Earlier this summer I made a month long research trip to the Czech Republic and Poland. It was so satisfying to be back in the archives after writing a good chunk of my dissertation. I knew what I was looking for and felt focused. Nevertheless, I still encountered some surprises!
At the Zemský archiv v Opavě (Regional Archive in Opava) an archivist took me on a behind-the-scenes tour of the archive’s holdings. Here I am standing with the oldest document in the archive’s collection, the town charter from the 15th century.
I spent a few days at the end of my trip in the Polish countryside with my partner. This was a great lake for swimming.
A letter of complaint about coal prices addressed to the Ministry of Fuels and Energy in the National Archives.
I have long wanted to see the socialist realist astronomical clock in Olomouc and finally got my chance!
An excellent photography collection of the town of Karviná, once a coal mining powerhouse, now a site of post-industrial languishing. I loved my time there.
From a 1952 issue of Nová svoboda. Miners were the ultimate proletarians (and briefly that included women!).
A cartoon from the 1990s showing a miner as the puppet of the global financial elite.
Mining tourism in Ostrava
Cartoonish faces of coal miners in Ostrava
Industrial tourism at Landek Park in Ostrava
A monument to The Miner in his ideal masculine form
The exterior of a mineshaft now open to tourists
Commercialized sex spread like wildfire through Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. This magazine called “For Men” was based in Ostrava and advertised mining jobs next to erotic photographs.
Whimsical illustration from a 1986 Czechoslovak guide to divorce (Ivo Plaňava, "Po rozvodu").