History
A voyage through history
Lets us set forth on a long pilgrimage through the centurie of history of this town. Of course, the first steps begin in the dim light of the Middle Ages in which the outlines of dominant features only energe in a step-by-step fashion.
This high-lying submontane zone with poor soils and coarse climate does not belong to those spots in which the first major settlements were founded and most ancient history of this country written. On the other hand, treasureseekers were lured to these places from time immemorial by particular geological composition of the local ground and especielly by the local deposits of silver and iron ores. Together with a situation of this site close to an ancient oveland trade route, these factors caught the attention of the bishops of Prague.
At the beginning of the 13th century, a holding referred to by a Czech personal name of Příbram, likely to have denoted its founder who remains completely unknown to us, belonged to a high-born magnate named Hroznata. However, his permanent interests were centered od N and NW Bohemia where most of his possessions were situated and where, at a place called Teplá, he established a chapter of Premonstratensian canons in 1193, accepting the dignity of prior of Teplá in the intention to dedicate his life to spiritual matters. Hroznata transferred all his possessions to his new foundation. Being situated too far from this centre, his holding at Příbram caught the eye of the bishop of Prague, the head of the Church of Bohemia. At that time, the bishop was busy creating a unified administration of ecclesiastical affairs and felt the need for resting stations at adequate distances from Prague which he could use in travelling all over his extensive domain. Příbram was situated halfway between the capital of Bohemia and the SW frontier. In 1216, Andrew, bishop od Prague, purchased "a holding called Příbram" from the Teplá canons ang initiated the buildup of one of his domains here. The episcopal residence was soon surrounded by a borouhg with a market privilege and with a church of St. James, functioning as a focal point of a domain with several villages.
In 1278, Přemysl Otakar II, king of Bohemia, was killed in battle; in the following period of unrest, adversaries of the bishop fell on many ecclesiatical domains. In 1289, they invaded Příbram, plundering the town and killing or capturing its inhabitants. After this April indursion, another raid came at the beginning of June.
The catastrophe must have been of considerable dimensions as after the cessation of hostilities in 1290 or 1291, the bishop had to convocate new settlers who were introduced do Příbram by the "locator" named Přemysl, local leader to whom all the practical aspects of re-settlement of the town were entrusted. As the bailiff of the renewed borough, Přemysl is the first representative of Příbram self - rule whom we know by name.
A long period of peace and prosperity followed. A new small castle of stone masonry was built here by the first archbishop of Prague, Arnošt (Ernest) of Pardubice (1343 - 1364) who paid frequent visits to the town; he also established a hospital with a second church of St. John in the suburb. New and new villages sprang up on the archbishop´s estate, the town below the castle grew in importance and the local life became busier and busier. Ultimately, the number of municipal households rose is nearly eighty and there was a school here as early as the 14th century. The archbishop slolemnly confirmed the legal securities of the burghers by a special charter in 1406. Most of thle local inhabitants spoke Czech.
Of course, there was always a lot of Germans around, mining the local silver ores. However, the mining business went through ups and downs so that the miners came and went, constituting a community apart which never merged with the resident burghers.
In Czech speaking Příbram, the challenge of the Hussite reformation met a lively response.
The archiepiscopal throne was left vacant as a consequence of the religious revolution and the town remained without overlord. The Příbram inhabitants took the Hussite side and even sent troops to the war but without much success, as the town was heavily damaged by the incursions of a Catholic nobleman called Hanuš of Kolovrat in 1421 – 1422. Sire Hanuš even possessed the fortified castle of Příbram for some time.
In the absence of its ecclesiastical overlord, Příbram was administered by the king of Bohemia who, however, did not retain direct rule over the town, pledging it to his creditors who changed frequently. Their usual intention was to collect as much money from the estate which they held temporarily as was possible; they were not interested in its long – term prosperity. The consequences, of course, were disastrous; the burghers ultimately feared lest their community, deprived of its ancient privileges, decrease to the status of a simple village.
In consequence of all this, there was much hope in the silver – mining activities which assumed unheard – of speed and dimensions since 1500. Many German miners from the Krušné Hory/Erzgebirge mountains came to town and some of them even established an independent community on the Březová Hora mountain nearby. In 1525, Jindřich Pešík, the local miners and it was expected that a major mining town would come into being soon.
However, these hopeful expectations failed to materialize. After 1550, the mining lost its importance but the hopes lingered on and, probably as their consequence, the sovereign terminated the extorsions of pledge – keepers in 1579, elevating Příbram to the status of a royal mining town administered by a royal official – the mint master. This brought prosperity to the town but the small community at Březová Hora, gradually turning Czech, ceased growing and remained a tiny hamlet.
Profound changes were wrought by the Thirty years´war (1618 – 1648). Plundered several times by the armies of both belligerent parties, Příbram received a nearly fatal blow. More than half of the town´houses – 97 out of 168 – fell in ruins and the survivors of this disaster were reduced to the status of beggars.
The outcome of the war brought about forced re-Catholicization of Bohemia, mostly Utraquist by then. The Příbram situation was precipitated by the fact that the Svatá Hora chapel of Virgin Mary came to be renowned as the most famous pilgrimage centre of Bohemia to which not only crowds of common people but even nobility and the emperors congregated. The pilgrimage traffic became a main source of substitence for the pauperized burghers.
It took Příbram no less than fifty years to recover fully from the ravages of war. One of the auwiliary factors was iron – mining which brought not inconsiderable revenues to the municipal treasury around 1700. The silver mines operated with meagre results; in consequence of this, the town gradually ceded its positions both as to investments and as to profits to the state in the course of the 18th century, retaining no more than four shares in the mining enterprise. This was soon to be proved a fatal mistake.
At the end of the 18th century, the mining turned out to be an unprecedented success, thriving beyond all expectations. The town grew in size and population but not in beauty: the new housing consisted of ramshackle miners´cottages among which a maze of lanes departing from the central square hardly gave an orderly appearance. Příbram, world-famous as the richest silver mine of all the Habsburg monarchy, hosted the central mining institutions and, since 1849, even the mining academy; however, the immense profits that sprang forth from the local enterprise flowed mostly to Vienna. The municipality had to be content with the abovementioned four shares in the mining activities.
Nevertheless, even this income was sufficient in the most prosperous years to provide for the foundation of important school facilities – a techers´training college in 1874 and a gymnasium, or grammar school, in 1884. These were to become the only ones of their kind in the region.
The peak of the local mining prosperity lasted for a century. Since the 80´s of the 19th century, mining profits stagnated and ultimately started decreasing. A number of miners were discharged and since c. 1900, when the Příbram population surpassed the number of 14,000, even town diminished.
It was the irony of fate that precisely at this difficult moment, in 1897, the adjacent community of Březová Hora ultimately reached the goal of its long-term attempts, being raised to the status of a royal mining town, though this title represented hardly more than a high-sounding but hollow epithet in the modern time.
The promising perspectives of 19th century Příbram thus slowly but steadily turned into nostalgic remembrances of the glorious but inevitably gone past. Nevertheless, a number of features made the town remarkable even in times of an economic and population decline. The worldwide fame of the mines still attracted a number of visitors, religious procession still ascended the Svatá Hora shrine. Unlike other country boroughs, Příbram offewred great education opportunities in a number of school institutions up to the Mining academy, as well as ample chances for a thriving cultural life.
After 1945, the history of Příbram took another turn. The incipient uranium age, overshadowed by the cold war, brought about a neew epoch of the local mining – burgeoning of mining and the resulting growth of the town. Nevertheless, the Příbram prosperity seems to have been burdened by a spell. Profits from the local mines, reaped in the 19th century by the Viennese administration, now went to the eastern despotic superpower. The consequences of its rule over Czechoslovakia left their imprints in the character of the growing Příbram. It was surrounded by sprawling “Stalinistic” architecture with dreary barrack-life facades. Mining shafts and building sites were now enclosed by barriers of barbed wire with watchtowers from which armed guards supervised the toiling convicts.
Of course, not even public life beyond the barbedwire entanglements could not be left unsurveyed by the new masters. The cultural level of the town decreased. In 1950, the clergymen of Svatá Hora, belonging to the Redemptorist order, were dragged to captivity. Nine years after this event, a theatre was solemnly inaugurated at the opposite-lying slope; its building was supposed to provide a symbolic dominant feature confronting the Svatá Hora shrine.
This last objective was not reached. The theatre failed to become Marxist competition to Svatá Hora, as the ideological strategists hoped. The theatre remained a theatre, the shrine remained a shrine and human beings remained human including the irrepressible streaming at liberty and spiritual riches. Old cultural traditions were ultimately revived at Příbram, chiefly on the initiative of individuals, especially in such spheres as music, science or regional cultural work and in spite of the frowning authorities.
The awakening of Czechoslovakia to freedom in November of 1989 caught Příbram at the threshold of another new era. Extensive mining enterprises, traditional silver and lead mines and modern uranium pits went out of operation. A town of forty thousand inhabitants is no longer a mining town. It has retained, however, its character of a pilgrimage centre and of a memorial of rich mining traditions. It is being turned into a centre of scientific research on the history of the uranium industry and on the third, anti-Communist resistance. It starts tapping the possibilities of its fascinating history and contemporary possibilities with the intention of providing a safe and culturally advanced home for its inhabitants, as well as favourable impressions to its visitors.
