Czechoslovakia in the 1930's - history through a novel's eyes

Overall country: see Czech Republic Road Ways.

We understand from this comment at our Roma in Film post that the Roma population lives peacefully in Cesky Krumlov, the town featured in the photo heading our blog.  Here is the comment:   retoque fotografico has left a new comment on your post "Romani in Film":

I was in a town called Cesky Krumlov in souther Czech. The Roma people are completely integrated and live side by side with the Slavs of the Czech republic.


Posted by retoque fotografico to Gypsies, Roma, Romani. Cultural Diaspora. HUMANITIES, HISTORY. at August 6, 2009 2:54 AM

Prague CZ - not bombed during World War II, so much like it looks now, this view from the Charles Bridge, looking to St. Vitus Cathedral on Castle Hill.

Roma traveled throughout countries as a parallel culture with the urban areas, towns and countryside where the outsiders live.

Czechoslovakia prospered between the World Wars, for a time. See ://archiv.radio.cz/history/history10.html Culture and literature and the arts - a social climate that fostered new ideas. Here is the cubist building in Prague known as the House of the Black Madonna.

See ://www.radio.cz/en/article/47925.

Then came economic collapses, unemployment, especially in the Sudetanland where there was a large German population, and the Nazi movement polarized ethnic Czech Germans, seeking to secede, from the other Czechs. They grew in power and sought to join the border lands with Germany. Then came military moves and Western appeasements, and World War II rolled in.

A well-narrated novel can put history in the mind better than statistics. Zoli does that, by having no table of contents, you do not know where you are headed with her, as even she does not, so you patch in as you go. There are just the occasional section headings when you get there.

1. Go here for an overview in doing a coherent history of this area, the struggles of the historians and others, at "Czech and Slovak History: An American Bibliography."

2. Here is a timeline for Czechoslovakia history, keeping in mind that the area has changed name and boundaries in the last 100 years - now is the Czech Republic and The Republic of Slovakia. Go to //www.facts-about.org.uk/history-and-events-timeline-czech-republic.htm. At the next page is a chart with all the major events, click and get the overview.

Zoli's book sections: A guide to when she was where, and during which dates. Note that the story may pass back to an earlier place at a different time, or tell more about that place in a later time.

Slovakia 2003
Czechoslovakia 1930's-1949
England - Czechoslovakia 1930's - 1959
Czechoslovakia - Hungary - Austria 1959-1960
Slovakia 2003
Compeggio Northern Italy 2001
Paris 2003