The Next Page: Prague’s Lennon Wall a Cold War landmark in its own right
It has been a quarter century since the Berlin Wall, that bastion of communist domination, came crumbling down amid cheers of jubilant celebration.
But in the Czech Republic, another bastion still stands in quiet celebration of man's irrepressible idealism. This structure is known as the Lennon Wall — Lennon, as in John, not Lenin, as in Vladimir.
Located just under the western end of the Charles Bridge, on a quiet tree-lined street in Prague’s Mala Strana neighborhood, the Lennon Wall is a testament to the inextinguishable spirit of a people who refused to be dominated.
My wife and I once took an extended vacation to visit friends who worked for the U.S. State Department in Vienna. While there, we took advantage of the great rail and ferry service to take side trips to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I came across a brief reference to the Lennon Wall in a travel guide and decided to seek it out. It was well worth the effort — a secluded and quiet respite from the throngs of tourists in Old Town.
The wall, which sits across the street from the French embassy and encloses the back of an ancient churchyard, actually is owned by the Knights of the Maltese Cross. Near Prague's popular riverside Kampa Park, the wall has been a popular gathering spot for the city's youth.
During the dark days of communist oppression, the wall often displayed anti-government graffiti and populist slogans and was the sight of skirmishes between the secret police and members of Prague’s underground culture.
After the 1980 murder of John Lennon, whose politically infused music had been an inspiration to Prague’s free-spirited youth, a tombstone-like niche in the wall became a memorial. The wall quickly became covered with testimonials, portraits and excerpts from his writings and lyrics.
This didn’t sit well with Gustav Husak and the communist authorities who had been in power since the Soviet invasion of the city in 1968. Although Perestroika reforms had been underway for some time in the Soviet Union, the local leadership was adamant in continuing its tyrannical hold. So they quickly whitewashed over what they considered Western propaganda and set up surveillance cameras to discourage these unwanted expressions of free speech. Musicians who gathered there and dared to play Lennon's music often were arrested and sent to prison for their treasonous behavior.
Thus began a war of expression between the communist authorities and the city's ever-growing dissident population. Throughout the 1980s, as often as the government painted over the wall's declarations, the Czech dissenters returned to express their feelings of liberation and to pay homage to their fallen hero. The Velvet Revolution, as it became known to the rest of the world, was underway.
By: John Cunningham
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
