Collective Mourning

Table of Content

I. The Village

II. The Mutual Celebration

III. The Ruin as a Memorial for Many

IV. Mutually Remembered History

V. The Continued Existence of the Community

VI. The Leaving of the Village

VII. The Reality Shock of

VIII. Mutual Mourning

IX. Report about the conference

X. Endnotes, Literature

I. The Village

In the 20th century no decisive event left its mark on the people of Central Europe as much as the time of the Second World War. War, death, and the separation of families were sources of suffering that had—and have—to be integrated, to be repressed, to be understood, and to be remembered. I would like to make the focus of my discussion a village, its people, and their fates and memories. The pictures you will see, uncommented, in the next half hour are being shown with the express permission of the surviving villagers and their Czech friends. I am compromising to a certain extent the usual standards of scholarship because my mother’s family forms a part of the community about which I am reporting.

Here I want to examine two questions: How is the past of the village remembered and how are these memories connected with the expulsion of its inhabitants and the village’s subsequent fate? And how was memory constructed after 1990, and what forms does it take today?

^[i]To establish different levels of discourse, I’d like to diferentiate beetween the usage of the name Maiersgrün as a memory-designator and Vysokà, its official contemporary name. The village was a little spot on the border between Bohemia and Bavaria, the Sudetenland and the German Reich, between the Federal Republic of Germany and Czechoslovakia. As a result of the Benes decree in the year 1946, all of its 700 inhabitants, as Sudeten Germans, were forced to leave and settled for the most part in the Western zones.^[ii] Over the course of the decades the buildings in the village, located as it was in a restricted border area, became dilapidated, so that today exactly five of the former 120 houses are still standing. The village no longer exists. On the basis of this village, which has a special status due to its exposed geographical location, I would like in a case study to attempt to trace the history of German suffering and German memory up to the present day.

The study is based on numerous conversations with some of the surviving inhabitants of this village who voluntarily told me their view of things.^[iii] In what follows, I shall be arguing from two ends in order to answer both of the questions I’ve just raised: The one starting point will be the history of the village as described and remembered by its inhabitants; I’m going to show how the remaining Maiersgrün inhabitants and their family are currently dealing with this heritage. What did it mean to live in Maiersgrün before 1946; how does the view of history remembered today present itself and is it coherent? Starting from the present – the other starting point – I will try to portray the evolution of the village community. What terms were employed to express their own status as “victims”; what forms were taken by mourning, reconciliation, forgiveness and the confession of their own guilt? Besides memory, hope is another central concept, since Ernst Bloch’s “principle of hope,” one can ask about the utopias that the memories, the constructions of the past possess.^[iv]

II. The Mutual Celebration

Last year an unusual family celebration took place in Vysokà^[v]: For a few days children frolicked through the forest-like area, the bell rang in the crumbling ruins of the village church; one could see cars with German and Czech license plates driving into the area. A member of the Maier family from Maiersgrün was celebrating her golden wedding anniversary in Vysokà, together with her family—most of the children and grandchildren had never before set foot in the place, but had been invited by their grandparents to celebrate this family reunion in this particular place. The guests came from far away, from all parts of Germany; the family ties held them together. Some of the guests were even neighbors of the family from the time before 1946. At the same time this celebration was no self-confident demonstration vis-à-vis the Czechs, no announcement of revisionist claims, but a gesture of bidding the place farewell in a mood of composed cheerfulness.

This family, which was allowed to celebrate such a unique experience there, obtained the permission of the local Czech authorities for this celebration: many of the Czechs living in the vicinity had even interceded on their behalf, and had also come. It was a mutual celebration. And it happend in a special place that is listed today as a national monument in a guidebook to the sights of the Czech Republic.^[vi] Not because the church in Vysokà is so important from an art-historical point of view, but because here something unique was created through private initiative. A memorial for which many thousands of euros were donated, which relied as little on—German or Czech—governmental subsidies as on the lobbying groups of those who were expelled, the Landsmannschaften. The Catholic Church in Vysokà was no longer used and became dilapidated after 1946 due to its status in the restricted zone. In 1978 the roof-truss was carried away for use in construction or as firewood, and the church, which was the pride of the village, became a ruin. Each year since 1991 a part of the ruin has been conserved—in its fabric as a ruin—for the most part through the work of private individuals.

III. The Ruin as a Memorial for Many

Thanks to this church ruin there is a place, which for the former inhabitants of Vysokà is a place for remembering, mourning and celebration. Services are jointly conducted on the feast of Corpus Christi by the Bishop of Pilsen and by a Bavarian priest. In general the Catholic creed is a very important tie of the former inhabitants and the Czechs as well as memory is centered around the former church and it’s church yard. The frame of the ceremonies and conventions is a religious one because it offers familiar ways of mourning and filling the gap of silence.

The ruin has become a destination for cyclists and hikers,^[vii] who for years have moved freely in the area that for decades was the demarcation line between the superpowers and thus a restricted zone. It is a special kind of memorial site: Without supervision, individuals have set up notice boards with pictures to remember, for example, the parish priests, individual houses. In a joint effort the labeling has been done in German and Czech. There is no explicite didactic principle behind this documentation; much more it has been left up to private initiative to determine where a new point of memory is created within this ruined space. The ruin after all is not only a romantic subject, but is practically predestined to recall something past that cannot be reconstructed, as an adequately felt symbol of grief and suffering. In general the tendencie of memory is in my poit of view a conservative one orientated to traditional values and without a critical reflexion.

For over ten years a guest book has lain in the makeshift altar piled up in the open-air church; this year it is the fourth of its kind. An analysis of the entries reveals that above all praise for the commitment of the participating helpers predominates. Only two out of hundreds of entries consider this form of remembrance as negative; they criticize the collaboration with the Czechs and the use of the language for the notice boards. Personal memories of former inhabitants are mixed in with the impressions of passing tourists and hikers, those of astonishment at the curiosity. The guest books constitute a whole choir of associations, wishes, thanks, memories.^[viii] The appeal of writing something down appears to be great at this place. In my opinion, there a memorial has been formed that is of a type of its own: The ruin is the center of this village, which one can scour for traces of the past. It is a grassroots interest group that has grown up out of personal ties, friendships that this place has connected over the decades.^[ix]

And the suffering about which we are concerned? It is not expressed in words: there are no accusations, no loud regrets, but the word Vertreibung is spoken; those affected cannot see it otherwise and even the Czechs have translated it in their language. Those affected are at a loss for words, as if not wanting to commit themselves to judgments besides political correctness. What is reported on the notice boards is the history of this village, a history that is identity-creating and where the interpretive sovereignty seems clear. That was.

IV. Mutually Remembered History

The notice boards in the ruin are only one narrative form for the history of the village. Two publications bear witness to that; naturally much more vivid are the memories of the people I spoke to, whom I would like to refer to here and then categorize without constantly citing them verbatim. My aim is to isolate in my perception the memory traces that are significant for me. What has crystallized out in the process is a prototypical history of the village:

The end of the old name of the village, grün (green), refers to its origin, in other words, woodland that had been cleared for cultivation. Mining in the Tillen Mountains was the impulse for the settlement; in the 19th century the unprofitable mine was abandoned and until 1946 Maiersgrün became what it was in the memories of the people I spoke to: a traditional farming village.^[x] The following period is remembered as a “golden age”: The lives of their ancestors were hard, but fair; war only played a role in the Napoleonic era. Only in the 19th century does the outside world come into view: the famous spas like Marienbad as well as the neighoring town of Eger. Here many of the farmers found work in the hotels or as tradesmen. The public vocational school in the neighboring Bad Königswart offered possibilities for advancement.

It is striking how parallel the stories are of the individual people I spoke to and what coincides in their accounts: For the most part the First World War is interpreted as a decisive event, since not only did forty men lose their live in the war, but in January, 1919, Czech soldiers came to the village. To a large extent the relations with the neighboring Bavarian regions were broken off. Unemployment made its entrance, the Czech crown became the currency, and Czech became to a large extent the official language of the authorities. Businesses were abandoned; prices for one’s products fell; young men left the village, and club life was monitored and decreased. In the middle of the thirties customs officials moved in; the Czech National Guard was present; barricades made it clear that the villagers were in a border zoneThis period is always clearly connoted as negative and placed in relation to the events of the year 1946. What had begun in 1919 found its continuation there. In the memories of the inhabitants one hears such expressions as Fremdbestimmung, Schikane, and Besatzung.

[...]

^[i] The name Maiersgrün is consciously used for the historical village, Vysokà, on the other hand, when one is speaking of the present site. Moreover, as a matter of course the inhabitants of Maiersgrün still today call their village Maiersgrün in their stories and memories. Slowly, however, even this group has begun to accept Vysokà as the name of the present place.

^[ii] On the history of the place as it was first set down after World War II, cf. for one Karl Mayer: Unvergessene Heimat Maiersgrün, Chronik, 1956. Another memorial brochure with a slightly semi-official touch was created in the year 1984 and contains several reports by different authors: Johann Hufnagl / Franz Pany / Gert Reiprich (Eds.): Unvergessene Egerländer Heimat. Mein Maiersgrün. Schicksal eines Egerländer Dorfes und seiner Menschen, published by the Heimatverband of the Marienbader e.V., Geisenfeld, 1984.

^[iii] Serving as a basis are nine taped interviews that were recorded in connection with the homecoming reunion in June 2001. Out of consideration for the privacy of those taking part in the interviews, I have not given their names. Verbatim quotations are given with initialized references; in any case, the majority of the quotations are indirect quotations or paraphrases.

^[iv] Ernst Bloch, Prinzip Hoffnung, Frankfurt, 1966.

^[v] With the permission of the host I have been allowed to discuss and show pictures of this celebration, which took place at Easter 2003.

^[vi] www.marianskolazensko.cz/html/historie/staravoda.html

^[vii] www.boehmen-reisen.de/reisen/familie_kanu_kur/radkuren.php www.traveljournals.net/explore/szech_republic/locations/m/1.html

^[viii] The guest books and were examined by me in April 2003.

^[ix] Interview with Mrs E.M. from August 17, 2001.

^[x] The memories tally by and large with the accounts from Mein Maiersgrün; much of the information does not appear to have been passed on orally, but to have originated there.