Kilo for each silenced. The bell on Rohan Island will weigh 9801 kg
illustration frame
| photo: National Monuments Institute
“The bell has been a part of our culture since the early Middle Ages to the present day. It plays not only a signal, but also a social role, “reminded Ondřej Boháč, the Prague bell ringer and chairman of the Sanctus Castulus association.
The bells were destroyed and remelted even during the First World War. After that, however, most of them made a great effort to replace them with new ones. That changed after World War II, when the communist regime prevented similar activities.
During World War II, ninety percent of bells disappeared from Czech and Slovak bell towers. Only those that were identified as the rarest were saved.
The bells were transported from all over the area to the so-called cemetery of bells on Prague’s Rohan Island. This year it is exactly 80 years since the ships directly from the dock on Rohan Island headed along the Vltava to German war factories.
The Bell # 9801 initiative wants to commemorate this anniversary. For every one bell destroyed, he puts one kilogram into a new bell. The bell will weigh 9,801 kilograms. The initiative wants to obtain the costs of casting the bell in a public collection.
The casting of the bell is planned for May 2022 in the professional Austrian workshop Grassmayr in Innsbruck. Already in previous years, bells were cast in the same workshop for the Prague churches of St. Havel and St. Hastala. At that time, the Sanctus Castulus Bell Bell Association, which also stands behind Bell # 9801, was behind their creation.
After a hundred years, the tower of St. Haštal was filled with bells thanks to a public collection |
The bell should arrive in the Czech Republic at the end of the summer. The initiative donates it to the capital. This is to place him in a new park on Rohan Island. The appearance of the bell is in charge of Leoš Válka, director of the DOX Center for Contemporary Art. The bell will have a bottom diameter of 258 centimeters. Four bells will be needed to rock it.
After the implementation of this project, the initiators of the collection want to continue collecting money for the missing additional bells, which have never returned to the Czech Republic since the Protectorate.