| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: The article provides a description of the history of committees for civil issues in the Czech part of the former Czechoslovakia between the 1950s and the 1980s. Two main data sources were used. Firstly, in-depth interviews were conducted with funeral professionals who conducted funerals in the time period under study. Secondly, handbooks for funeral organisers and civil funeral orators concerning funeral speeches and suitable forms of civil (socialist) funeral ceremonies were analysed. The author argues that members of committees for civil issues actively created new forms of ceremonies and played a key role in the spread of civil funerals in today’s Czech Republic. Such committees were hierarchically structured and centrally organised, and there were huge regional differences in terms of their activities. At the end of the 1970s and during the 1980s, they were more active in Moravia, where the numbers of civil funerals were lower and, thus, where the need for their promotion was greater. |
