Jakub S. Trojan

Jakub Trojan was born on 13 May 1927 in Paris, France, to Czech parents who had gone there two years earlier for work experience. In 1929 the family moved back to Czechoslovakia, so he spent his school years in Bohemia. He attended primary school in Vinohrady in Prague and then the grammar school in Slovenská Street in the same district, where his classmate was Ladislav Hejdánek, later a leading Czech philosopher and dissident. He passed his school-leaving exam (maturita) in 1946.

In interviews for the Memory of Nations (Paměť národa) archive he recalled that in 1942 his mother's cousin Alfréd Bartoš, commander of the Silver A parachute group sent from England, suddenly appeared and stayed hidden with the family for three days. The teenage Trojan bought him a copy of Svatopluk Čech's poems Písně otroka at his request. Bartoš later took his own life while being pursued by the Gestapo, and Trojan said the family survived only because a stranger returned Bartoš's notebook with their address instead of handing it to the Gestapo.

From January to April 1945 he was conscripted into the Technische Nothilfe. In May 1945 he witnessed two SS men being lynched on Wenceslas Square. He remembered a young Soviet tank soldier covering his eyes as he passed, and said he felt ashamed that he and the others in the crowd had either jeered or done nothing.

From 1946 to 1948 Trojan studied for five semesters at the University of Commerce (Vysoká škola obchodní, today the Prague University of Economics and Business). Because he took part in an anti-communist demonstration, he was expelled from all Czechoslovak universities in February 1948, but he was readmitted on appeal about six months later. In February 1949 he transferred to the Hus Protestant Theological Faculty, where his teachers included Josef Lukl Hromádka and Josef B. Souček. His studies were interrupted by three years of forced military service, and he completed his theology degree in 1955.

From 1964 he studied part-time at the University of Economics in Prague, graduating as an engineer (Ing.) in 1971. In 1970 he received the degree of Doctor of Theology (ThDr.) from the Protestant Theological Faculty for a dissertation titled "Théma: člověk" (Theme: Man). In 1990 he completed his habilitation with the work "Entfremdung und Nachfolge" and in 1991 he was appointed professor of ethics.

From 1946 to 1950 Trojan was a member of the Academic YMCA in Prague and one of its last secretaries. Five months after his wedding in 1950 he was called up to the PTP (auxiliary technical battalions), labour units for men the regime considered politically unreliable. He served from 1 January 1951 to 31 December 1953, mostly in Slovakia, in a company made up of Catholic priests and members of religious orders, where he was the only Protestant. He later called it an unusually precious experience and kept friendships from it for life.

From 1956 to 1967 he was pastor of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren congregation in Kdyně in the Šumava region, and from 1967 (some reports say 1966) to 1974 in Neratovice-Libiš. In the late 1950s he was one of the founding members of Nová orientace (New Orientation), an informal group of evangelical clergy who insisted that the Gospel makes Christians answerable for public affairs, even under communism. In Kdyně he attended meetings of the local national committee and put forward proposals.

In 1974 the state withdrew his licence to work as a clergyman, together with his friend Alfréd Kocáb. He worked for a year as a bricklayer and labourer, then at the Prague firm Řempo. After he signed Charter 77, Řempo's director said he could stay only as a storekeeper if he gave up all activity, which he refused. He applied to around thirty employers, each of whom turned him down once he mentioned the Charter, before finding a post as a payroll accountant at the Montáž transport and building cooperative, where he stayed until his retirement in 1987. During normalisation he held home seminars in theology and could publish only abroad. He signed Charter 77 among its first signatories in 1977 and in 1978 became a member of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS). He was watched and bugged by the StB secret police and said he was interrogated about fifteen times between 1968 and 1989.

After the Velvet Revolution, the dean of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University invited him to teach ethics. He became dean early in 1990 and served two consecutive terms until 1996, then worked as vice-dean for foreign relations. He was an honorary member of the Scientific Board of Charles University, a member of the council of the Academic YMCA and a member of the editorial board of the Prague publisher OIKOYMENH.

Jan Palach, the Charles University student who set himself on fire on Wenceslas Square on 16 January 1969 in protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia and the public's resignation, belonged to Trojan's congregation in Neratovice-Libiš. According to Christnet.eu, Trojan met him personally over Christmas 1968 and again in January at the funeral of Palach's uncle, and they talked about the political situation and the responsibility of the churches.

After Palach died, his mother Libuše Palachová, who regularly attended Trojan's services, asked him to bury her son. The farewell on 25 January 1969 became one of the strongest public expressions of resistance to the coming normalisation. Tens of thousands of people joined the funeral procession through Prague, while the burial at Olšany Cemetery took place with the family, invited guests and journalists.

In his sermon Trojan stressed that Palach's act should not merely be admired but should be a call to personal responsibility. He and the Catholic Church agreed that it was not a suicide of despair but a self-sacrifice raised as a sign. For the rest of his life he spoke about the funeral in interviews, including for the Memory of Nations archive and DVTV, and he regularly travelled to Všetaty, Palach's home town, for anniversary commemorations.

Trojan's work centred on theological anthropology and social ethics, especially questions of power and civic responsibility. He named Josef Lukl Hromádka as one of his most important teachers, saying Hromádka understood Christian faith as the deepest motive for responsibility in personal and public life, and that believing means being responsible in the deepest sense of the word.

The Memory of Nations archive sums up his conviction in his own phrase: the Gospel teaches us a basic responsibility for personal life and for public affairs. That idea drove the New Orientation movement he helped found, his civic engagement under communism, and his later writing on human rights in the Czech spiritual tradition and on the relationship between faith and politics.

In July 1950 Trojan married Karla Schwarzová, a theologian he knew from the Academic YMCA. Following an old evangelical tradition, as Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk had done, he added his wife's maiden name to his own, becoming Jakub Schwarz Trojan.

The couple had a daughter, Blanka, born in 1954, and a son, Pavel Trojan, born in 1956, a musician who later served as director of the State Conservatory in Prague. Their grandson Pavel Trojan is a Czech composer and actor, known for television series such as Dobrá čtvrť and Pojišťovna štěstí. A photograph in the Memory of Nations archive shows Jakub S. Trojan officiating at his grandson's wedding.

Trojan and his wife recorded a joint life-story interview, Nežít nadarmo (Not to Live in Vain), for the Czech Christian broadcaster Rádio 7.

Trojan is remembered as one of the most significant figures of Czech Protestantism in the second half of the twentieth century and as a moral voice of the resistance to communism. His funeral sermon for Jan Palach, his early signature on Charter 77 and his years of forced manual work made him a symbol of Christian civic courage. As the first post-1989 dean of the Protestant Theological Faculty, he helped rebuild free theological education at Charles University.

In a tribute published on 8 October 2026 by the evangelical congregation in Vrchlabí, Michael Pfann wrote that Trojan "was not a hero of a single day", and that his life joined political and social life with personal life and Christian faith. His recorded testimony in the Memory of Nations archive, including nine short clips and five full interview recordings, keeps his account of the twentieth century available to new generations.

Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, third class, awarded by President Václav Havel in 1998 for outstanding services to democracy and human rights.

Honorary member of the Scientific Board of Charles University.

Holder of the official Czech status of participant in the resistance and opposition against communism (per Wikidata).

In difesa della politica (Bologna: Centro Studi Europa Orientale, 1981)

Nepřeslechnutelná výzva, contribution to the volume for the centenary of J. L. Hromádka (1990)

Moc víry a víra v moc (OIKOYMENH, 1993)

Moc v dějinách (OIKOYMENH, 1994)

Idea lidských práv v české duchovní tradici (OIKOYMENH, 2002)

Spravedlnost povznáší národ: bilance theologa uprostřed 90. let (EMAN, 2002)

Jiskření a zážehy (Zdeněk Susa, 2004)

Ježíšův příběh, výzva pro nás (OIKOYMENH, 2005)

Kontrasty a alternativy (OIKOYMENH, 2007)

Putování k čirému, with Milan Balabán (Zdeněk Susa, 2007)

Krása vyvřelin (Zdeněk Susa, 2008)

Jan Kalvín: pět set let od narození, contribution (CEP, 2009)

Rozhovory s pamětí (Zdeněk Susa, 2010 to 2011)

Trojan gave several long interviews about his life. The Memory of Nations (Paměť národa) archive holds recordings made in 2006, 2014 (with Czech Television) and 2018 (with pupils for the Stories of Our Neighbours project), as well as an interview for the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. In 2019, for the 50th anniversary, he told DVTV about burying Jan Palach. He also took part in public lectures and debates, including the 2014 Days of Josef Zvěřina discussion "Democracy and Freedom" with Tomáš Halík and Daniel Herman, and lectures for HopeTV on the roots of Czech democracy.

Jakub S. Trojan died on Wednesday 7 October 2026, aged 99. His family informed the Czech News Agency (ČTK) on 8 October, and the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University also announced the news. The cause of death has not been made public, and reports did not specify where he died.

Obituaries appeared in iDNES.cz, ČeskéNoviny.cz, CNN Prima News, Christnet.eu and church congregations across the country. A last farewell will take place on Friday 23 October 2026 from 3pm at the evangelical Church of St Salvator (U Salvátora) in Prague, according to Christnet.eu.