Toman Brod's wedding photo

Toman Brod's wedding photo

This is our wedding photo from the year 1954.

I met my wife Libuse, born Kvasnickova, in 1952; she was three years younger than me and came from Moravia.

We met at the school residence on Opletalova Street, where I used to go see my friends, to hold various parties or rehearsed all sorts of amusing theater performances.

We began to go out together, and after two years, while we were still in school, in 1954, we were married.

Libuse was fairly politically conscious, more of proletarian origin, even though her father was a policeman, so not really a proletarian. After the war their entire family devoted themselves to politics and joined the Communist party.

My wife was a committed member of the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Movement. I think that she looked at me with some sort of detachment, because she could see that I wasn't as much a believer as she was, that in fact in private.

I was willing to tell so-called reactionary jokes, which was a huge insult, it wasn't allowed. But under my influence she became more civilized and very soon she turned into a normal girl.

We had a student wedding at the Old Town Hall, we almost didn't even have the money to pay for it. We invited only our closest relatives.

We didn't even have anything proper to wear, my wife modified her father's tailcoat, to make some sort of suit costume out of it, I perhaps had some sort of rented suit. I don't know what I wore.

After all, they had stolen all of our money, in the monetary reform, and we had nothing, our stipendium was only a couple of hundred.

The wedding was on 30th April 1954 and right the next day we went to the May parade. In those days we'd go parade through Prague, the entire school took part. It was a farce, we were supposed to celebrate 1st May, and our party and government, our leaders.

After the wedding we lived, together with Mrs. Kopska, in the apartment on Masna Street. In the fall, our daughter Sarka was born.

Our daughter had a big laugh from our wedding pictures, that her parents had looked like that. She drew us elephant trunks on them.

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