Conference paper

Stulc, Josef:

Between Scylla and Charybdis. Czech Built Heritage before and after the Velvet Revolution

The contribution characterizes both, the undeniable merits in science, listing and theoretical thinking but also terrible drawbecks inthe practice of conservation in Czechoslovakia in the period of totalitarian comunist regime. It mentions the hopes and optimistic expectations the Czech conservators attributed to the fall of unloved socialist system not believing the timely warnings coming of our western colleagues. At the end of the paper characterizes and on the pictures demonstrates the positive but also the highly negative and irreversible consequences the political and social changes had for our built heritage in the course of the last twenty years.


Josef Štulc, Architect, Art Historian (Specialization: Czech medieval architecture). Between 1969 and 2002, he worked in the State Institute for Monuments Care and Nature Preservation in Prague. He was Director of the State Institute for Heritage Preservation and worked in the National Institute for Heritage Preservation.
Since 1987, he has been lecturing for post-graduate students at the Faculty of Architecture, Czech University of Technology, post-graduate courses organized by the National Heritage Institute, and during international postgraduate courses at the Academia Istropolitana Nova in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. In 2002, he was elected President of the ICOMOS Czech National Committee. He is a member of the ICOMOS Advisory Committee and three ICOMOS International Scientific Committees. He is a member of the Oberlausitzer Gesellschaft für Wissenschaften and the Scientific Board of the National Heritage Institute.

He is a co-author of the ABC of Cultural Monuments in Czechoslovakia (Prague 1985) and about 170 scientific articles, reports and other publications in the field of heritage preservation.