I hope I bring something to Pilsen
Stáhnout obrázek
Karel Zach was born on 13 May 1963 in Pilsen. His father Karel was an economic deputy in the Stavba production cooperative, his mother Marie (née Kadlecová) a harpist in the orchestra of the J. K. Tyl Theatre and the Pilsen Radio. Jan Kadlec, the grandfather, was a successful entrepreneur, he had a wholesale confectionery business and owned several tenement houses. His grandfather Karel Zach was a legionary on the Italian front, later a commander of the gendarmes in Uzhhorod and then in Přeštice near Pilsen. After the communist coup, his grandfather Jan Kadlec lost his property, his grandfather Karel Zach was deposed, and his father Karel Zach was expelled from the Prague Law School, where he had only one semester left to complete. As a young child, he went with his mother to performances at the Chamber Theatre, where she performed, and he saw operettas from her repertoire many times. He had played ping-pong competitively since childhood. He graduated from the Construction Industry School and the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University, majoring in economics and construction management. He was not interested in technology, and he believes that he was not interested in it either; in Prague he was more interested in culture than in studying. In Pilsen he was a frequent guest of the student club Studna, he also organised unofficial discos there. Twice he tried unsuccessfully to get into production at FAMU. He spent a year of military service in Rajhrad near Brno, and was threatened with imprisonment for leaving the garrison. A doctor saved him by sending him to a Brno mental hospital for a month. He worked at the district construction company, the Horšovský Týn monuments centre, and later at the Office of the Chief Architect of the City of Pilsen, where he lived through November 1989. In 1990, Karel Zach and his sister Helena, five years older than him, restituted four tenement houses left by their grandfather Kadlec on T. G. Masaryk Square and Palacký Square in Plzeň. Since 1995 Karel Zach has been running an Irish pub and music club Zach‘s pub in the building on Palackého náměstí.
