1.
Czech Republic
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The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with mostly temperate continental climate and it is a unitary parliamentary republic, has 10.5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the territories of Bohemia, Moravia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire, after the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, reimposed Roman Catholicism, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, and was liberated in 1945 by the armies of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Czech country lost the majority of its German-speaking inhabitants after they were expelled following the war, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections. Following the 1948 coup détat, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence, in 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed, on 6 March 1990, the Czech Socialistic Republic was renamed to the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, it is a member of the United Nations, the OECD, the OSCE, and it is a developed country with an advanced, high income economy and high living standards. The UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development, the Czech Republic also ranks as the 6th most peaceful country, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, the traditional English name Bohemia derives from Latin Boiohaemum, which means home of the Boii. The current name comes from the endonym Čech, spelled Cžech until the reform in 1842. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, the etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning member of the people, kinsman, thus making it cognate to the Czech word člověk. The country has traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the southeast, and Czech Silesia in the northeast. Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992, the Czech part of the former nation found itself without a common single-word geographical name in English, the name Czechia /ˈtʃɛkiə/ was recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2.
Elbe
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The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia, then Germany and its total length is 1,094 kilometres. The Elbes major tributaries include the rivers Vltava, Saale, Havel, Mulde, Schwarze Elster, the Elbe river basin, comprising the Elbe and its tributaries, has a catchment area of 148,268 square kilometres, the fourth largest in Europe. The basin spans four countries, with its largest parts in Germany, much smaller parts lie in Austria and Poland. The basin is inhabited by 24.5 million people, the Elbe rises at an elevation of about 1,400 metres in the Krkonoše on the northwest borders of the Czech Republic near Labská bouda. Of the numerous small streams whose waters compose the infant river, here the Elbe enters the vast vale named Polabí, and continues on southwards through Hradec Králové and then to Pardubice, where it turns sharply to the west. At Kolín some 43 kilometres further on, it bends gradually towards the north-west, at the village of Káraný, a little above Brandýs nad Labem, it picks up the Jizera. At Mělník its stream is more than doubled in volume by the Vltava, or Moldau, upstream from the confluence the Vltava is in fact much longer, and has a greater discharge and a larger drainage basin. Some distance lower down, at Litoměřice, the waters of the Elbe are tinted by the reddish Ohře, in its northern section both banks of the Elbe are characterised by flat, very fertile marshlands, former flood plains of the Elbe now diked. At Magdeburg there is a viaduct, the Magdeburg Water Bridge, from the sluice of Geesthacht on downstream the Elbe is subject to the tides, the tidal Elbe section is called the Low Elbe. Within the city-state the Unterelbe has a number of streams, such as Dove Elbe, Gose Elbe, Köhlbrand, Northern Elbe, Reiherstieg. Some of which have been disconnected for vessels from the stream by dikes. In 1390 the Gose Elbe was separated from the stream by a dike connecting the two then-islands of Kirchwerder and Neuengamme. The Dove Elbe was diked off in 1437/38 at Gammer Ort and these hydraulic engineering works were carried out to protect marshlands from inundation, and to improve the water supply of the Port of Hamburg. The Northern Elbe passes the Elbe Philharmonic Hall and is then crossed under by the old Elbe Tunnel, a bit more downstream the Low Elbes two main anabranches Northern Elbe and the Köhlbrand reunite south of Altona-Altstadt, a locality of Hamburg. Right after both anabranches reunited the Low Elbe is passed under by the New Elbe Tunnel, the last structural road link crossing the river before the North Sea. At the bay Mühlenberger Loch in Hamburg at kilometre 634, the Northern Elbe and the Southern Elbe used to reunite, leaving the city-state the Lower Elbe then passes between Holstein and the Elbe-Weser Triangle with Stade until it flows into the North Sea at Cuxhaven. Near its mouth it passes the entrance to the Kiel Canal at Brunsbüttel before it debouches into the North Sea, the Elbe has been navigable by commercial vessels since 1842, and provides important trade links as far inland as Prague
3.
Josefov Fortress
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Josefov Fortress is a large historic defence complex of 18th-century military architecture, built between 1780-1790, in Jaroměř, eastern Bohemia, Czech Republic. Since 1948 it is part of the city of Jaroměř, after the coronation of Emperor Joseph II, new fortifications began to be built for the defence of the northern border of the Empire. The defence of Moravia was entrusted to Olomouc, which was fortified by powerful forts, when the work was completed, the fortification of Hradec Králové began in the years 1766-88. The Emperor Joseph II himself had the Josefov fortress to be built around the area of Plesy and it had three distinct sections - the main fortress with its residential and public function, the lower Crown fortress with a fortified island, and a forward redoubt in the fortress Brdce. The dominant part of the whole Fortress Josefov is the Empire Church, before that, there stood a fountain, which was made by the Czech J. Malinský in the year 1817. The Josefov fortress was originally named Ples, and only later, over the years, the fortress has been converted into a residential district. The biggest extreme music festival in Central Europe Brutal Assault takes place here each August. Metalheads from all over Europe occupy the fortress for three each year
4.
Bohemia
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Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech lands in the present-day Czech Republic. Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, after World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia. Between 1938 and 1945, border regions with sizeable German-speaking minorities of all three Czech lands were joined to Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland, in 1990, the name was changed to the Czech Republic, which become a separate state in 1993 with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Until 1948, Bohemia was a unit of Czechoslovakia as one of its lands. Bohemia was bordered in the south by Upper and Lower Austria, in the west by Bavaria and in the north by Saxony and Lusatia, in the northeast by Silesia, and in the east by Moravia. In the 2nd century BC, the Romans were competing for dominance in northern Italy, the Romans defeated the Boii at the Battle of Placentia and the Battle of Mutina. After this, many of the Boii retreated north across the Alps, much later Roman authors refer to the area they had once occupied as Boiohaemum. The earliest mention was by Tacitus Germania 28, and later mentions of the name are in Strabo. The name appears to include the tribal name Boi- plus the Germanic element *haimaz home and this Boiohaemum was apparently isolated to the area where King Marobods kingdom was centred, within the Hercynian forest. The Czech name Čechy is derived from the name of the Slavic ethnic group, the Czechs, Bohemia, like neighbouring Bavaria, is named after the Boii, who were a large Celtic nation known to the Romans for their migrations and settlement in northern Italy and other places. Another part of the nation moved west with the Helvetii into southern France, to the south, over the Danube, the Romans extended their empire, and to the southeast in Hungaria, were Sarmatian peoples. In the area of modern Bohemia the Marcomanni and other Suebic groups were led by their king Marobodus and he took advantage of the natural defenses provided by its mountains and forests. In late classical times and the early Middle Ages, two new Suebic groupings appeared to the west of Bohemia in southern Germany, the Alemanni, many Suebic tribes from the Bohemian region took part in such movements westwards, even settling as far away as Spain and Portugal. With them were also tribes who had pushed from the east, such as the Vandals, other groups pushed southwards towards Pannonia. These are precursors of todays Czechs, though the amount of Slavic immigration is a subject of debate. The Slavic influx was divided into two or three waves, the first wave came from the southeast and east, when the Germanic Lombards left Bohemia. Soon after, from the 630s to 660s, the territory was taken by Samos tribal confederation and his death marked the end of the old Slavonic confederation, the second attempt to establish such a Slavonic union after Carantania in Carinthia. Other sources divide the population of Bohemia at this time into the Merehani, Marharaii, Beheimare, Christianity first appeared in the early 9th century, but only became dominant much later, in the 10th or 11th century
5.
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
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Hácha was appointed president of the protectorate the same day. The Protectorate was an autonomous Nazi-administered territory which the German government considered part of the Greater German Reich, the states existence came to an end with the surrender of Germany to the Allies in 1945. To appease outraged international opinion, Hitler appointed former foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath to the post, German officials manned departments analogous to cabinet ministries, while small German control offices were established locally. The new authorities dismissed Jews from the service and placed them outside of the legal system. Political parties and trade unions were banned, and the press, many local Communist Party leaders fled to the Soviet Union. The population of the protectorate was mobilized for labor that would aid the German war effort, the Germans drafted Czechs to work in coal mines, in the iron and steel industry, and in armaments production. Consumer-goods production, much diminished, was directed toward supplying the German armed forces. The protectorates population was subjected to rationing, German rule was moderate—at least by Nazi standards—during the first months of the occupation. The Czech government and political system, reorganized by Hácha, continued in formal existence, the Gestapo directed its activities mainly against Czech politicians and the intelligentsia. Generalplan Ost assumed that around 50% of Czechs would be fit for Germanization, the Czech intellectual élites were to be removed not only from Czech territories but from Europe completely. The authors of Generalplan Ost believed it would be best if they emigrated overseas, as even in Siberia they were considered a threat to German rule, just like Jews, Poles, Serbs, and several other nations, Czechs were considered to be untermenschen by the Nazi state. The Czechs demonstrated against the occupation on 28 October 1939, the 21st anniversary of Czechoslovak independence, the death on 15 November 1939 of a medical student, Jan Opletal, who had been wounded in the October violence, precipitated widespread student demonstrations, and the Reich retaliated. Politicians were arrested en masse, as were an estimated 1,800 students, during World War II, Hitler decided that Neurath wasnt treating the Czechs harshly enough and adopted a more radical policy in the protectorate. On 29 September 1941, Hitler appointed SS hardliner Reinhard Heydrich as Deputy Reichsprotektor, at the same time Neurath was relieved of his day-to-day duties, so for all intents and purposes Heydrich replaced Neurath as Reichsprotektor. Under Heydrichs authority Prime Minister Alois Eliáš was arrested, the Czech government was reorganized, the Gestapo arrested and killed people. The deportation of Jews to concentration camps was organized, and the town of Terezín was made into a ghetto way-station for Jewish families. On 4 June 1942, Heydrich died after being wounded by an assassin in Operation Anthropoid, directives issued by Heydrichs successor, SS-Oberstgruppenführer Kurt Daluege, ordered mass arrests, executions and the obliteration of the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. In 1943 the German war-effort was accelerated, under the authority of Karl Hermann Frank, German minister of state for Bohemia and Moravia, Within the protectorate, all non-war-related industry was prohibited
6.
Brutal Assault
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Brutal Assault is an open-air extreme metal festival that takes place in the 18th-century army fortress Josefov, located in Jaroměř, Czech Republic. It is held each August early in the month from Wednesday until Saturday, the festival started in 1996, originally focused on grindcore. For many years, it was an event with mainly Czech. It changed location several times and grew into an event by 2006. After moving to Josefov, attendances grew further to 15,000 in 2012, the festival motto is, Against violence and intolerance. Brutal Assault takes place in Josefov, a fortress built between 1780 and 1787 by Emperor Joseph II on the left bank of the Elbe and Mettau rivers near Jaroměř. The two main stages are built against the fortress walls, stealing from the tents and bodies of drunk visitors is common at Brutal Assault. Guests are advised to keep their valuables in safe places, the festival area at Brutal Assault in Josefov is near a hill, which can be difficult to navigate. Nicknamed the hill of death, it becomes muddy and slippery after rain, the hill can be walked around, however, and the site is fully accessible to the handicapped. The nineteenth annual festival was held from Wednesday 6 August to Saturday 9 August 2014 and it was headlined by Slayer, Amon Amarth, Satyricon, Venom, Bring Me the Horizon, Children of Bodom, Devin Townsend and Down. Three bands were announced but eventually had to be cancelled, Strife, Arsonists Get All the Girls and Gorguts
7.
Heavy metal subculture
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Fans of heavy metal music have created their own subculture which encompasses more than just appreciation of the style of music. Metal fans may also write or take photos for metal zines, some critics and musicians have suggested that the subculture is largely intolerant to other musical genres. The metal scene, like the scene in general, is associated with alcohol. While there are songs that celebrate drinking, drug use and partying, there are many songs that warn about the dangers of alcohol. These vary with time and regional divisions, but headbanger and metalhead are universally accepted to refer to fans or the subculture itself, heavy metal fans have created a subculture of alienation with its own standards for achieving authenticity within the group. Metal fans formed an “exclusionary youth community” which was distinctive and marginalized from the mainstream” society, the heavy metal scene developed a strongly masculine “community with shared values, norms, and behaviors”. A “code of authenticity” is central to the metal subculture. The metal code also includes “opposition to established authority, and separateness from the rest of society”, the activities in the metal subculture include the ritual of attending concerts, buying albums, and most recently, contributing to metal websites. Attending concerts affirms the solidarity of the subculture, as it is one of the activities by which fans celebrate their music. Metal magazines help the members of the subculture to connect, find information and evaluations of bands and albums, the long hair, leather jackets, and band patches of heavy metal fashion help to encourage a sense of identification within the subculture. However, Weinstein notes that not all fans are “visible members” of the heavy metal subculture. Some metal fans may have hair and dress in regular clothes. In the musical subcultures of heavy metal and punk, authenticity is a core value, heavy metal fans began using the term sell out in the 1980s to refer to bands who turned their heavy metal sound into radio-friendly rock music. In metal, an out is. someone dishonest who adopted the most rigorous pose, or identity-affirming lifestyle. The metal bands that earned this epithet are those, who adopt the visible aspects of the orthodoxy without contributing to the underlying belief system. He claims that this made it hard for Metallica to. play their music and win over a crowd in a land where poseurs ruled and anything fast, wood claims that the. true devotee’s path to metaldom is perilous and fraught with poseurs. In an article on metal/hard rock frontman Axl Rose, entitled Ex–‘White-Boy Poseur and he notes that “We thought we were so badass. N. W. A came out rapping about this world where you walk out of your house, at this point, Rose argues that It was just so clear what stupid little white-boy poseurs we were
8.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
