New chief for scandalized ÚSTR

A 47-year-old former priest, Daniel Herman, has taken over as the new director of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (ÚSTR).

Herman is the fourth person in four months to lead the institute, which has been rarely out of the spotlight since it was created in 2007.

A former spokesman for the Czech Bishops' Conference (ČBK), Herman also ran the Prague office of former presidential candidate Jan Švejnar. He was chosen by the ÚSTR council Aug. 11 from a list of nine candidates to replace acting director Zdeněk Hazdra.

Speaking to The Prague Post on his first day in office Aug. 16, Herman said his main priority was "stabilization of the institute."

"I will begin with stabilization of its economics," Herman said. "I will run controls on this year's budget fulfillment and preparations for the next year's budget."

The ÚSTR has been embroiled in a number of controversies in recent months. Earlier this month, it emerged that a list of former spies from the communist era published by the institute had allegedly included the names of active agents working overseas as well as serving Czech diplomats.

The list was published online by the institute in April, and remained live until June.

In mid-May, the ÚSTR dismissed historian Jiří Pernes - who had led the institute for just six weeks - on suspicion of plagiarism in previous academic work, and installed Hazdra as acting director.

Herman agreed "the reputation of the ÚSTR has been damaged" and vowed to get the institute back "the good name that it had at the beginning."

Herman did not directly respond when asked whether the institute published the names of active agents, and would only say that "there is a whole lot of information on our website concerning the subject of our research."

Based in central Prague, ÚSTR was established in 2007 and began operating Jan. 1, 2008. Its mandate is to inquire into and highlight the era of the two totalitarian regimes in Czechoslovakia, Nazi and communist. Critics have called much of work sensationalized and take issue with its research methods.

Its first director was Pavel Žáček, whom Pernes replaced in April 2010.

Highlighting the significance of the institute's work for the Czech Republic, Herman said it was vital for the country to know its complete history.

"The work of ÚSTR is very important because we have not yet managed to have fully dealt with our own past," he said. "It is necessary to inspect it, know it well and learn from our own faults and mistakes."

Born in 1963 in south Bohemia, Herman first studied to be a teacher but didn't finish the program for ideological reasons. He trained as a priest, graduating from the Roman Catholic Theological Faculty in Litoměřice, north Bohemia. He was ordained in June 1989.

From 1996 until 2005, Herman was the spokesman for ČBK. Subsequently, he left the church. For the past two years, he has led the Prague office of Švejnar, an economist and academic with dual Czech/U.S. citizenship who ran for president in early 2008.

- Klára Jiřičná contributed to this report.

Bill Lehane can be reached at
blehane@praguepost.com