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follows. The physical component, which clearly acts as the symbol of discontinu-
ity, is the wall with the permanently closed entrance to the smaller section of the
cemetery that is no longer in use. The components of memory are therefore rather
disproportionate. Funerals only take place in the larger section of the cemetery (the
primary function of burying), while the cultural and informational components have
been preserved in the other section as well.
For instance, family names such as Renftel or Mattausch on the oldest tomb-
stones (see Fig. 8.3) are mentioned in historical sources about the village as early as
the mid-Seventeenth century. However, there is a question as to how long this will
remain the case, given the gradual deterioration of the cemetery. Another example
of indirect information about the past that has been preserved is the location of the
cemetery itself. From there, we can see traces of roads marked on older (military)
maps that lead to a site of pilgrimage on the hilltop of Gottesberg with a church,
which has now vanished. The neighbouring village of Petrovice offers an interesting
comparison. Petrovice is a border settlement between the Czech lands and Germany.
A spatial analysis and field survey have shown the significance of the impact of the
distance of the community from the border. Unlike the village of Vernerice, the for-
mer German inhabitants or their descendants have been visiting and maintaining
some of the tombs since the 1990s. As a whole, the spatial structure of the cemetery
in Petrovice is much more complex than that of the one in Vernerice and it does not
contain strictly delimited national sections.
While the first example showed functioning relations between the individual
components and the second a partial connection and partial contradiction between
them, there are numerous localities in the Sudetenland where the components of
landscape memory are in sharp contradiction with each other. Localities 1, 2 and 3
(Fig. 8.1) feature churches for which a lot of effort has been put into external main-
tenance. However, the furnishings inside are non-existent and in one particular case
the roof over the main nave of the church could not be preserved either. The phys-
ical and cultural component (although disrupted by the damage to the buildings)
is thus in complete contradiction with the functional component of the ceremonial
use of the buildings. Locality 4 (Fig. 8.1) and perhaps other localities in the area
(Raška, 2006) have probably gone through the most complicated development. The
German inhabitants were originally the dominant majority population here. After
their post-war displacement, the area was repopulated by inhabitants from the cen-
tral part of Bohemia or Eastern Europe. However, a military zone was created here
in 1953 and the area was depopulated again, with the exception of a few villages on
its periphery. Buildings disintegrated over time or were demolished, of the orig-
inal road system only those routes used for the new purposes were maintained,
and the mosaic of agricultural areas became covered up by vegetative succession.
Despite the ecological value of some of the succession communities of species in
the locality (as well as in the wider area), the components of landscape memory
are in contradiction with each other here and some of them cannot be traced any
longer.
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