Two great fires in the villages in the Region Česká Lípa at the turn of the 19th and the 20th century according “Deutsche Leipaer Zeitung”. Disaster of tens families in the background of a national fight
Abstract
At the turn of the 19th and the 20th century, two villages in the Region Česká Lípa were afflicted by the destructive fire. In 1898 the fire hit the village Bezděz and in 1904 the village Jestřebí.
Readers of the Česká Lípa newspapers “Deutsche Leipaer Zeitung” have been informed in detail about the both fires. You could find national elements in their reporting in the both cases.
As for Jestřebí lying deep in the closed german language area, the negative national view was milder than in Bezděz, which was situated on the language frontier. The aim of this contribution is not only the way which the both catastrophes were described.
Focus is also on national bias against the Czech population. The German Region medium was extremely strong influenced and limited by this nationalism in those days that it did not get rid of it either in referring about cases of suffering of common people in the mentioned villages.