Public rallies to support library

There were celebrities, speeches and a petition at the Old Town Square demonstration for Jan Kaplický's National Library Feb. 5, but bigger than that single-day showing is the innovative political activism that the equally innovative building project is generating.  

Demonstrators for the Feb. 5 event were largely mobilized by a page on the social networking application Facebook, and the group as of press time has 23,846 members.  

"Within about 30 hours, it had an excess of 10,000 members," said Jan Libíček, who was one of two masters of ceremonies for the rally.

"It created a platform for everybody who supports the project," added Tomáš Maule, the second emcee.

Police estimate that 1,000 people attended the rally, though the founder of the initiative, Martina Bělíková, said the group collected 1,452 petition signatures at the event and estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 attended.

The Facebook group calls itself "Vzdávám hold mistru Kaplickému a chci, aby v Praze stála jeho knihovna" or "I pay homage to Kaplický, and I want his library to stand in Prague." More generally, advocates of the library project have mobilized around the phrase "Democracie staví" or "Democracy builds," a sort of mantra of Kaplický's paraphrasing the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg was one of three Cabinet members to speak at the rally from a platform in the center of the square. Actors, academics, businesspeople, singers and celebrities took turns endorsing the library project.

"Why is the president so against modern architecture?" asked film director Jan Svěrák. "Why in the Czech Republic are beer, football and politicians the only winners?"

Kaplický's sudden death in January appears to have sparked this latest wave of support for the project, and leads to the question why there was not more support for the project when the architect was still alive. "It didn't change people's minds; they just stood up," says Maule, a student at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Kaplický's "Blob," a 35,000 square meter, 2 billion Kč building, was to initially house 10 million books and add space for 5 million more in the future. It was to overlook the city from Letná Park.

After anonymously winning an international architecture contest in March 2007, the unusual design of the building bred controversy and opposition as procedural elements of the contest where drawn into question. Events culminated with the European Commission calling the tender process illegal in August 2008.

In a soon-to-be-released documentary about Kaplický, Eye Above Prague, the architect gives his own views on what sidetracked the project. "Prague Mayor Bém began to attack the library," he said, adding later: "The library controversy resulted in lies being passed off as truth. More importantly there appeared unprincipled people who are not suited to democracy."

Libíček, an Oxford law student, sees some truth in that statement, saying, "It was blocked, and then they found reasons," but quickly adds that the political situation is more complicated. "Fighting against something is not going to get the job done. We are fighting for something."

President Václav Klaus is another major critic of the project. He once said he was willing to chain himself and prevent with his own body the building of the National Library.

For its part, City Hall now is walking a noncommittal line in reaction to the public mobilization over the the "Blob."

"City Hall has no problem facing the issues related to the new library building. However, the city of Prague is not and has never been the entity to build the National Library," reads an official statement. Officials declined to comment further.

Greater values

The group says it plans to continue collecting petition signatures and to initiate a letter-writing campaign to public officials based on a model used by Amnesty International. A second group "For the Library" - created by the online comedy team the Noise Brothers - will lead a protest Feb. 12, encouraging people to stack old books at the proposed Letná library site.

Maule and Libíček say this is a separate initiative, but offer their support and say they will use the opportunity to obtain more petition signatures.

"It's not about aesthetics. It is about what it represents," Maule says of the library before speaking more generally about politics. "It's not just about going to the polling station every four years."

Libíček added that what generated his passion for this rally was a general feeling that "politicians can just make decisions and we have to swallow them."

In the Eye Above Prague documentary, Kaplický takes a similar line by saying: "There are far greater values at stake here."

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com