What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 17 May 2023.

Dagmar Burešové was definitely built in 2022 but only given a street sign in the last month in the spring of 2023.

Dagmar Kubištová was born in Prague in 1929. Her father was a lawyer, and the entire family was strongly anti-communist.

In 1950, she married a paediatrician, Radim Bureš, and moved to his family’s villa in Střešovice. Two years later, she graduated from Charles University’s Faculty of Law.

Specialising in labour law, she represented people who had been prosecuted by the communists, including Milan Kundera and, most famously, Libuše Palachová, mother of Jan Palach: https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/clanek/domaci/palachovu-matku-jsem-hodiny-ubezpecovala-o-vyznamu-janova-cinu-rikala-dagmar-buresova-71265

This went down somewhat predictably with the authorities, who confiscated Burešová’s passport and hindered her daughter’s education.

After the Velvet Revolution, Burešová became Minister of Justice, holding the role until the first free elections in June 1990.

If you scroll to 5:57, you can see her explaining the meaning of Havel’s general amnesty to the nation on New Year’s Day 1990:

During her tenure, she advocated for the presidents of the nine regional courts, initiated the release of private letters written by Milada Horáková, and tried to push for the publication of names of those who had served in the StB.

From 1990 to 1992, she was chair of the Czech National Council; she also ran in the senate elections in 1996 (in Prague 4), ultimately losing to the ODS candidate.

From 1998 to 2003, she was the chairwoman of the Czech-German Fund for the Future (Česko-německý fond budoucnosti), whose projects aim to build links between the two countries: https://www.fondbudoucnosti.cz/

Bedridden after a fall in 2010, Burešová died in 2018, aged 88 and still living in the same Střešovice villa that she had moved into in 1950: https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/dagmar-buresova-smrt-jan-palach_1807021059_sam

Meanwhile, the law practice that she ran until 1989 continues to be run by her daughter, Zuzana Špitálská: https://www.akspitalska.cz/

Hořící keř (Burning Bush), a three-part HBO mini-series directed by legendary Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, was produced in 2013 and is based on Burešova’s defence of Libuše Palachová.

It’s still available to stream on HBO.