In Liberec, the construction of a monument designed by David Vávra is in preparation

Liberec - Preparatory work has begun in Liberec for a memorial costing 4.4 million crowns, which will bear the names of all the fallen residents of the city from the First World War. Liberec has never had one, it will be created according to a design by architect and actor David Vávra. It is expected to be completed by November 30, coinciding with the 101st anniversary of the end of the war. Petr Brestovanský, one of the project initiators and an archaeologist at the museum, said this today.

Until the displacement after the end of the Second World War, the majority of Liberec's population was German. "In the past, it was proclaimed here that we would come to terms with all the dates that were unpleasant for Liberec, the years 1918, 1938, 1945," he stated. In 1918, everything related to the Austrian monarchy was destroyed, 20 years later everything Czech, and in 1945 everything German. "This seems to me to be the least conflictual, to get past the passion of Germanness, because there are German, Czech, and Jewish names of the fallen side by side. And when I read them, I encounter those names in Liberec to this day about 80 percent of the time," Brestovanský noted. Among the 914 fallen residents of Liberec in the Great War were, for example, Akermann, Berger, Jedlička, and Šolc.

The design of the memorial is not yet final. Initially, the names of the fallen were to be engraved on a plate turning counterclockwise with water flowing in the opposite direction. However, this vision of Vávra did not meet the condition that the memorial would be maintenance-free. Vávra is therefore devising another concept. "For now, it is an idea. In the section determined by the sun's rise and set on the longest day of the year, there will be a plate. Names will be placed on it, and in the middle, there will be a funnel. Water would fall onto a concave metal plate, which should have some resonance," Vávra explained.

The memorial will be located on municipal land at the border of Růžodol and Ostašov. This year, the city hall will allocate 1.2 million crowns for its construction, while another 1.9 million will be contributed by the Ministry of Defense. The project executor, the association Archa 13, took out a loan for the remainder. The site where the memorial will be located was cleared of invasive trees. Now, granite stones are gradually disappearing from it and are being transported to the zoo. There are about 2000 tons of stone there, part of which, according to Brestovanský, will be crushed and used as a base for the memorial.

The location was chosen as a counterpoint to the nearby bustling shopping zone. During the First World War, one of the largest prisoner-of-war camps in Czech territory was located in the area, covering an area of 284 hectares. About 55,000 soldiers, mainly Russian and Italian, were held there. This is also something that the memorial should commemorate in the future. According to Brestovanský, they plan to create educational trails with information about the camp and life within it in the second phase. The third phase involves building a replica of one wooden house from the camp where the captured soldiers lived.