Bohumil Chmelík

He was born on 12 August 1938 in Trnava and graduated in dentistry from the Faculty of Medicine of Palacký University in Olomouc. He worked as a dentist and later as director of the hospital in Trnava. Since 1994 he has taught at the Faculty of Health Care and Social Work of Trnava University, first at the Department of Health Care Management and Languages and later at the Department of Public Health.

Alongside his career as a physician and university teacher, Bohumil Chmelík has been active in art and literature since his student years, and also as an organiser of cultural life in Trnava. He published in periodicals and
in the 1960s turned to experimental poetry and drawing. A hiatus followed in the 1970s, as in the years of normalisation there was suddenly “nowhere” to publish. Several decades later came the poetry collection V šere ticha (In the Dusk of Silence), followed by Sedem textov (Seven Texts). His play Záhrada spomienok Jána Koniarka (The Garden of Memories of Ján Koniarek) was also staged in a Trnava theatre.

In 1989 Bohumil Chmelík was a leading voice and organiser of the Trnava Cultural Forum, which brought together artists, architects, teachers and physicians and formulated demands for changes in the cultural life of the city of Trnava. He continued to contribute to the development of democracy for many years afterwards as a municipal politician, a regional councillor (2005 to 2013) and also as a member of the Slovak National Council and later of the National Council of the Slovak Republic (1992 to 1994).