Svatava Vynal

* 1930

  • “Finally, we made contact with those two and then marched for five days. Actually, rather five nights because during the day, guards were passing on the roads. In the border strip which was about 20 kilometers wide there was a zone which was illegal to enter. It was very dangerous because there was a guy on a motorbike with a large lamp shining towards all directions and behind him there were two other men on motorbikes, one of them peeking to the left, the other one to the right. They were looking for any motion, someone jumping out of the bush or something like that. It was really difficult to cross the road; we would need to wait for hours for the moment when nobody would be passing. It was very dangerous and we therefore mostly marched at night. We would sleep on small trees placed down on the snow. Obviously, it was nothing comfortable. My legs were freezing. Once we had to cross a large log which served as a bridge but was round and terribly slippery. We had to pass it to get to the other side – it was no piece of cake. But eventually, after five days, we managed. We marched for another while as if there were no border there. We couldn’t tell; there were no signs. When we got through, we immediately headed for the first police station. There they welcomed me: ‘Du Tsechisches Schwein.’”

  • “It was a terrible air raid back then, a really big one. We ran with my mom towards some wall. The house was built in 1910 or 1911 so it had strong walls. We thought that if it were to collapse, some of the walls would remain standing and we would hide below them. Obviously, it broke all of our windows and our balcony. There had been double glass everywhere and it all fell out. In the upcoming weeks there was no light. Only my sister’s tiny pram glass made of celluloid held out. So, that was our only window in the apartment.”

  • “My father was very lucky to be tried by a normal judge. He was not like these ‘people’s justices’ who imprisoned them all, caring about nothing. This one was a real judge. After five, six months or even a year he came with my father’s so-called concession. It included all of what he had signed but some of its parts were erased. My dad said: ‘I didn’t sign that, it didn’t go like this.’ The judge had a closer look and said: ‘Well, it really looks somewhat weird.’ Eventually he let him go which was a great thing. Naturally, the judge himself got fired immediately after that. My dad later found him working as a runner for a removal firm.”

  • “When I had been doing the radio broadcasting training, they told us: ‘Write something for the radio, something entertaining and short.’ So I did… It is short. Do you want to hear it? I may not remember the exact words but I do remember what it was about. ‘Oh, dear. Look from the window! Did you realize the weather was beautiful? It is spring already! Can you see? The birds are singing, wow, beautiful. This reminds me that I need to buy a new hat.’"

  • “I was working in Bancroft back then. I would like to quote an interesting thing here. About a month after I started there, Mr. McCantire, managing director of the company, paid us a visit in Paris. He said something rather interesting: ‘Svatava, there will be plenty of things around here which you will perhaps find badly executed. Be so kind, write them down and send it to me. I ensure you that I will read it. What will I do about it, that depends on how good it will be and what will be the content. But I will read it for sure. Do that, it is your chance to change things for the better.’ This was something amazing because naturally, one is motivated to change things but usually struggles with how to do it and what to change. I actually never wrote to him because I always changed my mind beforehand. I always tried to push the changes through on my own, to spare him the need to say: ‘Okay, so order these people in there…’ No, I made and executed my own decisions back then.”

  • “Did I say that my dad was on the Asinara island during WW I? It was interesting because back then he saved himself by lying. It is okay to lie if one then lives up to what they had lied about. They asked about who spoke Italian. He didn’t know Italian, only French, German and English but he said that he did and volunteered. They then spent some three weeks there. They were teaching them because most of them were uneducated Italians from Istria who spoke lousy Italian and did not know to read or write. So they taught them how this and that was spelled. In the meantime, my dad had learned it so by the time this was over he spoke Italian well enough to be just fine. Isn’t this beautiful? We are allowed to lie but then have to live up to it.”

  • “When I got to know Mary Quant I thought that I would let her produce her stuff in Italy because up until then she did it at home. At that time it was not a world-wide thing. So I told her that Radici would produce it and I would promote it. And so Mary Quant had flown over. There is a palace next to Milan’s cathedral and next to it is Terazza Martini where classy meetings are being held. So I had it organized for her up in there. When she arrived it was crammed because all the journalists came to see her. We couldn’t even move. She flew in with her husband, a nobleman, and she herself got later promoted to the nobility. So we made the first presentation for her and later at the fair they assigned me a stand with Mary Quant. I took the girls, dressed them in the short thing and let them run around the fair. Back then everyone was still wearing long skirts so everyone was surprised about who was running around there. It was very nice and a great success.”

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Vynal Svatava s matkou
Vynal Svatava s matkou
zdroj: Eye Direct natáčení

Svatava Vynal was born on 2 August 1930 in Prague, growing up in the Vinohrady quarter. Her dad Josef Pisinger was the chief operating officer of dining and sleeping cars of international railway expresses. Her mom Marie, née Preslerová, was an actress in E. F. Burian‘s theater, also publishing in various magazines and newspapers. The family was in intense contact with Svatava‘s great-aunt, First Lady of Czechoslovakia Hana Benešová who was also the godmother of Pisinger‘s other daughter Hana. During the war her father was a member of the resistance organization Obrana národa, and was in contact with Karl Kutlvašr. He therefore had to go into hiding. Her uncle, Lt Col Václav Pisinger was imprisoned in several concentration camps whereas his wife died in Auschwitz, all because of their help to the family of Karel Klapálek. For all of her youth Svatava Vynal played and produced theater, recited, wrote poetry and was a straight-A student. She became fluent in French, English, and German, spoke Russian and later learned Italian. She also exercised in a team lead by Božena Matějovcová, which trained to do a juniors‘ choreography for the XI. Sokol gymnastics festival. In 1948 under dramatic circumstances she escaped to Germany. She soon left the integration camp in Regensburg, accepting a job in the American army‘s HQ in Nuremberg. She later secretly left Germany for France. She lived in Paris and studied at a local catholic university, at a university in the Hague and at Ecole nationale d‘administration. She made her living by cleaning, teaching and translating, later getting employed as a secretary of the CEO for Europe in an American firm focused on the production of textile fibers and fabrics Joseph Bancroft and Sons Company. She received the necessary education at textile school in Saint-Étienne. She published in newspapers and magazines, and also designed logos. She got married to a painter, a Czech exile František Vyhnal and gave birth to two sons. Later she broke up with him and left with her sons to Milan where she continued in her successful career. Soon after their moving to Milan, František Vyhnal returned back to Paris. Svatava worked as a fashion and marketing executive in the Bayer company. Her office was located in the newly-built Grattacello Pirelli skyscraper. She had a valet and a maid to help her take care of the household and of her sons‘ upbringing. However, she didn‘t find the firm‘s operation convenient, and therefore after two years left to work in Czegos, one of the first consultant companies focusing on textile, fashion and marketing. A year later she had founded her own office Vynal snc., Marketing, Promotion, Press. Since the beginning of the 1960s she participated in Milan‘s rich social and cultural life which reached out to the whole world. She served as test driver for Alfa Romeo. Also, she was a member of an advisory commission of the directorate of Teatro alla Scala where she got thanks to Ladislav Vachulka. She collaborated with DMI - German Fashion Institute. She regularly published in ZOOM magazine, Moda Revue, Sports ware, International textiles and others. She cooperated among others with Mary Quant, Liben Torres, Milan Daňek and companies such as Bayer, Marzotto, Faliero Sarti, Grignasco. The Latin Union had sent her to Peru and Bolivia where she consulted representatives of the government and local industry on questions related to the organization of product exhibitions, fairs and their promotion. She helped numerous Czech exiles (among her friends were Karel Kryl, Ladislav Dydek, Arsén Pohribny) as well as Czech firms and Czech culture to break through abroad. After 1989 she resettled to Prague, helped with the setting up of a press office of Karlín Musical Theatre and was active in the organization Bohemia Nostra.