COURAGE

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Milan Uhde was born on the 28^th July, 1936 in Brno. In 1953 began to study Czech and Russian at Brno´s Faculty of Arts, where he also received a doctoral title. He expanded his further education after the Velvet Revolution, and in 1996 he was habilitated at the Brno Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU).

After completing his university studies, he entered the literary journal, Host do domu, where he worked until 1970. In 1967-1971 he was also an external lecturer at JAMU. He returned to this role more than twenty years later, and in 1990 he had lectures on contemporary Czech literature at his home university, and in 2001-2006 at the Literary Academy in Prague.  From 1971, Uhde was a professional writer, but could not officially publish his texts. After 1989, he actively participated in a political public life. In 1990-1992 he became a Minister of Culture, and in the next six years he was a parliamentary deputy too. He was also a member of Rada Českého rozhlasu (1999-2006), and Rada České televize (2007-2014). Milan Uhde was awarded, among others, the Egon Hostovsky Prize in 1986, one year later the award of Tom Stoppard, State Medal of Merit for Culture in 2000 and the Alfred Radok Award in 2007.

In spite of Uhde's previous enthusiasm for the Communist coup in the early 1950s, his work is characterised mostly by his later criticism, reflecting elements of absurdity and satire, a dilemma between individualism and collectivism. This approach led to banning the publication and an official collaboration with artistic ensembles in 1972. Five years later, Uhde signed the Charter 77, because, according his words, he had nothing to lose. Until 1989, he wrote for samizdat and exile periodicals (such as Svědectví, Listy, Obrys, Proměny). He also wrote scenarios for theatrical plays under the names of other authors; the most famous piece is Balada pro banditu performed by Divadlo na provázku.

Antal Uhl (1902–1982) was a Roman Catholic pastor. He was ordained as priest in 1924 in Bakócza. In 1927, he was made chaplain in Hőgyész and then in Pécsvárad. Beginning in 1931, he served as the pastor of the Hungarian workers in France in the city of Lille. After the German occupation (1941), he was sent to Paris, where he became the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Mission. In 1942, he smuggled from Budapest to Paris approximately 500 Hungarian citizenship identification cards to Hungarian-Jewish people to save them from deportation. He wrote hundreds of membership confirmation forms of the Hungarian Catholic Mission to Hungarian Jews in Paris so that they could freely use public transport. He was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1942 and was sentenced to restricted prison for 5 months in January 1943. Before having begun to serve his sentence, he was released, and he escaped to Hungary. He became an administrator and later a pastor in Baranyaszentgyörgy. After the war, he was summoned to the people’s tribunal of Pécs because he opposed the deportation of Hungarian Germans. He became a titular provost in 1971. He died as the pastor of Baranyaszentgyörgy in 1982.

Vytautas Umbrasas is a Lithuanian historian, diplomat and politician. As a pupil at a secondary school in Molėtai, he joined informal organisations and participated in various Lithuanian ethnic festivals that were not officially forbidden, and yet also not recognised and supported by the state. Family members who were persecuted and oppressed by the Soviet regime, including his uncle, the Catholic priest Jonas Žvinys (1901-1994), had a major impact on his education and the formation of his attitudes and his belief system. Because of his activities and views, Umbrasas was not allowed to enter Vilnius University to study history. He only became a history student a few years later, in 1979. During his studies at the university, he was chair of the Student Scientific Society. In 1983, he moved to Rumšiškės Ethnography Museum for family reasons, where he worked as researcher, and later as deputy director. During the Sąjūdis (Lithuanian National Movement) period, Umbrasas participated actively in the political and social life of the Republic of Lithuania. In 1997-2004, he was an adviser to the defence minister, he later took on diplomatic work, and since 2008 he has been vice-minister of defence.
Umbrasas says that the cultural opposition was a cohort or generation of people who did not fit into the system at that time, and sought to live their lives their own way. The aim of the cultural opposition was not to fight against the Soviet system, but to seek high standards and the fulfilment of personal talent.

Jaan Unt was an Estonian Classical philologist, translator and literary scholar. He was the first editor of manuscript magazines in Tartu in the late 1960s. In the days when people gathered in someone's house on certain evenings, he also held a ‘salon’ in his home. Vaino Vahing, Aleksander Müller, Juhan Toming and others also held such salons. In 1968, he was expelled from the University of Tartu for editing manuscript magazines. After his military service in the Soviet army, he studied at Leningrad State University, from which he graduated as a Classical philologist. After returning to Tartu, he could not publish, and for a long time he struggled to find work. Only in 1985 did he obtain a place as a lecturer at the University of Tartu. He has translated works from Ancient Greek, Latin and Russian, and has also published textbooks.