COURAGE

Підключення Колекцій

Following graduation from studies in the field of electronic data analysis, Jan Faktor worked as a programmer in Prague. Together with his wife, he moved to East Berlin in 1978 for personal reasons and found employment as a locksmith and kindergarten teacher, but also engaged heavily in the independent literary scene. Through his numerous experimental texts, Faktor enriched the group of authors belonging to the “Prenzlauer-Berg-Connection”.

Although the German language was foreign to him, he gradually gained his own perspective on its usage and challenged its artistic and political conventions as well as those of the independent literary scene. In 1983, he published his four part “Manifest of Trivial Poetry” (Manifest der Trivialpoesie) and one year later, together with Papenfuß and Stefan Döring, another manifest  “Zoro in Skorne”. He became a regular at apartment, studio and courtyard readings and he released his writings in Samizdat form.

Jan Faktor's texts often parodied techniques which are utilized linguistically to enhance meaning. These include repetition (for emphasis) and the usage of comparatives. Faktor's techniques are on display in his 23-page long poem "George's Worries about the Future" ("Georgs Sorgen um die Zukunft") from the volume "George's Attempts at a Poem and Other Positive Texts from the Poet's Garden of Horror" („Georgs Versuche an einem Gedicht und andere positive Texte aus dem Dichtergarten des Grauens“). Through the inclusion of meaningless albeit grammatically correct suprelatives ("the eight-hour working day becomes more eight hourly", etc.), the nonsense of the ideologically motivated and delusional degrees of comparison present in the official language of the GDR are laid bare. In other poems, the author constructs sentences without regard to German conventions for doing so thereby producing comical results.

In 1989, he became a member of the New Forum (Neuen Forum) and later an employee of the first GDR Civil Rights Movement weekly, The Others (Die Andere). Since the 1990s, Faktor has reflected retrospectively on the character of the independent literary scene of the GDR on multiple occasions in his own writings as well as in interviews.

Polish actor, comedian and by background – graphic artist. He was involved in the Solidarity movement from its beginnings. In the 1980s he thought against the socialist regime with his humour as a weapon. He produced numerous posters, comics, graphics and illustrations that were humorously discrediting the authorities. His works were commonly recognised and illegally distributed by the underground opposition. He also opposed the state propaganda during illegal performances of a stand-up nature.

Jacek Fedorowicz is a member of the Historic-Programme Council of the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk. He donated to the institution a wide collection of his graphics (along with stamps and patterns) and video recordings of his illegal performances.

Ladislav Karel Feierabend was an important Czechoslovak politician and economist. From 1938 to 1939 he was the minister of agriculture. After he went into exile in London in 1940, he held the post of Czechoslovak finance minister in the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. Feierabend was a member of the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants and after the war he joined the Czech National Social Party. After the Communist coup in February 1948, Feierabend decided to emigrate from Czechoslovakia. First of all, he went to London and then to the United States of America, where he actively participated in the radio station, Voice of America, between 1965 and 1969. He was also involved in the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in Washington.

Ferenc Fejtő (1909–2008) was a Hungarian-born French historian, journalist, writer and political scientist. He was born in Nagykanizsa, to a Jewish-Hungarian family of booksellers and publishers. He studied in both Zagreb and Nagykanizsa. Fejtő applied to the Science University of Budapest and at Eötvös Loránd University, but because of the anti-Semitic, “Numerus Clausus” law, he could not attend those schools and instead studied Hungarian, French and German language and literature at the University of Pécs from 1927. Following the abolition of “Numerus Clausus”, Fejtő studied Hungarian and German language and literature at the Science University of Budapest from 1929. He was a member of the Bartha Miklós Society, and joined the illegal communist movement. In 1932, Fejtő was sentenced to one year in prison for organizing a Marxist study group. He diverged from the communists and became a social-democratic journalist. In 1935, together with the poet Attila József and the publicist Pál Ignotus, he founded the anti-Nazi and anti-Stalinist literary periodical Szép Szó. In 1938, following a six-month prison sentence for an article criticizing the German-sympathetic government, he left Hungary and moved to France. In 1943–1944 he took part in the French Resistance.

Ferenc Fábri is a journalist. He started to attend the experimental summer camps organized in Bánk in the 1930s and continue to do so until the 1960s. Fábri is one of the old campers who is personally dedicated to preserving the heritage of the founder, reformist pedagogue Eszter Leveleki. A part of Leveleki’s bequest was handed over to him (e.g. diaries, picture albums, posters). Ferenc Fábri safeguards this heritage and draws on it in the various activities (organizing camps, founding the Eszter Leveleki Foundation). He also wrote many articles and edited books on the festivals.