A Man, a Violin and a German Castle
Text: Girina Holland, Berlin
Photographs: Jan Lechota, London
It is 6am. Jan and his wife Jitka are already seated in their car, starting the 753km journey from Brno to the small town of Waldeck in mid-West Germany. The streets are quiet, no sign yet of the buzzing traffic and people that will soon fill the streets of the Czech Republic’s second biggest city. Jan and Jitka, both in their late forties, have just spent a week in Brno visiting their 22 year old daughter Lucia and other close relatives. Now they have to get back to Germany, in time for a gig of Jan’s at a regional garden fair not far from their home in Waldeck. For the moment, Jan’s main concern is to bypass any hold-ups, especially to avoid Prague’s morning rush hour. Jan dislikes hold-ups. He likes to be on the move, to have a goal, to be heading towards something.
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Jan and Jitka are two of over 30,000 Czechs residing legally in Germany. This figure hasn’t altered much for many years, despite great fears by some that, with EU enlargement in 2004, Germany would be flooded by migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe. In fact, the largest flow of east-west migration already took place at the beginning of the 1990s, with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
This was also the time when Jan moved to Germany. He was 36 then, and living with Jitka and their two children in Prague. In 1992, his music agency had arranged a gig for him in Dresden. One of the city’s recently privatised 5-star hotels required a violin and piano duo to play Salon Music. The engagement was meant to last for an entire season. Together with his duo partner, the pianist Anton, Jan made his way to Dresden.
Jan pulls a streak of his wavy brown hair out of his face. With Brno left behind, the journey continues on the E461 towards Prague. “I am not interested in politics and have never been.” Jan’s voice with its charming Czech accent sounds irritated. When thinking back to his life in socialist Czechoslovakia, Jan feels that he wasn’t allowed to choose, that he was drawn into politics without actively seeking so. “I am just a normal guy” says Jan, and for him that means being a loving husband, caring father and someone who avoids trouble. Still, his strong individualism and entrepreneurial spirit caused Jan constant frictions in a country and working environment where centralised and top-down structures ruled. And even after the Velvet Revolution, he found the system and people’s mentality only slowly changing. He felt that Germany was an apposite alternative; not far away from the Czech Republic and offering job opportunities and a working culture that suited him far more.
When Jan came to Dresden in 1992 to play at the hotel, he took the opportunity and persuaded the hotel director to renew their work engagement, this time independent of the agency. As the Dresden hotel director was not only charmed by the duo’s performance, but also happened to own a hotel in Waldeck, West Germany, a year later, the two musicians started playing at Schlosshotel Waldeck.
Finding accommodation was not an issue for Jan. For many years he lived free of charge at his workplace, the beautiful Schlosshotel. Part of the town’s 12th century castle, Schlosshotel Waldeck sits majestically on top of one of the area’s green bosky hills of mixed forest, 200m above the lake Edersee, enchanting visitors with its captivating view. Jan remembers that, during his initial time at the hotel, he opened the window of his room each morning and released a loud shout of joy, sometimes imitating the monkeys from the nearby animal park. “I felt free, absolutely free.” Nonetheless, as for many migrants, being away from his family constituted a major encumbrance to Jan’s life. Until his children left school and his wife joined him in Waldeck in 2000, he drove to the Czech Republic almost once a month.
Now, after 27 years of marriage and extremely long periods of living apart, Jan and Jitka still truly enjoy being together. Jan was 21 when he met Jitka. She used to be one of the dancers – “the prettiest one” Jan asserts – in a Moravian folk dance ensemble in Brno. Jan lead the small orchestra that accompanied the dancers. Jitka is a soft and quiet person who, despite her age, has something maidenly about her. From her appearance, it is not hard to picture the former dancer. Jan knows how fortunate he is. The Czech Republic’s notoriously high divorce rate aside, out of the migrants he has met he is one of the few whose relationship has outlasted the strains of years of living apart.
In addition to the separation from his family, there was the frustration about his legal status. Early on he came to feel the disadvantages of being a foreign national. For the first four years the hotel management only employed the two musicians on short-term contracts. This was well before EU enlargement, and before the Community Law of automatic right of residence had inter alia been extended to Czech citizens. Each time Jan would receive a new contract he had to reapply for his residence permit. And each time he didn’t know whether it would be renewed. The duo were lucky that the hotel manageress valued their work so highly that, in 1996, she finally agreed to issue 12-month contracts for the two musicians. This didn’t put an end to the vast amounts of bureaucratic paper work, but it largely secured the renewal of their residence permit. From this moment on, Jan was set to hold out at Waldeck Castle for at least another six years, until he was eligible to apply for his indefinite leave to remain. These six years between 1996 and 2002, were a great blow to Jan’s restless character, and a serious test of his patience and endurance power. Jan was only permitted to work for the castle hotel – playing most evenings for hotel guests, and sometimes performing at social events for members of the management. Many times he used to think: “I long for more than sitting and waiting for the evening to come so I can start working. But I have to persevere, I have to hold out.” Jan did persevere, firmly believing that he was helping to secure a better future for his family and himself.
Jan stops the car. They have reached the German border. He opens the window and passes their passports to the border guards. How many times has Jan crossed this border since moving to Germany? He stopped counting long ago. However, there is one particular time he will not forget. This was before the Czech Republic joined the European Union. His violin case had aroused suspicion at border control. In vain Jan tried to explain to the eager and conscientious German border guards that he was a violinist and that the white stuff in his case was not cocaine but powder for treating his bow. So he unpacked his violin and started to play.
Jan concentrates on the road again, this time the border crossing went effortlessly.
“Every time we return to Germany, we kiss her soil.” Although Jan is grateful for the opportunities that living in Germany has offered, it is not a boundless love for the country that prompts his comment. Jan finds their short quarterly visits to Brno far from relaxing. The time spent with their daughter and relatives never seems enough and without even a room of their own, it is difficult to feel at home. Lucia is studying at Brno University, and doesn’t want to move to Germany. She gave it a try, just after finishing school, but only lasted for three months. She found the Germans hard to meet and missed her friends. Only wistfully have Jan and Jitka accepted Lucia’s choice, and both are still hoping that better job opportunities will bring her and her fiancé eventually to Germany. Their son Roman in contrast, is happy with his life in Germany. He came six years ago, and is finishing his violin degree at university in Wuppertal – a two hours drive away from his parent’s home in Waldeck. He now lives with his girlfriend and their 15 month old baby boy Gabriel.
For Jan’s own professional development, holding out to receive his unlimited work permit clearly paid off. “Nowadays I have the freedom to approach any potential employers. I usually go to them and ask if they need two musicians. If they say no, I unpack my violin and persuade them to listen to me playing.” This is how Jan loves to operate, and it results in an average of 200 performances a year, a large part of which are regular, weekly ones. Recently, he has also taken up teaching. With his additional employment at three music schools, where he teaches children the violin Mondays to Fridays, he feels he has managed to exploit his full professional potential. “Even winning the lottery wouldn’t have an impact on my job. I would continue working as I do now.”
Jitka has worked in different jobs for a large part of her life: as a nurse, teacher and for a small private museum, during their time in Prague. When she followed Jan to Waldeck in 2000, her lack of German forced her to take on a job as a chambermaid in one of the hotels in the area. She worked there on seasonal contracts for almost five years. The job gave her little chance to improve her German. “I certainly practised my Russian” she laughs. Her closest colleagues were other migrants, mainly Russians. With the aim of widening her job opportunities in the long-term, she quit her work at the hotel, and is about to start a year-long intensive German course. She is thinking of taking up nursing again, or maybe even giving dance classes.
The two reached a final decision on permanently staying in Germany not long ago. “Of course, we still miss seeing our relatives, going to weddings, Easter celebrations, and socialising.” In Waldeck they don’t have a large social network. They find it difficult building close friendships with people. “You meet someone that you like, but somehow nothing more ever comes of it. People here like to keep a certain distance.” Nonetheless, Waldeck and its surroundings have become their new home. Jan is even considering taking on German citizenship, “It would make dealing with the German administration and all the bureaucracy a lot easier.” Neither Jan nor Jitka attach any emotional value to a particular citizenship, they both feel European.
The car is now passing along the lake Edersee and up the wooded hill, on top of which Schlosshotel Waldeck comes into view. The final kilometre leads through Waldeck’s neat and clean town-centre with its one café, few restaurants and shops, and tourists equipped with sunglasses and rucksacks. A little further on, at the edge of the town, Jan turns into a small street. The car comes to a halt. It is just after 2pm, Jan and Jitka have arrived.