On Saturday, October 8, 2016, a ceremonial unveiling of the monument to Emperor Francis Joseph I took place in front of the church of St. Lawrence in Královstvo u Šluknov. The monument is a huge boulder on which is placed the original memorial plaque of Emperor FJI from 1908 and a relief of the emperor.

What preceded it?

In the Kingdom, in 1908, to celebrate the jubilee of the 60th year of the emperor's reign, a commemorative plaque made of black Šluknov syenite was placed on the general school building with the text:

Unserem glorreichen
Herrscher Kaiser Franz Josef I. zu
seinem 60 jährigen Regierungs-
-Jubiläum 1848-1908 in Ehrfurcht
und Dankbarkeit gewidmet. Die Gemeinde.

(To our glorious Emperor
Francis Joseph I on his 60th birthday
dedicated to the government jubilee 1848-1908
in respect and gratitude.

The plaque was made by the well-known Šluknov stone company W. Spölgen, which produced monuments to the Great War for almost the entire promontory. After the establishment of the independent republic, the plaque was removed from the school (its original location can still be seen on the facade) and safely packed and stored among the junk on the school grounds. During the sale of the school in the early 1990s, the plaque was discovered by Mrs. Semerádová while cleaning the floor and stored in the basement of Mr. Walter Koňák's store, where it waited for more than 20 years until its time came. This happened with the founding of the Association of War Veterans and their meritorious activity throughout the Šluknov Promontory, finding a suitable place for placement and also obtaining a suitable stone. We find a number of paradoxes in the borderland, and the actual implementation of the construction of the monument accompanied them all the time. So, above all, in the place where the restored monument stands, there was a foundation of a monument with a bust of our first president T. G. Masaryk, which was removed after 1948 and, unfortunately, was not lucky enough to be preserved for the Kingdom. The second interesting feature is a stone that, including transport, was donated to the village by a local businessman and donor, Mr. Petr Houdek. The stone originating from the Rožanský quarry became famous in the media after its location in the Silver Gorge near Šluknov and appeared in a number of television shots and photographs during the Czech Republic and European truck trial championships, where it was touched by the bikes of most of the participants. After being transported and placed on a stone plinth, it was cleaned and modified to accommodate the original FJI commemorative plaque. ​ Odeslat zpětnou vazbu Postranní panely Historie Uloženo Přispět

Thanks to the initiative of Messrs. Vašíček, Koňák, Domalípa and others, a new monument was created in the Kingdom, which in the years to come will commemorate the monarch, who eventually spent an incredible 68 years in office! ​

Source: Šluknovské noviny November 2016, p. 17. The author of the article is Mr. Jiří Sucharda