Newly built churches and chapels in the Czech Republic in 1948–1989

Abstract

During the communist regime that was in power in the former Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989, religious life was restricted. The functioning of churches was strictly controlled by state authorities, and churches were generally suppressed and persecuted. This involved the nationalisation and destruction or devastation of church buildings. In that socio-political environment that was hostile to churches, the construction of new sacred buildings became almost impossible. However, despite the passage of time, several of them were actually constructed, retaining their progressive architectural and artistic form. The text focuses on the description of the origins and architectural characteristics of several new religious buildings, the first of which is the extraordinary Chapel of the Divine Heart of the Lord in Olomouc from the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, built for the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Third Order of St Francis. Also unique and architecturally valuable are the buildings erected in the Moravian countryside at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s: the Church of St. Joseph in Senetářov and the Church of St Nicholas in Tichá. The text then presents the church of the Czech Evangelical Brothers in Prague-Kobylisy, known today as Jacob’s Ladder Church, which was built according to a unique design by a Swiss architect in the late 1960s in what was then Czechoslovakia. Finally, the paper describes the only new church building, constructed in the 1980s in the spirit of architectural postmodernism: the Church of St Wenceslas in Most.