Open Letter from the Club for Old Prague Regarding the Proposal for the Concept of Heritage Care Reform from the Perspective of NPÚ

CLUB FOR OLD PRAGUE
Mostecká 1, 118 00 PRAGUE 1

Mr.
Mgr. Tomáš Hájek, Dr.
General Director of NPÚ
Valdštejnské nám. 3
118 01 Prague 1

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Subject: OPEN LETTER
regarding the Proposal for a Concept of Reform of Heritage Care from the Perspective of the National Heritage Institute published on the NPÚ website
on May 15, 2006

Dear General Director,

The ideas you expressed in the mentioned proposal for a concept, which under your leadership should become the ideological basis for the activities of the reformed National Heritage Institute, are considered not only as insensitive but literally destructive to the field of heritage care, its organization, professional performance, and to the heritage fund itself.
The greatly simplified to vulgarized understanding of heritage care in your conception measures the meaningfulness of preserving a monument by its viability, which is meant as economic usability, and care for the monument is reduced to finding ways for its social-business revival. You have thus completely overturned the understanding of the values and priorities of traditional heritage care. You do not mention at all in your material the preservation of the authenticity of the monument, whose significance for creating a relationship between contemporary and future generations to historical architectural heritage is fundamental. Instead, you indicate a tendency towards reducing the number of monuments and the extent of heritage-protected areas due to the economization of their protection.
Only irresponsibility, incompetence, and ignorance of legal standards, including international ones, could have led you to formulate the aforementioned Proposal for a Concept of Reform of Heritage Care. It is also very surprising that you present this material full of completely subjective and problematic opinions in the name of the NPÚ. We believe that any concept of this significance should first go through a discussion within the field, not just within the NPÚ.
By issuing this concept, irresponsible personnel policies, squandering resources from the NPÚ budget, producing nonsensical organizational regulations and changes, disinterest in issues related to the maintenance and operation of the properties managed by the NPÚ, a feudal understanding of the position of the general director, and an inability to communicate with the environment, you have seriously damaged the credit of the National Heritage Institute and questioned the very essence of heritage protection.
Based on the above facts and the mandate of the General Assembly of the Club for Old Prague, the Domestic Council of the Club therefore calls on you to resign from your position at the head of NPÚ immediately.

On behalf of the Domestic Council of the Club for Old Prague:

PhDr. Kateřina Bečková, v.r.
Mgr. Richard Biegel, v.r.
Ing. Zbyněk Bureš, v.r.
Mgr. Kateřina Hanzlíková, v.r.
Mgr. Stanislav Holeš, v.r.
Ing. Václav Janáček, v.r.
Doc. Ing. arch. František Kašička, v.r.
PhDr. Kristýna Kolajová, v.r.
Ing. arch. Martin Krise, v.r.
Mgr. Radmila Kreuzziegerová, v.r.
Bc. Karel Ksandr, v.r.
Mgr. Blanka Kynčlová, v.r.
Ivan Minář, v.r.
Milan Patka, v.r.
Ing. arch. Miloš Solař, v.r.
Prof. PhDr. Rostislav Švácha, v.r.
PhDr. Helga Turková, v.r.
Ing. arch. Jan Veselý, v.r.

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