Case study: The Battle for Jezeří Chateau: Difference between revisions

Case study: The Battle for Jezeří Chateau (view source)

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 The main longitudinal building with its four perpendicularly adjacent wings formed an H-shaped ground plan, with the hall buttress coming out of the southern side. In front of the main frontispiece with a shallow central buttress ending in a prismatic tower, there was the court of honour. At each side of the main portal there are atlantes by Jan Adam Dietz from the mid-1800s.
 [[File:Jezeri chapel.JPG|thumb|Jezeří chapel under reconstruction]]
-As Ferdinand Vilém had no male heirs, he bequeathed his estate to his brother Oldřích Felix, who took over after his tragic death. On 25 September 1713 there was another fire at the chateau. Oldřich Felix, who had gone hunting that day, returned to see the building ablaze – the fire had spread so much by then that it could not be extinguished. Thanks to the committee sent by the hetman of Žatec to ascertain the damage, we now know how some of the rooms at Jezeří had looked before the fire and we can tell that the chateau already had the outer shape it has today. Unlike its renaissance predecessor, which had a tiled roof, this one only had shingles. On the middle floor there was a “new, spacious and beautiful ballroom with an oval, stucco-decorated vault, with huge columns and mascarons which took a group of ten masons, two stuccoworkers and six carpenters a whole summer to complete”. The room had nine windows and the damage inflicted by the fire was worth at least 4500 guldens. The adjacent room, by the “new dining hall”, with stuccoed ceiling and a beautiful floor was also completely destroyed (damage worth 388 guldens); another of the long list of destroyed rooms had been painted „al fresco“ (damage amounted to 350 guldens), and the alcove had a stuccoed ceiling and a valuable floor, too (350 guldens). In two adjacent rooms the fire also ruined frescoes, stuccoes and floors and its heat melted two beautiful tile stoves. In the great dining hall next to the chapel, decorated with stuccoes, a big green tiled stove was destroyed as well as a double door made of oak (damage worth 400 guldens), the fire also devoured the red room next to the dining hall, and the room next to that, a gilded study with stuccoes and frescoes on the ceiling, and another alcove (1400 guldens in total). The main helical staircase was destroyed as well as the old and the new towers with their little chambers, the “forest room” and the painted chamber, the kitchen with its foreroom, Count Lobkowicz’s painted rooms, four offices, a closet as well as a great hall above the dining room with a beautiful ceiling and floor, four capuccin rooms and another office. The fire did not spare the middle tower with a clock and two bells either, nor two dormers. A separate building below the chateau with six rooms, three closets and a laundrette was burned to the ground. The orangery, the lathe workshop, the new sawmill and other well-documented rooms and space also turned to ashes. The total damage soared to 30,398 guldens, 19 kreutzers and 3 denari.
+As Ferdinand Vilém had no male heirs, he bequeathed his estate to his brother Oldřích Felix, who took over after his tragic death. On 25 September 1713 there was another fire at the chateau. Oldřich Felix, who had gone hunting that day, returned to see the building ablaze – the fire had spread so much by then that it could not be extinguished. Thanks to the committee sent by the hetman of Žatec to ascertain the damage, we now know how some of the rooms at Jezeří had looked before the fire and we can tell that the chateau already had the outer shape it has today. Unlike its renaissance predecessor, which had a tiled roof, this one only had shingles. On the middle floor there was a “new, spacious and beautiful ballroom with an oval, stucco-decorated vault, with huge columns and mascarons which took a group of ten masons, two stuccoworkers and six carpenters a whole summer to complete”. The room had nine windows and the damage inflicted by the fire was worth at least 4500 guldens. The adjacent room, by the “new dining hall”, with stuccoed ceiling and a beautiful floor was also completely destroyed (damage worth 388 guldens); another of the long list of destroyed rooms had been painted „al fresco“ (damage amounted to 350 guldens), and the alcove had a stuccoed ceiling and a valuable floor, too (350 guldens). In two adjacent rooms the fire also ruined frescoes, stuccoes and floors and its heat melted two beautiful tile stoves. In the great dining hall next to the chapel, decorated with stuccoes, a big green tiled stove was destroyed as well as a double door made of oak (damage worth 400 guldens), the fire also devoured the red room next to the dining hall, and the room next to that, a gilded study with stuccoes and frescoes on the ceiling, and another alcove (1400 guldens in total). The main helical staircase was destroyed as well as the old and the new towers with their little chambers, the “forest room” and the painted chamber, the kitchen with its foreroom, Count Lobkowicz’s painted rooms, four offices, a closet as well as a great hall above the dining room with a beautiful ceiling and floor, four capuccin rooms and another office. The fire did not spare the middle tower with a clock and two bells either, nor two dormers. A separate building below the chateau with six rooms, three closets and a laundrette was burned to the ground. The orangery, the lathe workshop, the new sawmill and other well-documented rooms and space also turned to ashes. The total damage soared to 30,398 guldens, 19 kreutzers and 3 denari. [[File:P1030557 1.jpg|thumb|Former staff quarters]]
 Oldřích Felix decided to use his “modest means” to renovate the chateau the same year, and probably barely managed to do so just before his tragic death in 1722. He was also the last member of the Nové Sedlo-Jezeří branch of the Lobkowicz family, therefore the will of 4 September 1722 leaves the estate to Karel Adam - once he attained his majority – and until then it was to be managed by his father, Jiří Kristián of Lobkowicz. Karel Adam then formally sold Jezeří to Ferdinand Filip Josef, Prince of Lobkowicz in Roudnice, in 1752, thus passing the chateau, as was expected, to the Roudnice-Bílina line of the family.
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 In the years 1973-76, engineering-geological mapping was undertaken in the foregrounds of the Czechoslovak Army opencast mine, from whose conclusions stemmed a desperate need for more detailed research of the coal basin limits in 1980s. This mainly confirmed the fears that the extent of the crystalline massif of the Ore Mountains could significantly influence coal mining activities and vice-versa. It was found that it was necessary to urgently verify the state of the crystalline massif, its disrupted tectonic plates, efflorescent processes and landslide activity in the very places where the coal basin limits abutted the Jezeří chateau grounds. The responsibility for the research was given to Construction Geology Prague under the research management of RNDr. Jan Marek.
 In 1975, Dr Marek informed the Regional Office of State Cultural Heritage and Nature Conservation of the risk to the Jezeří Chateau heritage building and the surrounding mountainsides. He set up a permanent field office in an abandoned old tower of the chateau with the Regional Office’s approval.
 The critical site became popular after he submitted his final report on the engineering geological mapping and especially after his articles were published. Czechoslovak Television asked him to on their economics show “Is It Worth It?” from the chateau courtyard. Jezeří started to host journalists, political officials, leading scientists, entire busloads from the Regional Mining Authority in Most, Báňské projekty in Teplice, the Regional Office of State Cultural Heritage and Nature Conservation in Ústí nad Labem, the Central Geological Institute, various institutes of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and universities in Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Bratislava and Košice. Josef Velek – the only journalist with an openly pro-environmental focus – arrived. Dr Marel spent several evenings debating with this young author of such well-known books as “Jak jsem bránil přírodu” (“How I Protected Nature”), “Příběhy pro dvě nohy” (“Stories for Two Legs”) and others that the communists in control didn’t like much. He began to write a new book about the Jezeří problem, but never completed it: he died diving in the Red Sea soon afterwards. Wagging tongues said somebody pushed him.[[File:View of mines from Jezeri.JPG|thumb|View of mines from western side of Jezeří]]