Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(2):214-220

Dispute over confiscated property

Kristina Uhlíková

During the Protectorate, Czech preservationists gradually split into two increasingly antagonistic factions. The impetus for this split became appearances by the head of the State Heritage Office Václav Wagner in lectures in the former Masaryk Academy of Labour in the artists' club and in professional journals in the years 1940-1942 with a new theoretical concept of the heritage protection of properties that he henceforth proposed to consider more as full-fledged works of art than as properties of the past (i.e. a synthetic approach). After these lectures, a gradually increasingly aggravated exchange of views followed between Wagner and representatives of the older generation, Zdeněk Wirth and Karel Guth. Wirth may have also been bothered by Wagner's junctures with so-called creative monument care (schöpferische Denkmalpflege), which had gradually been promoted in Germany from the end of the 1920's, while most of its leaders openly sympathized with the ideology of National Socialism.
In the end, however, it apparently turned out to be mainly a generational dispute. On one side stood the older generation led by Wirth and the Club for Old Prague, on the other hand stood the State Heritage Authority under Wagner's leadership and a younger generation of art historians. After the war, the struggle between the warring factions erupted fully, focusing primarily on securing nationalized monuments.
If we compare Wirth's and Wagner's plan for managing and using nationalized historic buildings, both are apparently in agreement concerning obtaining the monuments into state hands. Since the French Revolution, monuments had been increasingly regarded as public property, with the owners rather becoming their managers. Removing historical buildings from private hands was not, therefore, regarded as something outrageous or surprising by most of the professional and general public, but was rather seen as the culmination of a process initiated much earlier. The difference between Wirth's and Wagner's concept can be primarily seen in the issue of the further use of the confiscated buildings. Wagner did not concretely specify their use by the wider public, his priority being the representation of the state. For Wirth, the clearly most important objective, besides the professional maintenance of the buildings, was to make them available to the public in a way that would be "instructive". At the time, focusing on educating again became societally very desirable.

Keywords: Zdeněk Wirth; Václav Wagner; history of heritage preservation; confiscation of property after World War 2; protectorate

Published: June 1, 2016  Show citation