Drought reveals old gravestones on the bed of Czech Lake Lipno

An old cemetery has emerged on the drought-drained bed of the Lipno reservoir in South Bohemia. Historians, together with monument specialists and hydrologists, secretly raised 12 stone gravestones from the second half of the 19th century from the bottom — the find was kept quiet so that the exposed shore would not become a target for treasure hunters.

The cemetery of a vanished town

The stones belonged to the cemetery of the village of Dolní Vltavice, which had existed since the mid-13th century and disappeared after World War II when the Lipno dam was built. According to local historian Jindřich Špinar of the South Bohemian Research Library, the settlement had a church, a parish and a school, and stood on a busy trade route from České Budějovice to Passau. Of the village's more than 400 residents, most identified as Germans, so they were expelled after the war.

Historian Štifter said all the gravestones were removed back in the mid-1950s, when the cemetery was exhumed and some of the dead were reburied in Černá v Pošumaví. “I have no illusions about how carelessly that was done, or how many of the dead still remain there,” he noted. According to him, the stones were simply dumped behind the cemetery wall at the time.

Faces and stories behind the names on the stones

Now specialists at the Seidel photo studio in Český Krumlov are trying to find the faces and life stories of the people whose names survive on the gravestones. The museum holds around 150,000 glass plates and negatives from the late 19th century, and a photograph has already been matched to the first name found on a stone — the father of a girl who died at the age of three from appendicitis. “We have her father, we have wider relatives, and now new links to other family members keep appearing — that's how we're piecing together the mosaic,” said museum director Zdenka Mrázková.

A memorial exhibition at the site of the find

According to Mrázková, historians are gathering all the available information, which is “flowing together like little streams into one big current.” The goal is to create a memorial exhibition in Dolní Vltavice, right at the site of the find itself, bringing together the scattered stories into a single picture. The history of the flooded lakebed has been studied since 2016, when the book “Lipno — a Land Under Water” was published. Researchers will now continue trying to determine whether faces from old photographs in the museum's archive can once again be matched to the names on the gravestones.

Read also: 6 cemeteries of Prague where history and art matter more than mourning: a guide to necropolis museums

Source: ekolist.cz