Protestant Monuments

Ceský Těšín

Since the year 1920 Český Těšín has been sharing a fate of a town divided by the state borders. It used to be a bilingual but it is still one city. It lies on the left bank of the river Olše at the edge of the Ostrava Basin at an altitude of 270 metres and 25, 573 inhabitants live there. It is surrounded by several dams and the nearest town is a Polish town Cieszyn. It has several superlatives: the biggest and the busiest border crossing with Poland, the most important centre of the Polish minority in the Czech Republic and the smallest number of historical monuments in a divided town. Although, the Museum of the Těšín Region remained here as well as the Museum Library Silesia and the railway station of Košice-Bohumín track from the middle of the 19^th century, most of the historical monuments can be found in the Polish side. Český Těšín had to face and deal with all these factors during the years; the ethnic relations between Czech, Poles and Germans were not negligible, either. Finally, in the year 1938 a Czech part of Těšín was connected to Poland and the town was formally united. But on the 1^st of September 1939 the town was invaded by the German army and it became a part of the Great German Empire. This disastrous situation affected hardestly the Jewish community in both parts of Těšín: synagogues were burned and the Jewish inhabitants were deported to the extermination camps.

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Ceský Brod

Český Brod Basin spreads in the east of Prague and derives its name from the town of Český Brod (219 metres above sea level with 6,637 inhabitants). The name means the Czech Ford as the town lies on the stream Šembera. It used to be an important place on so-called Trstenická path which had connected Prague with southern and eastern Europe. The town of Český Brod was founded as a market settlement above the ford across the Šembera by Prague bishop Jan I. In the year 1268 Jan III of Dražice, another Prague bishop made the local market settlement a town and it was called Biskupský Brod at the time. During the Hussite Wars the town supported the Hussites and in the year 1437 it was awarded the status of the royal town. In the year 1444 all the Hussite parties came to Český Brod to discuss a significant topic, observance of Compacts of Prague.

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Daňkovice

Near Jimramov, in a protected landscape area of the Žďár Hills, at the southern hill-side of Buchtův hill lies a small municipality of Daňkovice. At an altitude of 685 metres above sea level there live about 136 inhabitants. The municipality was already mentioned for the first time in connection with the year 1350. At that time Daňkovice was a part of the Pernštejn domain and besides peasant settlements the little cottages of day labourers were scattered over the slopes of the hills. The villagers made their living by weaving, by working on the poor fields and in the forest.

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Domažlice (Taus)

“Domažlice is a lovely little town,“ are the words of a song from the region of Chodsko. And the song is right. Domažlice (428 metres above sea level, almost 11,000 inhabitants), located only 16 kilometres from the German border is a traditional centre of the Chodsko region. Famous villages of Chodsko – Klenčí, Postřekov, Újezd, Trhanov or Draženov are situated at the foothill of Čerchov (1,041 metres) which is a part of the Bohemian Forest. It is not far from Domažlice.

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Děčín (Tetschen)

Děčín – in the past it was a name of a king town, today it is a name of a statutory town derived from an ancient Slavic tribe of the Děčans. The town with a rich but also a troubled history, the town located on the confluence of the river Elbe and the river Ploučnice, surrounded by a beauty of the rock towns, deep gorges and beautiful views; this town is also home for 50,000 inhabitants living in a centre of the town and also in surrounding neighbourhoods.

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Herlíkovice - Vrchlabí

Vrchlabí lies at the foothills of the Krkonoše Mountains under the slope Přední Žalý and the Jankův Hill at an altitude of 477 metres. The river Elbe flows through the town. In this important tourist centre and the surrounding villages where the road to Špindlerův Mlýn leeds along the Elbe valley, there live about 13,500 inhabitants.

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Heršpice - Slavkov

Heršpice, a little village in the South Moravian Region, is located only six kilometres from Slavkov, at the border of the Ždánický Forest National Park, 281 metres above sea level. The village has the population of fewer than 600 people. In the 13^th century Heršpice belonged to the Slavkov domain. In 1237 Václav I presented the Order of German Knights with it and in 1411 it became possession of Václav IV. From the early 16^th century to 1919 the domain was owned by the Kounics whose most notable member V. A. Kounic, after beeing appointed a Chancellor by Marie Terezie, was influencing Austrian foreign policy for forty years. At the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century, Dr Václav Duke Kounic built hostels for students in Brno. The hostels became famous during German occupation as a gestapo prison and its torture and execution place.

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Hodslavice

In the Podbeskydské Hills at the southern edge of the Natural park Kojetín along the brook Zrzávka the municipality Hodslavice is stretching. A road connecting Nový Jičín and Valašské Meziříčí is crossing the village. There is a nice hilly countryside with plenty of forests, fields and meadows. The village is at an altitude of 337 metres and over 1,700 inhabitants live here.

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Horní Dubenky (Ober Dubenky)

Horní Dubenky (600 metres above sea level, about 600 inhabitants) lies north of the Javořice Highland with the highest mountain Javořice (836 metres) which is at the same time the highest mountain of the Vysočina Region. It this remote region with a relatively high altitude where the river Jihlava rises, the villages were being established in the 13^th century in a so called “big colonization wave“. One of these villages was also Horní Dubenky. The centre of the region was Janštejn castle which was owned by Jindřich of Hradec since 1383. The castle was probably damaged during the Hussite wars. The rest of the castle can still be found in the forest near Horní Dubenky. Later Horní Dubenky was a part of the Telč domain. In 1423 a Hussite group led by Jan Hvězda of Vicemilice was attacked by the mercenaries of Menhart of Hradec. The rest of the 15^th century was a relatively calm period of agricultural and crafts development. The glass production near Janštejn was mentioned in this connection. But the post-White-Mountain period became one of the most difficult periods in the history of the region.

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