Ladislav Mňačko
January 29, 1919 – February 24, 1994
Ladislav Mňačko was a Slovak writer of Moravian origin and a versatile publicist. The most translated Slovak writer – his books have been published in 26 languages.
He was born in Valašské Klobouky in Moravia, but spent his childhood and youth in Martin, where his father got a job as a postmaster.
He actively participated in the Second World War in the ranks of the partisans. However, he missed the uprising in Slovakia, so he joined the partisan movement in East Moravia, the Ploština group. At the beginning of the 1950s, as one of the devotees of the communist regime, he was one of the most prominent journalists. With the passage of time, however, he not only lost his enthusiasm for communism, he even joined its uncompromising opponents.
In 1948 he was a correspondent in Palestine. As a correspondent, he traveled abroad often, visiting, among others. Israel (1948, 1954, 1967, 1968), Albania (1949), China and Mongolia (1957), Transcarpathian Ukraine (1956), Hungary (1957), USSR (1960), France (1963), Italy (1964, 1965, 1968), West Germany (1964), GDR (1965), Austria (1965, 1968), Vietnam (1966).
In 1959, he published his autobiographical novel Death Says Engelchen (Death Says Engelchen) (made into a film in 1960 by Ivan Balaďa and in 1963 by Ján Kadár). Also known is the novella How Power Tastes from 1967 – a shocking parable of how hypnotizing power a totalitarian regime can have.
At the beginning of the 1960s, he described the backstage of the political trials of the 1950s in the book Delayed Reportages, the importance of which is even compared to the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
In 1961, he attended the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel as a journalist; he elaborated the process in the reportage book Já, Adolf Eichmann (1961). In the autumn of 1967, he went into exile in Israel in protest against Czechoslovakia's position in the Israeli-Arab war, from which he returned after a few months, but his first wife – of Jewish origin – remained in Israel permanently. The second emigration, this time much longer, followed immediately after the August intervention of Warsaw Pact troops in 1968, after which he settled in Austria near Eisenstadt. In exile, he then devoted himself intensively to writing. A number of scripts for television were created here, nine of which were realized, and eight prose books, among others. political essays The Aggressors and The Seventh Night and the satirical novel with an Orwellian touch Comrade Münchhausen, published by the exiled publishing house Index.
In 1966 he was named a Meritorious Artist – for his significant contribution to the development of Slovak culture. In December 1969, he was expelled from the Writers' Union for "betraying socialist writers and political adventurism." In exile, he lived in Israel, Munich, Vienna, and finally settled near Eisenstadt, Austria, in the village of Großhöflein.
In 1989, he returned to Czechoslovakia. He strongly opposed the division of the common state and after its dissolution in 1993, he chose Prague as his residence. He died in 1994 in Bratislava. He is buried in the Slovak village of Lukovištia in the district of Rimavská Sobota.
Ladislav Mňačko was married twice. His first wife, Hedviga Mňačková, was the creator of the covers and illustrations of some of his books (Israel, Albanian Reportage). After the divorce, he remarried in 1968. His second wife, Eva Mňačková, née Bottová, bequeathed Ladislav Mňaček's estate, including his study, to the Museum of Czech Literature.