Of Monuments and Memory

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My On-Going Affair with Joseph II

**Joseph II Back on His Feet in Cheb (Mid-1990s)**

Statues of Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, that is. I’m not sure when I first became interested in Joseph II, the statue, not Joseph II, the man. It was sometime in the early-to-mid 1990s, and I suspect in Cheb, formerly Eger, in far western Bohemia. I have a vague memory of seeing him, one armed and lying in the mud in the back garden of the district archive there, when I was in graduate school. When I returned to Cheb in the mid-1990s, I returned to the back garden. There he stood on a make-shift pedestal, joined by a bunch of stray communists, until 2003, when members of the local Rotary Club had him repaired and moved to Františkovy Lázně, where he now stands on a very nice pedestal before one of the local spas, Dvoranou Glauberových. His right arm has yet to be replaced. More on that arm later.

**At the University of Vienna (June 2019)**

I’ve written about Joseph II more times than I can count. Well, maybe not more than I can count, but often enough. And, while I may be sick of the reforming enlightened absolutist, the “People’s Emperor” who ruled alone for only a decade in the late eighteenth century, and who couldn’t mind his own business, I’m not sick of running into statues of him. I only noticed the Joseph II who stands in one of the courtyards of the University of Vienna campus last June. That he’s there makes sense: it’s the site of the former Vienna General Hospital that the Emperor founded in 1784. The inscription is simple enough: “Josef II.” No idea how long he’s been there.

Joseph II busts and statues still dot the Lower Austrian countryside. They sprang up throughout the Bohemian Lands and Lower Austria beginning in the 1880s as part of the informal, liberal “Joseph II Movement,” and were meant to commemorate the centenary of abolition of serfdom in November 1881. No other Habsburg figure became such a ubiquitous part of the built landscape and so much a part of collective memory as Joseph II. The statues, often holding one or another of the Emperor’s modernizing patents in their right hands, quickly became political flashpoints in Czech-German battles for control of public space in the Bohemian Lands. German nationalists made increasingly explicit “German” claims on the people’s emperor in various ceremonies and commemorations, sometimes, even, protests at the statues. Joseph II became a “site of memory” of a mythic golden German past in the Monarchy.

This past June, I met Dacia, my Czech partner in crime, in Gmünd on the Austrian side of the border. We couldn’t leave Austria for České Velenice, which was taken from Lower Austria under the Treaty of Saint Germain in 1919, until we’d visited the Joseph II bust in the Schlosspark, where the inscription lauds him as the “Esteemer of Humanity.” Then we drove about ten feet to cross the border…

**Joseph II Bust at the Schloss Park, Gmünd, Austria (June 2019)**

Many of the early Joseph II statues looked very much alike. Why was this, you might ask? Like many American Civil War monuments, they were products of the nascent monument industry. Designed by an engineer and available by catalogue, they could be scaled down, metal clad, or otherwise modified. So many of them were unveiled in the early 1880s that their production was something of a sideline for the Fürstlich Salm’sche Eisenwerke in Blansko, Moravia, which was better known for producing award-winning steam engines.

Like the monuments themselves, their inscriptions were also similar, often lauding Joseph II as the “esteemer of humanity.” The Germans who unveiled them in the Bohemian Lands, however, more often lauded him as the “esteemer of Germandom,” in their speeches. The inscriptions on some later monuments reflected this attitude. Nationalist Germans used the statues, where they often met before going off to do battle with Czechs, to lay exclusive claims to increasingly ethnically mixed territory. The Czechs sometimes responded by attacking Joseph II statues during times of Czech-German tension.

After more than a generation of increasing Germanization of Joseph II, it’s no surprise that many statues fell victim to Czech nationalists in the so-called Statue War of autumn 1920. Their pent-up anger over years of German nationalist deployment of Joseph II monuments boiled over shortly after the second anniversary of Czechoslovak independence on 28 October 1920. Although it wasn’t the first volley in the Statue War—that was fired in Teplice—the Czech attack on the Joseph II statue in overwhelmingly German Cheb and the residents’ response had repercussions across the Bohemian Lands.

The Emperor Overlooking Market Square in Eger/Cheb around the Turn of the Century
(Postcard in the Author’s Collection)

In the wake of the First World War, local Czechs had sporadically attempted to vandalize the statue, which stood in Market Square. Their attacks had been foiled, but had proven such a nuisance that the central authorities in Prague suggested that city council members move the statue to the local museum. This didn’t happen. What happened was a series of skirmishes beginning on November 13, two days after the events in Teplice. It started when a Czechoslovak military band marched through Cheb disrupting German residents who were protesting government taxes on food. The Germans hurled insults at the band members, most of whom quietly retreated. Back in their barracks, however, the soldiers resolved to retaliate. Sometime after midnight on November 14, some 200 armed soldiers stealthily moved into the empty square, overpowered the watchman, and knocked Joseph II off his pedestal, breaking his right arm. The courageous watch still sounded the alarm and within minutes the square was filled with Germans coming to rescue “their” emperor. Although unrest, including violence on both sides, continued throughout the night and into the following day, by dawn, Joseph II, now one armed, had been restored to his pedestal. (You can find images of the restored emperor in all his glory at http://encyklopedie.cheb.cz/cz/encyklopedie/pomnik-josefa-ii.).

**The Emperor’s Empty Pedestal, Refurbished as a Memorial**
**Teplice, Northern Bohemia (Late 1990s)**

_{The fate of the Joseph II statues was finally settled in the mid-1920s, after the Czechoslovak parliament passed the Law for the Defense of the Republic. It called, among other things, for the removal from public view of statues, inscriptions, and memorials of anti-state character or of members of the Habsburg family. Some of the statues were hauled off to museums. The statue in northern Bohemian Ústí and Labem survived the Czech nationalists of the First Republic, but not Nazis of the Sudetenlands, who had it melted down for the war effort. What of the Teplice statue, whose removal had started the whole Statue War? It was moved from its pedestal before the city hall to the courtyard of the museum. It is said to have survived the Second World War, after which time the statue went missing. All that remains of the five-meter Emperor is the base, which shortly after 1989 was turned a memorial honoring the “executed, imprisoned, and oppressed under the communists.”}

**Joseph II at Josefov Fortress, today in Jaroměř,**
**Eastern Bohemia (2016)**

Since the Velvet Revolution, Czechs have thought better of the wholesale banishment of Joseph II and re-instated some of the surviving statues, if in a different context, and with new inscriptions. He is most often designated an “enlightened absolutist,” although the inscription on the statue at Josefov honors him as founder of the fortress that bears his name.

Local German speakers unveiled a large monument of Joseph II in Brno, the capital of Moravia, in 1913. It stood in the square before the imposing German House (Deutsches Haus). Local Czechs dispatched it, even before the Statue War, in September 1919.

**Postcard of Joseph II Monument standing before the Deutsche Haus (German House), Brno (public domain)**

Although the stone portions of the Brno monument were sold off or otherwise disappeared, the bronze figures survived. They were found in the old slaughterhouse shortly after the Second World War. Since 1988, Joseph II himself has stood in the garden of the Psychiatric Hospital in Brno-Černovice, while the two life-sized allegorical figures representing trade and tolerance that flanked him long sat in a green area near St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. They were moved in 2003 to Lužánky, the oldest public park in the Czech lands. The Emperor had donated the land for the park, formerly belonging to the Jesuits, after the abolition of the order in 1783.

**Allegorical Figures from the Joseph II Monument in Brno (late 1990s)**

So, what is it about these statues that interests me so much? Joseph II, contrarian busy body that he was, played a vital role in increasing rights of his subjects and modernizing the Habsburg Monarchy. I like the challenge of finding remnants of his memory in the Czech Republic. In the days before there were images of almost everything on the internet, so, before the early 2000s, the search for his remains was dependent not only on my own sleuthing, but also on practicing my Czech on poor, unsuspecting locals, most of whom were happy enough to help.

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Historic Monuments as Sites of Nationalist Tension

“Oh, home of tears, but let her bear this blazoned to the end of time: No nation rose so white and fair, none fell so pure of crime.” So reads an inscription on a Confederate soldier statue unveiled in 1911 on the lawn of the Cooke County courthouse in Gainesville, Texas. It is among many Confederate monuments that remain in public spaces across the United States, sometimes with little local debate, despite their white-supremacist inscriptions.

Protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and elsewhere, in summer 2017 reflected tension over the meaning of statues in public places and who determines their continued presence.

Front Royal, Virginia (May 2009); Luray, Virginia (May 2009)

In response to the protests, some Confederate statues, which are to be found mainly in the South, were boarded up, vandalized, or taken down in the dead of night. In some cases, locals called for statues of other less divisive figures to replace these monuments; in others, the pedestals remain empty. The public drama over Confederate statues is not a new problem, as those familiar with the post-1918 battles over the fate of statues of the reforming, enlightened-absolutist Habsburg Emperor Joseph II (r. 1780-1790) in nascent Czechoslovakia know.

Empty Pedestal, formerly the site of Equestrian Statue of Confederate General P.G. Beauregard, New Orleans, Louisiana (April 2018); Empty pedestal that formerly held a statue of Jefferson Davis, Memphis, Tennessee (March 2018) The pedestal itself was removed to a “secure location” in late July 2018. A boarded up, later removed, Confederate memorial at 59^th and Ward Parkway, Kansas City, Missouri (August 2017).

Like the Confederate memorials, most of which were unveiled in the early 1900s, in the era of Jim Crow and rising popularity of the Ku Klux Klan, or in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of increasing demands for equal rights, many of the Joseph II monuments were put up long after the events they commemorated in an era of tension. Yet again like the Confederate monuments, they were often the gift of private organizations to towns and cities. The Joseph II statues, like monuments to Confederate soldiers, possessed potential political power that was unleashed in an era of Czech-German national conflict.

The exclusive claims German speakers made on the memory of Joseph II are apparent in the solely German-language inscriptions on the statues, even in areas of mixed Czech-German population. The Germans of the Bohemian Lands overcame other, earlier interpretations of Joseph II, transforming him from the “Esteemer of Humanity” to the “Esteemer of Germandom.” Claiming his memory exclusively for the German people served to nationalize not only the Emperor, but also the Habsburg dynasty, thus weakening this important centripetal force of the Monarchy.

Turn-of-the-Century Postcard View of Eger, today Cheb, Czech Republic
(Collection of the Author)

Joseph II statues became flashpoints across the border regions of the Bohemian Lands soon after the foundation of Czechoslovakia following Austria-Hungary’s dissolution in late 1918. Czech-German conflict over the Joseph statues beginning in summer 1920, and continuing into the autumn, culminated in the so-called “Statue War” during late October, when most remaining statues of the Emperor in the borderlands were toppled. Assaults on the statues occurred in a time of economic, political, and social strife in Czechoslovakia and reflected the myriad problems its leaders faced in consolidating power, especially in the nationally mixed border regions. In addition to their anti-German/anti-Habsburg component, these popular attacks demonstrated local Czechs impatience with the regional and national authorities who had heretofore primarily limited themselves to suggesting that statues be boarded up or moved to museums.

The initial volleys in the “Statue War” were fired in predominantly German northern Bohemia. Owing to the alleged mistreatment of local German army recruits, national passions were already high in Teplice/Teplitz on October 28, 1920, the second anniversary of Czechoslovak independence. Following patriotic celebrations that day, local Czechs demanded the removal of the city’s bronze statue within three days. Rather than meet Czech demands to clear away the statue, district political officials simply boarded it up. The city’s German residents became increasingly angry the longer the statue remained encased. In early November, an unknown person or persons removed the covering. Fearing conflict, the Prague government sent in troops to maintain the peace. On November 11, local Czechs pulled down the statue, which city officials then moved to the city museum, where it remained throughout the interwar era. The statue’s removal reverberated throughout the Bohemian Lands. On the Czech side, there were anti-German protests and attacks on other statues of Joseph II. From the Germans came loud complaints about the government’s failure to stop “lawless” (Czech) behavior.

Czech residents, sometimes accompanied by Legionnaires (those Czechs who fought on the side of the Allies during wartime), attacked Joseph II statues across the Bohemian borderlands. While most statues were removed, covered up, or simply destroyed with only minor casualties, there were exceptions. Indeed, violence in connection with the statues resulted in several deaths. Some local German officials put their Joseph II statues under guard, while others convinced residents to set aside plans to re-erect local statues of the Emperor in the interest of peace and order. Elsewhere, German residents spontaneously, and, usually, peacefully, restored their towns’ statues.

Czech reactions to the attacks on the statues were varied and complicated. Czech intellectuals had long debated the effects of the Josephinian reforms. While recognizing the Emperor’s positive contributions in some areas, Czechs stressed the emotional and psychological significance German nationalists had invested in them. Many Czech politicians advocated the removal of the statues under government auspices. In late November 1920, they supported a parliamentary motion to remove all Habsburg monuments. The issue of the Joseph II statues’ future, which had in some cases been taken to court, was settled in the mid-1920s. The legal basis for the decisions was Paragraph 23 of the Law for the Defense of the Republic, which called for the removal from public view of statues, inscriptions, and memorials of anti-state character or of members of the Habsburg or the Hohenzollern dynasty. Virtually all of Joseph II statues would be taken down, although at least one obelisk remained, its inscription removed.

Joseph II obelisk near Teplice/Teplitz in Northern Bohemia (Mid-1990s); Cheb’s/Eger’s Joseph II in the Back Courtyard of the Státní okresní archiv Cheb (Mid-1990s)

A few monuments, their inscriptions removed, survived otherwise intact through the interwar period, even World War II, when the occupying Nazis melted down many for the war effort; and beyond, even as Czechoslovakia’s Germans were expelled after 1945. Some seventy years after the “Statue War,” and the fall of the Communism in 1989, statues of Joseph II began reappearing in the Czechoslovak/Czech landscape. Their Czech-language inscriptions are primarily variations on “Enlightened ruler and reformer,” although in eastern Bohemian Josefov, the statue’s inscription hails the Emperor as the “founder of the Josefov Fortress.” In the twenty-first century, he has occasionally been the subject of popular festivities.

Joseph II Statue at the Josefov Fortress (June 2016); Restored Pedestal, which formerly held a Joseph II Bust in Brno/Brünn (Late-1990s); Restored Joseph II Statue in Trutnov/Trautenau (June 2016); Garishly painted Joseph II Statue standing before a Restaurant in Northern Bohemia (Mid-1990s)

Another statue has been repurposed as a kind of brightly painted garden gnome in front of someone’s country house, while yet another stood—and, perhaps, still stands—near a roadside restaurant in northern Bohemia. These new—more benign—interpretations of the Joseph II statues, however, reveal the limitations of parallels between them and Confederate statues. Although some Confederate monuments may in the future occupy space in museums as part of the historic past, it seems unlikely that their presence will soon lose the ability to offend passersby.

Kane County, Illinois’ Multipurpose War Memorial

I’ve long appreciated the First World War memorials to which the Czechs have added the names of Second World War dead, victims of fascism and communism, and in one case, the dead from UN service. Makes good use of existing monuments. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument in front of the old Kane County Courthouse in Geneva, Illinois is something a little bit different. Meant to honor the those of Kane County and the surrounding regions who fought in the Civil War, it is dedicated to the participants in all American wars. And, there have been plenty.

Geneva, Illinois (September 2021)

The monument, which incorporates three fighting-front figures, was a popular measure, headed by GAR veteran, John Rogers. Unveiled in 1915, it stands on a concrete and marble base, to which plaques listing the names of the Civil War veterans are affixed.

Geneva, Illinois (September 2021)

Behind the monument is another Civil War Memorial. It incorporates a shell shot at Vicksburg and recovered from the Mississippi in 1920 and ball & chain used by the Confederates at Andersonville Prison.

Geneva, Illinois (September 2021)

The naval guns flanking the monument date from the First World War. They were added in 1925. Don’t climb on them!

Geneva, Illinois (September 2021)

The monument memorizes the relatively few local veterans of earlier wars, those with Mexico and with Spain. It also honors veterans of the Second World War and the Korean War. And, by the way, a memorial plaque recalls the speech the late John F. Kennedy gave at the court house in 1960 when he was running for president.

A Little Something about Thirteen-Inch Mortars or Why We Should Always Read the Information on Historic Markers

I’m not a big fan of cannons or mortars–I mean how interesting can they be and no they aren’t the same thing–but I am a fan of reading historic markers. That’s how I learned that these round mortar shells, which were what originally attracted my attention at Battery Park in Charleston, were for thirteen-inch mortars. Federal troop originally used said mortars to bombard Fort Sumter in October 1863. There are four mortars in the Park. They perhaps constitute the largest collection of this type of weapon. Now you don’t have to lean over to read the historic marker set in the brick paving because I’ve just told you what it says. You’re welcome.

Charleston, SC (December 2022)

Civil War Memories in Charleston, SC

When I went to Charleston for the first time late last year, I had no real visual idea of the city. I did expect to find Civil War memorials of some kind, even if they were only the ghosts of standing confederate soldiers or a Confederate general atop his stallion that had recently been removed. I didn’t find either, although there are some, because the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that a state law preventing anyone from moving a Confederate monument or changing an historical street or building name without the Legislature’s permission was legal. Those South Carolinians who would prefer not to have the Confederacy glorified in public places appear to be limited to public protest, often the application of paint to Confederate memorials.

I found several historic inscriptions on monuments in Charleston to be of great interest. The first was an informative plaque on Broad Street smack in the downtown. The Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston at the College of Charleston had placed it there in 2021. The plaque announced Broad Street as a site of domestic slave trade. I was both suprised that the trade had been so public–no embarassment there–and that the plaque was so late coming. Let’s be clear here: an estimated forty-to-sixty percent of those enslaved people brought to the US came throught the port of the “Holy City.”

Charleston, SC (December 2022)

The second thing I noticed was the numerous war memorials in White Point Gardens section of Battery Park. I was less interested in the imposing bronze figurative statue, “Confederate Defenders of Charleston,” that the United Daughters of the Confederacy had put up in 1932 than in some of the lesser memorials.

So, what was really interesting to me? The memorial to the men of the Confederate army and navy who defended Charleston Harbor. According to the informative inscription, they were the first in marine warfare to employ torpedo boats. Among the named dead is Horace L. Hunley, the inventor of the “submarine boat.” I’d never seen this sort of inscription before. Ugh. Now I have to go learn about mid-nineteenth-century submarine warfare.

Charleston, SC (December 2022)

Why Does Karl Lueger Still Have a Platz in Vienna?

And in the First District at that? Why would I want it as part of my view when I’m having a Melange or a Kaiserspritzer, depending on the time of day, at Cafe Prückel on the Ring? Seems unfair to me to have to look at the anti-Semitic founder of the Christian Social Party and onetime, longtime, mayor of Vienna in late Imperial Austria. I mean, even Emperor Francis Joseph didn’t like him. Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way. It is a Schande. At least part of the Ring is no longer named for him: Remember when the university’s address was Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 1, until 2012, even. Back when Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring met Dr. Dr.-Karl-Renner-Ring. Can’t someone send der schöne Karl to a home for unloved monuments/statues? End of rant.

After All, the Ukrainians Did Help Liberate Vienna in April 1945

I visited the Soviet War Memorial (Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee) on Schwarzenbergplatz (during much of the postwar occupation, Stalinplatz) again recently. It seems fair enough that the colors of the Ukrainian flag now appear as a backdrop to the columns of the colonade that partially surrounds the monument. After all, (Soviet) Ukrainian troops did help liberate Vienna from the Nazis in spring 1945. I asked the nice Viennese cop who was on duty at the plaza–I’d never before seen police there–how long the Ukrainian colors had been on this wall, which separates the monument from a neighboring construction site. The answer: since the beginning of the Russian invasion. So, late February.

This Ukrainian blue-yellow banner is very apt: It shows support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and it reminds the square’s many visitors of Ukrainian soldiers’ role in liberating Vienna.

Cultural Criminals

Many monuments help their viewers remember. Plenty of monuments remember war. IMO, one of things war criminals do is try to destroy memory of all kinds. In this case, cultural. For shame.

⚡️Russian forces burn museum with paintings of Maria Prymachenko.

A history museum in Ivankiv town, Kyiv Oblast, was destroyed by a Russian attack, according to Ustyna Stefanchuk, an art collector. The museum had about 25 works by famous Ukrainian artist Prymachenkoю
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) February 28, 2022

Postscript to My Favorite Statue in Prague — Podcast Is Linked Below!

Last autumn, Chad Bryant, my friend and colleague who teaches at UNC, asked me if I’d zoom with some of his students about a monument, a street sign, or some other part of the built environment that tells us something about a moment in time in Prague’s history. And so I did. No surprise that my choice was a monument. It was, of course, friend Konev. The four really smart UNC undergraduates with whom I spoke for the podcast knew all kinds of things about Konev. Among the most interesting fact they shared with me concerned Konev’s afterlife. As we know, after months, a couple of years even, of disagreement over Konev’s future, the statue was taken down in April 2020. Konev was removed, but not forgotten.

Konev, Gone, But Not Forgotten (Photograph by Dagmar Hájková , 2020)

In June 2021, artists Tomáš Vrána, Martina Minařík Pavelková, and Václav Minařík had twelve small Konevs (KONĚVMEN) installed as part of the eighth annual Landscape Festival, which was held in Prague’s historically working-class district, Žižkov. These little Konevs were painted as a variety of characters, including Batman, Adolf Hitler, and the Joker. For more information on this installaton, you can follow the link https://www.rferl.org/a/marshal-konev-makes-triumphant-return-to-prague/30690108.html

This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed copies of statues repurposed to new ends. When I first visited Chernivtsi, Ukraine more than a decade ago, I saw a number of statues of Habsburg Empress Maria Teresa on the campus of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (a UNESCO Heritage Site, btw), decorated in various ways. I have no idea who sponsored this project nor how long it was there.

Armless, Headless Maria Theresa (Chernivtsi, 2009)

Maria Theresa in Gold & Burnt Sienna (Chernivtsi, 2009)

Maria Theresa in a niqab (Chernivtsi, 2009)

Link to the UNCC podcast on friend Konev; also Dr. Cindy Paces’ discussion on the Marian Column awa one more on the end of Stalin.

A Small Memorial to Jan Palach on Wenceslas Square

More than sixty years ago, late in the afternoon of January 16, 1969, university student Jan Palach appeared on upper Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague. Standing on the ramp before the National Museum, he doused himself with kerocene, and lit himself on fire to protest the Soviet occupation of the country and the crushing of the Prague Spring. Palach didn’t die immediately, but lingered in the hospital for three days. One month after Palach’s funeral, his friend, Jan Zajíc, also committed an act of self-immolation. So, too, did several others elsewhere in the Czechoslovakia.

The rest of the story–the Communists’ disinterment of Palach’s body after his burial in Prague’s Olšany Cemetery and all that followed–numbers among the shoddiest episodes in a shoddy regime.

By the mid-1990s, following regime change, there was a lovely, small vernacular memorial to Palach and Zajíc, and other “victims of communism,” on Wenceslas Square, just below the equestrian statue of the saint.

There’s long been another memorial to Palach on Wenceslas Square: Barbora Veselá’s black bronze cross grows out of the pavement of the ramp where Palach died. I don’t even know if my monument is still there. In fact, it is still there according to a friend who promises to take a picture of it for me. I wonder if people still leave flowers and pictures?

What will Our Twenty-First Century Plague Columns Look like?

I’ve long been fascinated by the baroque Plague Columns (Pestsaule/Morový sloup/Kolumna dżumy) that dot Habsburg Central Europe, many of which are at the same time either Marian Columns or Holy Trinity Columns. They often incorporate various plague saints, among them Saints Roch, Rosalie, and Sebastian. These columns are my absolute favorite form of baroque art.

The earliest Marian Column constructed north of the Alps is the one of Mary as Queen of Heaven on Marienplatz in the center of Munich. It was unveiled in 1638 to celebrate the end of Swedish occupation during the Thirty Years’ War. Although some sources claim it also celebrated Munich’s escape from plague, I’m not convinced.

The most famous plague column of all may be the one Am Graben in Vienna, constructed to commemorate the city being spared from the plague. Among the episodic waves of epidemics that menaced Vienna over the years, the “Great Plague of Vienna” arrived in full force during 1679. The first cases had appeared in Leopoldstadt in late autumn 1678. Although contemporaneous reports put the number of deaths much higher, this plague is now thought to have killed some 12,000 people. The population ignored hygiene measures early plague doctors had proposed, and at least some religious people blamed the plague on Jews and witches. When the plague subsided, Habsburg Emperor Leopold I, who in typical Habsburg fashion had fled the city, had a provisional wooden column with the Holy Trinity on a Corinthian column unveiled in pious gratitude for Vienna being (relatively speaking) spared. In 1683, Matthias Rauchmiller was commissioned to design the column and some of its sculpture. Although he died in 1686, his conception and three of his angel figures can still be seen on today’s monument. Other designers and sculptors followed, and the column was finally unveiled in 1694. Regular religious processions, incorporating the column, were held were held until the eighteenth century.

**Pestsäule am Graben in Vienna (2012 and 2019)**

Among the many plague columns in Lower Austria are those at the largest Cistercian abbey in Europe, Heiligenkreuz Abbey in the Vienna Woods, and at Waidhofen an der Thaya, near the Bohemian border. Heiligenkreuz’s baroque Trinity Column, produced in sculptor Giovani Giuliani’s workshop between 1736 and 1739, stands in the middle of the monastery courtyard. The column’s iconography incorporates plague saints, as well as the Trinity. Mary, about halfway up the column, acts as intercessor for humanity and opponent of the plague. Waldhofen’s Trinity Statue was consecrated in the upper part of the main square in 1709 after the plague “faded away.” The ornate column includes reliefs of the plague saints.

**Heiligenkreuz (2016) and Waidhofen an der Thaya** **(2019)**

Among my favorite plague columns in the Bohemian Lands are those in western Bohemian Karlsbad, northern Bohemian Teplice, southern somewhere in southern Bohemia, and Opava, the capital of Silesia. A Marian Column, Opava’s Plague Column was built on Dolní náměstí in 1675. It stands before the monumental baroque Church of St. Adalbert, a major part of the former Jesuit residence in the city. Opava’s first column was modeled on the Marian Column in Vienna’s Am Hof, but had to be dismantled in 1825 owing to damage. Rebuilt in 1869, the new column was based on Vienn’a well-known plague column on Am Gaben. Oswald Josef Wenda designed Karlsbad’s nine-meter tall high-baroque sandstone Trinity Column, which was constructed in 1715 and 1716, in thanks for the city having been spared the 1713 plague. Teplice’s baroque Trinity Column was built for the same reason.

**Opava (2014), Karlsbad (2006), Teplice (1995), and Pilsen (1998) in the Czech Republic**

I also like a plague column in Benešov nad Černou, a small town near the southern Bohemian border. That’s Jan of Nepomuk standing on top; St. Sebastian is also there. This is a seriously small town, so it’s clear how ubiquitous these columns are.

**Plague Column, Benešov nad Černou**, **Bohemia (2019)**

Like so many other people, I’ve been thinking a lot about the number of unnecessary American deaths owing to Covid-19. How shall we honor these myriad dead? Given Donald Trump’s penchant for golden toilets and gaudy, gilt furniture, perhaps he will be interested constructing bastardized versions of the wonderful plague columns unveiled in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Habsburg Central Europe. You know, in remembrance of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who’ve died in recent months owing to his administration’s abject inability to formulate a coherent nationwide plan to battle Covid-19, or even to wear a mask. Remember his epic callousness when you vote.

Old Hickory’s Bad, Very Bad Reputation

I’ve never much liked Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory), dating back to when I spent time reading my parents’ copy of an illustrated lives of presidents. You know, I was at that age when you memorize all the presidents’ names in order of when they served. I’m not even sure what it was I didn’t like. Something about alcohol, guns, and misbehaving on the lawn of the White House failed to impress me. Then I forgot about him. Literally. Until Donald Trump started going on about him. Then I started noticing him. Always on horses.

There is a larger-than-life equestrian statue Andrew Jackson on the capital grounds in Nashville. That makes some sense. If you want to honor that kind of man. He’s from there and is buried at the nearby Hermitage. I did manage to take pictures around Jackson and his horse at Lafayette Square in New Orleans. That statue also makes some sense: the Battle of New Orleans.

**Jackson County Courthouse (June 2020)**

I didn’t know Jackson County, Missouri, was named for Andrew Jackson. I mean, why would it be? Nor did I know that there was an equestrian statue of Jackson in front of the county courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri until after June 25. That’s when someone/ones dumped red paint on it and graffitied in yellow the words, “slave owner,” as part of Black Lives Matter. No surprise, really, given his role in the Trail of Tears. That same day, Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. called for the statue’s immediate removal. By the time I got down to see the statue, it had been bundled up in a black tarp, a sure sign that its removal is not imminent. A sign to me, anyway. The only graffiti that remained to be seen was stenciled on the sidewalk before the plaza: we can’t breathe.

So, what to do with the statue? Rather than making the decision themselves, the Jackson County Legislature punted. Members decided on an ordinance putting the removal of the statue (and that of one before the courthouse in neighboring Lee’s Summit) to the voters. White vetoed the ordinance on July 24. He’s apparently hoping the legislators will find their backbones and vote to remove both statues. I wouldn’t hold my breath. It may be a long wait. (Will he stay or will he go?)

Addendum: He’s stayed . In November 2020, the good residents of Jackson County voted to keep the statues in front of the county court houses in Kansas City and Independence. As of July 2023, there is another movement to remove them.