"Look, weekend cottagers have come..." Cover Image

"Hele, lufťáci přijeli..."
"Look, weekend cottagers have come..."

Why weekend cottagers is still popular in the Czech Lands

Author(s): Irena Cejpová
Subject(s): History, Cultural history, Oral history, Social history, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), History of Communism, Post-Communist Transformation, Book-Review
Published by: AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Ústav pro soudobé dějiny
Keywords: Weekend housing;weekend cottages;Czech Lands;Czechoslovakia;Czech society;Communist regime;Czechoslovak normalization;leisure;countryside;oral history

Summary/Abstract: Petra Schindler-Wisten's monograph titled "About holiday homes and people: Holiday homes in the Czech Lands in the period of so-called normalization and transformation" (Prague: Univerzita Karlova and Karolinum, 2017) maps the phenomenon of holiday cottages in the Czech Lands since its very beginnings in the 19th century almost until today. In this respect, she focuses on the post-war period of the Communist regime, in particular the 1970s and 1980s, the years of the so-called normalization, when this type of spending one’s free time, and partly also a lifestyle consisting in spending weekends and holidays in own houses and cottages, indeed became a mass phenomenon in Czechoslovakia. Using results of oral history research, she is looking for reasons why the so-called “second housing” became so popular among various groups of the Czech society, social and economic differences notwithstanding. The reviewer appreciates the publication as the first attempt to deal with the topic in question in a clear and comprehensive manner and from a historical point of view rather than from sociological or socio-geographic ones, which represents a significant factual enrichment of the current state of knowledge. However, she also formulates some methodological reservations with respect to the research project whose results are presented in reviewed work, claiming that not enough clear reasons have been given to justify its starting points and outlining untapped opportunities in this respect.

  • Issue Year: XXVII/2020
  • Issue No: 3-4
  • Page Range: 722-727
  • Page Count: 6
  • Language: Czech