The Road to the Protectorate: Exploring Czechoslovakia’s Uncomfortable Pasts

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel addresses the undesirable aspects of Czechoslovakia's cultural history during the 1930s. Moving away from the often glorifying narratives of the First Republic, its papers bring to light elements that have long been ignored due to their potential to tarnish the image of Czechoslovakia as a peaceful and democratic country. Analysing developments in art, design, and architecture during the 1930s in relation to Czech and German communities within the country, the papers reveal that the cultural politics of the Protectorate were not as unprecedented a rupture from the earlier situation in Czechoslovakia. This includes the vested interest in the “cultural purity” of local communities in Moravia, which developed in dialogue with national socialist policies for a new Europe, attempts to forge a contemporary Heimat culture that diverged from the conservative creative expression with which it is often associated, the role of camp building types that originated in the First Republic yet continued to serve as models throughout the Second World War, and a revival of vernacular forms of construction in Czech architectural designs that underscored their dominance in peripheral, minority, and border regions. Focusing on these long-suppressed memories, the panel ultimately argues for the necessity to revisit well-known memories of the First Republic and its dramatic conclusion and to contemplate less comfortable developments that blur the clear divisions into a ‘before’ and ‘after’ the Munich Agreement.

Sub Unit

• Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts

Chair

• Thomas W. Ort, CUNY Queens College

Papers

• Dressing New Europe in a Folk Costume: The Place of Folk Culture in the Protectorate - Marta Filipova, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)

• Volk, Folk and the Popular: Sudeten Heimat Culture in 1930s Czechoslovakia - Julia Secklehner, Constructor U (Germany)

• Camps: A Contested Trajectory between Czechoslovak Democracy and the Protectorate - Vendula Hnídková, Inst of Art History CAS (Czech Republic)

• The Democratic State Playing Favourites: Building for Minorities in Interwar Czechoslovakia - Barbora Řepková, Inst of Art History CAS (Czech Republic)

Discussant

• Thomas W. Ort, CUNY Queens College