Reference Type: Journal Article
Author: Preda, Sînziana
Year: 2007
Title: Biografii exemplare în comunităţi de cehi din zona Banatului în secolele XIX-XX
Journal: Analele Banatului, S.N., Arheologie - Istorie
Issue: XV
Pages: 285-293.
Language: Romanian
Keywords: Czech minority, ethnography, ethnic identity, elites, folklore
Abstract(EN): Exemplary characters become heroes in collective memory:starting from this statement, the project we initiated was intended to follow present and past exemplary characters that have found a place in the memory of the seven villages with compact populations of Czech origin. (Sf. Elena, Bigăr, Gîrnic, Ravenska, Eibenthal şi Şumiţa).The Czech Pems’ heroes are those mythical ancestors that sacrificed themselves in a distant past in order to lay the foundation of the communities which have largely survived to this day. Their figures and efforts create epic images where legendary elements, exceptional deeds and historical data merge. Although we cannot talk about a veneration of these heroes “with a purely religious meaning” - like in the case of the ancient Greeks - the image of hero-ancestors is and will remain hallow in the villagers’ mentality and they are mentioned with every tale about the Pems’ beginnings in Banat. The attachment to these founding heroes is even more remarkable when we consider that many of them are almost fable-like since historical records mention them only partially. History, or rather the stories passed down from father to son (many respondents simply answered that this was what .
URL: http://muzeulbanatului.stormmedia.ro/uploads/products/2007%20Preda.pdf