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Mbledhje koleksionesh

The trained-documentarian, Werner Theuer has held numerous jobs throughout his life. Since the end of the 1970s he has belonged to an independent theater group which showcases its performances in private apartments and on church premises. Via his signature on various submissions and resolutions, Werner Theuer came to be known as an open opponent of the regime. He was arrested and interrogated on numerous occasions. In 1984, he moved to West Berlin, where he earned a living as a taxi driver. Since 1993, he had been active in the Archive of Opposition to the GDR, focusing on the preservation of the estate of Robert Havemann. Theuer completed his university studies in 2001 with a thesis titled “Securing the endangered tradition of opposition and civil movements in the GDR”. This Master thesis was recognized with a prize for outstanding work by the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences.

Pavel Tigrid is one of the most distinguished Czech journalists of the 20th century. He was not only a writer and publicist, but also a publisher and politician, one of the most prominent representatives of Czechoslovak anti-Communist exile.

Pavel Tigrid, also known by the name Pavel Schönfeld, was born on October 27, 1917 in Prague to a middle-class assimilated Jewish family which was affiliated with writers Antal Stašek and Ivan Olbracht. Already as a student at lyceum, he worked as an editor for the Student Magazine, in which he published his first papers. During his studies, he set up a theatre group of youngsters with his friends where he directed an avant-garde performance. He fled to London in March 1939, where he worked as a broadcaster and editor of the BBC's Czech Broadcasting and editor of the Exile Government’s broadcast, “The Voice of Free Czechoslovakia”. In London, along with W. Bergr, he published Magazines Cultural Notebook and Review 42. After the end of Second World War, he returned to his homeland. In 1945, he briefly worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he met his future wife, Ivana Myšková, whom he married in 1947. He founded the weekly magazine Obzor with Ivo Ducháček and from 1946 he was the Editor-in-Chief of the weekly magazine for the young generation Development. In February 1948, he was on a reportage tour in West Germany, from which he never returned. Instead, State Security arrested his wife and didn’t release her for three months. After which, she managed to escape to her husband. Pavel Tigrid settled in Germany, where he co-founded the Czechoslovak Relief Committee for Refugees. In addition to this work to help political refugees, he was particularly engaged in journalism. Articles on the situation in Czechoslovakia were published in the German, English and French press. In Munich, he worked for the Free Europe Committee and participated in the preparation of Radio Free Europe broadcasting. He was the first program director of the Czechoslovak editorial office. He resigned in November 1952 after conceptual disagreements with Ferdinand Peroutka and moved to the United States. In 1956 he founded Testimony, an exile quarterly for politics and culture, which became the most important and prestigious magazine of Czech political exile. During the first years, they were located in New York. However, in 1960, Pavel Tigrid relocated to Paris, where he also transferred the quarterly Testimony. After 1968, Pavel Tigrid was deeply involved in the political and cultural dialogue of the afternoon and poster exile. Tigrid was a part of the foundation of many exile activities, among others, he was one of the founding members of the Czechoslovak Exile Documentation Centre of Independent Literature, whose collections are stored in the National Museum. Together with his wife, Ivana, he also organized effective help for representatives of the Czechoslovak opposition.

 He returned to Prague after the Velvet Revolution at the invitation of Václav Havel and then worked in his presidential office. From 1994 to 1996 he held the post of Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic. He was awarded a number of awards from 1995 as well as the Order of T. Masaryk. Until his death, he lived alternatively between France and Bohemia. He died on 31 August 2003 in his home in Héricy, near Paris.

Ivana Tigridova was a journalist and human rights activist, a life partner of the journalist, writer and most prominent representative of the anti-Communist exile of Pavel Tigrid. She was born in Prague on November 4^th, 1925 as Ivana Myšková, to a middle-class artistic family. Her grandmother from her mother's side was Terezie Brzková, one of the most prominent actresses of the First republic. Ivana Tigridová came from a Jewish family, so she had to leave English grammar school in Prague after the arrival of the Nazis. Her father was deported to Terezin first and then to Auschwitz, where he died in January 1945 on a death march. After the war, Ivana graduated from business School, on Resslova Street, where she managed to transfer after her dismissal from grammar school, and in a few months she completed her graduation at the Grammar School in order to take up Law at Charles University, which she did not complete.

In 1945 she met Pavel Tigrid, whom she married in February 1947. In 1947, Pavel Tigrid was followed by the Communist-controlled State Security, and should have been arrested on 23 February 1948. Tigrid was fortunate because he was abroad on a business trip. Ivana Tigridova was arrested shortly after the February 1948 coup and was imprisoned for three months. After her release, she soon escaped to her husband to Germany.

After leaving for emigration, they lived in Germany, where Pavel Tigrid built the Munich branch of Radio Free Europe and became its program director. Ivana began working with him in Radio Free Europe, working in the program department of the Czechoslovakian editorial office preparing the monitoring of the Czechoslovak press. In 1952, they relocated to New York and then to Paris in 1960, where Pavel Tigrid also transferred the quarterly Testimony Magazine, which he founded with his friends in 1956, and from which he became the most influential and successful Czechoslovak exile to start a magazine over time. His wife was also involved in his publishing.

 In the 1970s, Ivana Tigridová began to work more intensively on human rights issues. In November 1974, he founded the Help and Action organisation, supporting persecuted representatives of cultural and political opposition in the Eastern Bloc countries. After the establishment of Charter 77, the creation of an International Committee to Support the Charter 77 Principles in Czechoslovakia was launched in Paris, which helped the Charter 77 signatories in their efforts to implement human and civil rights in the country.

After 1989, Ivana often returned to Prague and helped her husband, who became Advisor to President Václav Havel and later Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic. Ivana Tigridová died on 27 June 2008 in Héricy, Paris, where she had lived with her family for many years.

Pavao Tijan was born in Senj in the Croatian Littoral on June 15, 1908. He was a Croatian political émigré, lexicographer, journalist and columnist. He attended primary and secondary school in his native Senj. He graduated with a degree in Slavic studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science in Zagreb in 1930. Initially, he worked in Vukovar as a private instructor for the Eltz family from 1931 to 1934. After that, he became a teacher of the Archdiocesan Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb (1935-1944). In 1938 he began working with Mate Ujević on the Croatian Encyclopaedia project as a member of its Central Committee and as Ujević's deputy chairman and secretary. After the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941, he started working in the Croatian Publishing and Bibliographic Institute (HIBZ). He contributed to various journals and magazines, such as Hrvatska prosvjeta, Obzor, and Jutarnji list, for a time he was editor of Hrvatski jezik and Književni tjednik and wrote for the cultural section of Spremnost. He also explored the cultural history of his native Senj and the Croatian coast. As the head of higher education and scientific institutions in the Education Ministry of the Independent State of Croatia, he particularly worked for the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo in 1944.

He first went to Italy after 1945 to immigrate. Two years later he moved to Spain, where lived the rest of his life. In 1949, with a group of Croatian Catholic intellectuals in Madrid, he launched the journal Osoba i duh. As a university professor, he taught Slavic linguistics in Madrid at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones scientificias. Besides contributing to émigré journals such as Studia Croatica and Hrvatska revija, Tijan was editor of the Croatian program on Spanish National Radio for almost twenty years (1956-1975), where he reported from an anti-communist standpoint on social, political and cultural movements in Croatia under Yugoslav socialism. Likewise, in Spain as a technical editor, he participated in the encyclopaedia project on Spanish cultural history entitled Enciclopedia de la cultura española (1963-1968). He also translated many discussions and works from Croatian culture and literature into Spanish. Tijan died in Madrid on July 2, 1997.

His collection was created spontaneously during his lifetime as an émigré. As an anti-communist intellectual, he opposed the regime in Croatia and Yugoslavia, and considered his own work vital in order to destroy the communist ideology and regime in his country. Because of this commitment, he could only travel to Croatia in the 1990s after democratic changes. He arranged his collection at the end of his life because he wanted to move it to research and cultural institutions in Croatia, so it could serve future generations interested in exploring the history of Croatian anti-communism in the latter half of the 20^th century. His family eventually fulfilled his wish and transferred Tijan's collection to Croatia in 2006.

Viorel Virgil Tilea (b. 6 April 1896, Sibiu – d. 20 September 1972, London) was a Romanian diplomat and politician who distinguished himself during his time as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom from 1939 to 1940. Tilea was a descendant of the Raţiu family, which had become known for its members’ active involvement in the Transylvanian Romanians’ movement for civil and political rights in the nineteenth century. Upon graduating from high-school, he went on to study law at the University of Bratislava. In 1915, however, he had to interrupt his studies due to his conscription into the Austrian-Hungarian Army. After the Great War, he completed his studies at the Faculty of Law of the University of Vienna. In the context of Austria-Hungary’s disintegration, Tilea actively participated in the political mobilisation of Transylvanian Romanians. Thus, in October 1918, he joined the National Romanian Council which became the political representative of all Romanians living in Austria-Hungary. The Council sent him on diplomatic missions to Geneva and Paris. During the talks he tried to make sure that the decisions to be made at the Paris Peace Conference would be favourable to Transylvanian Romanians. In the first half of 1919, Tilea served as private secretary to Iuliu Maniu, one of the most revered Transylvanian Romanian political leaders. Then, from October to December 1919, he was private secretary to another Romanian politician of Transylvanian origin, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, whom he accompanied to the Paris Peace Conference. In the autumn of 1919, he was appointed attaché at the Romanian Legation in London. He served in this capacity for two years.

In 1922, Tilea defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Rolul diplomației în politica de stat (The role of diplomacy in state policy) at the University of Vienna. Later, he continued to publish books in the field of diplomacy, such as Acţiunea diplomatică a României, nov. 1919 – mart. 1920 (Romania’s diplomatic activity, November 1919 – March 1920). From 1939 to 1940, Tilea served as Romania’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom. In March 1939, Romania found herself at the centre of a diplomatic incident known as the “Tilea Affair” after the minister sent on behalf of the Romanian government messages to the British government suggesting that Nazi Germany was planning to dismember Romania just as it had done with Czechoslovakia. Thus, he hoped to obtain from the British government guarantees regarding Romania’s territorial integrity. Subsequently, however, the Romanian government disavowed Tilea’s messages. His messages alarmed the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and ultimately contributed to Britain’s abandonment of its appeasement policy with regard to Nazi Germany. In the autumn of 1940, shortly after the establishment of the pro-German National Legionary State in Romania, Tilea was recalled, as he was deemed pro-British. However, he refused to return and asked for political asylum in the United Kingdom. After the establishment of the communist regime in Romania, Tilea became involved in organising the Romanian émigré community. According to the wishes expressed in his will, his memoirs Envoy Extraordinary: Memoirs of a Romanian Diplomat were finally published in 1998, twenty-six years after his passing. They contain valuable information on his activity as Romanian ambassador in London.