Publication details
Zapomenutí kurýři Indexu : případ Gerharda Küchena a Ulrike Ackermannové
| Title in English | Forgotten Couriers of the Index : The Case of Gerhard Küchen and Ulrike Ackermann |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In her study, the author reflects on the historical neglect of “ordinary” Western couriers involved in smuggling books, magazines, and technical equipment into Czechoslovakia before 1989, which may have been due to the mostly leftist orientation of these smugglers. At the same time, she notes that as early as the early 1990s, Adolf Müller, one of the founders of the exile publishing house Index, lamented the proverbial double standard that prevails in evaluating exile publishing enterprises and their connection maintained with home, and the promotion of one case which “ended in trouble, [and] is published almost as one and reprinted hundreds of times.” While the case of the detained French caravan of 1981, which Müller had in mind, is still remembered today, other channels and above all the actors remain, with exceptions, unnoticed. These include the forgotten German students Gerhard Küchen and Ulrike Ackermann, who were arrested in Prague in 1978 and subsequently abused in the propaganda film Under the Mask of a Private Man (1978). |