Západočeská Vlastivěda: Národopis. by Alexandra ProcházkováReview by: Zdenek SalzmannSlavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Winter, 1994), pp. 1131-1132Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2500862 .

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Book Reviews 1131

Zdpadoceskd vlastiveda: Ndrodopis. Ed. Alexandra Prochazkova. Plzen: Zapadoceske nak- ladatelstvi, 1990. 372 pp. Photographs. Line drawings and maps. Bibliography. Index of localities and regions. German summary. 54 Kc, hard bound.

The Czech word vlastiveda, which corresponds to the German Heimrlatkunde, is usually translated in Czech-English dictionaries as "local or national history and geography," but as it is used by Czech writers it also covers an area's natural history, ethnograplhy, arts and crafts, language and folklore. This volume covers the ethnography of the west Bohemian Region (Zdpadocesky kraj, an administrative unit of which there were five in Bohemia besides the capital, Prague). The region extends over 4,200 square miles and includes among its larger towns and cities (proceedin-g friom the north southward) Karlovy Vary, Sokolov, Cheb, Tachov, Plzen1, Rokycany, Domazlice and Klatovy. The work supplements but does not replace the two large, richly illustrated volumes of Plzenisko [the Plzen region] published in 1934 and 1938.

Among the authors of the various sections are specialists associated with the West Bohemian University at Plzen and ethnographers from the staff of what was then the Institute for Ethnography and Folklore of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. The volume acknowledges the coexistence of Czech and Bohemian Germans in the region until 1938 and it pays attention to the resettlement of the west Bohemian borderland after the war, when almost all German-speaking inhabitants chose to move or were transferred to Germany. In generlal, the time period covered is fi-om the end of the eighteenth century until the present.

The book is divided into five chapters. Chap. 1, which deals with old folkways, is by far the longest, containing sections on farm buildings and living quarters, tradi- tional forms of agriculture, diet, crafts, dress, folk art, family and household customs, religion, annual observan-ces, music, dance and folk prose. Chap. 2 discusses the role of industrial workers in the shaping of the ethnographic image of the region. In chap. 3 the nature of the extensive resettlement of the area after World War II is taken up. Some of the new settlers came from the interior of the republic but a great many were re-emigrant Czechs and Slovaks, especially from Volhynia in Ukraine and Romania. Chap. 4 describes the socio-economic changes in west Bohemian villages after 1945 and return-s to many of the topics dealt with in chap. 1 but relative to the postwar period. It is, in effect, a brief ethnography of contemporary village life. In the final chapter listings are provided of folkloric ensembles, ethnographic collections and exhibits in west Bohemian museums, protected structures (farmsteads, granaries, mills and the like) valued for their folk architecture, and proposed folk architecture reser- vations and zones.

The manuscript of the book was sent to the printer in December 1988 when Czech ethnographic research and publications were still under the control of Antonin Robek, whose qualifications for the job were primarily political. This may explain, for ex- ample, the inclusion of the ethnography of industrial workers (chap. 2). There is no reason, to be sure, why the ethnography of the working class should be of less interest than the ethnography of the peasantry, but to what extent, if at all, did the lifeways of industrial workers in west Bohemia differ from the lifeways of such workers else- whel-re in Bohemia? And in any case, if a comprehen-sive modern ethllographic de- scription is intended, why not also include a chapter dealing with the region's urban ethnography? Robek's explanation in the "Introduction" is neither clear nor convinc- ing: "We pass over the way of life and culture in larger towns and cities in part because cities have features different from village culture, and in part because they tend to be bound together in their expressions of familial and social life by usages which are comrmon to them and only slightly dissimilar."

The inclusion of a chapter concerning the re-emigrants to the region is to be commended. After the transfer or voluntary departure of many Bohemian Germnans, both the primarily agricultural southwest and the highly industrialized north of west Bohemia needed to be repopulated. Tens of thousands of new settlers were brought in, some from other parts of Bohemia and others from Slovakia, including Gypsies, Hungarians and Ukrainlians. Still othel-rs who were of either- Czech or Slovak her-itage came from Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, France and other countries. Consid-

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1132 Slavic Review

ering the different cultural backgrounds of these people, their adjustmllent to each other and to a life and area unlike what they were used to would have made an interesting study of the persistence of tradition versus culture change. This topic should have been given more attention than it has received.

Despite the few reservations noted, the work is a useful synthesis of ethnogr-aphic data relating to west Bohemia. Other volumes of the west Bohemiliain vlastiveda have been promised-in fact, a volume on language appeared only recently-and they ar-e worth looking forward too.

ZDENEIK SALZMANN Northern Arizona University

Drehscheibe Prag: Zur deutschen Emigration in der Tschechoslowakei 1933-1939. Eds. Peter Becher and Peter Heumos. Publications of Collegium Carolinum, vol. 75. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992. 206 pp. Name index. DM48, hard bound.

This volume, consisting of fourteen papers by thir-teen contributors, is the outcome of an international colloquium on German cultural and political emigration to Czech- oslovakia 1933-1939, held in Munich in November 1988. In the following year the Adalbert Stifter Verein opened an exhibition under the same title, which was subse- quently shown in several German cities and-after the collapse of commlunismn-in Prague as well. The volume is a heterogeneous collection. It is unevenlly divided be- tween articles concerned with collective histor-ies of political and artistic groups, as well as with explicit biographies of individual politicians or artists (Kul-t R. Grossmann, John Heartfield, Oskar Maria Graf, Oskar Kokoschka,Johannes Ur-zidils). Several chap- ters are concerned with the wartime emigr-atioin from the former Czechoslovak Re- public, especially with the follow-up German emigration to Great Britain and Latin America. Of the thirteen authors seven are German, two are Czech, two are American, one is British and one is Israeli.

Drehsclheibe means literally a railway turn-table and thus car-r-ies conveniently the meaning of a pivotal junction at which groups of German anti-fascists were arrivinlg from various German provinces after 1933, a minority of them seeking asylum, but the majority actually changing trains and pursuing their journey further away from central Europe. Between February 1933 and March 1939 an estimated 20,000 refugees escaping the brown- terror in Hitler's Reich passed through Prague, for the Czecho- slovak capital lay less than 100 mniles away from the German border. The second function of Czechoslovakia from the perspective of Germain emigranlts, as Wierner R6der claims in the intr-oductory chapter, was that of serving as battle station for

p)ropaganlda activities against nazism, not only in Germaily alone but in other- parts of the world as well (for instance in Spaini when-ce hundi-eds of German political refugees, having safely reached Prague, volunlteer-ed to fight in the Interiiation-al Bri- gades). Almost 80% of the political refuigees coming to Czechoslovakia belonged to the left: social democrats, commun-ists, trade Ulnionlists, trotzykites, etc. Prague was selected by the leadership of the German Social Denmocrats as its tempor-ar-y HQ. Only France received a larger body of German fugitives and offered greater opportunities for publishing emigre periodicals (160 titles as against 60 in Czechoslovakia). However, Prague was, without challenge because of its unusual viciility to the German border and its bilingual tradition. Since almost every third inhabitant of Bohemiiia and Mo- ravia was of Germiian nationality, Czechoslovak communists, social democr-ats and trade union-ists offered helping hands through numlerous committees of solidarity, fund- raising and by providing shelter to German refugees. Froml- the cultural point of view, the refugees with their- families had little problem in finding their- needs satisfied since Czechoslovakia had German libraries, cafes, cinenmas, radio p-ograims, newspapers and journlals, and schools of all levels, including two Germani uLniver-sities in Prague alone ancd one in Briinn (Brno). Czechoslovakia's left-wing German authors (e.g. Louis Fiirn- berg, Rudolf Fuchs, Egon Er-win Kisch, F. C. Weiskopf) were internation-ally known.

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