Monuments and Collective Memory
Following the First World War, the leaders of Czechoslovakia created new holidays, among them, one celebrating the Battle of Zborov (“Army Day”) on July 2. Together with October 28, the day the Czechoslovak Republic was declared in Prague, Zborov was the main commemorative site on Czechoslovakia’s national-patriotic calendar. Because it was only one of many …
Continue reading “The Battle of Zborov, the Czechs, and Their Two-Tailed Lion”
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 …
An obelisk honoring the “fallen military heroes” of the US Army’s First Infantry Division—the Big Red One, the army’s oldest—during the Second World War was unveiled outside Cheb, a small Western Bohemian town, on October 26, 1946 in connection with Czechoslovakia’s annual October 28 independence day activities. It is one of five that commemorates the …
Continue reading “The End of the First Infantry Division’s Second World War: Cheb”
Of Monuments and Memory