Monuments and Collective Memory
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. …
Continue reading “What will Our Twenty-First Century Plague Columns Look like?”
I saw my first Soviet war memorial in Vienna when I was a grad student. I’d wandered onto Schwarzenbergplatz and, lo and behold, there it was: in front of a semi-circular white marble colonnade was a tall column topped by the figure of a Red Army soldier. He was wearing a gold helmet and had …
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 …
Of Monuments and Memory