Episode list

The first part of the cycle approached five Germans (from the former GDR and "West" Germany) who, for various reasons, decided to work and live in the Czech Republic. A radio editor brought here by love, an employee of the Institute of Egyptology, raising her children in Czech, an employee of the German Embassy in Prague, or a translator of Havel, Vaculík or Grus, a bank clerk who arranged concerts for Czech jazz bands before November 89, will talk about her experiences. after Germany, and finally a bohemian and pedagogue of the University of West Bohemia, who studied Slavic studies in West Berlin and completed his studies in Prague.

It doesn't matter anymore, "thinks Max Krabatch, a native of South Bohemia, the mayor of South Bohemian Rosenberg, thinks about the importance of nationality in the next part of the series on contemporary Czech-German relations. like half a century on the other side of the border.The story of an idyllic town in the wild Vltava valley changes - while the elderly sing German songs in the local cemetery, young people practice baseball .

The free port on the Elbe is a well-known European commercial center, but few people know that it contains a piece of Czech territory, which our republic received in 1929. Salenhafen - this is the Czech port in Hamburg, where the ship flax-seeded LABE goes. with cinematographer and director Ján Piroh on board. Thanks to him, the third part of the Okno cycle brings several people closer to their neighbors, for whom friendship between nations, cities and countries is not just a phrase, but a condition for their work and way of life.

The cases of emigrants who, after the fall of totalitarianism, not only do not want to return after the fall of totalitarianism, but do not feel sentiment and are not embarrassed to say out loud that they feel good in the new country, still sound inappropriate to our ears. If this country is Germany, it still affects many people at least suspiciously. Among such satisfied Czechs with a German passport, we find a journalist, carpenter, sculptor, painter, owner of a graphic studio or, for example, a saleswoman in a department store (by the way - this is none other than the former actress Jitka Zelenohorská, the star of the safe ).

The father of the current chief of the military airport in Pardubice was imprisoned in a concentration camp as an anti-Nazi resistance fighter. The fact that his son went to study in Germany for military school one day can be boldly considered a historical paradox. At the same time, few people know that dozens of men and women from Bohemia and Moravia attend military universities and vocational courses in the country of the former ideological enemy every year. Director D. Vondracek visited some of them in the places of their temporary work to show that some persistent historical stereotypes can be broken even in uniform and with "weapons in hand".

Not only about their popularity, but also about their experience with the German league and Germany in general, the 1. FC Kaiserslautern champions Pavel Kuka and Miroslav Kadlec, football players who are joined by another Bundesliga star, new father Radoslav Látal from Shalke O4, and 18-year-old David Jarolím acquisition of list A of the Bayern Munich team. From the Czech Republic, former representative and current manager Frantisek Straka and league gunner Sparta Horst Siegl shared their German "experiences".

There are many reasons why some Germans want to fight Czech. For some, it is a desire to know their own roots, reaching back to generations of Czech parents and grandparents, for the second a liking for "exotics", for the third a pragmatic addition to another legal or economic education. Although the pronunciation of some students from the universities of Munich and Poznan may make a smile come to our country, their tenacity, with which they penetrate the seven falls and the listed words, or their overview of Czech literature and history, rather deserves our recognition.

Several young girls from Bohemia and Moravia found their temporary home in Germany, around Lake Constance. Home because they are perceived as second mothers or eldest daughters in German households rather than a "babysitter". They all confirm that the experience they gain in an foreign environment as an au pair is more important than their earnings. And it doesn't matter if they are surrounded by vineyards or bison on the farm, if they live with ordinary people or in an aristocratic family.

Only the border separates the two peasants who farm a short distance on the Czech and German side: the Czech Poislov family living in Mlynárovice and the German Reiss family living in Schnellzipf. Like many of their ancestors, each of them remained faithful to their land, despite adversity and history. Neither the war nor the later expulsion, nor the Iron Curtain, forced them to leave the places where their families once took root.

If the word company is replaced by the word partnership, it is far from just a change of name, but above all of content. And so, instead of formal "social" contacts, the inhabitants of cities and the countryside naturally find their way today in the case of Czechs and Germans. Evidence of this can be photographers, students and other citizens of Prague 1 and the German Bamberg, or scouts from the Moravian Libava region, who, together with former German residents, are preparing the surroundings of the devastated church in Stará Voda.

There are not even a hundred Sudeten Germans returning to Bohemia after forced displacement. Nevertheless, fears of a "new Germanization" remain among some locals. The documentary about four Czech Germans who are trying to elevate the impoverished industry and services and at the same time offer work to the local people is trying to dispel these doubts. However, sometimes they encounter undeveloped business ethics and anti-German prejudices .

A thing unthinkable a few years ago: every day a bus departs from South Bohemia with young high school students to take them abroad to the Austrian hotel school where they study. The Austrians pay for the study, the bus is the Czech side - but even this small investment will pay off many times over. And while Czechs are learning to cook Czech dumplings in Austria, at another school, an Austrian grammar school in Prague, future intellectuals are commenting on the neighborhood with German-speaking countries.

Under the word missionary, everyone recalls the ardent men of faith who conquer pagan territories and convince the natives of their teachings. However, if we understand the mission more as the path of a man who is able to share his faith wherever fate takes him, then even two priests on both sides of the border can be boldly called missionaries. One is Dr. Libor Koval works in Freiburg, Germany, the second is German Bonfilius M. Wagner, who serves in the Novohrad Monastery near Ceské Budejovice.