"It went up and down, my husband, with the help of a colleague, was offered a place for one term, then again, but it was only for a term in Cologne. And then they offered me a job in Cologne again, because I met the slavists there and they just gave me a place for a semester. There were all kinds of reasons. Because there, like getting a place in Germany, it's especially for a woman, and especially if you came from the East, they looked down on you terribly. And they thought you had a bad education and all kinds of things."
"And my mum had another strange adventure, when they saw that she was adamant that she was going to go, so they took her to the station and there was a group of Englishmen and the grandmother, who I never knew of course, said to her, 'Look, look, join those Englishmen, you can't lose anything, it's all right.' And she was about to mingle with the English, and suddenly she saw a train leaving, and she asked some stationmaster, 'Where's this train going?' And he says to her, 'That's the last train to the border.' And she, like a flash, just said, 'Help me on that train!' And yet she was not such an sporty type. She jumped on a train, it seemed completely impossible. But by some superhuman effort, she managed to jump on that train. And the train just went day and night, there she was sitting in the dark, it was completely empty, nobody was on it."
"Daddy was an important car designer, so important that Hitler was interested in his designs. He even invited both parents, before the war, to Berlin, and he simply wanted Daddy to work for him. Because Daddy designed, among other things, an extraordinary military car that was able to go up stairs and I don't know what else."
Bronislava Volková was born on 15 May 1946 in Děčín to parents of Jewish origin. Her mother, Markéta Fischerová, née Margit Morgensternová, was a violinist, performing under the name Gita Morenová. Her father, Štěpán Fischer, a prominent car designer and lifelong communist, fought in the Czechoslovak army on the Western Front. After graduating from secondary school in 1963, Bronislava Volková studied Spanish and Russian languages at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. After returning from her study stay in the Soviet Union, she experienced the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops. In 1969 she married the hispanist Emil Volek, and subsequently had difficulty finding employment. Both spouses decided to emigrate, leaving for France in 1974 and staying in West Germany. In Czechoslovakia, they were sentenced to 18 months in prison for leaving the republic. They worked at the universities of Cologne and Marburg until 1976, when they left for the USA. Bronislava Volková, after working for example at Harvard University and the University of Virginia, only after six years found permanent employment at Indiana University. She came back to Czechoslovakia in 1989 on an IREX scholarship, shortly before the Velvet Revolution. She permanently returned to her native country in 2018. Bronislava Volková is a distinguished linguist, semiotician, poet and translator. She has received many awards for her scientific and writing activities. She is a creator of extensive work in the field of collage and a director of multimedia performances. In 2000, she also created the publishing house Explorer Editions, where she published bilingual poetry with collages in bibliophile editions. In 2023 she was living in Prague.
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