Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Prague Post- Teen Ager Finds Vanished Village

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Prague Post- Teen Ager Finds Vanished Village

Teenager finds vanished village

Category: Culture

Published: 12 August 2015

Written by Raymond Johnston

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Czech 15-year student writes book about traces found hidden in vegetation

Stožec, South Bohemia, Aug 12 (ČTK) — Luděk Němec, a 15-year-old Czech student, has written a book about a vanished village in the ŠumavaMountain, titled Krásná Hora - the History of a Forgotten Weaver's Village, that was officially presented in Stožec today.

Němec was collecting documents for his book from the age of 11 when he started searching for the abandoned village in the locality.

The ŠumavaMountain, situated in southern and western Bohemia, spreads along the country's southwestern border. The national park established on its territory is one of the largest in Europe.

“I have been travelling to Šumava with the parents since my childhood and I gradually took up interest in the extinct local villages,” said Němec, student of a grammar school in České Budějovice who lives in Dolní Třebonín village, both south Bohemia.

Mild winters in the past few years when Šumava was not covered with snow helped him find traces of the village, he explained.

“All of a sudden, I started uncovering places where the vanished village Krásná Hora used to lie,” Němec said.

He found various relics of old buildings and sacral monuments that were hidden in a lush vegetation in other seasons of the year.

The 170-page book depicts the history of the village of Krásná Horain Šumava (Schoenberg in Boehmerwald in German) from its foundation until the transfer of its mostly German inhabitants and its vanishing after World War II.

The book offers a number of period photographs, including maps with a precise location of particular houses in the village. Each house is described in one paragraph, including its history and owners.

“Old memories come back to life thanks to this book,” Němec said.

He has cooperated with the Seidel Studio photographic museum in Český Krumlov, south Bohemia, from which some of the period photos published in his book come.

Krásná Horais not the only village that disappeared in Šumava following World War II and the communist coup in the country in 1948. The communist regime relocated the inhabitants of several villages situated near the border in the 1950s.