Czech Sacral Architecture between 1900 - 1950 in International Context

The thesis deals with the history and the interpretation of the development of sacral architecture during the first half of the twentieth century. It interprets the topic in a broad framework, which mentions the historical preconditions of this development and in the most important cases also its international relations. The introductional chapters list all up-to-date publications to the topic and suggest certain means of interpretation of sacral architecture which reflects the natural division of this topic between the disciplines of architectural theory and religion science. The own thesis begins with characteristics of social and religious situation in the Austria-Hungary and its consequences of sacral architectural development. It mentions basic examples of sacral buildings and the measure of their relation to the contemporary architectural development in general. Subsequently it mentions transformational influence of World War I and of declaration of souverain Czechoslovakia, which led to the emergence of new churches with their own architectural ambitions and also to the focus shifting of discipline to new contemporary topics. It follows the parallels with contemporary architectural trends of 1920's and the level of their use in the specific field of religious buildings also in relation to individual churches with their different architectural developments. Further it mentions sacral building development in 1930's with the emphasis in relation to the contemporary social atmosphere and in accent transformation between conservative and progressive religious approach. Than it follows with a review of religious culture transformation during World War II in Protectorate Czech Moravia and shows particularity of unnumerous examples of church buildings and projects from this era. The final part than reflects the evolution of the social role of religion after the War as well as an influence of communist coup in 1948 at potential of sacral architecture. It states the negative influence of both totalitarian regimes on the quality of sacral buildings of following period and on a poor measure of disciplines theoretical knowledge, which among others results in unsufficient primary sources, from which this thesis would likely have taken. Even when this thesis have not and cannot have an ambition of full exploration of the topic, it presents the factography and collecion of interpretations, by means of which the significant gap in the historiography of 20th century Czech sacral architecture can be at least partially bridged