These two books, one a monograph, the other an edited set of essays, are examples of a recent phenomenon in Czech architectural history: the attempt to reread, and to come to terms with, uncomfortable aspects of the country’s twentieth-century past. Both books take on topics that, if not taboo, have long been shunted aside because they confront moments or issues that have left scars on the national consciousness. Lenka Kerdová’s excellent book, Malý Berlín ve Velké Praze (Little Berlin in Greater Prague), explores the works of German-speaking architects in Prague in the years between the two world wars; Enlightenment, Culture, Leisure: Houses of Culture in Czechoslovakia, edited by Michaela Janečková and Irena Lehkoživová, grapples in interesting and insightful ways with the creation of the network of “houses of culture” during the time of state socialism in the former Czechoslovakia.
Czech architectural, art, and design historians have been systematically reexamining...
University of California Press