Award Ceremony in the Czech Republic in 2012
The ceremonial announcement of the results of the 6th national round of the Eustory European history competition took place on September 26, 2012, in the conference hall of the main building of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It was attended by students, teachers of history, the public and representatives of the institutions organising the competition (Koerber-Stiftung, Institute of Contemporary History, and History Teachers’ Association of the Czech Republic). Also present was Professor Rudolf Zahradník, Honorary Chairman of the Czech Academy of Sciences, under whose auspices the Eustory competition has been organised since the very beginning.
The Executive Committee of the Eustory competition, which had chosen memorials and places commemorative of the communist regime as the topic of the 6th national round, decided to announce the top ten highest-rated works. The top ten authors and authors’ teams included students from eight Czech and Moravian secondary schools, to whom Professor Zahradník and Dr. Oldřich Tůma, Director of the Institute of Contemporary History, presented prize money and book prizes. There was also the traditional best literary style work prize awarded by the “Dějiny a současnost” (The History and the Present) cultural and historical magazine, which was handed over by the chairman of the magazine’s Editorial Board, Professor Vít Vlnas.
Kirsten Elvers, representing the German Koerber Foundation, spoke about the European context of the competition and opportunities offered to successful authors of works participating in national rounds by the international coordinator of the Eustory programme. The presentation of Tomáš Nagy provided an insight into the topic and agenda of this year’s Eustory International Summer Academy in Berlin; Tomáš Nagy attended it as a co-author of one of the prize-winning works of the Czech national round.
The event was concluded by an address of Petr Pánek, President of the PANT civic association. The representative of the institution, which will be a new organisational partner of the Eustory competition in the Czech Republic as of the start of the 7th national round, introduced PANT’s principal activities focused on providing support to the teaching of modern history, most of which are available on the Moderní-dějiny.cz educational website.
The organisers would like to thank the institutions which supported the 6th national round of the Eustory competition, namely the Association of Regions of the Czech Republic, the regions of South Moravia, Zlín and Central Bohemia, and the Capital City of Prague. Book prizes were kindly donated by the Academia, Alexander Tomský, Argo, Doplněk, Lidové noviny and Paseka publishing houses.