There are things I will never fully be able to understand about Prague. In my Kafka class we have been talking about “world historical people,” which are cultures that make a mark on history. I didn’t know much about the Czech Republic, didn’t know if it had made a mark on world history, but I am learning that world history left marks on the Czech Republic. Here are some random lessons I have picked up about the Czech Republic, most specifically Prague:
Our Czech film history professor
was going over some important dates in the history of Prague on our first day
of class. She asked us what happened in
the world in 1938 that involved Czechoslovakia.
None of us could remember, so she asked us if we had ever heard of the
Munich Agreement, of the type of politics it represented. At that moment I think a lot of us flashed
back to a 7th grade history lesson: appeasement. Oh, it
was YOU the rest of the world just gave to Hitler… It is strange to be living in what was just a
footnote of a country to us at the time.
We watched a movie for film
history called The Higher Principle. It was about a group of students who were arrested
for doodling on a newspaper picture of the German Protectorate of Bohemia, who
had just been assassinated. The whole
movie we waited for them to be rescued or somehow let go. They were shot. Three students killed for an idle joke. About to graduate—my age.
As punishment for the assassination
alluded to in The Higher Principle,
the Nazis destroyed an entire Czech town: Lidice. They killed all of the men, sent the women
and children to concentration camps, and burned the town until there was absolutely
nothing left of it.
We took a tour of a famous
brewery called U Fleku, which has been brewing beer since the 1400s. Our tour guide told us that there was only
one day that the brewery ran out of beer: the day the communist regime changed
the value of money—5000 crowns would now be worth only 1 crown. They Czechs had one day to make their savings
count before this change went into effect, and that was the day U Fleku ran out
of beer.
I have noticed a pattern in the
speeches of tour guides: if a building is ugly, you can bet the communists
built it. They are so easy to pick out—concrete
slabs or an awful tower that looks like a needle, trying hard to ruin a skyline
perfectly dotted with red roofs and spires.
Our Kafka teacher reminds us
sometimes that unfortunately the atrocities went both ways. Mass graves of Germans living in the Czech
Republic have been recently found.
Revenge enacted when the Czechs received their independence from the
Nazis.
Jews in the Czech Republic often
did not fare well either. Our Kafka
professor told us today that Jews who survived the Holocaust and came back to
Prague were labeled as Germans by the Czechs.
These gaunt, recovering people who no longer had to wear yellow stars
now had to wear the letter “N” (the Czech word for German is Nemec).
The history here is incredibly rich,
albeit tragic.
In other daily news, I just got
back from a weekend at Oktoberfest (expect a “How To Correctly Do Oktoberfest”
guide soon) and I am headed to Rome this weekend to see my former Rockhurst
roommates, Sam and Kara!
Can you spot what doesn't belong?
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