experience.

“My stay at Newsnight helped me to make it clear to myself that I wasn’t born to work in television – there was too much technology involved and I was rather more interested in formulating ideas and writing and speaking at the microphone.

“But working in the domestic services of the BBC was great fun. It enabled me to travel a lot, because I worked on a programme which was part of the current affairs output.

“I did a programme for example on the first reactions of America towards the Gorbachev regime. I did a programme on Indonesia and so on.

“I was the producer. I was behind the scenes, so to speak: I was not speaking to the microphone, we had presenters for that.

“But I and the presenter would usually travel to Indonesia or to the United States, or elsewhere, and it was great fun, I thought.”

Petr Brod with Pavel Pecháček,  the director of the Czechoslovak editorial office of Radio Free Europe in Munich,  1991 | Photo: Post Bellum

After the BBC you worked in Munich, back in Munich, for Radio Free Europe. How did RFE compare to the BBC in terms of approach, or in terms of the mission?

“They were very different. We were two broadcasters, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, under one roof.

“Radio Liberty broadcast to the countries of what is now the former Soviet Union and Radio Free Europe broadcast to the countries of Eastern Europe under Soviet domination, including the Baltic republics, which were then still part of the Soviet Union but the US did not acknowledge their inclusion into the Soviet Union.

“Our approach was quite different in terms of specific criticism of the communist regime. The BBC was rather cautious in its approach to the communist regimes in Eastern Europe; Radio Free Europe was much sharper in its criticism of the Soviet regime in the smaller communist countries – partly because it could claim that it was not an arm of the US government.”

Do you feel that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in some way contributed to the end of communism in Czechoslovakia and this region?

“I don’t have to quote myself, I always quote somebody else in that respect: In the case of Czechoslovakia I quote Vasil Biľak, who was at the time – in what we call the normalisation years, between 1969 and 1989 – the chief ideologist of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and one of the most Stalinist leaders of the country.

“He was asked after the Velvet Revolution how he had learnt the news of the revolution in Prague and in Bratislava in the autumn of 1989. And he said, Why of course I was listening to Radio Free Europe.”

Did you know or work with Karel Kryl?

“Yes. He was my colleague at Radio Free Europe, but we had met as students at the Munich University and we in fact lived close to each other in the Olympic Village for about three years.

Karel Kryl | Photo: Czech Television

“The Olympic Village, after the Olympic Games of 1972, had been turned into student dwellings and we were both living there for three years.

“So we were quite close and I was a sort of a sounding board for some of his songs and poems, because he was a man who needed reaction, direct reaction from his listeners and friends and so on.

“And because I was very close in terms of physical distance – we lived about 200 metres apart – I would often be invited to his bungalow and he would either read or recite his poetry to me or sing his songs to me.”

That’s amazing. Radio Free Europe sent you to Prague as a correspondent when the revolution happened. That must have been completely exciting?

“It was indeed. And there was an element of revenge in it, in that I could take a little bit of revenge on the communist regime by attending the first congress of the Communist Party after its downfall from power, which was in December 1989.

“I was a sort of a sounding board for some of Karel Kryl’s songs and poems.”

“I could see all these Communist functionaries confessing sins, so to speak, and saying that everything that they had been doing for the last 20 years was wrong, because it was not in line with the national interests of the people and so on – and from then on they would behave.

“It was wonderful to watch all this from close by. On the other hand, it was also an overwhelming experience to be able to walk the streets of Prague again, to be in a free country.

“Remember, I had been absent for 10 years. I was now seeing again my school friends, my other friends. I was speaking Czech as a normal language of communication, and so on and so on.

“It was very exciting, and my first assignment in Prague was to go to a press conference announcing the coming of the Rolling Stones to Prague!”

Petr Brod  (second from right) worked in RFE during Velvet revolution in 1989 | Photo: Josef Rakušan,  Post Bellum

Another amazing story. I understand that Václav Havel asked you to be the head of the International Department at the Office of the President – but you weren’t interested?

“I was interested, but I felt I wasn’t the right person, because journalism was my passion and I knew inside somehow, or I had an intuition, that once I joined the political establishment it would be difficult for me to return to journalism.

“And I knew that Havel’s days would one day be over. That was one thing.

Václav Havel | Photo: APF Czech Radio

“The other was I knew that serving Havel would mean an almost 24-hour day. And I wanted to have a family, I wanted to get married, which happened indeed after I found a woman in Prague who wanted to marry me.

“So all these considerations made me say no to Václav Havel, reluctantly.

“But I always tried to give it a positive notion, so I suggested people who would do the job better than me. And in both cases when he offered me the job he took advice from me and appointed the people that I had suggested.”

Later you were the head of the Czech Service of the BBC here in Prague. I know some journalists who went through the BBC and I have a strong feeling that it was a kind of finishing school, or a school of excellence, for Czech journalism. Would you agree? Some of those people were so good.

“I would agree, although it sounds like boasting. I mean, we tried to be that finishing school.

“Most of those people came to us after a few years in the Czech media and we tried to give them a new view of journalism, somewhat different from the local media.

“We wanted to stress the importance of international affairs, so that they would not say, Oh, we’re not interested in Zimbabwe, or, Who’s interested in what goes on in the Pacific or in China?

Petr Brod in Czech Radio  | Photo: Milena Štráfeldová,  Czech Radio

“We based our broadcasts on both elements: local news and international affairs.

“We tried to give them the feeling that they are an impartial organisation, that they should not side with anybody, despite private sympathies for certain parties, and despite the clear notion that we all were in a conflict with the Communists, even then.

“The Communist Party was still a fairly significant portion of the political spectrum here at the time, but we told them, We must speak to the Communists as well, because they’re a part of the political setup, they’re part of Parliament and so on and so on.

“We tried to bring the impartial ethos of the BBC over to what had been a highly politicised environment; naturally so, because it was only a few years after the downfall of communism.

“I think we did very well in this respect and I’m always glad to see faces of my former colleagues from the Czech Service of the BBC on the television screen or to hear them on Czech Radio, on Czech public radio mostly.

“If they went somewhere, they usually went to the public radio and television stations when they left the BBC.”

I presume you welcomed the efforts to improve Czech-German relations that began in the 1990s?

“Very much so, yes. I was aware of the historical problems and of course the history of Czech-German relations was very close to my heart, because my parents had suffered under the Nazi regime, because we were critical of the GDR and its regime.

“It was a complicated set of feelings that my parents and I had towards Germany and things German and the Czech-German relationship.”

“We were also to some extent critical of what had happened in West Germany after the war with the readmission of certain former members of the Nazi party into the political establishment, and so on.

“So it was a complicated set of feelings that my parents and I had towards Germany and things German and the Czech-German relationship.

“But I knew that Germany would in many ways now become our most important neighbour in a unifying Europe, and possibly a unified Europe, which indeed came about when we joined the European Union in 2004.

“And it was important for me to support the positive developments in the Czech-German relationship, and therefore I also became active in certain organisations which dealt with the relationship, especially the Czech-German Future Fund, which tries to support everything that enables Czechs and Germans to come closer, to perform joint projects: improving the environment in the border areas of the Federal Republic and the Czech Republic, restoring German cemeteries on Czech territory, supporting school exchanges, supporting cultural exchanges, and so on and so on.”

Have you ever thought about what Czechia would look like today if the Germans hadn’t been expelled after the war?

“It’s very difficult to imagine. One wants to think that it might have become another Switzerland, where four ethnic units live next to each other and have been living in more or less peaceful relations for the last 700 years.

“But I’m afraid it wouldn’t have worked that way. And especially with the communist regime here, the relationship would probably continue to be very tense, because the remaining Germans would have thought that the heavy burden of communism was brought upon them by the Czechs.

Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia | Photo: Abraham Pisarek,  Deutsche Fotothek,  CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

“Because the Czechs, out of fear of German reprisals, were actually in many millions voting for the Communist Party after the war; the Communist Party which followed the programme of the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia at the time.

“So I think that if the Communist Party had not pursued that policy and allowed three and a half million Germans to remain within the borders of post-war Czechoslovakia there would be an enormous amount of tension, which have continued the tensions exacerbated by the Nazi for the next three or four decades.

“And that would have been terrible.”

One friend of mine has the opinion that the Sudeten Germans were ultimately fortunate that they were forced out of the country, because many of them ended up in Bavaria, which is relatively wealthy, and lived quite OK lives and weren’t under communism.

“Well, this is what I implied by what I was saying, that in a way [laughs] the Sudeten Germans should be grateful for the historic fate which befell them, although they were of course denied their homeland and they sat by the rivers of the Isar, in Munich, and moaned about the loss of their original homeland, like the Jews once did by the waters of Babylon.

“But in fact as far as individual fate is concerned they had a much better time in the West than they would have had in Czechoslovakia.

“And a witness to that is the fact that when in the 1960s the Czechoslovak authorities allowed some of the remaining Germans from Czechoslovakia to emigrate to West Germany, the majority of them did so and went there.”

My final question is a big one, but still, you and your family have lived through a lot and seen a lot. How do you view the direction that the world is taking today, when you have Trump, you have Musk, you have populism, you have Putin, you have Orban and so on?

“My only hope is that it’s all temporary. And that many of the regimes that will be established, by even free vote, in Hungary, in Slovakia, in the United States and elsewhere will show that they cannot fulfil the promises they give to their voters, will show that bringing more tension into international relations works against the interests of their nations, will see that with global climate change becoming stronger their policies of abolishing everything that tries to stop such developments were wrong – and that mankind will learn something from its mistakes.

“But I am not too optimistic.”

That sounds pretty optimistic, what you just said. I think things look much worse than how you’re describing them.

“Hope lasts eternal.”

Author: Ian Willoughby
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