My mind can only grasp about 250 years of a nation’s history. Of course America’s history is far richer and deeper than what is recorded from European settlers. I have only scratched the surface of European history and I have learned how naive I have been.
About 10 years ago I was visiting my mom and dad. Mom had a tote full of my old keepsakes; school records and pictures, baseball paraphernalia, and this old globe I had since I was 7 years old. I took it out of the tote and said “what am I supposed to do with that?” Mom said, “it was yours. Did you know there are countries there that no longer even exist!” “Well mom, the land is still there, and for the most part the people remain too. It’s just the names and some of the lines have changed.”
Lanškroun was first noticed in the late 1200’s. It lay on the border of Bohemia and Moravia, Czech lands. It has been “acquired” and sold numerous times by various noble families who ruled the various kingdoms and duchies of the day, usually as a result of the end of some war such as the Battle White Mountain and the Hussite War. The Swedish army occupied the area during the Thirty Years War(1618-1648), who would destroy and burn the town before they left. It was ethnic Germans who sought to expand that moved into the area and rebuilt Lanškroun. Today you can see the German influence on architecture, memorials (WW1 German memorials are everywhere) and even some of the food (is schnitzel German or Czech? Answer: it is delicious). More wars came and more geopolitical boundaries like the Astro-Hungarian Empire formed. After WW1 the Czech people merged with the Slovakians to become Czechoslovakia. But in 1938 a guy named Hitler wanted his ethic Germans back and the Czech lands known as Sudetenland was freely handed over by the French, English and Italians. I guess the Czechs did not have a say. Those other guys were just thinking of their own skin and “appeased” the guy with the silly mustache. Of course the Sudetenland was not enough to annex and soon he took the rest of Czechoslovakia as a protectorate. Now most of us should know a little about the rest of WW2 history. So afterwards in 1945 the Czech partisans expelled all Germans from their borders. It wasn’t all pretty as the Lanškroun Blood account suggests.
Then another war, a Cold one, consumed the freedom and spirit of the locals. This too is history most should know. But in 1989 a peaceful Velvet Revolution ended that war and in 1992 a velvet divorce dissolved Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Democracy is growing, not without some aches and pains. My friend Jiři managed to leverage some pre democracy earnings and purchase a former state owned manufacturing company in Lanškroun and has grown it into an international company. For a small rural town with a turbulent past, LA is a thriving community. Shops, industry, research, manufacturing and my most favorite bakery in the world, Sázava, are located here.
“In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline—a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners’ ignorance of the Czech homeland.”-Derek Sayer author of The Coasts of Bohemia- a Czech History. A must read if you want to understand Czech culture and her people.
Hrad Potśtejn
About the time Lanškroun was first noticed, the Drslavic family dynasty built the Castle Potštejn. The castle’s ownership has changed through war, marriage and money multiple times. Most notably was the robber barren Nicholas who used the castle as his Hole in the Wall like an early version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Prince Charles, no not the current British monarch, but Charles IV, of Good King Wenceslaus fame, King of Bohemia was the only successful conqueror of the castle. To root out the bandit he had his crew dig tunnels beneath the fortress until it collapsed, burying its residents, and all his loot. Rumors and myths abound with stories of hidden treasure, that remain hidden as of today.
The castle has changed ownership many more times. However,
since 1945 it is primarily controlled and operated by the local municipality and well worth the mile walk up 482 feet to take the tour.
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