Communist State Planning & Heavy Industry

1918 - 1948

The First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) brought democratic self-governance, land reform, and modernist architecture to East Bohemia — but also sharpened the Czech-German nationality conflict in border towns. Svitavy (Zwittau), Trutnov (Trautenau), and the Podkrkonoší foothills were bilingual communities where Czech and German parish churches observed parallel liturgical calendars and German-language Vereine organized Schützenfeste, Kirchweih, and Maibaum celebrations alongside Czech poutě. The Pardubice Crematorium (1921, one of Czechoslovakia's first) marked secularization of death ritual. The Museum of East Bohemia in Hradec Králové began systematic ethnographic collection of folk culture, including Masopust masks and ritual objects. The 1938 Munich Agreement and German occupation brought the Velká pardubická to a halt (last pre-war running 1937) and expelled the Hospitaller Brothers from Kuks. For the German-speaking minority, 1945 brought expulsion under the Beneš decrees — erasing the German-language festival layer entirely from border towns like Svitavy and Trutnov, where incoming Czech settlers brought their own traditions with no connection to the displaced German community's calendar.

From 1989

The post-1989 era is defined by a tension between revival and survival: some traditions were restored from museum records and living memory, while others never lapsed. The Hlinsko-area Masopust obchůzka — village Shrovetide processions in Studnice, Vortovice, and Hamry — was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List in 2010 precisely because it survived the communist era without interruption, with mask-making techniques and ritual roles transmitted within families. By contrast, the Chlumec nad Cidlinou Masopust was explicitly revived ('obnovená tradice') in 2023 by the ESKIMO winter-swimmers club, making it the 'first year of the modern-day Chlumec Masopust' — a revival drawing on living memory of older village practice, not an unbroken chain. The Broumov Benedictines returned after 1990, restoring the full monastic liturgical cycle (svátek sv. Václava Sept 28, svátek sv. Vojtěcha Apr 23), though the community is smaller than before 1950. The Velká pardubická was saved from post-communist sponsorship crisis by 45 local businessmen who formed Dostihový spolek a.s. (~1994), modernizing the racecourse with a new inner grass track. Pardubice gingerbread received EU PGI protection in 2008, confirming both artisanal and industrial production methods. Kuks Hospital, renovated 2010–2015 (Europa Nostra Grand Prix 2017), now hosts heritage concerts and exhibitions but not the pouť pilgrimage fairs that once coincided with feast days at the Church of the Holy Trinity — the continuity has shifted from liturgy to heritage tourism. Today you can walk from a UNESCO-registered Masopust procession in a Hlinsko-area village to a steeplechase that has run since 1874, tasting gingerbread whose craft lineage is documented from 1512 — but each of these living traditions carries its own story of rupture and repair.

1845 - 1918

The arrival of the railway (Pardubice connected 1845, Hradec Králové 1857) integrated East Bohemia into the Austro-Hungarian industrial economy, generating new festival forms alongside traditional ones. In 1874, Count Maximilian Ugarte, Prince Emil Fürstenberg, and Count Oktavián Kinský founded the Velká pardubická steeplechase — now the oldest continuous Czech cultural-sporting event, running annually on the second Sunday of October. Josef Gočár's Automatic Mills for the Winternitz brothers (1910) brought functionalist industrial architecture to Pardubice's riverfront. The Petrof piano factory (established 1864) made Hradec Králové a centre of instrument-making. Industrialization created new calendar rituals — race days, factory shifts, railway timetables — that existed alongside but did not replace the parish pouť cycle. Stand at the Pardubice racecourse on the second Sunday of October and you experience a calendar slot that has been occupied by the same event since 1874, surviving two world wars and three political regimes.

1766 - 1845

Emperor Joseph II's fortress-building programme reshaped the Hradec Králové-Jaroměř corridor into a military frontier zone. The Josefov Fortress (1780–1787) at Jaroměř introduced a garrison town with its own chapel and feast-day calendar, while Hradec Králové itself was refortified as a walled city — a transformation that constrained urban growth but brought military payroll and garrison festivals into the local calendar. Náchod Castle acquired its Baroque expansion during this period. The enlightened-absolutist state also reformed guild structures and religious houses, though the Broumov Benedictines survived the Josephine dissolution. Walk the bastion circuit at Josefov and descend into the casemate tunnels: you are experiencing a military installation designed to project Habsburg power against Prussia, now repurposed as a heritage venue for historical re-enactments. The garrison chapel's feast days are no longer observed as living religious practices — the continuity has shifted from liturgy to heritage performance.