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

Editors of dailies and popular periodicals visited the critical area around Jezeří as a group in 1985. The editorial office of “Věda a technika mládeži” celebrated Dr Marek as the winner of a nation-wide competition of discoverers and inventors.

Regional, district and municipal secretaries of the Communist Party made a field trip to the Jezeří area in 1986 with the aim of giving political support and assurance to the uninterrupted operation of the coal mining. Rudé právo editor Čekalová elbowed her way into the field trip (and could not be refused due to her position), and brought Dr Marek along as her expert advisor (otherwise he could not have attended such a meeting, being a branded opponent to the regime). He provided the board of secretaries with a comprehensive explanation of the issue, took them to the dam of the then emptied Lake Dřínov, guided them around the derelict chateau, and attended the final discussion at the House of Culture in Most. Of the 12 Party exponents originally biased in favour of continuing the coal mining, eleven eventually voted for limiting the mining and preserving Jezeří Chateau. Comrade Šenkýř, a regional Party secretary, formulated the final statement.

Deputy Prime Minister Rudolf Hegenbart, a pro-reform secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and head of the Interdepartmental Committee, visited Jezeří in 1987. He arrived with several ministers and in the company of the General Manager of North Bohemian Mines, dressed in an incomplete miner’s uniform. On the terrace of the chateau, overlooking the coal basin, he listened to the General Manager’s lecture on the mining progress, continuing success and bright prospects for the coal mining. Then he listened to Dr Marek’s lecture. After that, he asked him for his published works to study and kept holding on to his elbow throughout the rest of the guided tour. Before the end of the excursion, he made Dr Marek sit in one of the two chairs available in the chateau courtyard, sitting himself on the other one, while the team of ministers and the General Manager of the mine corporation had to look on standing in a semicircle around them. Everyone present must have been clear about the fact that the decision had been made.

The mine managers and planners were thus forced into a solution they did not welcome: they had to leave intact the portions of the basin strata series below the most critical parts of the main Ore Mountains side, including the coal seam, which could not be extracted through an opencast mine. Those areas were to act as pillars whose purpose was to secure the stability of the tectonically disrupted mountainsides and thus the safety of operations in the open mine pit. The pillar below Jezerka contains approx. 10 million tonnes of coal; the one below Jezeří has 20-30 million tonnes of coal. Naturally, the pillars and their surroundings had to be kept under geomechanical and geodetic monitoring. The village of Albrechtice could not be saved: it had been destroyed shortly before that (quite pointlessly, as it turned out).

The victorious celebrations quickly gave way to having to sort out who would undertake the overall renovation of the intricate building. A bid was made by Průmstav Pardubice, a Chomutov operation, a large and well-established company, but its general manager forbade the commission. The first money that arrived in the Jezeří account was used for erecting a metal scaffold around the main building, and a small construction team from the Žalany u Teplic co-operative farm started fixing the roof. When they found out it was beyond their capacity, they passed the task on to the Most state farm.

A small group of persistent campaigners to save Jezeří with a larger circle of supporters established itself as the “Association to Save Jezeří” in 1988. It registered itself with the Ministry of the Interior when a mild political thaw came. Later on, the citizens’ association name was changed to the “Association to Restore Jezeří” in order to better express its current goals and efforts. The purpose was not only to save the historic building but also to restore its surroundings and the remains of the original landscape. A notable paradox then occurred: the Association exponents who were experts on various scientific disciplines and land use, who were previously in opposition to the governing political team, now became an informal advisory board to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party! The one who took up the task of resolving the long neglected and truly pressing environmental problems: Rudolf Hegenbart. Associations members were summoned as needed and met in Prague, usually in the Terplan basement. An exceptional meeting was held in the little-known Ore Mountains hamlet with a long mining tradition, Hora Sv. Kateřiny, in October 1988, when they celebrated the birthdays of the environmental activist Petr Pakosta as well as Dr Marek.

Soon afterwards, however, the party and government began to break apart and collapse in November 1989. That had serious implications for Jezeří. The former all-governing position of North Bohemian Mines lost its political support and, soon after that, its economic power. They were forced to reduce the mining activities to a fraction of the previous volume, making the advance of the Čs. armády opencast mine slower. They had to start acting at least a little “environmentally”, since that was the universal imperative of the new era.