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10.
The Baroque era
Towards
the end of the 17th century Germans and Czechs suffered
equally under the economic plight brought about by the long
war. Language and culture had run aground. Only the nobility
was willing and able to advance a limited circle to higher
educational levels, just enough to retain or elevate their own
splendor. Baroque architecture and lifestyle began its bloom
at the royal courts and set the stage for the intellectual
awakening in the second half of the 18th century. Splendor and
misery of this age lay next to each other: Monumental
achievements in architecture, painting and horticulture on one
side, subservience and forced serfdom of peasants and the
miserable life of the burghers on the other. Germans, Czechs,
Italians, Frenchmen and people from other European countries
stood in the service of the Bohemian gentry in monasteries and
towns as architects, painters and plasterers. For a last time,
the Baroque period achieved a union of Europe on the basis of
an international aristocratic nobility and well educated
middle class. The old and the new Bohemian nobility (e.g.
Schwarzenberg, Kinsky, Clam, Gallas…) had gained European
character through their familial and commercial connections.
They hold indubitable places in the history of the
Sudetenlands as ministers, diplomats, generals, bishops,
patrons, builders and landowners. The nobility still played an
important role at that time. The face of the land was
transformed during those decades and retained the acquired
Baroque features all along into the present. The palaces,
town-mansions, the monumental churches and town halls, the
parish and deanery churches, the Trinity and Plague columns,
the Nepomuk statues on the bridges - all of that was
accomplished in the two life spans following the dreadful
30-year war. This post-war period gave Bohemia, Moravia and
Silesia a relatively undisturbed time to toil peacefully.
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