"Prague Panoramas" examines the creation of Czech nationalism
through monuments, buildings, festivals, and protests in the public
spaces of the city during the twentieth century. These "sites of
memory" were attempts by civic, religious, cultural, and political
forces to create a cohesive sense of self for a country and a
people torn by war, foreign occupation, and internal strife.
The Czechs struggled to define their national identity throughout
the modern era. Prague, the capital of a diverse area comprising
Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Poles, Ruthenians, and Romany as well as
various religious groups including Catholics, Protestants, and
Jews, became central to the Czech domination of the region and its
identity. These struggles have often played out in violent acts,
such as the destruction of religious monuments, or the forced
segregation and near extermination of Jews.
During the twentieth century, Prague grew increasingly secular, yet
leaders continued to look to religious figures such as Jan Hus and
Saint Wenceslas as symbols of Czech heritage. Hus, in particular,
became a paladin in the struggle for Czech independence from the
Habsburg Empire and Austrian Catholicism.
Through her extensive archival research and personal fieldwork,
Cynthia Paces offers a panoramic view of Prague as the cradle of
Czech national identity, seen through a vast array of memory sites
and objects. From the Gothic Saint Vitus Cathedral, to the
Communist Party's reconstruction of Jan Hus's Bethlehem Chapel, to
the 1969 self-immolation of student Jan Palach in protest of Soviet
occupation, to the Hoskova plaque commemorating the deportation of
Jews from Josefov during the Holocaust, Paces reveals the
iconography intrinsic to forming a collective memory and the
meaning of being a Czech. As her study discerns, that meaning has
yet to be clearly defined, and the search for identity continues
today.
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