Czech Republic

„All important historical events had their beginning in Prague,“ started the Czech writer and actor Zdeněk Svěrák in his opening speech, giving the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 as an example. The actor of “Kolya”, the movie that won an Oscar in 1997, spiced his spirited and inspiring speech about the importance of history with pieces from one of his books, taking digs at actual Czech politics. Svěrák may have exaggerated the role of Prague as the cradle of historical events a bit, but one thing is true: This ceremony on 20 February in Prague was the kick-off event for EUSTORY’s award ceremony season 2014.

This 7th Czech competition round was the first one organised by our new Czech partner PANT Citizens' Association and it was a really successful one: In the context of the topic “Also a Place Has Its Memory - In the Footsteps of My Region's History", more than 50 works from all over the country were submitted. The jury decided to award the best ten entries. In order to guarantee the quality of the awarded research works, PANT cooperated with the Historical Institute in Prague, which has been organising the competition before. The two former competition organisers, Vojto Celko and Oldrich Tuma, attended the ceremony as well.

The winner of 1st prize, Jan Havránek, researched the history of a sports house in his hometown Chomutov. The second prize was a team effort of Ester Boháčková and Kateřina Fričová about a mill in Chodovlice, a village in the north of the Czech Republic. The 3rd prize went to Tereza Poláčková who examined the ‘Long 19th century’ in the community Černčice.

Thanks to a good cooperation with publishing houses and other sponsors, the prize winners got awarded plenty of books. But the most memorable for them was probably receiving the certificate and a personal comment from Zdeněk Svěrák.