A Spirit at Work / Architecture and Czech Politics 1918-1945 – Vendula Hnídková (ed.)

Architecture in 1918–1945 in the Territory of Czechoslovakia and the Protectorate was created on the basis of markedly varying topics. To locate the architectural production of the time within the territory of a small country in the unsettled situation of Central Europe, it is necessary to confront architecture directly with issues of political science. Therefore, besides the above mentioned emphasis on typological categories or thematisation of individual roles in contrast with group roles in the process of realization of government commissions, each chapter deals with a general term of political science that helps relate architecture to politics quite distinctly. A survey of ambivalent positions of the participants of the architectural and political business during the process of creating the scene of Czechoslovakia and the Protectorate as well as an examination of the shared and developed building production in the context of political issues of the time help define the local identity through architecture in a complex way as a “petrified ideology”. The book is subsidized by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic as a part of the Program of Applied Research and Development of the National and Cultural Identity (NAKI II).