In the mid-nineteenth century the north Bohemian industrial region, settled by a mainly German-speaking population, experienced exceptional urban and demographic growth. Its characteristic feature was rapid urban development which went hand in hand with an urge to build. In this way an impressive conglomeration of coexisting industrial areas emerged: stately villas, grandiose public buildings, delightful garden quarters and small town housing that created a distinctive genius loci for the place. The border region had long been a busy crossroads of culture, history and ideology, where Czechs, Germans and Jews mixed together and influenced each other. It thus reflected the complex ethnic relationships on the territory of what is today the Czech Republic. This wealthy, heavily populated region with a continuous belt of industrially developed agglomerations formed the economic backbone of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. Industry became an inseparable part of the identity of these towns, shaped not only by local architects but also by foreign studios and creators whose names were wellknown, operating in the adjacent German regions. A more or less independent north Bohemian architectural scene emerged with Ústí nad Labem and Liberec especially as its partial centres, a certain fragmentation given by the mixing of varied, often conflicting, tendencies being typical. This paper focuses on the architecture of the Bohemian Germans which created a natural counterpart to the architecture of the Czech majority. Its aim is to analyse in more detail the architectural product of northern Bohemia while laying emphasis on the stylistic starting points and theoretical background, including the concept of ‘style’ which did not lose its topicality even during the period between the wars which forms the focus of this study. Attention is similarly focused on the relationship between the clients and the architects and the financial and personal ties with another country which played a relatively significant role. The paper is a contribution to the revision of the still prevailing opinion that the buildings in the border areas are peripheral and not very inventive.

Jaroslav Zeman: zeman.jaroslav@npu.cz

The artist Joseph (Josef) Jusztusz (Justus) (9. 3. 1900, Kolocza, Hungary — 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland) is completely forgotten today. We know almost nothing about his life, although we are less ignorant of his work than we think. In the first half of the 1930s he was one of the most prominent artists of the circle of anti-Nazi caricaturists who fled to Czechoslovakia from the persecution of Nazi Germany, and who influenced the trend of Czech social and political illustration. Jusztusz worked under the pseudonym Bert alongside such Czech illustrators as František Bidlo, Josef Čapek, Adolf Hoffmeister, Antonín Pelc and Ondřej Sekora, as a foreign contributor to the satirical weekly Der Simplicus / Der Simpl. His works gradually influenced the nature of the whole journal, and several of them he exhibited in the famous International Exhibition of Caricature and Humour in SVU Mánes in Prague. Although Jusztusz did not escape the attention of the censors and intelligence agents, his identity was successfully kept secret and is debated to this very day. This essay however uses archive sources to reveal the artist’s identity with certainty, including his Hungarian origin and Berlin training. The editor-in-chief of the Prager Presse Arne Laurin described him as ‘a man of exceptional moral qualities’. His own correspondence touches on his fate as a refugee including the results of being uprooted from his native land. Not only could most of the original drawings in the holdings of the National Gallery in Prague be identified through the aspect of the artwork of Bert as draughtsman, as well as the stylistic plurality of his work specified on the basis of the drawing tendencies of his works published in the Prager Presse, Neuer Vorwärts, Prager Tagblatt and České slovo, but Jusztusz’s probable authorship of the painting Circus, until now ascribed to Georg Grosz (1893–1959), could also be pointed out. Bert was compared with Grosz very frequently in his time. The study therefore focuses similarly on the context of their attitudes to life and on work that supports doubts about the authorship of the painting.

Bronislava Rokytová: rokytova@pamatnik-np.cz

Former residences of the highest-ranking Nazi officials in Germany-occupied Poland have enjoyed a powerful and haunting presence since the Second World War. Their presence is very much tangible, including the actual buildings or sites where they once used to be, but they are also represented in propaganda photographs and publications from the era. In this paper, I discuss two major residences of this kind which still show traces of German interferences: the former Imperial Castle of Poznań, appropriated by the Wartheland Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, and the Wawel Royal Castle, which was taken up as residence by the Governor-General, Hans Frank. The two building complexes were exposed to a number of significant alterations which were intended to celebrate a new symbolic role to be played by the German centres of power in newly established German administrative units: the Reichsgau Wartheland and the General Government. These residences were redesigned also with Hitler in mind, and each was to provide an apartment suite dedicated to his needs. In my discussion of the two residences and the alterations they were exposed to, I will try to examine the ways with which architecture was used in building the authority of power. Architecture and its visual representations were equally important in the process. In their efforts, two Nazi German officials modelled their ideas on those by Hitler but they also had to face the local context with its existing possibilities and limitations. In order to paint a broader picture of German activities and their symbolic longue durée, I have decided to provide an extended account that includes the alternating periods of occupation and independence: the Partitions of Poland, the Second Polish Republic, the Second World War, the post war period, and today. In my investigations, I draw upon Hitler at Home by Despina Stratigakos (2015) as well as Heritage Studies, especially those branches that explore ‘dissonant heritage’ and ‘the heritage of atrocity.’

Aleksandra Paradowska: aleksandra.paradowska@uap.edu.pl

The manuscript known in the Czech environment as the Mater verborum and held in the Library of the National Museum in Prague consists of a set of three encyclopaedic dictionaries of which the most extensive is the Glossarium Salamonis (Mater verborum) compiled at the beginning of the tenth century. The Prague edition of the manuscript originated around 1240, and was quite certainly made in a Benedictine environment. Especially interesting are the historiated initials, unusual for this type of manuscript, and always present at the beginning of the appropriate letter of the dictionary. The unique iconography of the initial ‘T’abanus (fol. 169v) with Christ crucified on a cross decorated with the cut branches in the form of a ‘Y’ (forked cross, or Gabelkreutz) stands out among them. This is the first ever example of this iconography in central Europe. The initial demonstrates its connection with the text of the glossary which almost literally cites excerpts from The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, while the scribe moreover added the entry (Tabernaculum corpus domini, tentorium vel papilionum) to Isidore’s text, inspiring the presence of the Crucifixion in the accompanying initial, but nevertheless not explaining the portrayal of the cross in the form of the Gabelkreutz. The reason for the choice of the less usual shape of the cross and the symbolic meaning of the Crucifixion is apparent from the iconographical concept of the decoration of the manuscript’s initials which visually and semantically ‘communicate’ with each other, in some cases even being semantically and visually ‘paired’ on the principle of biblical narration, analogy, parabolas and antithesis. This is evident in the initial ‘T’abanus with the Crucifixion, and its semantic and visual relationship to the initial ‘Y’e t z (fol. 191r) with the grape harvester collecting grapes symbolising the human soul and its salvation and the ape representing sensuality, sin and damnation. The initial introduces the text precisely, quoting a passage from the first book of Isidore’s Etymologies (De gramatica), which describes the symbolic meaning of the letter Y as a symbol of the crossroads of human life (bivium), with the right arm of the letter symbolising salvation and eternal life, and the left, damnation and death.

Daniela Rywiková: Daniela.Rywikova@osu.cz

The paper discusses the temporary show of the monumental painting The Finding of the Body of Duke Henry II the Pious by Johann Franz de Backer (Antwerp 1680 — after 1737) — the court painter of the Bishop of Wrocław, Franz Ludwig von der Pfalz-Neuburg. It took place in the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross in Wrocław in July 1728, before sending the painting to the Benedictine Church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross and St Hedwig in Legnickie Pole. This exhibition, mentioned by the local newspaper ‘Schlesischer Nouvellen-Courier’, was crowded with the inhabitants of the city and widely commented on by experts and art lovers. It was a conscious show of an outstanding work of art, organized most probably by De Backer himself. He was an excellent painter and outstanding expert in European painting, who spent his professional life working at various European courts. The exhibition had not only artistic value, but also an ideological significance associated with the cult of Duke Henry II the Pious as a Christian martyr, who had given his life in the battle of Legnica in 1241 in defence of the Christian faith against the the Mongolian army. In the times of a heated religious conflict between the majority of Protestants in Silesia and the Catholics supported by the Habsburg authorities the person of Duke Henry II the Pious served as a symbol of the fight against the non-Catholics. This show in the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross was the first temporary art exhibition in Wrocław, organized long before the institution of annual exhibitions of works of art appeared in Central Europe. Unfortunately, it did not receive any response from other artists active in Silesia until 1862 when Heinrich Förster, the bishop of Wrocław and an outstanding patron and art lover, organized a temporary exhibition of the painting The Vision of St Hedwig by the excellent Düsseldorf painter Karl Müller which was intended for the parish church of St Hedwig in Ząbkowice Śląskie-Sadlno.

Andrzej Kozieł: andrzej.koziel@uwr.edu.pl

Master of the Liberal Arts Štěpán of Staňkov, chancellor of Queen Sophia of Bavaria and canon of several chapters and dean of the chapter of All Saints at Prague Castle, left Prague after the outbreak of the Hussite revolution and settled in Upper Lusatia in Budyšín (Bautzen), where apparently he remained until his death (before 1431). He also evacuated the chapter’s treasure from Hussitecontrolled Hradčany and had it guarded in the Cistercian Monastery Altzelle not far from Dresden. However, in 1426 the gradual decline of financial means for living in exile forced him to pledge the monastery’s valuables. For unknown reasons, a court case flared up between the two subjects regarding the state of the pawned items, which was soon transferred to Rome. Thanks to the survival of the interrogation protocol drawn up for the hearing of the case before Cardinal Julián Cesarini on 28 October 1427, we know roughly the composition of the chapter treasure in question. At that time it consisted of a silver head with the remains of St. Agnes, a silver gilt arm of St Ludmila, a silver gilt arm of St. George, several monstrances, two heavy silver paintings with remains, a silver gilt censer, and eleven silver gilt pectoral crosses which were approximately one inch long. A number of items however suffered damage of some sort, most probably connected with their second shift to the town of Grimm near Leipzig. It is however impossible to say on the basis of surviving sources whether it involved unwanted damage (loss, theft, damage) or was forced (payment of expenses for transport). The sources also remain silent concerning the wording of the final judgment, as well as the fate of the items after Štěpán’s death and the renewal of order in the Bohemian Lands.

Ondřej Vodička: vodicka@mua.cas.cz