National Revival, Industrialization & Folk Romanticism

Habsburg rule, the Dual Monarchy and the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian world.

1 chapter

1717 - 1848

When the Eggenberg male line died out in 1717, the Schwarzenberg family inherited the Krumlov duchy and continued the German-speaking administration of South Bohemia's great estates. Josef Adam of Schwarzenberg reconstructed the castle theatre (1765–1766) into one of the world's best-preserved Baroque theatres, with original stage machinery, scenery, and some 2,400 volumes of scripts and scores—noble self-representation as visual language. The Enlightenment brought practical transformation: the horse-drawn railway (koněspřežka, 1827–1832) from České Budějovice to Linz was the first railway on the European continent, connecting South Bohemia to the Habsburg economic core. The Schwarzenberg property was confiscated by the Czechoslovak state in 1947—a fact often omitted from the 'cultural patronage' narrative. České Budějovice's Přemysl Otakar II Square preserves the Enlightenment-era urban plan that made the city a transport hub.

1948 - 1989

The communist takeover of 1948 nationalized Schwarzenberg estates, monastic property, and the fishpond system, placing Rybářství Třeboň under state management. The carp harvest at Rožmberk Pond continued as a working practice—the Christmas carp tradition maintaining its cultural salience even as the public spectacle dimension evolved. The Cistercian community at Vyšší Brod, expelled by the Nazis in 1941 and prevented from returning by the Communists, lost its liturgical calendar; the monastery was nationalized and the monks found refuge at Wilhering in Austria. Folk traditions were channeled into state-sanctioned 'people's culture': the International Bagpipe Festival was founded in Strakonice in 1967 (not 1976 as often cited), institutionalizing the tradition as both preservation and political display. In 1945–46, the German-speaking population of the South Bohemian borderlands was expelled under the Beneš Decrees; the process involved both organized transfers and acts of violence. Over 100 villages in the Šumava borderlands were destroyed, cemeteries desecrated, heritage de-ethnicized. Czech and Romani settlers moved into emptied communities—Krumlov became known as a 'Romany town' under socialism.

1611 - 1717

The Rosenberg male line died with Peter Vok in 1611. After the Battle of White Mountain (1620), the Habsburgs confiscated rebel estates and granted the Krumlov dominion to Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg—a reward for loyalty that inscribed imperial Catholic authority onto the landscape. The Eggenberg administration, conducted in German, transformed the Rosenberg castle into a Baroque ducal residence. The Counter-Reformation reshaped pilgrimage culture: at Kájov, the Chapel of St. John Nepomucene (1699) and Baroque furnishings overlay the simpler Gothic devotion, turning an intimate folk shrine into a massive Baroque propaganda event with indulgences. The Eggenbergs' 'cultural patronage'—celebrated in heritage narratives—was simultaneously an expression of Catholic/Habsburg power; note this when reading the Baroque layers they left behind. The Johannite Commandery at Strakonice Castle administered Counter-Reformation religious authority in western South Bohemia.

From 1989

The Velvet Revolution restituted monastic property (Vyšší Brod to the Cistercians in 1995), enabled privatization, and triggered a heritage boom whose festivals you can still experience today. Český Krumlov was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992—the same year the Five-Petalled Rose Festival was founded by the municipal cultural agency under Pavel Vymazal. The festival genuinely draws on the 1581 Rosenberg wedding chronicle and the heraldic roses on buildings, but has no documented intermediate tradition between the 16th century and 1992; it is an invented tradition that functions as civic ritual. After the UNESCO inscription, housing privatization in the historic center displaced much of the Romani community—known since socialism as a 'Romany town' with its own cikánské hudby (brass and string bands including Cindži Renta, Mulat Čag, and Orient that played in medieval cellars)—to peripheral estates; human rights organizations have characterized this process as ethnic cleansing by gentrification. Holašovice received UNESCO inscription in 1998, the same year Selské slavnosti was founded—a heritage-era peasant market drawing on Prácheňsko folk traditions in a UNESCO-managed setting. The carp harvest at Rožmberk Pond continues under Rybářství Třeboň a.s., the autumn spectacle drawing thousands. Prachatice's Slavnosti solné Zlaté stezky (34th year in 2026) reenacts Golden Trail salt caravans, and the medieval route has been reactivated as a certified European hiking trail. České Budějovice's designation as European Capital of Culture 2028 will produce new heritage narratives—whether these surface or suppress the region's German-speaking past remains an open question.