Josef Guttmann’s Journey: From Jan Buchar to Peter Mayer

Ceremonial presentation of a biography of Josef Guttmann 

The life journey of the Czech journalist and politician Josef Guttmann (1902–1956) was largely determined by his political views and origins. As a prominent and influential left-wing intellectual, he found himself in the sights of the First Republic police for a number of years. In 1933, when he showed the courage to speak out critically against Moscow's policy regarding the current danger of fascism in Germany - and thus inexcusably violated party discipline - he earned the hatred of Communist comrades. After the outbreak of World War II, he managed to escape from Czechoslovakia before being sent to a concentration camp and, after two years of wandering, applied for asylum in the USA. As before in Czechoslovakia, he continued to protect his identity there, once again publishing his reflections and analyses on international politics, Europe, and the USSR under pseudonyms. He merely replaced Jan Buchar and Václav Kovář with Václav Bušek, Peter Mayer, and Joseph Gordon. And was buried in New York under the name Joseph Gordon... 

This evening with the author of the book, Jan Žůrek, and the historian Pavel Siostrzonek will be moderated by Michael Rozsypal.