Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Autobiography of Bretislav Friedrich

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 111; Issue: 12-13 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00268976.2013.792466

1362-3028

Břetislav Friedrich,

Building materials and conservation

I was born in Prague, now in the Czech Republic, on 29 May 1953, a single child of Bretislav and Sylva Friedrich. My paternal grandfather, Frantisek, came from a family that had lived for generations in a small village at the Bohemian side of the Austrian–Prussian border. He was able to graduate from high school one year ahead of time – because he was gifted and because he wanted to lessen the financial burden on his family. Upon his graduation in 1909 he was hired as a technical clerk by the Carborundum Company,1 where he rose quickly through the ranks. His portfolio soon included one of Carborundum’s main preoccupations, namely the development of abrasives and grinding tools – made not only from silicon carbide (carborundum), but also from aluminium oxide (artificial corundum), a pioneering feat which revolutionised the machining of glass worldwide while simultaneously eliminating the hazards of silicosis (grinder’s asthma). He also founded a research library at Carborundum, a rarity at industrial companies of the time. Frantisek’s relationship with the Czech communists or, since 1929, their Soviet sponsors2 was not a congenial one: his spirit of a self-made man did not square well with the collectivist mentality of the communists. During a business trip to the Soviet Union in 1936, he was put under pressure by his hosts to reveal proprietary information about Carborundum’s products and procedures. His brewing conflict with the communists came to a head in the Fall of 1945 when Carborundum was taken over by a communist leadership and my grandfather was forcefully retired – without (almost) any retirement benefits. My grandmother then took the only available job of a menial worker at a state farm and supported the family until the early 1960s when her husband was politically rehabilitated and his retirement benefits restored. My father, after his graduation from high school in 1940, found at first a refuge at Carborundum, but in 1943 was seized by the Nazis as a forced labourer3 and deployed to the Walzlager factory in Steyer, Austria. In April 1945 he fled Steyer and illegally returned to Bohemia. After the reopening of Czechoslovak universities he matriculated at Prague’s Institute of Chemical Technology but, in the wake of the firing of his father, dropped out and took a job instead. My mother grew up after the death of her mother in the family of her mother’s sister. During the Nazi occupation of the country she too was drafted as a slave labourer, folding parachutes for the Luftwaffe at the Prague airport. She got to know her father, Josef Fleischl, only after his return, in 1945, from a concentration camp. My grandfather Josef had a legal training and helped to push ahead with the rehabilitation of my grandfather Frantisek. The greatest family influence has been my father’s sister, Jitka, who had also crossed illegally the Czech–Austrian border, in 1949, but in the direction opposite to that followed by my father before her. Self-educated, self-reliant and self-less, she has been my confidant and an inspiring mentor throughout my life. It was also she who encouraged me to go to the Jan Neruda High School and later to study at the Faculty of Science of Charles University.