Abstract
My paper concentrates on the preservation of cultural heritage in the area of Northern Bohemia during state socialism. I chosed this region because we are not only facing the common paradox of socialist heritage care (these future-oriented utopias preserved artifacts of the past), but also facing the process of a changing cultural landscape due to, in this case, coal mining.
I will apply the diachronic perspective on this issue, comparing the approaches to cultural heritage on the regional level in the early 1950s (heritage sites in the revolutionary phase of socialism) to those of the 1960s (especially in 1962, when status of National Cultural Heritage Site was "invented"), and I will conclude with the years before and after 1989 (to track the continuity of a specific method of preservation). I am mainly focused on the lists of heritage sites, which changed a lot especially in regions where the cultural landscape was transformed.
According to these lists can we create a networks on the maps, which will help us to understand the criteria and categories of the heritage sites. What purposes could be behind heritage preservation in different cases of heritage sites? Primary sources reveal that behind the declared need to preserve important monuments of history, personal, career or other public goals are often hidden.
The majority of cases that I will describe are connected with controversy. It was not just about, what to preserve and what to not, the discussion shows us also the meanings ascribed to the heritage and history generally by the social agents.
Through the different motivations, I understand heritage preservation in socialism as an authentic way of making sense in the public space. An important issue is the question of (dis)continuity in the specific method of heritage preservation after 1989.