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Planning for a visit by a friend from NZ this summer, I keep looking up things and reviving my knowledge of my own country... which is how I remembered the Prague Metronome and looked it up.
I don't plan to take her there (probably, unless she really wants to, but we're currently leaning towards Vyšehrad as parks above Prague go - likely to be much calmer, plus earlier history).
But I may tell her the story because there's a bit more to the story than most online articles about the Metronome tell you.
What they do tell you is that there used to be a monumental statue of Stalin that got torn down, and the Metronome reminds us of the Communist past. They may even say that the inscription at the Metronome reads "In time, all things pass."
Which, from reading the Czech Wikipedia articles about the two, isn't even half of the truth. And inevitably linking it to the Communist past is doing the place and the country exactly the sort of disservice post-Communist countries still suffer from.
For one thing, the name the artist gave the structure is actually "Time Machine". Everyone calls it the Metronome because it looks like one. Which is extremely typical of the Czech attitude towards modern sculptures.
The story actually starts around 1912, when there were plans to build a memorial to the founders of Sokol (the sport organisation) in that place. (Well, actually I guess the story may start even earlier, with understanding why there is that big empty space on Letná to begin with, but I haven't gotten around to reading about that yet.)
Then before WW2, there were plans to build a statue of Masaryk there. Two of the people who worked on the Stalin statue actually were attached to that. Which definitely gives a bit more... nuance to the Stalin statue. On some level, it obviously was a big middle finger to the First Republic. Replacing one personal cult with another one...
(There absolutely was a personal cult around Masaryk, but unlike Stalin, I think Masaryk wasn't complicit, or definitely not to the same degree. It just happened because so many people admired him and had no better ideas how to deal with it. Early days of democracy coupled with the nationalist pride of a small nation that suddenly found itself with a world-famous figurehead.)
But the Stalin monument was such a massive undertaking that it only got finished soon after his death, not long before Khrushchev criticised Stalin's personal cult... which meant it wasn't long for this world: it got demolished in 1962.
And then Prague was left with an empty plinth for nearly thirty years. It's extra ironic (in the non-literal meaning) because a nearly-new football stadium had to be demolished for the Stalin statue. (The team had a new one built elsewhere, and that got replaced by a bigger and better one in 2008.)
And then in 1991 there was a big jubilee fair happening in Prague, commemorating a famous one that had happened in 1891 (and was already a commemorative one in itself, commemorating a much smaller one that had happened in 1791...). And as part of that, they installed the Time Machine on Letná, intended as a temporary structure.
It's now been there for thirty-two years (with occasional breaches for maintenance).
So, yeah, there's more to the story. All things pass in time. The founders of Sokol are no longer the big figures looming over Czech national consciousness that they must have been in 1912. Personal cults are frowned upon (and new ones spring up). Masaryk has rather prevailed over Stalin after all. Football stadiums get upgraded.
And temporary measures sometimes turn out to be permanent, because they turn out to suit the people much better than all the big flashy gestures.
P.S. And, yeah, a Time Machine can be used to travel into the future. That also seems to be an aspect of it the English-language articles hung up on our Communist history overlook. It's less about reminding us of our history and more about reminding us it's over.
It's known for a skate park and a beer garden, things it's much harder to picture anyone enjoying with a different sculpture, no matter who might have ended up towering over the city. I suppose it still is a middle finger to Stalin. I think Tyrš and Fügner would be glad to know their would-be memorial place is used for sport, even if they would not recognise the discipline.
I don't plan to take her there (probably, unless she really wants to, but we're currently leaning towards Vyšehrad as parks above Prague go - likely to be much calmer, plus earlier history).
But I may tell her the story because there's a bit more to the story than most online articles about the Metronome tell you.
What they do tell you is that there used to be a monumental statue of Stalin that got torn down, and the Metronome reminds us of the Communist past. They may even say that the inscription at the Metronome reads "In time, all things pass."
Which, from reading the Czech Wikipedia articles about the two, isn't even half of the truth. And inevitably linking it to the Communist past is doing the place and the country exactly the sort of disservice post-Communist countries still suffer from.
For one thing, the name the artist gave the structure is actually "Time Machine". Everyone calls it the Metronome because it looks like one. Which is extremely typical of the Czech attitude towards modern sculptures.
The story actually starts around 1912, when there were plans to build a memorial to the founders of Sokol (the sport organisation) in that place. (Well, actually I guess the story may start even earlier, with understanding why there is that big empty space on Letná to begin with, but I haven't gotten around to reading about that yet.)
Then before WW2, there were plans to build a statue of Masaryk there. Two of the people who worked on the Stalin statue actually were attached to that. Which definitely gives a bit more... nuance to the Stalin statue. On some level, it obviously was a big middle finger to the First Republic. Replacing one personal cult with another one...
(There absolutely was a personal cult around Masaryk, but unlike Stalin, I think Masaryk wasn't complicit, or definitely not to the same degree. It just happened because so many people admired him and had no better ideas how to deal with it. Early days of democracy coupled with the nationalist pride of a small nation that suddenly found itself with a world-famous figurehead.)
But the Stalin monument was such a massive undertaking that it only got finished soon after his death, not long before Khrushchev criticised Stalin's personal cult... which meant it wasn't long for this world: it got demolished in 1962.
And then Prague was left with an empty plinth for nearly thirty years. It's extra ironic (in the non-literal meaning) because a nearly-new football stadium had to be demolished for the Stalin statue. (The team had a new one built elsewhere, and that got replaced by a bigger and better one in 2008.)
And then in 1991 there was a big jubilee fair happening in Prague, commemorating a famous one that had happened in 1891 (and was already a commemorative one in itself, commemorating a much smaller one that had happened in 1791...). And as part of that, they installed the Time Machine on Letná, intended as a temporary structure.
It's now been there for thirty-two years (with occasional breaches for maintenance).
So, yeah, there's more to the story. All things pass in time. The founders of Sokol are no longer the big figures looming over Czech national consciousness that they must have been in 1912. Personal cults are frowned upon (and new ones spring up). Masaryk has rather prevailed over Stalin after all. Football stadiums get upgraded.
And temporary measures sometimes turn out to be permanent, because they turn out to suit the people much better than all the big flashy gestures.
P.S. And, yeah, a Time Machine can be used to travel into the future. That also seems to be an aspect of it the English-language articles hung up on our Communist history overlook. It's less about reminding us of our history and more about reminding us it's over.
It's known for a skate park and a beer garden, things it's much harder to picture anyone enjoying with a different sculpture, no matter who might have ended up towering over the city. I suppose it still is a middle finger to Stalin. I think Tyrš and Fügner would be glad to know their would-be memorial place is used for sport, even if they would not recognise the discipline.