Zprávy památkové péče 2018, 78(3):187-202 | DOI: 10.56112/zpp.2018.3.02

A time of agents. The influence of persons engaged in the rescue of movable heritage properties in the period immediately after World War II, especially in northern and northwest Bohemia

Kristina Uhlíková

Ústav dějin umění AV ČR, v. v. i.

There has been virtually no media nor, surprisingly, any professional attention paid in the Czech Republic to persons who sought to rescue works of art, books, and documents that were endangered for various reasons within the restored Czechoslovak state in the period immediately after World War II. At the time, they were mostly referred to as "agents" or "commissioners", having been entrusted or authorized to this work by one of the authorities of the renewed state administration or by some central collecting institution. They typically referred to themselves as "conservationists" in period documents. The objective of this article is to map out the efforts of these people and authorizing institutions to rescue endangered cultural properties of various origins during the first two years after the end of World War II. The work focuses on processes related to securing movable artistic properties and other items of scientific collective value; the rescue of books and archival documents is not specifically addressed due to the limited scope of the article. From the beginning, however, these three basic types of cultural properties were, for the most part, dealt with together; the particular processes began to diverge along different lines only later (although they often continued to intersect).
The situation throughout Czechoslovakia was very unclear following the end of the war. During the first weeks, the new state administration was emerging from a transformation of the former Protectorate Administration, or the Reich administration in the border areas. At the same time, completely new offices were being created according to the plan previously approved by the London Exile Government. Regional administration in particular was to be reorganized into a three-tier system of national committees which would include both state and local administrative bodies. The liberation armies were still active in Czechoslovakia until early December 1945, particularly Soviet and American. Moreover, the recovering Czechoslovak army was also actively engaged in the entire process. The main overall problem that heritage conservation kept running into was a lack of clarity concerning competencies among the authorities that lasted at least until the end of 1945, in some places even longer.
In the weeks immediately following the war, the Secretariat for the Register and Rescue of Art and Historical Monuments (Sekretariát pro evidenci a záchranu uměleckých a historických památek) became the most active and operative body for the rescue of endangered monuments. It originated through the initiative of archivists working originally in illegality as an archive section of the Czech National Council. After the liberation, the archive section was transferred to the competence of the Cultural Commission of the newly formed Czech National Committee. The initiator of the Secretariat was the head of the Archives of the National Museum, Jaroslav Charvát, who also headed it up in the beginning. As the name indicates, the primary objective of this body was to register cultural monuments, which was certainly the most important immediate step in their rescue.
From the outset, rescue efforts focused on three different types of cultural properties depending on their origin. The first task was secure the collections and documents of Prague collections institutions, libraries, and archives that had been deposited in a number of buildings outside the capital to protect them from aerial bombing. The second, more complicated, task was to secure books, documents, and collection items that had been hidden from the advancing forces during the end of the war by German Reich authorities, collection and scientific institutions, libraries, and private persons within `the Protectorate and the Sudetenland. The third group of endangered cultural properties included items previously belonging to the German inhabitants of the Sudetenland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Many of them had left their homes at the end of the war in fear of the advancing armies, particularly of the Soviet army. Virtually all the property of the overwhelming majority of the remaining German inhabitants of Czechoslovakia (the only exceptions were those who were provably anti-Nazi) was gradually expropriated by the state during 1945, prior to their expulsion from Czechoslovakia.

Keywords: monument rescue after World War II, history of heritage care, Jaroslav Charvát, Alfréd Piffl, confiscation

Published: September 1, 2018  Show citation