I will continue to draw your attention to other wicked or arbitrary behaviour. A. N., a railwayman from the village/city of Lutopecny(??) I will continue to draw your attention to other wicked or arbitrary behaviour. A. N., a railwayman from the village of Lutopecny
Abstract
This text addresses the life and work of Augustin Navrátil (1928-2003), a Roman- -Catholic activist from the Moravian township of Lutopecny near Kroměříž. A.
Navrátil has not been subject of a complex publication yet, although he is the author of the largest petition demanding religious - and with that going hand in hand also civic - liberties in socialist Czechoslovakia (1988, 600 000 signatures). Man who signed Charta 77 but also a husband and father of nine children.
The aim is to cover his life from his birth, over his family background to the beginnings and heights of his social engagement. The text will mainly deal with 22 open letters in which he drew attention to various illegal practices and actions of the Communist power, as well as with the three petitions he authored (1978, 1985 a 1988) and the samizdat (self-published) journal Křesťanské obzory (Christian horizons), which he published with a group of others from June 1988 to July 1990.
In contrast to most Czech dissidents, he was never sentenced to a prison term for his activities, but he had to involuntarily undergo repeated psychiatric treatment. He was diagnosed with the so-called paranoia querulans, a very frequent psychical disorder among Czech "fighters for justice".
The main focus of the work is on the period before the Velvet Revolution, for this we also find the largest number of sources and various responses and reactions. Following the Revolution, many took different roads due to time and ideological reasons - to this day, this topic remains painful for some of the living witnesses.
Navrátil, however, did not cease to be an active citizen: we will briefly look into his other activities as well.