Waldstein Palace in Prague: The First Baroque Residence in Central Europe (Advanced Guides to Czech Monuments)

Duke Albrecht von Waldstein (Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein), was one of the greatest Czechs who made astonishing career on the battlefields of the Thirty Years’ War. The Duke went down in European history and he was also one of the greatest builders. Nothing changed Prague, Czech Republic, as dramatically as his gigantic residence, in the Lesser Town (Mala Strana). Waldstein’s Palace has been preserved practically intact, its facade looks exactly as the Duke designed it. We are fortunate to have at least the mask with which one of the most enigmatic men in world history hid his face. The central question of research on Waldstein is his loyalty to the Emperor. We will probably never know if he was loyal to his Emperor in the last years of his life. Waldstein Palace is, however, precious testimony to his self-representation at the time when he constructed his residence in Prague, that is in the years between 1621 and 1630.

The most striking feature of Waldstein Palace is not what it reveals, but what it hides. What we miss on the facade and in the Palace interior is any direct reference to Albrecht von Waldstein. He is conspicuously absent in this huge Palace, on its facade we do not find coat of arms of Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Waldstein, Duke of Mecklenburg, Friedland, Sagan and Glogau, Count of Schwerin, Lord of the lands of Rostock and Stargard. When we look for celebrations of Waldstein, the Palace and its rich interior seem faceless. But at the moment that we forget his personage and start to look for allusions to Empire, the person is suddenly vividly present. We see right before us Albrecht von Waldstein, Generalissimo of the Imperial Army, Admiral of the North and Baltic Seas and Knight of the Order of Golden Fleece. At the peak of his career, in the 1620s, he wholly identified himself with the Holy Roman Empire. This was also expressed in the decoration of his Palace in Prague, which he constructed at that time. In this sense, we may say that in the Palace of the most energetic man of his time, impersonality reigned. All the glory went to the Holy Roman Empire and its Emperor.

The Advanced Guides to Czech Monuments differ from other guide books in questions they ask. Why monuments were created, what their messages were, what is legend and what is history in guidebooks and travelogues …

Why should we ask? The problem of our world is a timelessness, in which the cultural identity of the entire western civilisation is being dissolved, slowly but inexorably. Today, only a few people understand ancient myths or biblical stories which monuments depict, even though every schoolboy knew them by heart not so long ago. The Western world has almost entirely removed narrative history from the school curriculum, without which historical monuments make no sense, their historical context quickly fading into oblivion. The commercial success of pseudo-historical novels demonstrates that ignorance of and indifference to history is spreading so quickly, that soon there will be nothing left to forget. Therefore, we should ask ourselves before it is too late, what lies behind these monuments, what can their forms and stories tell us.

The Advanced Guides to Czech Monuments are encounters with their creators–the architects, sculptors, painters and, last but not least, their patrons. We have tried to build a gateway to the past from archival documents and scholarly research. We wanted to look at the monuments through the eyes of those who commissioned them and those who worked on these commissions.

The Advanced Guides to Czech Monuments are original historical studies which introduce fresh information and viewpoints. We thoroughly studied everything thus far written about the monuments, but our main attention was devoted to the structures themselves.