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The exhibition accompanied by this catalogue in one of the out-
puts of the research conducted within the project entitled Social, Cul-
tural and Ideological Transfers in the History of the Border Region of
North-West and North Bohemia andTheir Role in the Region’s Develop-
ment and Sustainability as part of the program of applied research and
development of national and cultural identity (NAKI).
If the project pursues the issue of most various forms of transfers
in the border region of North-West and North Bohemia, then the un-
doubtedly significant subject is the region’s borderline itself neighbour-
ing with Saxony. In addition, the development of the linear course of
the historical borderline went hand in hand with that of the dense com-
munication network when an array of alternative connections appeared
along with the long-distance routes. The course of the borderline was,
then, changing on a local scale during the high and late Middle Ages. The
new state, Czechoslovakia, assigned a new role to the national border
and new form of border came with the 1938 seizure of the borderland
territories. The new border, while the latter – no matter how transitional
– had not come to life easily and needless to say: the given border bore
typical features of a totalitarian state from the very beginning. The fall
of the German “empire”, however, also shifted the borders to their “orig-
inal” lines, albeit the rules in doing so were in no way amiable, because
what was border then, between 1945 and 1966, Czechoslovakia and East
Germany (the German Democratic Republic), was called “a small Iron
Curtain”, referring to the infamous Iron Curtain dividing the East and
West at the times of Cold War. With a little bit of exaggeration, the era
spanning from 1949 to 1966 was thus, say, the times when the Czecho-
slovak and German nations were officially “befriended” but otherwise
fiercely patrolled. The situation somewhat eased with the 1961 construc-
tion of the Berlin Wall, since East Germany hermetically closed itself to
all those aiming at the West. Lets, however, not forget the psychological
point of view: the utterly depressing, insensitive and brutal communist
demolitions of the border villages and objects in the 1950s. The year 1989
changed the Czech-Saxon border again, making it permeable once again,
but new walls are already building again.
