Victories, failures and pitfalls. Transformations of the monument care in the 20th century illustrated by the examples of several objects of the Municipal Conservation Area of Havlíčkův Brod

Monument care, as a highly complex and interdisciplinary subject area of a human activity, can be viewed from the theoretical perspective considering its objectives, tendencies, aspects of methodology as well as global obstacles put in its way. Nevertheless, such an approach must be accompanied by the view focusing on particular output of practical activities of the branch, which can make the theoretic paradigm specific, support or question it and thus open a way for further consideration, whose implications can be immense. Providing there is no mutual feedback between the theory and practice, something that could be, with a little exaggeration, called “monument care for monument care” could emerge, even if undoubtedly on a high professional level. In short, an apt comparison of such a condition could be made with a situation where a person in a house on fire would be engaged with studying fire safety regulations effective in various parts of the world instead of extinguishing the fire, which even though praiseworthy and conductive, would not help much to localize the raging fire. The purpose of the paper is to describe certain specific, but sometimes to some extent quite typical achievements as well as failures of the monument care, with an example of efforts put within the 20th century into safeguarding particular objects. Among others, it outlines the extraordinary environment of this discipline at the beginning of the 20th century and the activities of the Vienna Central Commission for the Preservation of National Heritage Sites, specifically its conservation scientist of that time, who was one of the most outstanding (though quite contradictory) personalities of the Czech monument care, Zdeněk Wirth. Some attention is also focused on the conflict between the construction efforts of rising firms of the First Czechoslovak Republic and the defenders of the old architecture. It also depicts conservationists’ desperate tilting at windmills of the communist totalitarianism, as well as conservation treatments of the rather confused period after November 1989 – all that demonstrated with the example of the burgher houses, which are situated or used to be situated on Havlíček’s Square in Havlíčkův Brod