Zbyněk Fišer/Egon Bondy and the State Security
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: January 20, 2025, 19:00 – 21:00
Presentation of a comprehensive new book published by the Museum of Memory of the 20th Century. Its main theme is the diverse relations that the writer and philosopher Zbyněk Fišer had with the Communist-era secret police, the State Security (StB). Zbyněk Fišer used the pseudonym Egon Bondy from the late 1940s on. In four periods he was a collaborator of the StB under various code names: Klíma, Zbyněk, Mao and Oskar. From 1961 until 1989, he was intermittently, and successfully, deployed in a number of secret StB operations.
The first part of the book is an interpretive study by Miroslav Vodrážka entitled History as an Unravelling of the Openness of Life and Work. In particular, it examines various myths, or the myth of Bondy; this is specific in that it was created over a long period of time not only by the author himself, various actors and groups, but essentially was not possible without the secret plans of the StB. The second part of the book contains archival StB documents from the period 1949–1989, selected and critically annotated by historian Petr Blažek. In addition to the authors of the publication, several invited guests will also speak.