Space – landscape – home – homeland

Abstract

This article endeavours to analyse the subjective experience of the landscape and its embracement by two groups of people (the Czech majority and the German minority) in the Czech lands during the first half of the 20th century. It considers the landscape to be an optically perceivable sector with its own distinct elements, structures, important places and landmarks. It simultaneously perceives it as a space with a history and symbolic value. The Czech geologist Cilek states that “we age together with the land and trees in our home landscape”. How specifically do we create this home landscape and what strategies do we choose if forced to abandon it? The actual topic of the paper and the study is therefore the relationship between the landscape and home within the meaning of a place we have assimilated with, one that evokes an emotional relationship, i.e. the origin and function of the anthropological dimensions of the Czech landscape, the interconnection between the landscape and a specific group, and the spatial map that originated as a result of new political-social conditions, and new territorial borders and even state borders.