The Junge Kirche
published my article on Marxist-Christian Dialogue in its issue of March 10,
1965, from which I quote: ‘A genuine dialogue requires openness and readiness
to give up all that is antiquated, ossified, and dogmatic both in Marxism and
in Christianity.’ After publishing it, Heinz Kloppenburg, the editor of the Junge Kirche, invited me to West
Germany. He was an important Member of the Christian Peace Conference, an
international organization established in Prague; his invitation could not be
brushed aside by the authorities. And so I was invited to the Department for
Religion Affairs. The name of the Head of the Department was eponymous: Hrůza
(‘Horror’, ‘Terror’). He said I would be given the passport: ‘You must write a
detailed report concerning everybody you will talk to’. I replied: ‘I shall do
so, telling everybody I shall talk to that I am bound to write a report about
our talk, promising them a copy of my report’. And so I never met Heinz
Kloppenburg. I nevertheless used the opportunity to sharply criticize the
church policy of the Department: ‘If you really care for socialism, you must be
interested in the full development of every member of our society. It is the
highest time that you release the incarcerated Catholic Priests from prison and
allow them to return to their churches so that people can benefit from the
moral strength they derived from their Christian faith during their
imprisonment.’ I shall never forget the nervous jumping up and down of his legs
during our interview. The year 1965, Hrůza still had the power to prevent me
from visiting West Germany, but even that power of his soon ended.
***
My articles in the Junge
Kirche had a prelude. In 1964 I wrote an article in which I contrasted the
positive evaluation of the progressive developments in Christianity in the West
by Marxist theoreticians with the negative attitude of the Communist officials to
Christians in our country. ‘Negative attitudes towards Christians have become
unfortunately a rule in relation to progressively thinking Christians in our
society,’ I wrote. I argued that it was in the interest of the socialist society
that Christians should cease to be only grudgingly allowed to make their
contribution to the society, in spite of their being Christians. I insisted
that they should be invited to do so as Christians, so that they could openly draw
on the best that their faith offered them, and on that basis enrich the society
as a whole. I sent the article to the Literární
noviny, a cultural haven of the Czech intelligentsia and the main engine of
the liberal thinking in the country. But the Czech intellectuals were for the
most part as averse to religion as they were anti-dogmatic, and so the
Editorial Board hesitated, unsure whether to publish my article or no. In the
end they decided to publish it in summer, during the silly season. But the
Department for the Control of the Press stopped the publishing, summoning the
Chief Editor and me to the Central Committee. We were ushered into a room with
a long table around which were sitting some twenty Communist Party officials; we
were to be rolled over and chastised for our attempted trespass against the
Communist Party Policy. But I turned the table against them, sharply
criticising the official policy concerning Christians. [The man who chaired the
meeting later complained to Milan Machovec: ‘When we were young, we would never
dare to talk to our elders as Tomin talked to us.’] In the end, they decided
that I must rewrite the article. And so I consulted Milan Machovec, whom I was assisting
in organizing Marxist-Christian Dialogue in his Seminar at the Faculty of
Philosophy. He told me: ‘Rewrite it so as to make it even stronger.’ And so I
rewrote it and gave it a new title: ‘Úskalí atheismu’, ('Pitfalls of Atheism', ‘Klippen des
Atheismus’). In the article I argued that in Marxism there was no place for
atheistic proselytizing: ‘A genuine Marxist is interested in the optimal
development of every man and woman, and would attempt to convert a Christian to
atheism only if he or she had grounds to believe that the Christian they
approached would become a better man by virtue of becoming an atheist.’
The article was published on August 15, 1964. The Literární noviny were always selling well,
but the issue with my article was selling noticeably more quickly than
normally. On October 3, 1964 the LN
devoted the central double page to ‘TOMIN IN DIALOGUE WITH CHURCH’.
***
In 1966 I was invited to give a lecture on Marxist-Christian
Dialogue at the University of Heidelberg, then at the University of Göttingen.
What was I talking about? I spoke without any notes. In giving my talk, I had
in front of my eyes all I knew about Christianity as well as all my experiences
of living in a socialist country, steeped as I was in the writings of Marx and
Kant, Marx’ idea of Communism as the realm of freedom chiming in my mind with
Kant’s idea of freedom actualized here and now in the realm of ends, im Reiche der Zwecke.
***
The last time I had an opportunity to talk to German
students was in June 1979. Barbara Day has preserved the time-context within
which I gave the talk: ‘On Tuesday 5th June Wilkes came to Luke’s
rooms in Balliol College to brief Taylor [who was to be the next Oxford visitor
in my seminar, J.T.] … On the same June evening as Wilkes, Lukes and Taylor
were sitting in Balliol discussing the Prague seminar, Zdena Tominová [my
wife, J. T.] was … attacked by a masked man [on entering our house in Keramická
street, J. T.]. Passers-by rescued her … An ambulance was called and she was
hospitalized with concussion. The news reached Tomin, on night duty at the zoo,
who visited her at the Na Františku hospital. Returning to work … he
neglected his rounds to write a letter to President Husák; he was convinced there had
been an attempt to murder Zdena and that he was to have been accused of the
murder … On Wednesday June 6th the regular seminar took place; on
Thursday, Julius gave a talk on Charter 77 to a visiting group of West German
‘tourists’ at a rendez-vous in the Vikárka restaurant in the Castle, under
the nose of President Gustáv Husák.’ (The Velvet
Philosophers, The Claridge Press, 1999, pp. 39-40).
I described the event on my blog in ‘A Reminiscence’, the
post of 2nd October 2014, from which I quote: ‘Charles Taylor
visited my seminar the day my wife returned from hospital bruised all over her
face – the consequences of an assault. Zdena Tomin was at that time the only
spokesperson of the Human Rights movement Charter 77 left at large; the other
two spokespersons were imprisoned. I worked as a night watchman in Prague Zoo
and I was at work when our neighbour phoned me that a masked man attacked my
wife. Before my wife was taken to the hospital Na Františku, she asked the neighbour to
phone me that I should visit her as soon as possible. So I left the Zoo
immediately. In the hospital, Zdena told me that she was returning from a
meeting of Charter 77 followed by a secret police car as usual; the car drove
away before she reached our street, which was unusual. At the corner of our
little street stood a car with its headlights on, which looked ominous. On
entering our house, a masked man hit her on the head with a truncheon. At that
moment a group of people returning from the cinema were passing by and the
attacker fled. A neighbour called an ambulance. Before getting into the
ambulance, Zdena hid her handbag in a bush in front of our house; it was full
of Charter 77 materials.
Instructed by my wife, I retrieved the bag, returned to the
Zoo, and spent the night writing a letter to the President of the Republic:
‘Was it to be a murder? Coming home from night-watch I would have been the
first to find her dead. Was I to be accused of her murder?’ I typed the letter
with as many carbon copies as the typewriter could take, left the Zoo at dawn –
it was in June, the nights were short – and distributed the copies putting them
into the letterboxes of Charter 77 signatories I trusted. With every copy
delivered I began to breathe with greater ease; our chances of surviving the
incident were growing. (The letter was promptly published in the German
newspaper Die Welt.)
Later in the day I revisited the hospital. The chief nurse
refused to let me see my wife; she said that she was in a coma and that the
doctor forbade any visits. I told her that I visited my wife in the hospital
during the night: ‘I go now to the Central Committee [of the Communist Party]
to inform them about the incident. When I come back, I shall insist on seeing
my wife.’ When I returned to the hospital after visiting the Central Committee
I was allowed to see my wife; she had a severe headache but wanted to go home
as soon as possible.
The next day I learnt that my wife was not to be murdered in
our house; both she and I were to be abducted. I was summoned to the local
police station; the interrogator wanted to know where I had been in the night,
why I did not go for the usual night-round through the Zoo. When I then went in
the evening to do my night-watch duty, the men in the porter’s Lodge looked at
me aghast. They had been told that I had been kidnapped the previous night. The
deputy director of the Zoo came to see me, completely drunk: ‘The other night I
was told that you were kidnapped and that I should call the police, which I
did.’ So I spent the night writing a letter about the incident on the basis of
this information, this time addressed to the Minister of Internal Affairs.
After returning from the night shift and posting the letter I began to translate
it into English. I was in the middle of that work when I was visited by some
German students. I had completely forgotten that I had promised them a talk on
Erich Fromm’s To Have or to Be?
Several months previously I had been given a copy of the book for that purpose.
The students invited me for lunch in Vikárka, a famous restaurant at the Prague
Castle. Only some of the group were then supposed to return with me to my flat
for the talk, for the flat was too small for the whole group. The students
reserved a big hall in the restaurant, just for the group. After the meal, we
were about to leave when a torrential rain started to pour down. The Germans
paid well; we were welcome to stay. I devoted my talk to the Charter 77 and the
events of the last few days; our struggle for Human Rights well exemplified
Fromm’s emphasis on ‘to Be’ instead of ‘to Have’.
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