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5: CASE STUDY 2: THE CZECH/AUSTRIAN BORDER
maintenance purposes a large portion of the buildings here have been left
unaltered. It was located only approximately 500 m from the border inside
what is now the Podyji Park. It now belongs to the Park Administration and
is used for storage and maintenance for the park staff. It is still surrounded
by the original fences, the same barbed wire type as the late 1950s fence
lines. One section of the complex, the former training ground, is now used
as a nursery to cultivate trees before they are planted in the park itself. In
the early 20 th century a game lodge belonging to the Vranov Castle Park
existed in the same location (Anderle and Schmidt 2002:22). The name of
the border guard station ‘Hájenka’, meaning lodge, also reflects this. The
border guard compound has been redeveloped and rebuilt during its period
of use with the earliest building dating from 1956 (building 4). The
buildings varied depending on how many soldiers it needed to house and
the different functions they were used for. Although slightly outside the
Podyji Park itself I have also looked at Šafov border guard station, 3.rPS,
also part of the Znojemská brigade, as it has not been reused and although it
has fallen into a poor state of repair it still gives an understanding of how
the border guards lived and worked during their service (Figure 76).
Figure 76: Šafov border guard station. Photo: Anna McWilliams 2011.
Similar to the Hájenka border guard station a solider entering the Šafov
border guard station was greeted by a message painted on the opposite wall
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