„Údolí a návrší poseto jest černými malými i velikými pahrbky.“ Hřbitovy na bojišti u Hradce Králové z roku 1866
“The valley and the hills are dotted with small and large black mounds.”Cemeteries on the 1866 battlefield near Hradec Králové

Summary/Abstract: The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 left a lasting mark, particularly in eastern Bohemia, where its legacy is preserved in the form of scattered war cemeteries and memorials. After 1866, the battlefield near Hradec Králové was transformed into a scattered “cemetery complex”, existing both on the ground and in contemporary and later imaginations, in which the pragmatics of immediate burial, the historicism of sepulchral forms, civic heritage preservation activities, and various regimes of collective memory overlap. These sepulchral monuments gradually became an integral part of the cultural and natural landscape, significantly shaping collective memory and local identity. The creation, appearance, and long-term development of war cemeteries and memorials reflect not only the aesthetic and ideological norms of the time, but also the growing role of civil society in institutionalizing the memory of the battlefield. Cemeteries have been transformed into places of memory, where the reverential function blends with the aesthetic impact of the landscape and which serve as permanent reminders of the historical experience of mass death. This paper focuses on the transformation of the Hradec Králové battlefield of 1866 in terms of the (dis)continuity of local funerary and sepulchral sculpture in existing and newly established cemeteries. It shows how the original “places of death” gradually became institutionalized and culturally anchored spaces of memory

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