Memorial to the fallen

The memorial to the fallen of the First World War, originally located near the present-day Hotel Dalibor, was designed by the architect Antoním Ausobský in 1927. The original choice, a sculpture by Emil Kubíček – Messenger with news of victory at Zborov, Verona and Doss Alta, did not suit the intended location; the offer of a sculpture by Jan Štursa – Wounded, was deemed too expensive for the town.

Ausobský created a non-figural design for the memorial. Rising up on a three-tier pedestal, a stele of roughly hewn, low stone blocks contrasts with a smooth light-coloured granite slab which forms a vertical strip in the axis of the memorial's front elevation. The uppermost block bears the relief of a torch of victory in an allegory of the freedom the Czech lands acquired with the help of the Legionnaires after three centuries of post-Bělohora servitude and oppression.

The complex iconographic programme has been recorded by the town chronicle: “The lower three blocks represent the three centuries of our servitude following the battle at Bělohrad; the three rusticated layers clasping those blocks are the three ages of secret resistance against oppression. Four massive blocks of the First World War are resting on those layers. They are dedicated to the memory of the Legionnaires and our heroes abroad – the lower one is marked 1914, the top one 1918. The layers of rusticated blocks clasping the smooth central slabs symbolize resistance and its victims in the homeland. The topmost block with the torch of victory in relief is the stone of liberation.”

The overall design of the memorial, the surrounding landscaping of which was carried out by the landscape architect Alois J. Kulišan, bears typical features of Antonín Ausobský's work, especially his fondness for light values and contrasts between materials. The austerity and the ascetic aspect of the memorial is testimony to Ausobský's timeless Classicist creative signature, which also corresponds to the Functionalist trend of the period in preferring an unadorned and abstract form of expression.

Regarding the memorial's overall conception, Jan Kotěra had already preceded Ausobský with a similar design. His sketch for a war memorial for the town of Slaný divides the whole into three with a tiered top. However, its geometric form is richer, more lavish and fragile. Ausobský's work is more severe, almost ascetic but also harmonic and dignified. In this, it conforms to the period of its creation, which required the maximal effect from a minimal budget.

Fittingly, the memorial was unveiled ceremoniously on the 28th of October 1930 – the anniversary of the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic. However, in the late 1950s, as a result of road-works over the River Loučná, it was dismantled. Later, in 1975, it was installed, rotated by 180°, in front of the Sokol Organization building at the opposite side of the town.

PK – AŠ