Newsletter | Nov/Dec 2015

Lutah Marie Riggs Film - Wendy Bertrand

Comments of the Editor - Lucia Bogatay, December, 2015

City Slicker Farms' West Oakland Farm and Park Slated to Open in March - Rebecca Friedberg

Lucia Travels to the Czech Republic - Lucia Bogatay

Grabstejn and the Hotel on Ještěd Mountain - Lucia Bogatay

The Hospital of Kuks - Lucia Bogatay

The Benes Villa at Seimovo Usti - Lucia Bogatay

Lenka is an attorney who specializes in criminal law. Jaroslav (Jarda) is a civil engineer and contractor. He loves to cook and enjoys music. We always end up talking shop, so I learn about renovating old stone and masonry buildings and the woes of getting approvals. Eduard (Edu) is a precocious four year old, larger than his age group, mischievous and a bit spoiled. He has a definite technical bent, and is always examining machinery to see how it works, and “cooking” things (inedible things) while his father makes dinner. Lenka has a grown-up son by a previous marriage, named Marek. Edu likes him, it is clear, but isn’t sure who he is.

On the first Saturday of my visit in the Czech Republic, when the whole family can join us, we drive to Liberec in Northern Bohemia to visit Grabstejn Castle, the remote outpost of a noble German family. When Germany lost the last war, Czechs of German descent were summarily dispossessed of their Czech properties. One assumes that is why this estate now belongs to the State.

The day is magnificent; warm and sunny. We have a tour of the cold, rambling castle, where hunting seems to have been the primary pastime. It is clear from the paintings of the impressive family tree (adorned with many different colorful escutcheons) and from the many family portraits, that having to maintain the family dignity by finding suitable aristocratic mates for their abundant children must have been a full time job. The current scion has married out of the nobility, and so has lost status in the family, a point our guide is careful to make. Although the palace is owned by the state, family members do visit from time to time. They apparently still own other castles in Germany.

We end the afternoon at Ještěd (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjɛʃcɛt]; German: Jeschken). It is the highest mountain peak (1,012 m) of the Ještěd-Kozákov Ridge near Liberec. From the summit there are views into Germany and Poland. The Horní Hanychov region of Liberec lies just below the mountain. On top of the peak is the Ještěd Tower restaurant, hotel and television tower, designed by Karel Hubáček who won a competition for the commission. The mountain also has a ski resort. Its predecessor on that site was destroyed by fire in 1963. The current tower, begun in 1966, is a tapering cone (actually a rotational hyperboloid) built of reinforced concrete, sitting on piers atop a conical hill which is ominously shaped like a cinder cone. The structural engineer was Zdeněk Patrman and the interior was designed by Otakar Binar, who made extensive use of glass Hubacek received an international award, the August Perret Award, in 1969 for the design.

There is access by car, but it is more easily and pleasantly reached by a funicular from the base of the mountain. A pair of opposing ramps lead one to the Hotel lobby. From there, a beautiful stair brings one to the third floor above grade where there is a restaurant in perfect original 1960’s condition. The large but rather narrow curving dining room has canted strip windows facing the view, with concentric rows of furniture, light fixtures, railings, and the dramatic curving stair which wraps an inside stone clad wall decorated with large cast glass sculptures. North Bohemia used to be famous for its glass and production, which now, alas, is fairly limited. Jested is a popular destination on weekends, even this late in the season, which is cold, but still without snow. In winter one can ski here.

We join the line on the stair for the restaurant and eventually get a table on the west side, where we have hot chocolate, coffee and we order “pine cones” (shiska) which I am told are a typically Czech pastry. The pine cones turn out to be sweetened potato dumplings covered with powdered sugar, butter and ground poppy seeds, and are both starchy, heavy and rich, but quite delicious. The ground poppy seeds give them a curious, distantly familiar flavor, as though I might have tasted something like them in my childhood, perhaps with my Slavic relatives.

From the seating area one can see the countryside far below, through wispy clouds and mists which are occasionally punctuated by small airplanes looking like remote controlled toys. This dramatic spot seems a favorite small plane destination.

After exploring the viewing terrace, admiring the silly sculpture of a dwarf, and taking hero shots on the higher of the rock outcrops, we take the funicular back down the mountain, and return to Kralupy.

On a cloudy day in late October, my last day in the Czech Republic, Lenka Capekova and I drive to East Bohemia, to a small village near Prasky Hrad, called Kuks. It is a former spa town, with an 18th Century hospital. Most of the original complex is missing, but what remains is now almost completely restored. It is still only a fragment of a much larger complex, built by its founder, a fascinating minor German nobleman and art patron named Franz Anton von Sporck.

Sporck’s father had been ennobled for his service in the Thirty Years War, and for fighting against the Turks. He was rewarded with an estate in Bohemia and had purchased this site along the Labe in 1662 when he was 65. Franz Anton was born there that same year, and inherited all his father’s estate when he was 17. A well-educated and cultured man, Franz Anton seems to have been somewhat insecure in his recent nobility, and somewhat conflicted. He traveled around Europe, spending much time in the court of Louis XIV who was building Versailles at the time. He determined to build something on that scale in Bohemia which would impress the more seasoned nobles, whom Franz Anton nevertheless apparently despised. He discovered a mineral spring on his land beside the Labe River, near Hradec Kralove, and in the thirty years from 1694 to 1724 he built a deluxe spa complex, complete with baths, infirmary, chapel, racecourse, theater, gardens, guest houses and a new mansion for himself. The chapel and perhaps the mansion were designed by the Italian born G.B. Aliprandi, who at the time was an architect in great demand in Prague.

Franz Anton was a complex personality, with some major contradictory impulses. There seems to have been a powerful moral and religious component (Franz Anton had had a Jesuit education), especially present in the magnificent chapel, and the didactic and religious sculpture he commissioned, but that was balanced by an equally strong intellectual and luxurious sensibility which provided the rich entertainments and lavish accommodations.

The site was richly decorated with large sculptures, many of which still survive. By far the finest were those by a famous Tyrolean sculptor named Matthias Bernard Braun. Sporck was one of his first Czech patrons. The only earlier one was the group of St. Luitgard for the Charles Bridge in Prague. But Sporck may have gotten him that commission.

Once completed, the complex provided entertainment and comfort for the rich and talented. During that period Kuks, with its concerts, salons, hunts and lavish parties at this upper-.class Baroque resort gave competition to the famous spa towns of Western Bohemia, Kolovy Vary (Karlsbad) and Marianske Lasne (Marianbad). During Sporck’s lifetime it was certainly the social and cultural center he intended it to be. There were fairs in which wine was dispensed from wells, hunting parties that included royalty, knighthood ceremonies for a hunting order Sporck (the Knights of St. Hubert; of which the Emperor was a member), and Venetian nights on the river with music and cannon salvoes.

However, only 20 years after it was finished, and two years after the death of Sporck, a terrible flood on the Labe permanently destroyed the healing spring which fed the spa, and swept away three bridges, the race track, the Summer Pavillion, and assorted other buildings. Thereafter the site went into decline and over the years most of the remaining structures were pillaged for building materials. The hospital, its chapel and a couple of spa buildings, a grand stair and some worker housing are all that remains. Sporck’s mansion was the last to be pulled down, which happened in 1901.

Tom and I visited Kuks in 1993, and saw what remains of it in its original disrepair. I am glad to see it now renovated and restored. Even with the missing buildings, there is more than a hint of the magnificence of the original complex with its grand North-South axial layout.

From North to South, it crosses the Labe River valley. Sporck’s mansion and hot spring with spa buildings were on the slope above the North side. A grand stair bordered by cascades down either side led from the site of the mansion (which was on axis with the hospital and chapel), passes a hotel and assembly rooms (one of them now housing a restaurant). Below that is the river. The Axis continues across an old bridge, and passes through fields dotted with picturesque cows, and random statuary borders the path as it climbs up the opposite hill, where a double stair leads up to a large terrace lined with statuary to the chapel and the hospital beyond it.

Copies of Braun’s magnificent larger-than-life baroque statuary of the Vices and Virtues on the hospital terrace. The originals have been moved to the hospital dining room where one can enjoy their remarkable dramatic power and wonderful movement of these allegorical tours de force. The various vices and virtues are all personified beautifully. One has to believe that some of the ailments treated in the hospital might have been avoided had people seen the allegorical statues BEFORE they got infected.

The tour includes a visit to the famous pharmacy, which still has its original decorated ceramic jars (labeled) and even turned wooden boxes which we are told are quite rare. These are set out on beautifully decorated cabinets and shelving. We see also the large elegant chapel of the hospital, where we are treated to a concert by a pair of Renaissance musicians playing various period instruments and singing in Czech medieval and Renaissance songs. They play various winds, strings, percussion, a tiny organ, cow horn flutes, a primitive zither-like thing, bag pipes, in addition to singing beautifully. Quite impressive. I buy a disk.

On Sunday we have the first of the Presidential villa visits. We go Sezimovo Usti with Janek and his girlfriend Catherine to see the villa of Hana and Edvard Benes.

Benes was the second Czechoslovak president. He and his wife took great joy in building their homes and gardens, and Sezimovo Usti seems to have been their favorite, a real home, a sanctuary, center of their social life, and their burial place.

The couple met in Paris in 1905, became engaged a year later, and married in Prague in 1909. Hana Vickova brought a substantial dowry to the marriage which allowed Edvard to devote himself to his scientific and educational career. For enthusiastic Hana, Edvard was a lifelong advisor and teacher. For hard working and somewhat aloof Edvard, Hana, with her open personality, education and intelligence became the public face.

World War I caused a major disruption in their lives, driving Edvard to go abroad along with Masaryk and Stefanik, where they could be better advocates for their Czechoslovak nationalist interests. Hana stayed home, but could not avoid imprisonment which undermined her health, and may have contributed to the couple’s remaining childless, making Hana more devoted than ever to creating homes for herself and Edvard.

Following the war, with the creation of Czechoslovakia, their lives changed again when Edvard Benes became foreign minister, and eventually prime minister. However, life continued to be difficult. Benes resigned from the government in 1938 following the Munich agreement, and went into exile again in England in 1939. He returned following the war, and resumed his duties briefly before, sick and dying, he again resigned from the government (now Communist). Benes died and was buried at the villa in a place of his chosing. Hana survived him for another 26 years, living out her life at Sezimovov Usti, fighting off Communist confiscation of the villa as long as she could. In her will she wanted it opened to the public. Oddly, under Communism this was not possible, and it was only to be achieved after 1990. The villa was fully restored between 2006 and 2009.

The gardens, in the English style, with large trees and pools, were designed by architect Otakar Fierlinger, who also designed a later addition to the house. The estate had been enlarged between 1932 and 1938 with gradual purchases of adjoining properties. This allowed both a formal “parterre” and a more relaxed park beyond it which led in each direction to the rivers bordering the property: The Luznice River to the South East, and Kozsky Creek on the opposite side. The contours of the site inspired a rock garden on the slope towards the river, and on the advice of the author Karel Capek, a well was placed below a spillway from the pool near the house. It was known as Karel's Well. The couple both loved to garden, and planted many of the trees themselves.

The Fall colors during our visit are spectacular: the birches are an intense yellow, and the oaks in shades of variegated rust and gold. The vines on stone walls and buildings have turned an intense red. I enjoy the company, the day, and the insights into 20th Century Czech history.