1980 CZECHOSLOVAKIA 650 Yrs of Peter Parler Antique Silver 100 Korun Coin i75055

Description

Item:
i75055
Authentic Coin of:
Czechoslovakia - 650 years - birth of Petr Parléř
1980
Silver 100 Korun 32mm (
14.97
grams) 0.700 Silver (0.2926 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 100
ČESKOSLOVENSKÁ SOCIALISTICKÁ REPUBLIKA 100 KČS, Czechoslovak Socialist coat of arms, value below.
PETR PARLÉŘ 1330-1980, Portrait of Petr Parléř.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
Peter Parler
(German:
Peter von Gemünd
, Czech:
Petr Parléř
, Latin:
Petrus de Gemunden in Suevia
; 1333 - 13 July 1399) was a German-Bohemian architect and sculptor from the Parler family of master builders. Along with his father, Heinrich Parler, he is one of the most prominent and influential craftsmen of the Middle Ages. Born and apprenticed in the town of Schwäbisch Gmünd, Peter worked at several important late Medieval building sites, including Strasbourg, Cologne, and Nuremberg. After 1356 he lived in Prague, capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and seat of the Holy Roman Empire, where he created his most famous works: St. Vitus Cathedral and the Charles Bridge.
Sometime after 1352 Peter joined the construction works at the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg as the
parlier
, or chief site assistant alongside his father. The exact date and his precise role are unclear. The foundations of the church had already been laid in 1351 on the initiative of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, who envisioned it as a center for holding imperial ceremonies. This is reflected in the carved coats of arms of the Emperor, the seven Prince-electors, and the city of Rome where the Holy Roman Emperors were crowned. Here the first sculptures can be directly ascribed to Peter, among them a prominent figure of Zacharias.
Charles also commissioned the building of Wenzelsburg Castle at Lauf an der Pegnitz, near Nuremberg. Built on the ruins of an older castle, its ambitious architecture can be directly connected to the Parlers and Peter probably worked there as a sculptor. By 1355 their sophisticated style had come to the attention of Charles IV and Peter was called to work in Prague, the capitol of the new Kingdom of Bohemia and seat of the Emperor. The year of this appointment is not entirely clear since the documentary inscription in Prague was partially painted over in the 15th century. Today research usually sets the date to 1356, which accounts for a pause in construction in both Nuremberg and Prague, as well as information that he was at least 23 years old at the time of his appointment.
Prague
Upon his ascension to the throne as King of Bohemia in 1347, Charles IV established his capitol at Prague. At the time it consisted of two autonomous Medieval towns on each side of the Vltava river (German:
Moldau
): the Old Town on the right and the Malá Strana with Prague Castle above it on the left. In 1348 he ordered construction of the New Town adjacent to the existing Old Town, founded Charles University, began reconstruction of the castle, and restarted work on the cathedral. To accomplish this ambitious building program he recruited the best architects he could find. First was Matthias of Arras, who died in 1352. When elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1355, Charles determined to make Prague the showcase capitol of Central Europe and recruited Peter Parler to execute this grand vision. The period would launch what became known as Prague's "golden era" and it soon was the largest European city after Constantinople, Paris, and Granada.
St. Vitus Cathedral
When Peter arrived in Prague in 1356 at the age of 23, his immediate assignment was to take over the construction site at St. Vitus Cathedral, which had languished since the death of Matthias of Arras in 1352. It is indicative of Peter's talents that the most important building in the Empire was then entrusted to such a young architect. Peter continued the works at St. Vitus from the ambulatory and chapels, which were partially complete, and gradually changed the Matthias plan while keeping continual references to the original vision.
After 1360, Peter owned a house in Prague Castle Square and had been elected city alderman. His first wife Gertrude died in the late 1360s and he returned to Cologne to dispose of her inheritance in 1370. He then married Elisabeth Agnes von Bur in 1380 and in the same year bought a second house on Castle Square. From this marriage two more children were born: Johann, who possibly became a stonemason in Zagreb; and Paul, about whom no information survives. He may have had other children as well. The purchase of the houses, the marriage of his daughter, and the number of his children led to some legal disputes. Peter Parler is known to have relinquished both houses to his second wife and their children.
Peter was granted citizenship in Prague in 1379. By his old age he had become a wealthy man and was still active as an architect. His name appears as Cathedral Master (German:
Dombaumeister
) on a panel at St. Vitus as late as 1396. He died in Prague in 1399 and was buried at St. Vitus Cathedral, with his sons Peter and Wenzel carrying on his work.
Peter Parler was one of the most well-known and influential craftsman of the Middle Ages. The designs of both he and his father became known as the "Parler style" and spread throughout Central Europe. Significant examples include: St. Martin's Church, Landshut (begun 1389); St. Lorenz, Nuremberg (nave begun 1400); St. George's Minster, Dinkelsbühl (begun 1448); St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna (south tower begun 1368); and numerous other examples across the Hanseatic League from the Netherlands to Poland. Examples can also be found in Scandinavia, such as at St. Mary's, Helsingør, Denmark.
A demonstration of just how far his ideas went can be found at Seville Cathedral, begun in 1402 and today still the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. The standard Gothic verticality of the central space is broken up by a balustrade at the boundary with the clerestory windows. More importantly, the balustrade's widely spaced vertical bars and its position flowing outside of the outermost ribs are exactly like Peter Parler's original design of the western bays at St. Vitus' Cathedral. Construction at Seville Cathedral continued until 1506.
During the Hussite wars (1419-1434) the lands of the Bohemian Crown were totally ravaged. Although his buildings still stand, much of Peter Parler's sculptural works were destroyed. A portrait of him, carved out of his hand, remains in the
Domgalerie
at St. Vitus Cathedral.
An Asteroid named in honor of Peter Parler, 6550 Parléř, was discovered by Antonín Mrkos at Kleť Observatory on 4 November 1988.
The "Peter Parler Prize" was established in 1994 by the German Foundation for Monument Protection (German:
Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz
) and the Federal Association of German Stonemasons (German:
Bundesverband Deutscher Steinmetze
). It is awarded every two years at the International Exhibition of Natural Stone and Stone Processing in Nuremberg for outstanding service in the preservation of cultural heritage. The prize is accompanied by a commemorative bust of Peter Parler and EUR 15,000. It was most recently awarded in 2015 to August Weber and Helmut Schneider for restoration work at St. George's church in Ulm.
Czechoslovakia
: In 1945, the Third Republic came into being, in April. Its government, installed at Košice on 4 April, then moved to Prague in May, was a National Front coalition in which three socialist parties-the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), the Czechoslovak Social democratic Party, and the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party-predominated. Certain non-socialist parties were included in the coalition, among them the Catholic People's Party (in Moravia) and the Democratic Party of Slovakia.
Following Nazi Germany's surrender, some 2.9 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia with Allied approval, their property and rights declared void by the Beneš decrees.
Czechoslovakia soon came to fall within the Soviet sphere of influence..
The popular enthusiasm evoked by the Soviet armies of liberation (which was decided by compromise of Allies and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta conference in 1944) benefited the KSČ. Czechoslovaks, bitterly disappointed by the West at the Munich Agreement (1938), responded favorably to both the KSČ and the Soviet alliance. Reunited into one state after the war, the Czechs and Slovaks set national elections for the spring of 1946.
The democratic elements, led by President Edvard Beneš, hoped the Soviet Union would allow Czechoslovakia the freedom to choose its own form of government and aspired to a Czechoslovakia that would act as a bridge between East and West. Communists secured strong representation in the popularly elected National Committees, the new organs of local administration. In the May 1946 election, the KSČ won most of the popular vote in the Czech part of the bi-ethnic country (40.17%), and the more or less anti-Communist Democratic Party won in Slovakia (62%).
In sum, however, the KSČ only won a plurality of 38 percent of the vote at countrywide level. Edvard Beneš continued as president of the republic, whereas the Communist leader Klement Gottwald became prime minister. Most importantly, although the communists held only a minority of portfolios, they were able to gain control over most of the key ministries (Ministry of the Interior, etc.)
Although the communist-led government initially intended to participate in the Marshall Plan, it was forced by the Kremlin to back out. In 1947, Stalin summoned Gottwald to Moscow; upon his return to Prague, the KSČ demonstrated a significant radicalization of its tactics. On 20 February 1948, the twelve non-communist ministers resigned, in part to induce Beneš to call for early elections; however Beneš refused to accept the cabinet resignations and did not call elections. In the meantime, the KSČ marshalled its forces for the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948. The communist-controlled Ministry of the Interior deployed police regiments to sensitive areas and equipped a workers' militia. On 25 February Beneš, perhaps fearing Soviet intervention, capitulated. He accepted the resignations of the dissident ministers and received a new cabinet list from Gottwald, thus completing the communist takeover under the cover of superficial legality.
On 10 March 1948, the moderate foreign minister of the government, Jan Masaryk, was found dead in suspicious circumstances that have still not been definitively proved to constitute either suicide or political assassination.
In February 1948, the Communists took power in the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, and Edvard Beneš inaugurated a new cabinet led by Klement Gottwald. Czechoslovakia was declared a "people's democracy" (until 1960) - a preliminary step toward socialism and, ultimately, communism. Bureaucratic centralism under the direction of KSČ leadership was introduced. Dissident elements were purged from all levels of society, including the Roman Catholic Church. The ideological principles of Marxism-Leninism and socialist realism pervaded cultural and intellectual life.
The economy was committed to comprehensive central planning and the abolition of private ownership of capital. Czechoslovakia became a satellite state of the Soviet Union; it was a founding member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) in 1949 and of the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The attainment of Soviet-style command socialism became the government's avowed policy.
Slovak autonomy was constrained; the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) was reunited with the KSČ (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia), but retained its own identity. Following the Soviet example, Czechoslovakia began emphasizing the rapid development of heavy industry. Although Czechoslovakia's industrial growth of 170 percent between 1948 and 1957 was impressive, it was far exceeded by that of Japan (300 percent) and the Federal Republic of Germany (almost 300 percent) and more than equaled by Austria and Greece.
Beneš refused to sign the Communist Constitution of 1948 (the Ninth-of-May Constitution) and resigned from the presidency; he was succeeded by Klement Gottwald. Gottwald died in March 1953. He was succeeded by Antonín Zápotocký as president and by Antonín Novotný as head of the KSČ.
In June 1953, thousands of workers in Plzeň went on strike to demonstrate against a currency reform that was considered a move to solidify Soviet socialism in Czechoslovakia. The demonstrations ended without significant bloodshed, disappointing American Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, who wished for a pretext to help the Czechoslovak people resist the Soviets. For more than a decade thereafter, the Czechoslovak communist political structure was characterized by the orthodoxy of the leadership of party chief Antonín Novotný, who became president in 1957 when Zápotocký died.
In the 1950s, the Stalinists accused their opponents of "conspiracy against the people's democratic order" and "high treason" in order to oust them from positions of power. In all, the Communist Party tried 14 of its former leaders in November 1952 and sentenced 11 to death. Large-scale arrests of Communists and socialists with an "international" background, i.e., those with a wartime connection with the West, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, Jews, and Slovak "bourgeois nationalists," were followed by show trials. The outcome of these trials, serving the communist propaganda, was often known in advance and the penalties were extremely heavy, such as in the case of Milada Horáková, who was sentenced to death together with Jan Buchal, Záviš Kalandra and Oldřich Pecl.
The 1960 Constitution declared the victory of socialism and proclaimed the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR).
De-Stalinization had a late start in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1960s, the Czechoslovak economy became severely stagnant. The industrial growth rate was the lowest in Eastern Europe. As a result, in 1965, the party approved the New Economic Model, introducing free market elements into the economy. The KSČ "Theses" of December 1965 presented the party response to the call for political reform. Democratic centralism was redefined, placing a stronger emphasis on democracy. The leading role of the KSČ was reaffirmed, but limited. Slovaks pressed for federalization. On 5 January 1968, the KSČ Central Committee elected Alexander Dubček, a Slovak reformer, to replace Novotný as first secretary of the KSČ. On 22 March 1968, Novotný resigned from the presidency and was succeeded by General Ludvík Svoboda.
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Mr. Ilya Zlobin
, world-renowned expert numismatist, enthusiast, author and dealer in authentic ancient Greek, ancient Roman, ancient Byzantine, world coins & more.
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