Vanished Villages

Along with the village farms and yards, schools, castles and churches also disappeared. It was only in the 1990s that the border zone was reopened to all those interested in its turbulent history and its current look. The ideal conditions for visiting the extinct settlements are in spring or autumn, when the vegetation does not cover their indistinct remains. Wandering around the vanished places is made easy by signposts with Czech and German names erected in the terrain, asin some places there are no signs of former settlement. Most of the vanished villages lie on local roads or marked hiking trails.

In the former village of Lučina (DE: Grafenried) near Nemanice, individual destroyed buildings have been gradually uncovered in recent years. This is a very interesting probe into history – for example, the remains of a church, a parish, a pub, a brewery, a glassworks and other buildings have been uncovered, and the original cemetery has also been made accessible. Every year, a Czech-German Holy Mass is celebrated here in the place of the original re-consecrated church of St. George.

However, the village of Trubce in the Holýšov region disappeared in a different way: after 1960, it became part of a military training area.

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The Vanished Village of Lísková

The vanished village of Lísková in the Upper Palatinate Forest is today known more as a border crossing. The site is located 20 kilometres from the district town of Domažlice and less than 6 kilometres from the German town of Waldmünchen in the Cham district. The village was annexed from the Upper Palatinate to the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1708. However, it was not until 1722 that the village’s spiritual activities and economy were checked. According to the Lexicon of Villages in the Czech Republic, the village was listed as Haselbach in the Domažlice district between 1869 and 1930. Between 1950 and 1989, the village was not mentioned at all. In 1989, the border with Bavaria was opened on the site of the former customs house, followed by the construction of a border crossing. Since January 1, 2000 Lísková has been part of the municipality of Nemanice.

An interesting way to learn about the history of Lísková is questing, for which a worksheet can be downloaded from the Internet.