| First there was the
mythical-proportion victory of the Czech Hussite rebels over Europe's
best, the Crusaders in 1420. The Hussites were led by the one-eyed landless
squire-warrior Jan Žižka who led them on
this occasion to defend themselves in the Battle At the Vítkov Hill.
A few centuries later the hill was referred to by the locals as Žižkaperk, i.e. Žižka Hill (from the
German "Berg").
[Unfrotunately the domain of the URL for the
official website of the Vítkov National Monument, pamatnik-vitkov.cz no
longer exists. The National Museum that now owns the renamed monument does
not have anywhere near the amount of information on its web site that used
to be available. We disconnected the hyperlinks but left them in blue font
to indicate the missing items for future reference.]
By the end of the nineteenth century, as the
intensity of the Czech
nationalist sentiments and desire for independence rose toward their peak, Žižkaperk was just "a bush-covered hill
where the independent municipality of Žižkov meets Karlín and
Prague." However, in 1882 Association To Erect Žižka Memorial
was established. (Here is the cover of its published history.)
In 1913 proposals
were solicited to enter a competition for a winning memorial design to
adorn the top of the hill.
"The competition became part of the history Czech graphic arts,
sculpture and architecture. .... First place was not awarded. By the same
token, the honor of taking the second place was bestowed on three
proposals. .... None of them were ever used even in part." The
Czechoslovak Legionnaires developed an idea of
a National Monument as a backdrop to the Žižka Memorial.
"More competitions [for the design of the] so
conceived [Monument] took place in 1924 and 1927. Even then there were no
winners. However, in them the concept began to crystallize; the statue
became a part of the planned Monument."
On November 8, (anniversary day of the battle) of the
year 1928 (ten years after Czechs and Slovaks had gained their
independence), the cornerstone for the eventual
National Monument At Vítkov was laid instead of the originally
intended Žižka Memorial. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, "President -
Liberator", broke the ground, although he "refused the idea that
he would buried here" one day. The project was the work of a Czech Legionnaire
from the Russian front, Jan Zázvorka, and his associate, Jan Gillar.
In 1932, Bohumil Kafka responded to a request and
tendered a proposed design for the equestrian memorial to Jan Žižka. In
five years he produced a life-size model an had the mold ready in 1941,
having finished it while his homeland had already been occupied by the
German invaders. Yet, the statue was cast from the mold only after
World War II had ended and Kafka had passed away. "It was
ceremoniously unveiled on July 14, 1950, under altogether different
circumstances, in a different ideological context. The previous,
religious concept of Žižka, as it appeared in the 1913 competition was
replaced by an interpretation of him as a leader of a plebeian revolution.
Times have changed." For those who don't remember, in February
1948 the Communists assumed and quickly solidified power in
Czechoslovakia.
Unlike the statue, the work on the unfinished National
Monument was interrupted by the German occupation of Czecho-Slovakia in
1938. The German National Socialist (a.k.a. Nazi) armies of occupation
"misused the Monument as a military material warehouse".
When the Czechoslovak Government took the Monument
over after the war it was "in a sorry shape. Although the concept of
the facility remained more-or-less the same, it was given an added role of
honoring the dead of the just-ended war. It became the new venue for the
Grave of an Unknown Soldier; the original site in the Chapel of the Prague
Old Town City Hall was desecrated and destroyed by the foreign forces of
occupation.
In 1953 an Annex was added that became The Hall of the Soviet Army. ... In 1955 it was
opened to the public in the current, paradigmatic form of pure socialist
realism." The main building was also undergoing changes and
additions, while "the word 'liberation' was infused with a different
meaning". It did not refer to the liberation of Czechs and Slovaks
from the 300 years of Germanic domination under the Habsburg dynasty, in
which the Czechoslovak Legions played an important part. Instead, it was
to mean liberation from the German occupation by the Russian-dominated
Soviet Union that turned Czechoslovakia quickly into its own vassal state.
"The history of the Czech Legions evaporated from the facility only
to be replaced by celebration of class warfare and the proletarian working
class."
The original idea of the Monument serving as a
mausoleum was revived, although with a pagan twist in a demonstration of
servility of the Czechoslovak Communists to their Soviet
"teachers". Instead of making it a place of internment for the
Legionnaires, the local lackeys inspired by their Moscow masters
decided in 1953 to turn it into a venue for the public display of the embalmed
remains of Klement Gottwald.
Take a virtual tour of the Vitkov National
Monument.
Source: The official website of the Vítkov
National Monument.
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