25th anniversary of St.Gallen-Liberec

15 September 2014. There has been a partnership between the Liberec region and the Canton of St.Gallen for 25 years. Liberec, whose German name is Reichenberg, is situated close to the German-Czech-Polish tripoint. The lecture series will spotlight the cultural history of the Czech Republic and show how a small Central European nation has fought to be an independent state time and again.

Nation building, foreign policy and the Sudeten problem

The lecture series will be launched on 29 October by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schmid, who will outline the long and arduous road towards Czech nationhood. In his lecture on 5 November, Daniel Jetel from the Department of History of Zurich University will deal with the tensions between inner conviction and outer compulsion that affected Czechoslovak foreign policy during the interwar years. The Sudeten problem will be the topic on 12 November, when Susanne Keller-Giger will speak about the end of the cohabitation of Czechs and Germans in Czechoslovakia.

Presidents, literature and Liechtenstein

The very different presidents of the post-Communist era – Václav Havel, Václav Klaus and Miloš Zeman – will be focused on by Prof. Dr. Josette Baer from the Department of Philosophy of Zurich University on 19 November. On 26 November, Georg Escher from the Department of Slavic Studies of Basel University will talk about present-day Czech literature and about history. The lecture series will be concluded by Susanne Keller-Giger, who will cast light on the fight about the estates owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein in Czechoslovakia.

The six lectures about St.Gallen's partner town of Liberec will take place at the University of St.Gallen in Room HSG 01-U121 on Thursdays at 6.15 p.m. Dates : 29 October; 5, 12, 19 and 26 November; and 3 December. 

Bild: www.stgallen-liberec.ch