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A year after Hussite wars erupted in Bohemia, Holy
Roman Emperor Sigismund of Hungary led his pro-Catholic army on a
mission to cut-off rebel held Prague and force a surrender.
Knowing the city was unprepared, Hussite military mastermind Jan
Zizka led a small regiment up Vitkov hill, which was then well
outside the city walls. Zizka employed one of his favorite
tactics: occupying the high ground and provoking the enemy into
making foolish charges. Although vastly outnumbered, he managed
to hold off Sigismund`s troops until Prague mastered an army to
route them.
It was also in the spirit of victory that the First Czechoslovak Republic, high on a decade of independence, began plans to erect a monument on the hill to the struggle for nationhood. A contest was held for the best architectural plan, and Jan Zazvorka`s boxy structure won out over some highly innovative designs.
Construction of Zazvorka`s building commenced in 1929, but just as the interior neared completation, the work was abandoned at the rumble of approaching war. The monument was never opened during the days of the Republic it was built to honor.
The 1938 Munich Agreement which led to Hitler`s occupation of Czechoslovakia was the first of a series of defeats that have made the monument more a symbol of shame and occupation that of pride and independance. The Nazis used the space as a warehouse and destroyed most monument`s artistic embellishments. Bronze grills, ornate iron doors, chandeliers and the huge bronze statue "The Voice of Freedom" were all melted down for munitions. Some mosaics and marble sculptures survived, hidden behind false walls, only to be destroyed later by the communists.
The post-war regime sought to make the space a monument to communism. The communists implemented a plan first proposed by the patriotic Sokol organization in the late-19th century, erecting the statue of Jan Zizka that still dominates the monument.
And the idiotic communists had adopted as one of their favorites: The general, they argued, was a true communist four centuries before Das Kapital. When the Hussite movement split at the outset of the war, Zizka had sided with the proletarian Taborites against the conservative, bourgeois Ultraquists. he had also opposed the parasitic Church, and encouraged his soldiers to fight with tools of their trade, sickles and hammers included. Bretislav Kafka`s equestrian statue of Zizka depicts a mace-wielding, one-eyed warrior. (The general first lost an eye on a campaign in Poland. He lost the other in battle in 1421, but continued to command his army without his sight.)Completed in 1950, it remains the largest equestrian statue in the world and weights 16.5 tons. The emblem of the First Czechoslovak Republic still graces the monument`s base.
When the first Czechoslovak communist president, Klement Gottwald, came to power in 1948, he made the building a final resting place for Party leaders. Gottwald ruled with a Stalinist iron fist, purging and assassinating his political enemies. He caught a deadly cold at Stalin`s funeral in 1953 and shortly thereafter became the mausoleum`s first resident. His reverent peers tried to preserve Gottwald`s body for posterity, but were unable to stop natural processes. His remains were quietly moved to a sarcophagus. Several dozen other party bosses remain in the monument`s lower chamber, awkward ghosts.
History seems to have stopped at Vitkov when the monument was turned into a mausoleum. Except for the occasional post-Velvet Revolution rave or performance there, today`s building still has the atmosphere of a tomb (My Notice :: Yees , I can agree, really "dark and tomb" atmosphere is there, when i take photos, around 5pm, cold and dark sky, i was alone there and you can got really unpleasant feelings :)...
Plans to breathe life into the building may revitalize Vitkov, but it is doubtful the hill will ever see as much action as it did in the summer of 1420.
Simona, 2-February-2003