Číslo 2, roč. 111 (2024)

The article focuses on how residents of the north Bohemian town of Liberec deal in their family histories with possession of post-displacement. The objects they use were confiscated from the German-speaking minority in the aftermath of World War 2. The text provides an overview of narratives of this event in the Czech public discourse and discusses how these are reflected in family stories. The study is based on three family histories collected during ethnographic fieldwork and the analytical framework is informed by memory studies and theories of hauntology.

The article raises the issue of identification as a “tutejszy” among people who live in southeastern Lithuania today. The question of how and why “tutejsi” (plural for “tutejszy”) draw identity boundaries between themselves and other people is very important due to the overall social and political changes in this region over the last century. To answer this question, qualitative field research was conducted using observation, participant observation, and in-depth interviews with the region’s inhabitants.
The data analysis revealed two categories that play a role in the drawing of identity boundaries: the first relates to ethnicity and the second one relates to the value ascribed to being a “tutejszy”. Based on these two axes, the authors developed four models of “tutejszy” identification in southeastern Lithuania.

The text focuses on the re/construction of identity and heritage conservation in the Slovak town of Partizánske. The town was founded as one of the industrial towns of the Baťa company at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s. Despite the efforts of experts, neither the town’s urban plan nor any significant part of it (except for the modernist church) is institutionally protected to this day. In this text, we offer an alternative approach to the re/construction of historical heritage and its institutional protection. In addition to qualities deemed valuable by art historians, this approach is informed by the current collective memory on which the town’s inhabitants base their relationship to historical heritage. We anticipate that focusing on the inhabitants’ current relationship and understanding of the city’s history and broadening the focus beyond the founding firm and its activities can support efforts to institutionalise local heritage conservation.

This article explores how local media constructed resilience and agency in two small towns in interwar Czechoslovakia. It explores how small towns were represented as actors capable of coping with structural disadvantages and of navigating through the uncertainties of the turbulent period of the “long” 1930s. The research focuses on two towns, Kdyně and Heřmanův Městec, and presents the content analysis of two periodicals, Kdyňská Stráž (The Kdyně Argus) and Zájmy Heřmanoměstecka (The Heřmanův Městec Affairs). The comparative analysis of the periodicals’ agendas, the narratives of the towns, the towns’ relationship to a larger system, and the framing of major challenges during the analyzed period has unveiled common traits as well as differing strategies in creating a sense of agency: an internally- and individually-oriented discourse in Zájmy Heřmanoměstecka and an externally and collectively oriented discourse in Kdyňská Stráž.