Czech singer Karel Gott († 80) he received a pension for 15 years, but few people knew how nobly he handled it. A legendary artist before his death according to the information he had a pension in the amount of about 34,550 Czech crowns (approximately 1,377 euros). Since he was more than well-off at the time, he sent his pension to charity.
Under the previous regime, it was said that you couldn’t get rich and everyone should be equal. However, it was far from the truth. Back then, male and female singers could earn big money, who at that time were among the absolute top in Czechoslovakia and their incomes reached figures that ordinary people could only dream of.
But concerts were not the only source of income for artists. They also made some nice sums by selling records, which were spent in the hundreds of thousands. Karel Gott, who died in the last century, was in a separate category, who was the only Czech performer who could also give concerts in the West.
In the past, Ondřej Soukup remembered how they shared their fees in the 1980s. He revealed that for one performance in 1982 with the accompanying Orchestra of Ladislav Štaidl, he charged approximately 160,000 crowns.
“Karel had 70 percent for one concert and I 2.5 percent, which at that time was about 250 West German marks, converted to approximately 4 thousand crowns, and that was, I think, very beautiful. Bandleader Láďa Štaidl distributed it very fairly.”
