The stories are processed in two versions – short and long. The short versions (graphically processed) will appear during the commemorative events in the form of posters, leaflets and advertisements, while the long versions will be available on the website www.koniggratz150.eu. The author of the stories is the publicist Vladimír Bílek, and the professional supervision was provided by the historian of the Museum of Eastern Bohemia Josef Šrámek.
“When we were thinking about how to give the 150th anniversary of the battle another dimension, it occurred to us to present not only the fates of soldiers and commanders, but also of ordinary people from villages who suffered so terribly from the War of 1866. And so we came up with the Stories of the War of 1866. They give wartime events a human dimension, bring them closer to the present, and through individual actors show what war meant for life in villages and towns, and what it meant for the relatives and loved ones of those who came into direct contact with it,” says Vladimír Bílek.
The basis of the stories is not only significant commanders, but also ordinary people, the Hradec fortress, and the interesting phenomenon that members of most nations of Europe fought in the war. For example, on the battlefield near Hradec Králové, military medics marked with a white armband and red cross provided first aid for the first time. It was the first time that the Red Cross helped in a war on Czech territory.
In the war, soldiers of nations from the whole of Central Europe fought and died, and today their descendants are neighbours or travel to one another without restrictions of state borders. The stories thus make it possible to show how we in Europe are interconnected with a distant past. And it is not only about Czechs, Germans or Austrians, but also about Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, Serbs, Slovenes or Croats.
The basis for the visual identity of the commemorative events became the monumental painting by the painter Václav Sochor. He too became the central figure of one of the stories. He was 11 years old at the time when one of the greatest cavalry battles in Europe of that era took place near Střezetice not far from Hradec Králové. Thirty years later, already as a well-known painter, he painted the entire scene. Emperor Franz Joseph I later purchased the painting for his collections.
The fates of both commanders-in-chief are also interesting. The Austrian commander-in-chief Ludwig Benedek was pensioned off after the lost war and had to promise that he would not speak about his command. He was buried in civilian clothing and without military honours. The victory helped the Prussian King Wilhelm I attain the title of Emperor and the unification of Germany.
In the Stories of the War of 1866 there will also appear a farmhand who protected with his own body the last cow of his master from being requisitioned by soldiers, or the more technically advanced breech-loading rifles that may have decided the battle.
The city of Hradec Králové supported the stories project.