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Small Technical Heritage Objects in the Cultural Landscape: Research Possibilities and Conservation Challenges (Přemysl Mácha – Radek Bryol – Lenka Tlapáková – Radim Červenka – Vojtěch Bajer)
The Image of Staged Folk Culture: From the Presentation of Traditions to a Staged Genre (Martina Pavlicová)
Ethnological Research into Socialism in Post-Socialist (Czecho)Slovakia (Zuzana Beňušková)
Paths and Possibilities for Experiments in the Field of Traditional Technologies (in the Czech Republic) (Václav Michalička)
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Small technical heritage structures in the cultural landscape present special challenges for their research and conservation. They are usually located on private land, many have disappeared entirely or have been refitted for a different purpose, and archival records are sparse or not available at all. The article describes experiences with the research and conservation of these structures in the Rožnov area in eastern Czechia. It outlines available methods, critically reflects on their application, and suggests ways for overcoming limitations associated with research of these structures. The article argues for the creation of a robust interdisciplinary research team including historians, anthropologists, GIS specialists, archaeologists, foresters, and geologists, to name a few. Also, it calls for the critical and complex use of archival materials, ethnographic interviews, and GIS in mutual interconnection. The conservation of small technical heritage objects is contingent on what we can find out about them through research as well as on their character, location, state of preservation, and on attitudes towards them held by owners, local inhabitants, and municipal authorities. A strong role can be played by private enthusiasts, local NGOs, and public officials as partners in the repair, renovation, and promotion of these structures. Open-air museums can contribute with expert supervision and methodical leadership to prevent amateur renovations from ruining the structures’ heritage value.
The study deals with the presentation of folk culture expressions on stage and tries to answer the questions that arise in this context. They relate both to the genesis of the presentation of folk traditions and to the subsequent developments that formed demonstrations of folk culture into a staged genre with artistic ambitions. Based on examples of selected expressions of folk culture in the Czech environment − especially expressions of folklore, which, alongside customary traditions, were always the backbone of staged presentations − the study shows how the demonstration of folk culture expressions was approached, how the performances were accepted by audiences, and which functions (ideological, artistic, and entertainment) were attributed to them. Another important question is what image of folk culture was created on the stage and how this image could have influenced the “living” terrain of the countryside and the very tendencies to protect the values of folk culture, which began to pick up strength in Czech society at the end of the nineteenth century.
The text presents an analytical overview of the results of ethnological research on the era of socialism conducted in Slovakia after 1989. It mainly describes the projects within which this research was carried out and the applied methodological approaches. It classifies the research results by thematic area and includes references to relevant academic publications. The text also mentions the academic discourse that resulted in several studies and themes. For the sake of comprehensiveness, basic projects, considerable museum activities, and audio-visual outcomes are mentioned, which provide knowledge about everyday life in socialism.
This study deals with experiments in the field of traditional production technologies. It focusses on experiments that can be used for ethnological interpretations. Attention is paid to both scientific experiments and results achieved by amateur experimenters. The theoretical introduction, defining the historical continuity and basic principles of empirical knowledge of traditional technologies based on experiments, is followed by a review text focussed on the form of contemporary experiments and reconstructions of historical technologies and techniques. An important part of the study presents examples of successful and significant experiments carried out in the Czech Republic. The experimental reconstruction of the technology used for the production of ash filtrates, which disappeared in the second half of the nineteenth century, is mentioned as an illustrative example. In the conclusion, the author points out the benefits and pitfalls associated with experiments in the field of traditional technologies.
Studies and Materials on the Subject of “Tradition as an Object of Economic (Non)Interest”
Cultural Heritage as a Commodity? An Example of City Festivities and Festivals (Alexandra Bitušíková)
Souvenirs along the Royal Route in Prague as an Object of Establishing and Negotiating Authenticity (Barbora Půtová)
How Much Is the Czech Dance? Authenticity for Sale (Daniela Stavělová – Laura Kolačkovská)
Socio-Economic Aspects of Changes in Czech Fishing Traditions in Regional Contexts (Vojtěch Kouba)
Money Loves Silence: The Transformation of the Idea of Money in the Ukrainian Megalopolis in a Post-Socialism Era (Tetiana Tkhorzhevska – Yulia Bohuslavska)
Traces of Musical Life in Advertisements of Humoristické Listy (with focus on the 1880s) (Milan Balódy)
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Alexandra Bitušíková
The submitted treatise provides an overview of current state of the concept of ethnographic collection in Czech museology, and it points to a certain mutual imbalance between the two spheres. Especially in The treatise deals with the commodification of culture heritage (on the example of city festivities and festivals). Based on numerous, mostly foreign, publications it submits an overview of research approaches to the research on eventization – especially the growing number of city festivities and festivals, which turn into events attracting large numbers of visitors and supporting the commercial character of the events. The treatise points out the tendencies of municipalities and other co-organizers that, wittingly or unwittingly, transform cultural heritage into an economic commodity – a product, which can have an impact on the transformation of values and the forms of different expressions of cultural heritage. The treatise also reflects on the academic debate about the relationships between authenticity and commodification of cultural heritage, which has long been a challenge for (not only) ethnology and social anthropology. The conclusion includes a case study about the Radvaň Fair in Banská Bystrica, held since 1655 and inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Slovakia in 2011. The fair has experienced several changes – from a marketplace with a predominantly economic function to a city festival that pays tribute to traditional handicrafts and folklore. In the context of the theme of this cultural heritage commodification, the research intends to observe the strategies and goals of the municipality – the leading organizer of the fair – in organizing the event.
Barbora Půtová
The study focusses on the Royal Route in Prague, the major tourist enclave in the Czech Republic. The objective of the study was to create a typology of souvenirs and to ascertain the degree of authenticity, including the presentation of the potential and future of souvenirs along the Royal Route. The study first presents urban tourism and tourist enclaves framing the researched subject. Next, it describes the field research methodology used to define the consequences of the Royal Route transformation into a tourist enclave, to determine the souvenir typology, and to establish the staged authenticity. Mixed field research along the Royal Route focussed on identifying the structure of shop tenants and the assortment of goods and services offered. The assortment of goods they offer consists typically of mass-produced souvenirs and souvenirs that in most cases lack any link to Czech culture and traditions. The conclusion of the study is based on the synthesis of the methodologic part that raises a requirement for definition and conceptualization of an authentic souvenir. At the same time, the study takes into account any possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that see the crisis as an opportunity to construct and negotiate an authentic souvenir along the Royal Route.
Daniela Stavělová – Laura Kolačkovská
The contribution revisits the question of tourism’s role in the commodification of folk dance and open the discourse of value, in which an intrinsic and sacred cultural sphere of value is presumed to circulate independent of an unstable and profane economic sphere of value. It deals with the dance productions of Czech folklore show for tourists visiting Prague. This phenomenon has its origins in 1970’ when few people – dancers and musicians from folk ensembles – started to be invited to dance for tourists in prestigious hotels. After 1989 “velvet revolution” the business with folklore became a part of tourism where the dance has its specific role. An increasing number of special pubs offering Czech meal, folk costume, song, and dance show during an evening, provoked several questions as to how folk dance can become a profitable commodity, what trade rules apply here and what the demand-supply ratio is. We were interested to who are the dancers and musicians paid for one evening to show the Czech folk dance culture and what is their social status? The following questions streamed to explore which elements of the traditional culture are picked up from the folk culture to represent the “real Czechness” and how the interaction with foreigners (tourists) is going on: e. g. the negotiation about the repertoire, their participation to dance, etc. The research was based on the observation of the strategies of several pubs in Prague and deep interviews with actors which enabled to see the inner side of the process.
Vojtěch Kouba
The article focuses on the current changes in the traditions of the Czech aquaculture and the possibilities of using fishing traditions in regional development.It is based on field research in smaller fishing areas of Bohemia (surroundings of Blatná, Chlumec nad Cidlinou, and Přelouč). While in Blatná and its surroundings the tradition of autumn public fish harvest is still alive, and even, as a complement to it, the community-oriented June Fishing Festival was established, fishermen in eastern Bohemia consider public harvests to be dangerous (busy roads run on the dams of the ponds) and loss-making. While the economic importance of the Czech aquaculture is declining, its non-productive functions are becoming increasingly important, both for the landscape and water retention in it, as well as for the regional identity and development of tourism associated with the growing popularity of recreational fishing. While present-day Czech fish producers focus primarily on maximizing their production, a differentiation of approaches to the industry can be expected in the future, including the emergence of new products using elements of fishing traditions in their marketing. We can therefore divide fishing traditions into the following categories: production, environment, leisure, and regional aspects.
Tetiana Tkhorzhevska – Yulia Bohuslavska
The study addresses the question of the place of the money in the modern big city citizen’s life and, by proxy, his ideas of money. We don’t emphasize the destructive kind of influence of the global capitalism on post-Soviet society but also don’t exclude the possibility of such reading. We state that modern urban citizens use quite archaic magical practices. We state that money for the big chunk of Odesa’s citizens are not rationally nominal equivalent of the effort but are the “wonderful gift” of the higher entities. We state that ideas about the supernatural power of money didn’t cease to exist in the socialism era and had been spread out in the post-socialist era. Using different methods, we examine the ideas of money of the people of various ages and conclude that the number of irrational views about money increases with the decrease of age. We talk about the visible formation of the new religion where the place of higher entity is occupied by exchange equivalent.
Milan Balódy
The study uses advertising sections of the widely read and successful weekly Humoristické listy [Humorous Papers] as a source of the history of music. Through an analysis of advertisement departments, it maps the city inhabitants´ opportunities in the late nineteenth century to fill their leisure time with musical activities. The advertisements create a space where the offer encounters the inquiry.
They thus become a witness to contemporary tastes, preferences, and mentalities. The research shows that alongside traditional musical instruments, which required at least a rudimentary interpretation skills to master the play, instruments operating by mechanical means (automatophones) or those designed without much artistic ambition for profane social entertainment (e.g. bigotphones) were gaining in popularity. The space in which contact with music took place was also expanding. Various refreshment venues allured people with regular concerts. The submitted text is a contribution to the history of popular music in the Czech lands, and it partly reflects the public taste of the time.
Studies on the Subject of “Ethnographic Collection as a Source”
Ethnographic Collection in the Concept of Contemporary Czech Museology (Lenka Drápalová)
Major Trends in the Conception of Ethnographic Museum Materials in the Works of Czech Ethnologists and Museologists before 1989 (Otakar Kirsch)
Traditional Handcraft Techniques as Part of Documentation Accompanying the Museum Ethnographic Collection (Václav Michalička)
Recovered Territories in Source Materials of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas: Selected Examples of Socio-Cultural Change in Post-Migration Areas (Anna Drożdż)
The Conception and Form of Folk Song Collections from Bohemia from the Period of Preparations for the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition 1895 (Zdeněk Vejvoda – Věra Thorová)
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Lenka Drápalová
The submitted treatise provides an overview of current state of the concept of ethnographic collection in Czech museology, and it points to a certain mutual imbalance between the two spheres. Especially in The treatise deals with the commodification of culture heritage (on the example of city festivities and festivals). Based on numerous, mostly foreign, publications it submits an overview of research approaches to the research on eventization – especially the growing number of city festivities and festivals, which turn into events attracting large numbers of visitors and supporting the commercial character of the events. The treatise points out the tendencies of municipalities and other co-organizers that, wittingly or unwittingly, transform cultural heritage into an economic commodity – a product, which can have an impact on the transformation of values and the forms of different expressions of cultural heritage. The treatise also reflects on the academic debate about the relationships between authenticity and commodification of cultural heritage, which has long been a challenge for (not only) ethnology and social anthropology. The conclusion includes a case study about the Radvaň Fair in Banská Bystrica, held since 1655 and inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Slovakia in 2011. The fair has experienced several changes – from a marketplace with a predominantly economic function to a city festival that pays tribute to traditional handicrafts and folklore. In the context of the theme of this cultural heritage commodification, the research intends to observe the strategies and goals of the municipality – the leading organizer of the fair – in organizing the event.
Otakar Kirsch
The study focusses on the Royal Route in Prague, the major tourist enclave in the Czech Republic. The objective of the study was to create a typology of souvenirs and to ascertain the degree of authenticity, including the presentation of the potential and future of souvenirs along the Royal Route. The study first presents urban tourism and tourist enclaves framing the researched subject. Next, it describes the field research methodology used to define the consequences of the Royal Route transformation into a tourist enclave, to determine the souvenir typology, and to establish the staged authenticity. Mixed field research along the Royal Route focussed on identifying the structure of shop tenants and the assortment of goods and services offered. The assortment of goods they offer consists typically of mass-produced souvenirs and souvenirs that in most cases lack any link to Czech culture and traditions. The conclusion of the study is based on the synthesis of the methodologic part that raises a requirement for definition and conceptualization of an authentic souvenir. At the same time, the study takes into account any possible impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that see the crisis as an opportunity to construct and negotiate an authentic souvenir along the Royal Route.
Václav Michalička
The contribution revisits the question of tourism’s role in the commodification of folk dance and open the discourse of value, in which an intrinsic and sacred cultural sphere of value is presumed to circulate independent of an unstable and profane economic sphere of value. It deals with the dance productions of Czech folklore show for tourists visiting Prague. This phenomenon has its origins in 1970’ when few people – dancers and musicians from folk ensembles – started to be invited to dance for tourists in prestigious hotels. After 1989 “velvet revolution” the business with folklore became a part of tourism where the dance has its specific role. An increasing number of special pubs offering Czech meal, folk costume, song, and dance show during an evening, provoked several questions as to how folk dance can become a profitable commodity, what trade rules apply here and what the demand-supply ratio is. We were interested to who are the dancers and musicians paid for one evening to show the Czech folk dance culture and what is their social status? The following questions streamed to explore which elements of the traditional culture are picked up from the folk culture to represent the “real Czechness” and how the interaction with foreigners (tourists) is going on: e. g. the negotiation about the repertoire, their participation to dance, etc. The research was based on the observation of the strategies of several pubs in Prague and deep interviews with actors which enabled to see the inner side of the process.
Anna Drożdż
The article focuses on the current changes in the traditions of the Czech aquaculture and the possibilities of using fishing traditions in regional development.It is based on field research in smaller fishing areas of Bohemia (surroundings of Blatná, Chlumec nad Cidlinou, and Přelouč). While in Blatná and its surroundings the tradition of autumn public fish harvest is still alive, and even, as a complement to it, the community-oriented June Fishing Festival was established, fishermen in eastern Bohemia consider public harvests to be dangerous (busy roads run on the dams of the ponds) and loss-making. While the economic importance of the Czech aquaculture is declining, its non-productive functions are becoming increasingly important, both for the landscape and water retention in it, as well as for the regional identity and development of tourism associated with the growing popularity of recreational fishing. While present-day Czech fish producers focus primarily on maximizing their production, a differentiation of approaches to the industry can be expected in the future, including the emergence of new products using elements of fishing traditions in their marketing. We can therefore divide fishing traditions into the following categories: production, environment, leisure, and regional aspects.
Zdeněk Vejvoda – Věra Thorová
The study addresses the question of the place of the money in the modern big city citizen’s life and, by proxy, his ideas of money. We don’t emphasize the destructive kind of influence of the global capitalism on post-Soviet society but also don’t exclude the possibility of such reading. We state that modern urban citizens use quite archaic magical practices. We state that money for the big chunk of Odesa’s citizens are not rationally nominal equivalent of the effort but are the “wonderful gift” of the higher entities. We state that ideas about the supernatural power of money didn’t cease to exist in the socialism era and had been spread out in the post-socialist era. Using different methods, we examine the ideas of money of the people of various ages and conclude that the number of irrational views about money increases with the decrease of age. We talk about the visible formation of the new religion where the place of higher entity is occupied by exchange equivalent.
Studies on the Subject of “National School in Ethnology and Socio-Cultural Anthropology”
North American Folkloristics between Folkloristics and European Ethnology (Petr Janeček)
An Outline of the Development of the Mexican Anthropology from the Early 19th Century until 1948 (Oldřich Kašpar)
Field Research in Folklore Studies in Serbia: A Historical Overview and Development Perspectives (Sonja Petrović)
Thirty Years of Independent Ukrainian Ethnomusicology (1990–2020) (Iryna Dovhaljuk – Lina Dobrjanska)
Rieger, or Grimm? Romantic and Pragmatic Approaches to the Ethnological Research into Laws (Tomáš Ledvinka)
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Petr Janeček
The overview study focuses on a brief outline of the history and disciplinary identity of North American folklore studies (folkloristics, folklore) with an emphasis on the field of verbal culture. Major research themes, research schools, and personalities are presented, as well as history of institutionalization of the field at the U.S. universities after World War II. After a brief introduction to the origins, when North American folklore studies did not differ significantly from British and Continental scholarship, its development during interwar period and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, when its emancipation took place, mainly because of unique American emphasis on study of folklore performance, is described. Critical overview text thus presents basic contours of this specific academic field, practiced mainly in the U.S.A and Canada, which in many aspects represents a unique scientific discipline with close ties to international folklore studies, European ethnology, and anthropological fields in general.
Oldřich Kašpar
This overview study seeks to capture basic features of the development of the Mexican anthropology from its "formative" beginnings at the very outset of the 19th century until the founding of the National Indigenist Institute in 1948. Emphasis is placed on the historical roots of the latter scientific discipline, the contribution of foreign scholars to the development of the discipline in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, and the variable evolution of a constant in the Mexican ethnographic and anthropological research, namely the pervasive question of indigenism. The description and analysis of the activities of the basic museum and academic institutions, as well as of the first professional periodicals have not been left out either. The work also analyses the impact that various turning points in the Mexican history of the defined period had on the development of the discipline (the Second Mexican Empire in the 19th century, the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, the last two decades of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th centuries, the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917, the later period of 'cardenism', etc.). The author has based his text on the study of archival documents, contemporary Mexican ethnographic and museum literature, and contemporary scholarly works, especially those written by Mexican and American anthropologists.
Sonja Petrović
The paper offers an overview of the most relevant events in the history of collecting of the Serbian oral tradition, starting with the medieval mentions and records, through the recording of folk songs in the modern times in various regions inhabited by the Serbs, up to the systematic fieldwork collection conducted by Vuk Karadžić and the contemporary field research in folklore studies. The author indicates specific motivations of collectors in different periods, and the position and role of folklore in creating the image about the national past and in forming the national identity of the Serbs. Special attention was paid to the advances of fieldwork methodology which moved from the principles and recommendations of early ethnographers who designed field questionnaires, and later it grew and embraced contemporary interdisciplinary influences on the understanding of the field and the role of researchers. Contemporary forms and trends in the development of field research in folklore studies in Serbia are singled out and their significance for the development of Serbian folkloristics in the whole is emphasized.
Iryna Dovhaljuk – Lina Dobrjanska
The article presents an overview of Ukrainian ethnomusicology in 1990–2020. This period is characterized by the comprehensive development of science mostly due to the obtaining of Ukrainian Independence. The study focuses on the main issues in many ethnomusicological directions. First of all, the attention is focused on the activity of the leading modern Ukrainian ethnomusicological scientific and scientific-pedagogical institutions as well as smaller regional centers. The most important directions of activities of these centers such as documentation of musical folklore (ethnographic and archival), ethnomusical pedagogy, conferences, publications etc. are also analyzed. In addition, scientific achievements in such important areas as theoretical and methodological, areal and typological, historical, ethnoorganological, ethnochoreological, source studies, etc. are considered. As a result, the article comprehensively presents the state of Ukrainian ethnomusicology today and outlines prospects for the future.
Tomáš Ledvinka
The article undertakes a genealogy of conceptual definitions of the ‘lore of law’ as a subject of study before the formation of both European legal ethnology and the anthropology of law, mainly within the Historical School of Law in the first half of the nineteenth century. By tracing the way in which the subject ‘lore of law’ has been categorised, the article follows the evolution of its definitions from 18th-century antiquarian legal research, Herder´s view on the law´s orality in original biblical sources, to Jacob Grimm´s understanding of ancient legal customs as part of folk poetry. Grimm´s romantic approach is used to illuminate the distinction of other contemporary approaches, especially the fundamentally opposite pragmatic study of contemporary constitution which has been developed by Joseph Anthon Rieger and Joseph Mader. The ‘lore of law’ seem to have acquired a newfound importance in the period after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806). Particularly its conceptual definitions such as “customary law” and “folk law” are explored as being moulded by new nationalist and universalist patterns of scholarly thought. To conclude, the article foregrounds the expansion of legal horizons traced in this pre-evolution of the ethnological study of law.
Journal of Ethnology 1/2021 deals with the theme “Forced Migration”. Tomáš Dvořák submits a view of the demographic issue in the context of the national and migration policy after the end of the main wave of the forced displacement of German residents (Marriage as a Life Strategy in the Cogs of Post-War Migrations, on Example of the Jáchymov Area in the Years 1949-1950). Sandra Kreisslová and Jana Nosková pay attention to the post-war forced migration of German-speaking inhabitants and the reflection thereof in magazines published by those displaced (Media Representation of Post-War Forced Migration of Germans from Czech Lands in Journals of this group, on Example of Magazines Aussiger Bote and Brünner Heimatbote). David Kovařík focusses on displacement of selected groups of inhabitants in the years 1904-1954 from areas which were used by the army as military training areas in the Czech lands (Military Training Areas as Scenes for Forced Migrations in the Czech Lands, and Their Commemoration). Josef Šuba applies the method of oral history to explain the situation of a particular South-Moravian location which disappeared as a consequence of the construction of a water reservoir (The Extinction of Mušov from the Perspective of the Former Inhabitants).
In the article “On the Decease of Film Director Karel Vachek”, Review Section commemorates the trace of this personage in the historiography of ethnology (author Martina Pavlicová). Social Chronicle publishes congratulations to the jubilees of the ethnologist Mirjam Moravcová (born 1931), the ethnologist Peter Salner (born 1951), and the musicologist Jarmila Procházková(born 1961); it also publishes two obituaries: for Ondrej Demo (1927–2020), a musical folklorist, and radio editor and dramaturge, and for Eva Kiliánová (1930–2020), an editor of folk prose. Further regular columns include reports on exhibitions and scholarly projects, and reviews of new books.
The study deals with marriages, concluded mainly by German residents in the Jáchymov district in the years 1949-1950. Marriages between different groups of inhabitants demonstrate the manifold migration background of residents in the monitored region, and they are also analysed as a possible way to resolve life situations, associated with the migrations. The monitored region and the theme of marriages is first presented based on basic demographic indicators. The issues of marriages and marriage rate are then analysed in the context of the post-war national and migration policy, including the circumstances under which the major source set for the study developed. Subsequently, the study exemplifies, based on the files studied, various migration and life situations experienced by members of different population groups, categorized based on ethnicity, migration origin, and several further criteria. The study shows that some aspects of the social reality, researched on a micro-scale, significantly breach the image of a total breakup and isolation of national communities in the borderlands. The reality did even not correspond to the ideologically postulated imperative of borderlands purge. The closing note assesses the observed marriages from the perspective of diverse types of common life strategies of the German minority in Czechoslovakia after the end of the main wave of forced displacement, and from the perspective of the research into family memory.
The study deals with the post-war forced migration of German-speaking inhabitants from Czechoslovakia, and its reception in magazines which the forcibly-displaced Germans began to issue in “West Germany” (Federal Republic of Germany) in the late 1940s. The authors analyse two patriotic magazines (Heimatzeitschrift) from the beginning of their publishing until the end of the twentieth century. The patriotic magazines are understood as media of collective memory of the social group of those forcibly displaced. Based on the study of empiric material, the representations of the forced displacement can be analytically divided into three groups. The “expulsion” is represented as: 1) loss of home; 2) new start, and 3) historical grievance. The authors show that the forced displacement in connection with the loss of the (old) home country is a basic theme for the above-mentioned magazines. In the magazines, the representations thereof are closely associated with the memory politics of patriotic organizations with their exactly defined interpretation of history, claiming the right for the motherland, and enforcement of the victimization discourse.
The study deals with the displacement of selected groups of inhabitants from areas that were occupied by the army and used for training and other needs of it as military training areas in Bohemia and Moravia in the twentieth century. These displacement operations affected about seventy thousand inhabitants between 1904 and 1954. In addition to the description of particular displacement operations, the study also deals with the fates of inhabitants, affected like this, as well as of depopulated and desolate villages and settlements, which mostly were demolished and razed to the ground in the subsequent years. The displacement of inhabitants from military training areas is an example of forced migration in which each period and each political system applied different procedures in relation to residents in the affected areas. While the displacement of affected inhabitants at the time of the Nazi occupation entered into the national memory as an example of the persecution of Czech citizens and it was publicly commemorated in the subsequent years, further displacement operations after the year 1945 were, by contrast, tabooed and those affected were not allowed to commemorate these events publicly. This different experience became evident in the creation of collective, or cultural memory, and it also influenced diverse forms and ways of commemorating the forced migrations from military training areas.
In the second half of the 20th century, several dozens of villages ceased to exist as a consequence of water systems built on Bohemian and Moravian rivers. One of them was Mušov in South Moravia, a village which disappeared beneath the water of Nové Mlýny Dams. The preserved sources show vain attempts of local inhabitants to rescue Mušov, which were followed by a process of gradual becoming reconciled to the loss of their homes and by individual struggles to ensure as good conditions for forced displacement as possible. However, four decades have elapsed since Mušov was flooded, and the former residents look to the past in a conciliatory fashion. Although in the 1960s they supported an idea to build a new village and refused to accept the extinction of Mušov, they realize with the passage of time that their then effort was vain from the very beginning. Currently they see the displacement as an opportunity to acquire higher-quality housing for their families, which they might not have reached in the original village. Their lost home is, at least partially, substituted by ties to the community of former Mušov residents, which has survived and which actively keeps passing on memories of Mušov.
