SVATO SCHUTZNER

Svato Schutzner (Age 95)  
Passed away in his sleep on January 18, 2019 in Washington, DC, where he had resided for 55 years. He is survived by his son Daniel and his daughter-in-law Teresa, also of Washington, and nephews and nieces in the Czech Republic. He was predeceased by his wife Milada.Svato was born and grew up on the top floor of Comenius University Library in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, where his father was head librarian. After high school Svato entered the Catholic seminary in Prague and was ordained in 1946. He soon joined an underground movement following the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. His role was to travel secretly between Czechoslovakia and West Germany so as to maintain contact with the church in the West. As communist pressure on the Catholic Church increased, he escaped to West Germany in 1950, not to return for 40 years. He spent several years in refugee camps, after which he immigrated to the United States. He served in parishes in Louisiana for seven years, then requested and was granted release from his priestly vows. In 1963 he was awarded a master's degree in library science from Louisiana State University. At that point he came to Washington to accept a position at the Library of Congress. In 1966 he married Milada, a fellow worker in the resistance movement, who, after also escaping Czechoslovakia, had spent 12 years in Europe as a social worker. He remained at the Library as a cataloger, soon moving to rare books and becoming their foremost scholar of medieval Latin and Greek manuscripts. At the Library he is remembered as someone who could figure out seemingly inscrutable text. He authored two Library of Congress volumes that describe in detail a collection of texts from the middle ages that had been in the library's possession for some time but were uncatalogued and therefore largely unknown. He retired from the Library in 2003. Besides his familiarity with Latin and classical Greek, he was fluent in half a dozen European languages and had a reading capacity in several more, including Hebrew. In retirement he was generous to those in need.A memorial service will be held in the spring at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Washington, DC.