OPAVA – THE CITY MEMORY CHANGES UNDER DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AND REGIMES

Opava has always been a city on the border. So there have been many changes of regimes and states to which Opava belonged, as well as changes of the city’s ethnic composition. The most numerous and rapid changes happened during the 20th century; whereby the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, then the first Czechoslovak republic until 1938, then part of the German Reich until 1945, then returning to be part of the Czechoslovak republic until 1993 and finally, as part of the Czech Republic till today. The aim of the paper is to analyse and compare the politics of memory and efforts to change Opava’s symbolism. The study focuses primarily on the projection of ideologies and identities onto the symbolic landscape under different regimes during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Within the research the concept of urban symbolism is used in dealing with the city’s cultural dimension with a focus on the distribution and meaning of symbols and rituals in relation to the cultivated surroundings. The study is limited to the analysis of urban public space aspects, such as the destruction and construction of symbolic sites (plaques, statues, monuments, buildings, graves), the renaming of streets and places, and commemorative rituals. The paper synthesizes the results of research of urban symbolism and politics of memory in the public space of Opava. It interprets and shows how urban public space has been adapting to the changes of regimes and the city symbolism has been modified consciously but also indirectly.