"The point was that he (Karel Schwarzenberg) arranged for me to treat Věra Čáslavská at the psychosomatic clinic where I worked, so he called me to see if it would be possible. And when he talked to me like that, I told him if he knew that they had more or less stolen a piece of our estate in South Bohemia. He was wondering, 'How did you...?' I said, 'Well, I am actually Jan Poněšický from Poněšice, and Poněšice is near Hluboká, as you know, and we had a big estate there with a huge Poněšice Game Reserve, which still exists there today. And when one of our ancestors, quite recently, about a hundred and fifty years ago, went blind, your ancestor immediately took advantage of it - and bought it for a penny. And Prince Schwarzenberg said, 'Well, yeah, but that was then, and it wasn't my fault.'
"And he sent her to me. She didn't want to be in therapy somewhere in the Czech Republic because she was very well known. So Havel wrote to me asking if she could come to Germany to the clinic where I was working. And Schwarzenberg was the one who organized it, because the clinic also belonged to someone who was a nobleman. It was a big psychosomatic clinic that was in private hands. I can't remember the name right now. So he just got in touch with the owner of the clinic, who also agreed to it. That means she didn't have to pay to stay there. And as for the therapy, Havel sent me five thousand marks at that time - and I sent it back to him, saying that I would do it for free. So this Čáslavská was there then for, I don't know how long, two months."
"And now I also got into that group, through Jitka Vodňanska, who was related to Václav Havel, so I got into that group. And I remember that I was in the autumn of '76, also in that Pařížská Street, there was a young woman who sometimes organized like illegal evenings with lectures. The philosopher Machovec was lecturing there at that time, and the Tomins were there too, those philosophers. So I was there, and I just wanted to say, 'You're always philosophising here, and tell me why nothing is actually happening in the Czech Republic?' That's where I saw Václav Havel for the first time, and then there was the actor with the big nose, who was in Austria, with Landovsky. And I got so angry that they didn't tell me to sign there too. And on the contrary, they just told me if I could hide all the signatures with me. Because it was dangerous - and I wasn't as famous as they were. So I hid them for a while, so I didn't sign it in the end. And I didn't even know it was possible to sign it afterwards. I thought that those who signed it, and that's all that was possible. Yeah, well, that kind of bummed me out. I guess if I had found out at that time and signed it, I probably wouldn't have emigrated, I probably would have stayed on in that group that met Havel there."
"Then I woke up one morning and heard in the barracks that the Russians had occupied us. So now, what to do? We had planned then, on the same day, we had a sport aviator in our club there, and we agreed that on that 21st of August, he would fly over the square like this and drop these leaflets, on one side was briefly our program, and on the other side was the application for that KAN, but it came to nothing when they occupied us on the 21st. But we had already organized that event there, in that square, so instead we organized a signing event for neutrality. So a lot of people signed there and we sent the sheets secretly to Vienna."
Jan Poněšický was born on 3 October 1943 in Prague as the second son of Jan and Věra Poněšický. He spent his childhood and teenage years in České Budějovice. He continued, following the example of his parents, to study medicine, graduating in 1967. He completed one year of military service as a doctor in České Budějovice. Here he was at the foundation of the South Bohemian branch of KAN during the „Prague Spring“. He reacted to the invasion of VS troops by organizing a signature action for the preservation of the country‘s neutrality. This political involvement led to his prosecution in 1969-1970. For organizing a photography exhibition on the anniversary of the August invasion, he was dismissed from his job in 1969 and banned from working in South Bohemia and Prague. His new workplace became the psychiatric hospital in Horní Beřkovice. Here he began his psychotherapeutic training and started a long-distance study of psychology. Due to the persistent persecution by the state, he chose to emigrate to West Germany in 1977, where he successfully worked in medical, pedagogical and scientific activities in German clinics and hospitals. In the early 1980s, at the request of Václav Havel, he allowed Věra Čáslavská to stay at his clinic for treatment. After the Velvet Revolution he extended his work activities to the Czech Republic. He conducts psychotherapeutic trainings, teaches at universities and is a guest at professional congresses and conferences. In 2023 he lived in Bad Gottleuba, Saxony.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
