Czech Republic History

Czech Republic - national flag

The flag was officially adopted in 1920 by the formation of the Czechoslovak state after the First World War. To Bohemia's white-red heraldic colors, a blue triangle was added to distinguish the flag from the Polish one. Blue is Mæhren's heraldic base color. The flag remained unchanged when Slovakia became independent in 1993.

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Czech Republic - prehistory

Czech Republic is rich in Paleolithic finds. The oldest pebble tools are more than ¹/₂ million. years old, and for approximately ¹/₂ million. years ago simple hand wedges and scrapers were manufactured. From the Middle Paleolithic, several bone finds are known to Neanderthal man. At Bečov, the traces of a small semicircular hut have been examined. From the Late Paleolithic, the mammoth hunting ground Dolní Věstonice can be highlighted, inhabited for approximately 28,000-26,000 years ago. Round huts with hearth and walls of earth and stone have been found; sometimes mammoth bones and tusks were used in the construction. From Dolní Věstonice come the world's oldest figures in burnt clay of mammoth, rhino, bear, reindeer and lion as well as a female figure. Funerals, mammoth bones and bone carvings have also been found at Předmostí. approximately 5000 BC agriculture was introduced with the ribbon ceramic culture. The Bronze Age began approximately 2200 BC, and approximately 1800 BC the Czech Republic was covered by the high grave culture. The Iron Age began approximately 700 BC, and from approximately 500 BC the Czech Republic became part of the Celtic La Tène culture, from which in 400-tfKr. rich princely tombs are known such as at Chlum with Etruscan imports. Even then was the fortressZávist near Prague probably an important princely seat. Later a city arose here, an oppidum. Other oppida are Stradonice and Staré Hradisko. Around the birth of Christ, the La Tène culture was replaced by Germanic cultures with immigration from the north and west by tribes such as Marxists and hermundurs. At Musow, extremely rich tombs from the 1st century AD have been found. with Roman imports.

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Czech Republic - history

During the migration period, the Huns' advance in the 400's affected. only peripheral southern Moravia, but from 500-t. an extensive and rapid migration of Slavic tribes, which also came to include Czech territory, took place.

Written sources are almost non-existent, but a Frankish chronicle from the 600's. mentions an allegedly Frankish merchant, Samo, who headed a Slavic "empire" or tribal community 623-658, whose territorial extent we do not know, however.

The first well-documented state formation in the area was the Great Moorish Empire, while the historical roots of modern-day Czechia date back to the 900's, when a principality emerged in Bohemia. From 1029, the neighboring country of Moravia was linked to the kingdom, and these two countries still make up the Czech Republic today.

The population here was predominantly Czech, but in the 1200's. German immigrants settled in the mountainous fringes of Bohemia in particular, just as they contributed to many urban foundations. In 1198, Bohemia gained the status of a kingdom, and for a time the country became a great power in Central Europe.

The 1400's Hussite War weakened the country, however, and in 1526 the Austrian Ferdinand I of Habsburg was elected king of Bohemia. The Catholic Habsburgs came into increasing conflict with the Protestant Bohemian estates, which in 1618 triggered the Thirty Years' War.

After the victory of the Habsburgs in the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620, Bohemia experienced a strong recatolation and an increasingly strong central government from Vienna. Linguistically, Czech gradually became Latin and German as cultural and administrative languages.

In the 1800's. a strong Czech national movement emerged, seeking autonomy for Bohemia and Moravia within the Habsburg Empire, a claim rejected by the large German minority.

At the end of World War I, the Czechs, led by TG Masaryk, succeeded in gaining Allied support for an independent state enlarged with Slovakia, which until that time had belonged to Hungary, and thus Czechoslovakia emerged on 28.10.1918.

The Czech-German conflict continued in Czechoslovakia, and relations between Czechs and Slovaks became increasingly tense, which Adolf Hitler used to break up the country in 1938-39 and establish the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia.

After World War II, Czechoslovakia was restored and the majority of its German population was displaced. The Communist takeover of power in 1948 dampened the Czechoslovak conflicts, but did not resolve them, and after the fall of communism in 1989, they flared up again, resulting in a division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia per. 1/1/1993

The Czech Republic was then an independent state. Under Prime Minister Václav Klaus, the country pursued a very self-conscious policy from 1993, emphasizing economic reforms at home and a foreign policy monopoly on rapprochement with the West, claiming to have distanced itself from other post-communist countries in aligning with Western standards.

After the 1996 election, Klaus was able to form a government again, albeit with a weakened mandate. A growing economic crisis and numerous economic scandals with corporate eviction and corruption forced Klaus to resign in December 1997 when his party ODS split.

Danmarks Nationalbank Governor Josef Tošovský (b. 1950) led a transitional government until an extraordinary parliamentary election in June 1998, after which the Social Democrat Miloš Zeman formed a minority government with the support of Klaus' ODS, with which a permanent co-operation agreement was concluded.

History after 2000

In foreign policy, the Czech Republic gained EU accession status in 1997, and under Zeman's rule, the process of adapting to EU standards was accelerated so that, after a referendum, the country could join the EU along with the other Central and Eastern European candidate countries 1.5. 2004.

By 1999, the Czech Republic, along with Poland and Hungary, had joined NATO. Miloš Zeman's government got made a necessary privatization of the banking sector, and from 1999 the economy began to improve. Since 2002, the growth rate of GDP has risen steadily to now around 6% (2006), and the Czech Republic is also approaching the economic level of the old EU countries.

The parliamentary elections in 2002 resulted in a narrow Social Democratic election victory, allowing the party under Vladimír Špidla to form a majority government in a coalition with two smaller bourgeois parties. In 2003, in a lengthy process, Parliament elected Václav Klaus to succeed Václav Havel as President of the Czech Republic, although Klaus, with his pronounced EU skepticism, is often at odds with both the government and his own old party, the ODS.

Internal unrest in the Social Democrats meant that Špidla had to resign as head of government in July 2004 and his successor Stanislav Gross (b. 1969) in April 2005 following a corruption scandal. He was replaced by the energetic Jiří Paroubek, who, however, could not prevent the ODS from becoming the largest party in the June 2006 elections.

The election left the Czech Republic in an unstable political situation, with the left and the right each receiving 100 seats.

After 2013, the president is elected by direct election. The first directly elected president was Miloš Zeman.

Czech Republic - visual arts and architecture

With the advent of Christianity in the 800-900's. churches and monasteries were built in both Bohemia and Moravia. Prague got in the first half of 1000-t. its first basilica church, the Romanesque St. George, and the castle Hradčany were founded in 1200-t. During the reign of Charles IV (1346-78), Prague became a metropolis, and with inspiration from foreign artists, Gothic in Bohemia developed into one of the richest in Europe. At the castle Karlštejn near Prague, the painter Theoderik oversaw the decoration of the Holy Chapel (1357-65). Charles Bridge in Prague was built under the direction of Peter Parléř, who also worked at the Cathedral of St. Veit; both are excellent examples of High Gothic.

After the Hussite wars of 1419-34 and the victory of Catholicism over the Reformation tendencies, the Renaissance gained ground in the late 1400's, in the Smíšek Chapel in the Cathedral of Kutná Hora. With the reign of the Habsburgs from 1526 and the convening of Italian architects and sculptors, the renaissance unfolded in the Belvedere Summer Palace in Prague (1538-64), and many cities and palaces were adapted to the ideals of the Renaissance. Rudolf II's reign 1576-1612 was one of the most important epochs in the country's art. With artists such as Bartholomäus Spranger, Adriaen de Vries and Johann von Aachen attached to the court in Prague, Rudolfine Mannerism emerged, which had influence throughout Europe.

In the period after 1620, the painter Karel Škréta stands out with his synthesis of the international currents of the time. The renewal of architecture now took place in the secular buildings of the aristocracy, and in the 1700's. developed a distinctive blending style of Baroque and Gothic. The painter Petr Jan Brandl brought the baroque style into his portraits and religious motifs and provided inspiration for his contemporaries, Vaclav Reinerwho painted frescoes in several of Prague's churches. In the 1700's. the artistic influence of Austria spread with inspiration from Italian and Dutch baroque, as seen in churches around Olomouc and Brno. Leading architects were Christoph and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer. The development of art and architecture was controlled from Vienna, and it led in the 1800's. to a flourishing of the national and folkloristic features of art with the painter Josef Mánes as the father of a national Czech expression.

The architecture was in the 1800's. characterized by historicism until modernism broke through around 1900. The Bauhaus school was a source of inspiration, and Mies van der Rohe's Tugendhat House (1928-30) near Brno and the city of Zlín, planned after Le Corbusier's advice, shows the influence of functionalism up to World War II. In art, modernity manifested itself in several groups of artists. František Bílek became the main figure of the Art Nouveau style. Cubism stood out strongly, also internationally, with Emil Filla, Bohumil Kubišta and František (François) Kupka. After World War I, when the Czechoslovak Republic was formed, artists and intellectuals formed an internationally oriented avant-garde. From the artists' association Devětsil sprang in the early 1920's the so-called artificialism, in which folklore and a modern poetic expression were combined, and from this developed surrealism, which in the 1930's and 1940's was represented by Toyen, Jindřich Štýrský and Josef Istler.

After World War II, state-promoted social realism became prevalent. With the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and the division of the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, artists were once again given the opportunity to work freely, also in an international context. Graphics and book illustration have in the 1900's. has been extensively used by artists as a means of expression, highly experimental and internationally noted in times of repression of artistic freedom.