The morally rotten state of our society, or rather a certain part of the so-called top ten thousand who influence contemporary politics, is characterized by a number of cases. Among them we count, for example, the legendary “dosimeter”, or the large-scale fraud in the Motol hospital. No less serious is the age-old but still current problem of the Štiřín Castle and its privatisation, or sale if you prefer. The weekly Our Truth recently published a shortened version of an open letter to Czech Finance Minister Stanjur from the long-time former director of this state chateau and the entire adjacent area, including the golf course, Václav Hrubý. This man has devoted all his energies (including, without exaggeration, his health, his nerves and his personal and family life) to the flourishing of this building. Because his fate is still close to his heart, he continues to fight for the preservation of the now dilapidated building in its original form.
Family silver
At the outset, it is important to recall what is at stake. The Baroque chateau of Štiřín is located in a romantic region, surrounded by several ponds. It is located 25 km southeast of the centre of Prague, very easily accessible via the D1 motorway and the Prague R1 ring road. The extensive grounds offered a wide range of conference and hotel services with opportunities for sports and cultural activities as well as relaxation and rest. It is a very convenient place for various meetings, including high-level international meetings, conferences, symposia and seminars or presentations and other events, a place with a unique environment, with historical genius loci and with perfect facilities and services.
The total accommodation capacity of the facility is 63 rooms with 125 beds, including a presidential suite, in the standard of a four-star hotel. In its heyday, Štiřín Castle offered banquets, receptions and receptions in its historic premises, as well as a restaurant in the unique House of Atis, where you could also use the garden with the possibility of barbecues, barbecues and various garden festivities. Guests also had access to a relaxation centre with a gym, sauna, whirlpool baths, biosolarium and a massage and beauty centre.
We cannot forget the chateau chapel, where, among other things, Christmas concerts of classical music were traditionally held as part of the concert series Suk’s Musical Štiřín. The unique environment for relaxation was enhanced by the restored and highly maintained 40ha park and arboretum with more than 500 species of rare trees and the largest collection of rhododendrons in Europe (1,270 shrubs in 120 varieties). The park was maintained in cooperation with the Botanical Institute of the CAS in Průhonice and the Research Institute of Ornamental Horticulture in Průhonice and was considered by experts to be one of the best revitalised parks in the Czech Republic until Václav Hrubý’s departure as director.
A nine-hole golf course, equipped with the necessary playing facilities, has been sensitively incorporated into the park.
The year is 2023
The Štiřín State Chateau has been closed since January of that year. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic no longer wants to subsidise the operation of a facility that it considers unnecessary and unprofitable, despite the unquestionable economic facts and the language of numbers over the past decades, when the operation of the complex was profitable. However, even the preserved site continues to be burdened with costs of around 17 million a year. State money of a considerable amount goes not only for minimal maintenance, but also for legal services, as journalist Jiří Pšenička, who has been following the entire development, begins to write on Seznam.
At the beginning of 2020, Václav Hrubý was removed from his position as director. He was replaced by a newly appointed director, Petr Veselý, who did not stay in his new position for long. But let us return to Hrubý. He first came to Štiřín Chateau in 1977 as a restorer, and eventually worked there for over forty years on the flourishing of the building entrusted to him. It was not enough for the Foreign Ministry to deprive Hrubý of his current job. Moreover, in order to prevent his possible protests and attempts to explain in the media the true intentions of the Ministry, namely the privatisation and sale of the castle building into private hands, it purposefully sued Václav Hrubý through the law firm of Jan Olejníček.
And the investigative journalist Pšenička tried to report objectively, see the headlines of several of his many articles:
Dozens of lawsuits against the former director of Štiřín Castle. It’s a crime, says the head of the trade union about what’s going on in the state-owned Štiřín Castle. They filed 21 lawsuits against the former head of the government-run castle, all of them lost. It cost millions, the lawyer is profiting from it. The case of Štiřín was also dealt with by the Control Committee of the Chamber of Deputies with the participation of the current minister, Jan Lipavský, then still a member of the Pirates, who adopted, in the vernacular, an unsavoury, unsalty opinion. We mention this in order to underline Lipavský’s role in this case, which was reminded to the public by the above-mentioned letter from Hrubý to Finance Minister Zbyněk Stanjur. This was Hrubý’s last step towards correcting public affairs.
The penultimate one was the petition Let’s stop the sale of Štiřín Castle, which was organised at the end of last year and signed by hundreds of residents who disagreed with a series of auctions for the sale of Štiřín. In connection with the petition, letters were also sent to the Minister of Culture, Martin Bax, as well as a statement on the procedure of the ÚZVSM in the sale of the castle, which concludes that the game is most likely a purposeful attempt to expropriate and alienate a lucrative and extremely valuable architectural, art-historical and urbanistic complex of Štiřín Castle from the state property in order to benefit some interested parties who have been preparing for this “business” transaction for a long time and are now waiting for the most favourable conditions. It cannot therefore be excluded that this could be the fulfillment of a criminal offence consisting in the violation of the legal obligation to manage state property with due care.
Every vote helps
The petition is available to interested parties on the “Innovation Republic” website. From its text we select the following:
We, the citizens of the Czech Republic, unlike the responsible representatives of the state, perceive the entire auction sale of the Štiřín Castle as an act of mismanagement of state property. It is astonishing with what cynicism and indifference state officials treat a cultural monument in which the state has invested considerable financial resources over several decades.
The Štiřín Castle complex, which was valued at CZK 3.3 billion on the basis of expert opinions, is now the subject of a kind of auction trade, by which its price has been reduced for the umpteenth time. The area of Štiřín Castle, i.e. the state castle, is spoken of in the media as a consumer product, which is even the subject of a Christmas discount! We demand that the state institutions responsible for the preservation of cultural heritage reconsider their attitude towards the Štiřín Chateau, which has been listed as a cultural monument of the Czech Republic since 1958 and was in excellent condition until its closure.
Continued next time with an interview with Václav Hrubý
Ivan Černý