COURAGE

connecting collections

Jan Vladislav byl český básník a překladatel. Po roce 1948 se stal „zakázaným“ autorem. V roce 1968 se podílel na vzniku „Kruhu nezávislých spisovatelů“ a v roce 1969 se stal šéfredaktorem časopisu Světová literatura. V letech 1970–1971 byl však zbaven všech funkcí a bylo mu opět znemožněno publikovat. V polovině sedmdesátých let založil samizdatovou edici „Kvart“, ve které vyšlo více než 120 titulů, a stal se jedním z prvních signatářů Charty 77. V roce 1981 byl donucen z Československa emigrovat a usadil se ve Francii. Podílel se na založení Československého dokumentačního střediska nezávislé literatury v Hannoveru v roce 1986. Od roku 2003 žil trvale v Praze. Je nositelem Řádu T. G. Masaryka (1991), francouzského Řádu umění a literatury (1993), Ceny PEN klubu za celoživotní dílo (1998) a Státní ceny za dílo překladatelské (2001).

Éva Vadas was a Salesian nun and Bokor member. She entered the Social Mission Society/ Szociális Missziótársulat in 1935. She visited and helped people in hospitals and jails, and she also helped other families and did administrative work. She learned about the aims and principles of Bokor in 1948, and after the dissolution of the convents in 1950, she found the ideas of social responsibility and charity which Bokor represented very close to her own vision. She had to work in a factory. During these years, she organized the communities and helped spread the samizdats of György Bulányi. She was imprisoned from 1952 to 1956. After her release, she remained a member of Bokor up to her death. The collection of the Bokor base community is based on Éva Vadas’ documents. She contributed to the work of the community as a typist. She typed the Bokor samizdats, for example, the issues of Christmas Present /Karácsonyi ajándék (KARAJ).

Lauri Vahtre (b. 1960) is an Estonian historian, writer and politician. He is active in popularising history.
As a student at the Tartu State University, he was an activist and one of the main members of the Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) student movement. In 1983, he was expelled from the university shortly before he would have defended his thesis. His exmatriculation was not directly connected with his activities in Noor-Tartu, as he had distanced himself from the movement for a long time before, with the aim of not causing it trouble. However, his intentions and exmatriculation did not spare the movement, and it was closed by its members in 1984.
Vahtre managed to complete his studies in 1984, however. Later, in 1988, he also gained a candidate degree from the Institute of History of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. From 1989 to 1992, he taught as a senior lecturer at the University of Tartu. He was a member of the Congress of Estonia, and from 1991 to 1992 was a member of the Constitutional Assembly.

Szabolcs Vajay (1921–2010) was a Hungarian historian, genealogist, heraldist, and diplomat. Vajay created an important scientific oeuvre. He dealt primarily with the medieval history of Hungarians, genealogy, and heraldry. Since 1943, his professional writings were published in 6 languages in 22 countries. He served as vice-president of the International Academy of Heraldry (1964–1976), and in 1980 he was made a professional heraldist of the Order of Malta. He was the president of the National Fellowship of Genealogist and Heraldist Associations, and he was then made an honorary president.

He was born to a Hungarian noble family in Budapest. He studied at the Szent Imre High School and then went on to study law at the university of Budapest (1939–1943). In 1942, he was made a member of the Knights Hospitallers. As a scholar, he continued his studies in Switzerland. After the putsch of the far-right Arrow Cross Party in Hungary (1944), he chose to live in exile. From 1943 until 1946, he studied at the International Affairs Department of the University of Geneva. He then became private secretary to ambassador György Barcza. In 1946, he took part in the peace negotiations as a junior diplomat. He worked for the International Red Cross and then moved to Argentina in 1948. Between 1949 and 1953, he was the managing main secretary at the Buenos Aires office of the Institute of Modern Art Foundation. He worked as a journalist in France from 1954 to 1958, and he became a cultural co-worker at Radio Free Europe in 1955. Vajay was a UNESCO official (1959–1983) responsible for the Latin American Department of the Class of Social Sciences. He took part in the organization of many higher educational institutions and contributed to the publication of Spanish and Portuguese encyclopedias and the development of scholarship networks. In 1986, he was made permanent commissioner of the International Council of Social Sciences, which operated next to the UN Center in Geneva. He led the Office of the Knights Hospitallers in Geneva. He taught at the Károli Gáspár Calvinist University and the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary.