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report: January 2009 |
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architecture / fashion / design | Czech Republic | by Jaroslav Rudiš | 2008-10
Liberec: a town below the CloudsThe town of Liberec in northern Bohemia is a special place. When you approach it on the motorway from Prague at first the outline of a mountain ridge appears with the silver tower of a television mast and a hotel on the hill called Ještěd, which belongs to the town. In the car you can then reckon for an hour what the weather is like down on the streets.For the weather can often be very different to the interior of the country. Behind Prague the sun shines but in Liberec it can easily rain. And it does, you can be almost certain. Liberec, which has a population of one hundred thousand, is surrounded by the Iser and the Lausitz mountain ranges, and the clouds that come from the Baltic are caught there like in a trap. The mountain ridge does not allow them enter the interior of the country and so often all the rain they contain falls here. It is a good idea to take an umbrella with you when go for a walk. A typical Liberec joke goes something like this: “If you can see Ještěd it’s going to rain, if you can’t see it it’s raining already.”The Sudeten metropolis It is not this alone that makes Liberec a mysterious town. When young I often came to visit relatives here, travelled around the town by tram and on the old crumbling facades I deciphered inscriptions in German. Bahnhof. Postamt. Kaufhaus. The question occurred to me: where did they come from? Where are the people who lived there once? The Germans who had lived in Czechoslovakia were taboo until 1989. We did not talk about them or, if we did, then only about them as evil Nazis. Liberec – Reichenberg was in fact the model town of the Sudeten, a prosperous town that derived its wealth largely from the textile and glass industries but that also attracted tourists on account of the natural beauty of the surroundings and was somewhere that Czechs lived alongside Germans. After the war almost all the Germans were driven out of Liberec. They left behind their empty houses, many of them fell into ruins, others survived socialism in a truly pitiful condition. I can still remember the decaying art nouveau houses in the street called Pražská ulice, which were saved only a few years ago, at the last moment, as it were. On the other hand the town baths is still waiting to be rescued. On the periphery of Liberec – as in other towns in Czechoslovakia – in the 1960s and 1970s grey concrete housing estates were built for the workers. All the apartments were the same: hot water, central heating and a very clear idea of what the neighbours were doing at any particular time, as the walls of the buildings were simply too thin. Perhaps this is why these pre-fabricated panel buildings are known in Czech as rabbit hutches. Now they are gradually being renovated and given a more humane face. The massive House of Culture is also a reminder of a long forgotten time. On account of its strangely elongated shape is simply called the coffin by the inhabitants of Liberec. On the way to the library Nonetheless, fortunately many houses from the past remained standing and were renovated after 1989. The district of Lidové sady (Peoples Gardens) is still delightful. It seems there as if time had stood still. Decorative small villas, large, well-tended gardens and trams travelling slowly on long, tree-lined roads. On the main square is the town hall designed in a neo-Renaissance style by the Viennese architect Franz Neumann, on the top is a statue of the knight-in-armour Roland, the protector of town charters. The town hall has played a role in several films, as indeed has the local railway station. The slender functionalist coffee shop and the Nisa apartment building from the 1930s are also impossible to overlook. I worked for a period of two years as a porter in a further architectural gem, the Grand Hotel Zlatý Lev (Golden Lion) by the architect Anton Worf. In 1905 it was regarded as the most modern in the entire monarchy and today is still among the best in the city. There was a central vacuum cleaning system, excellent food, extremely high-ceilinged rooms and a guest book in which one hundred years of exciting Liberec history are reflected. This book was signed by the polar explorer Amundsen, the second President of Czechoslovakia Beneš, Hitler, the communist Gottwald and the astronaut Jurij Gagarin. One of my favourite places is the crematorium dating from 1917 on the small hill in the centre. It was the very first in Austria-Hungary but bodies were only burnt there after the collapse of the monarchy, as imperial regulations did not allow for cremation.The project of the State Scientific Library financed by a German-Czech funds refers to the German past. It was opened in 2000 and has its headquarters only a few steps away from the wonderful, recently renovated Viennese café Pošta. Before the war a synagogue that was burned down by the Nazis stood on the site now occupied by the large, glazed and airy rooms or the library. The design by architect Radim Kousal from the Sial association included a small Jewish prayer room. Hubáček’s miracle Liberec's most wonderful jewel and at the same time one of the best-known buildings in the entire Czech Republic rises above the town at a height of 1012 metres above sea-level. The silver cone of the Hotel Ještěd, which is almost one hundred metres high, dates from 1973 and was designed by architect Karel Hubáček from Liberec, who was awarded the prestigious Perret Prize of the International Association of Architects for his project. Chance played a role in implementing this building. Originally an old German hotel stood here but it burned down at the beginning of the 1960s. Hubáček's design connects a fascination with space travel, technology and science fiction with a good feeling for landscape. The aerodynamic point of the tower complements the peak of the Ještěd Mountain, and indeed even seems to grow out of the mountain top. The building serves as a television broadcasting station and a mountain hotel with a large restaurant and two levels containing bedrooms. It is easy to believe here that you are on board a spaceship. It is a great pity that during the era of wild capitalism in the first half of the 1990s part of the interior design was destroyed and replaced. But now consideration is being given to making copies of the original chairs, tables and lamps, and the city of Liberec is making a determined effort to have the hotel entered in the UNESCO world cultural heritage list. In 1968 Hubáček founded the architects association SIAL in Liberec, which became a very progressive and well-known name in the country. The creation of the faculty of architecture at the technical university in Liberec also resulted from his initiative. He was also the architect of the department store on the square Soukenné náměstí that dates from 1978 and was highly original for its time. Nowadays it is called Ještěd. At present, after lengthy disputes and arguments in the media, it is being torn apart by excavators to make way for a new shopping gallery. It is better to flee from the building site to the hill. Spending a night on Je‰těd is a real experience. In summer lightning can occasionally strike the tower. In winter you can wake up in the darkness of white clouds and, if you are particularly lucky, during inversion weather you can experience total isolation here above the clouds. Excerpt from the novel Grand Hotel that will appear in November 2008. Jaroslav Rudiš (1972) – writer. Born in Turnov. His first novel was called Nebe pod Berlínem (2002, the German edition, Der Himmel unter Berlin, appeared in 2004). In November 2008 the German edition of his second novel Grandhotel, set in Liberec, will be published by Verlag Luchterhand. Its hero, the thirty-year old loner Fleischman, an amateur meteorologist and searcher for meaning works as a porter in Hotel Ještěd. Rudiš' most recent novel Potichu (Softly) appeared in 2007. External links: www.rudis.cz
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