Cervené kostely – Red Churches

Cervený kostel, Litomerice © Ricky Yates

 

The first Toleranzpatent / Patent of toleration of 1781, whilst giving some religious freedom to protestants living within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was still quite restrictive, in particular insisting that any buildings should not look like churches and should not have an entrance directly onto the street. It was only after Emperor Franz Joseph 1 issued his Protestantenpatent / Protestant patent in 1861, that non-Roman Catholics were finally allowed to build and own places of worship which actually looked like churches, with towers or spires and bells, etc.

Therefore within the borders of what is now the Czech Republic, there are numerous church buildings similar to this one in Litomerice, that date from the second half of the nineteenth century, and the early years of the twentieth century. Their architectural style is what I would describe as red-brick Victorian Gothic. In Czech they are known as Cervené kostely / Red or Dark Churches.

These Cervené kostely are located in towns and cities where there was a majority or a large German-speaking population and they were built for worship by German-speaking Lutherans. German-speakers were often the owners of factories and businesses and were wealthy enough to raise the necessary funds for their design and construction.

As I have previously written, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, was very keen that the boundaries of this new nation should be the historic ones of Bohemia and Moravia which predominantly follow the ridges of the surrounding hills and mountains. This was to ensure that the new nation had defensible borders and that also, nearly all Czech speakers would be living within those borders.

However, one important consequence of the adoption of these borders was that many people of German ethnic origin were also incorporated into Czechoslovakia. According to a census taken in 1921, just over three million Germans lived in Czechoslovakia accounting for around 23% of the country’s total population. The areas where Germans formed a majority were known as Sudetenland and the people themselves as the Sudetendeutsche.

In December 1918, less than two months after the new independent state of Czechoslovakia had come into existence, the Czech Lutheran Church and the Czech Presbyterian/Reformed Church agreed to unite, forming the Ceskobratrská církev evangelická (CCE) / Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (ECCB). They were then, and still are, the largest Czech Protestant Church and celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of their formation in December last year.

But it was only the Czech-speaking Lutherans who joined the newly formed CCE/ECCB. A separate German-speaking Lutheran Church remained, until 1945.

In 1945, under the Potsdam agreement and the Beneš decrees, nearly all ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia and the German-speaking Lutheran Church within the country, ceased to exist, leaving behind empty Cervené kostely.

Cervený kostel /Red Church, Brno © Ricky Yates

It has been interesting visiting, photographing, and trying to discover what has happened to these abandoned Church buildings since 1945. The Cervený kostel in Brno, which I previously featured in this blog post about the city in 2012, is now in the hands of the CCE/ECCB and is used regularly by them for worship.

The Cervený kostel in Olomouc, which I haven’t visited, meaning that I don’t have a photograph, also initially passed to the CCE/ECCB. But in 1957, it was given to Palacký University and for many years, housed the archives of their Research Library. It is now to be revamped to become a new venue for concerts, exhibitions and a café.

Cervený kostel, Litomerice © Ricky Yates

The Cervený kostel in Litomerice, which I featured at the beginning of this post and can be seen again, from a different angle, in the photograph above, now belongs the relatively small Czech Baptist Union. But whether the Baptists in Litomerice had their own building prior to 1945, or how they were able to take over the former German Lutheran Church, is a mystery to which I don’t know the answer. There is no relevant information on their website.

Cervený kostel, Varnsdorf © Ricky Yates

The photograph above is of the Cervený kostel in Varnsdorf, a town which lies right on the border of the Czech Republic with Germany. So far as I can tell, the church is not currently used for anything. I believe it now belongs to the town council who appear to be about to carry out much needed repair work, judging by the recently erected scaffolding around the spire.

Kostel svatého Pavla, Ústí nad Labem © Ricky Yates

Kostel svatého Pavla, located in the centre of Ústí nad Labem, is another fine example of a Cervený kostel. Despite appearances, the building is not made of bricks, but of concrete, covered with glued red tiles to imitate bricks. The Czech Wikipedia article about this church explains that after 1945, all German inscriptions were either ground down or whitened so as to be no longer visible.

This Church is now co-owned and administered by the CCE/ECCB and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church (CCSH) who both use it for worship – the CCE/ECCB on Sunday mornings and the CCSH on Sunday afternoons.

I am well aware that there are several more Cervené kostely elsewhere in the Czech Republic which I hope to find, visit, and photograph, over the next few years. In the meantime, if anyone can throw more light on how, post 1945, they have ended up in the hands of their current owners, please do leave a comment here on my blog.

Finally, I once again apologise for the absence of some Czech diacritics. Unfortunately, as I have previously explained, my blog set-up can only cope with certain diacritics. Any it doesn’t like are rendered as question marks, and names such as Litom??ice and ?ervené kostely would appear in the text.

Sudetenland and the Sudetendeutsche

Map showing those areas with a majority German population in the 1930s, superimposed on an outline of the current Czech Republic. Fair use assumed as the map is from a now defunct website

Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, as part of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the end of the First World War. The country’s first President, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, was very keen that the western boundaries of this new nation should be the historic ones of Bohemia and Moravia which predominantly follow the ridges of the surrounding hills and mountains. This was to ensure that the new nation had defendable borders and that also nearly all Czech speakers would be living within those borders.

However, one important consequence of the adoption of these borders was that many people of German ethnic origin were also incorporated into Czechoslovakia. According to a census taken in 1921, just over three million Germans lived in Czechoslovakia accounting for around 23% of the country’s total population. The areas where Germans formed a majority were known as Sudetenland and the people themselves as the Sudetendeutsche.

Throughout the 1920s, there were controversies and tensions between the Czech authorities and the Sudetendeutsche. These became more intensive in the 1930s, partly because of the economic depression which particularly impacted on the Sudetenland as it was home to much of the country’s heavy industries such as glass making, paper production and textiles. These industries suffered because of a large drop in demand and from protective measures taken by other countries.

Following the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich in March 1938, Hitler turned his attention to the Sudetendeutsche living in Czechoslovakia. Aided by Konrad Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten German Party, troubles and disputes were actively encouraged to create a sense of crisis within the Sudetenland, which Hitler then used to press his claim to incorporate the area and people into a greater Germany.

The whole issue came to a head at the Munich Conference held at the end of September 1938. At this conference, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Italy adopted a policy of appeasement towards Hitler and signed an agreement with Nazi Germany, allowing it to take control of the Sudetenland in return for a promise that this would be the end of German expansion. The government of Czechoslovakia was not represented at the conference nor a party to the consequent agreement.

As a result, Czechoslovakia lost about one third of its territory including much of its heavy industry. It also lost all of its frontier fortifications with Germany. Thus six months later in March 1939 and despite promises to the contrary, Hitler was freely able to march in and take over the rest of Czechoslovakia without hardly a shot being fired. As I explained in an earlier post entitled ‘Correcting History’, Czechoslovakia has the distinction of being the country which suffered the longest period of Nazi occupation as it was not fully liberated again until the early days of May 1945.

The Czechoslovakian government-in-exile, which was based in London for the duration of the Second World War, made two demands that it wanted to see implemented once Hitler and his Nazi forces were defeated. The first was the restoration of Czechoslovakia to its pre September 1938 borders. This was achieved with the exception of some territory in the far east of the country which was ceded to the Soviet Union and is now part of Ukraine.

The second demand was for the expulsion of the Sudetendeutsche population from Czechoslovakia. This was both to punish them for their support and cooperation with the Nazi invasion and occupation as well as being seen as a way to avoid any repartition of German nationalism within Czechoslovakia in the future. This policy was formerly agreed at the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 but had already begun to be implemented in a sporadic and on occasions, violent manner, almost as soon as Czech control over the Sudetenland had been re-established.

The Krkonoše Mountains or das Riesengebirge, where we spent the first week of our recent holiday, was part of the Sudetenland. It is the area immediately below the name Reichenberg (Liberec in Czech) on the map above. Being there and exploring the history and culture of the area, is what has prompted the writing of this blog post. On the walls of Penzion Nikola where we stayed, there were old black and white photographs of Pec pod Snežkou or Petzer as it was known in German. They show buildings with German names and German signs. There is every possibility that these photographs were left behind by the former Sudetendeutsche owners of the building as those expelled usually could take very little of their possessions with them, only what they could carry by hand.

Arcade in the main square of Žaclér © Ricky Yates

Deciding who would be expelled and who would not, varied from place to place. Because of inter marriage between Germans and Czechs, defining who was German wasn’t always clear. Today there are many Czech people who have very Germanic surnames. The current Czech Foreign Minister is Karel Schwarzenberg – a young Czech organist, who sometimes plays for us at St. Clement’s, has the surname Axmann. As we have discovered in our time here, many older well-educated Czechs are able to speak fluent German.

Germans who held crucial positions in major industrial plants were exempt from expulsion as were those who were deemed to have been anti-fascist. The final decision was usually left to the different local authorities.

On Monday 18th July, we made a slight detour to our journey from Pec pod Snežkou back to Prague, in order to  visit the little town of Žaclér (German name; Schatzlar) which lies on the eastern extremity of the Krkonoše Mountains National Park. From my map it looked like an interesting place but I could find no reference to it in any guidebook.

Attractive ancient wooden hose in Žaclér © Ricky Yates

In the historic centre of the town was this attractive arcade and nearby were two fascinating ancient wooden houses. And just off the main square was the Church which sadly, like most Czech Churches, is kept locked except when services are taking place. However, what intrigued both Sybille and I was a notice on the Church door giving details of the funeral arrangements for a man with a Germanic surname and with the text of the notice being in both Czech and German.

Even more revealing was a large walled burial ground immediately behind the Church. Outside the main gates was an explanatory notice in four languages, (Czech, German, English and Polish), giving a little bit of town history together with information about the graves of certain notable local people buried there. But as we walked down the central path through the burial ground, we noticed a large number of graves of people who had died after 1945 but who had  Germanic surnames and with inscriptions in German rather than in Czech. Clearly, for whatever reason, Žaclér was a town from which many Sudetendeutsche were not expelled in 1945/6 and where they and their descendants, continue to live.

Memorial to two French prisomers of war in the burial ground at Žaclér © Ricky Yates

One other feature of the burial ground is the presence of two memorials to prisoners of war who are buried there. One commemorates two Frenchmen – one from Le Havre and the other from Paris. The other commemorates several citizens of the former Soviet Union and is an extremely rare example of a memorial in the post-communist Czech Republic that still bears the hammer and sickle emblem.

Over sixty-five years after the expulsion of the Sudetendeutsche from Czechoslovakia, there remains a legacy of what happened. Despite the movement of Czech people into the former Sudetenland, these areas still are remarkably under populated. One article I read claimed that the current population of Pec pod Snežkou, is only one third of what it was before 1939. Many buildings which once housed the permanent local German-speaking population, are now used to house visiting tourists, especially those who come to ski in winter.

However, there doesn’t seem to be any latent anti-German sentiment amongst Czech people today, despite past history – certainly none that we have experienced as an Anglo-German couple resident here. German tourists now visit in large numbers and Germany has become the Czech Republic’s foremost trading partner. And whilst there are organisations within Germany, who continue to argue for either the restitution of confiscated Sudetendeutsche property or for the payment of compensation by the current government of the Czech Republic, there political clout and influence is small.

Memorial to several Soviet prisoners of war in the burial ground at Žaclér. Note the hammer & sickle emblem. © Ricky Yates