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Sociocultural Psychology on the Regional Scale pp 47–74Cite as

Sociogenesis: The Making of a Land and a Symbolic Space

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Abstract

This chapter proposes a sociogenetic reading of the hill and its region. For this, it first retraces the history of the region, with a focus on events that had consequences for the hill and how it is apprehended today, from ancient times to middle ages, during which one of the founding myths of the country was defined in connection to the hill, into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the First Czechoslovak Republic, World War II, communism, the Velvet revolution and its aftermath. Second, on this basis, the chapter shows the different “uses” that have been made of the hill across time: a historical-mythical place, a national argument in times of crises, an artistic motive and a touristic attraction. In any case, the hill has become a symbolic reality, or an ornament, that is redundant not only in the history of the Czech Republic but also in the current visual landscape of the region. On this basis, the first series of hypotheses are made: because of this double existence, material and symbolic, and its extreme redundancy, it is quite likely that the hill is playing the semiotic role of an attractor.

The notion of an entity moving through time gives rise to the notion of history as always history of something, this something being in particular case the Czech nation (…). When the object of history is the nation, it is its imagined existence over time which makes it possible the construction of the enduring “we” who imagine “our history” and unproblematically utter, as Czechs do, the phrase “We have suffered for three hundred years”.—(Holý, 1996, pp. 116–117)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    My limited access to the Czech language brings me to rely on English translations or secondary literature; the fact that I do not recourse to archival sources will be excused, I hope, by the fact that I have no intention to replace the work of historians.

  2. 2.

    https://www.dub.cz/en/rip-mountain; https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1XE14_geologie-ripu-geology-of-mountain-rip and also on geological anomalies (Ulrych et al., 1998).

  3. 3.

    Profous, Antonín (1951). Místní jména v Čechách: Jejich vznik, původní význam a změny, díl 3. M-Ř. Prague, Czechoslovakia: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences as quoted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%98%C3%ADp_Mountain.

  4. 4.

    There are thus traces of Říp in other chronicles. See the only book fully written on Říp (Jilík, 2008).

  5. 5.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%98%C3%ADp_Mountain; it was “renewed in 1126 by Czech Prince Soběslav I at the occasion of his victory over the German King Lothar III in the famous battle of Chlumec” http://www.roudnicenl.cz/mesto/sights.

  6. 6.

    https://www.roudnicenl.cz/mesto/sights

  7. 7.

    The history of the Czech Republic has a few significant periods and turns, which I can only allude to here; for more details, see the structure of the excellent “The Czech Reader” (Bažant et al., 2010).

  8. 8.

    https://www.roudnicenl.cz/mesto/sights;

  9. 9.

    https://www.triposo.com/loc/Roudnice_nad_Labem/history/background

  10. 10.

    There were some political discussions on who (German, Czechs) had to move or could choose to stay in the territories or resettle (Smetana, 2008, p. 59), but the application of these rules seems to have been varied (see Chap. 5).

  11. 11.

    Hence, it seems that some Czech families in Ústí/Aussig who were living there for many generations and had cut their ties with possible relatives inland actually remained there during the war; see testimony of Bedřich Brabec (Matějka 2010, p. 149).

  12. 12.

    Beneš apparently felt that he took the only reasonable solution, given the lack of support of his allies. He thus writes in his memoirs: “We were informed [by France and Great Britain] that if we did not accept the plan for the cession of the so-called Sudeten regions, they would leave us to our fate, which, they said, we had brought upon ourselves. They explained that they certainly would not go to war with Germany just to ‘keep the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia’”. (Beneš, 1954, p. 43, emphasis original). According to Luža, however, “the decision to capitulate haunted him for the rest of his life” (Luža & Vella, 2002, p. 22). See also (Smetana, 2008) for a close analysis of the process leading to the Munich agreement and its consequences.

  13. 13.

    This question – whether Czechoslovakia, with its small yet strong army, should have fought or not - was discussed in public debate, during the war and after, in historiography and literature (Heimann, 2009, pp. 82–86; Luža & Vella, 2002, pp. 20–24; Mastny, 1971, pp. 17–20). Mamatey reports that after the announcement of the surrender, “a million people milled through the streets of the capital, frenziedly crying: ‘We want to fight!’” (Mamatey, 1973, p. 164). See also the accounts of resistance generals (Luža & Vella, 2002; Moravec, 1975), bitter and clairvoyant about the political underpinnings of the situation, and in contrast the novels by Josef Skvorecky that describe the carelessness of some part of the youth under occupation (Skvorecky, 2010).

  14. 14.

    As shown by a series of letters between the Böhmische Escompte and the Dresder Bank, documents which were made available for the Nürnberg trials https://wiener.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/Results/SimpleSearchResults.

  15. 15.

    As retraced on a website devoted to the Langweil family. The story has also been reported by one interviewee. http://zmizelilangweilovi.zstrmice.cz/pages_en/info/daniel-eduard-langweil.php.

  16. 16.

    An event that inspired literature and cinema (for instance, Binet, 2010; Linskey, 2017; MacDonald, 2011)

  17. 17.

    The money was exchanged to the ration of 1 Reichsmark to 1 Czech krona (CZK); in addition, people could only exchange 500 CZKs; “amounts exceeding CZK 500 were forcibly deposited on bonded deposits. These deposits remained blocked until 1953 (…), when they were canceled without further compensation in the next monetary reform”. (https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8Ceskoslovensk%C3%A1_m%C4%9Bnov%C3%A1_reforma_(1945)).

  18. 18.

    As in the Slánský trials, which were mock trials that led to the execution of a member of the communist party and 10 other members of his group, himself and a majority of his colleagues being Jewish (McDermott, 2015, pp. 69–73).

  19. 19.

    Apparently, one of the sons of the owners of Butonia came after the war to try to recover the factory. As it was already nationalised, he decided to work as an employee of the former family factory.

  20. 20.

    Since December 2017, I have been surprised by the increase of the Czech flags everywhere in the country, from billboards next to the highways, to pots of yoghourt.

  21. 21.

    https://countryeconomy.com/unemployment/czech-republic

  22. 22.

    Oral version as told to me as I started to discover the country. Similar versions can be found in secondary literature (‘Czech Republic’, 2016; Pospec, 2003).

  23. 23.

    http://www.kct.cz/cms/czech-tourist-klub-kct

  24. 24.

    This was led by the chairman of the association, at that time Václav Bouma; apparently the cottage is also named “the Bouma hut”. https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumova_chata.

  25. 25.

    Apparently there is no clear attribution of the origin of that inscription http://www.cestomila.cz/clanek/1384-rip-nevypadala-by-posvatna-hora-ceskeho-naroda-lepe-odlesnena, but a picture of 1954 (Fig. 4.9) shows clearly that it was not there yet.

  26. 26.

    Apparently with the disapproval of the National Heritage Institute (Nejedlý, 2015).

  27. 27.

    http://www.podripsko.cz/menuId-1-strankaId-28-stranka-hora_rip.html

  28. 28.

    One old belief or rumor was also that Praotec Čech was buried in Ctiněves, but archeological researches have disproved that hypothesis.

  29. 29.

    http://www.podripsko.cz/menuId-96-strankaId-65-stranka-spolek_rip.html

  30. 30.

    http://www.dox.cz/en/exhibitions/where-is-my-home

  31. 31.

    http://www.galerieroudnice.cz/narod-sobe.html

  32. 32.

    http://www.usteckykraj-priroda.cz/14

  33. 33.

    See, for instance, a druid association: https://www.druidi.cz/hora-rip/.

  34. 34.

    With endless advertising – here for instance https://cestovani.idnes.cz/co-mohamedu-mekka-to-cechu-rip-d2e-/po-cesku.aspx?c=A071230_175522_igcechy_tom.

  35. 35.

    http://www.podripsko.cz/

  36. 36.

    E.g., http://www.podripske-pivo.cz/main.php

  37. 37.

    Apparently, the nationalists did not see the irony of climbing the hill for their claims, when the very logo on the hill compares them to pilgrims going to the Mecca.

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  1. Institute of Psychology and Education, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Tania Zittoun

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Zittoun, T. (2019). Sociogenesis: The Making of a Land and a Symbolic Space. In: Sociocultural Psychology on the Regional Scale. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33066-8_4

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