Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: Lipnice

The memorial service we attended for Jaroslav Hasek included a gun salute, which was meant to be ironic as much as anything else, as while a soldier for many years, Hasek still wasn't too hot on the idea of war or military service by the end of his life. He would have carried, probably, a Mauser 1898 while with the Austrians, but these are Mosin-Nagant rifles, used by the Russian army 1891-1945 (and really longer, if you count the secondary units like the Soviet National Gaurd), and therefore by both sides during the Russian Civil War. Even the U.S. Army carried them in that war, and after the war they remained in U.S. Army National Gaurd units as the M1916 rifle, although I don't know for how long. Most of the U.S. ones had originally been built by American companies like Remington during World War I for the Czar, but then left undelivered because of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Today, the only army which still carries Mosin-Nagants, at least that I know of, is the Finnish Army, who use a special, rare version of it called the M85.

The reenactors agreed to have their photo taken, but unfortunately I didn't get their names. I hope they don't mind the effects of my horrible light meter.

Here's a darker shot. I'm not sure if this is really all that great or not, but I figured I'd at least experiment with it.

Here's a black and white that I shot of the castle. Most, if not all (I don't remember) of the black and whites that I shot in Lipnice were shot in town or back in the woods, but here I got the castle from the level of the town.

In addition to the Lichtenburgs and the Luxembourgs, another famous person associated with Lipnice is Jaroslav Hasek, who completed (or failed to complete, actually) his most famous book THE GOOD SOLDIER SVEJK, while living here. His house buried somewhere in this block, as I couldn't get a better angle on it than this. Although he died in 1923 we attended a memorial service for him on this trip hosted by several of his fans, who wore Austrian-Czech army uniforms from World War I, as Hasek was a veteran both of World War I and the Russian Civil War, fighting on the Bolshevik side. More on this later....

And...here's another shot of the Hrad Lipnice courtyard.

Here's a shot of the courtyard of Hrad Lipnice, showing the chapel.

Dating to the 13th Century, Hrad Lipnice was built by the Lords of Lichtenburg as their family residence, as was the custom for medieval lords. Indeed, few castles were built for kings or princes, as the vast majority built were residences for lords to protect themselves from peasant revolts. Machievelli wrote a whole chapter of THE PRINCE explaining this, that a professional army could lay seige to you, and the castle would be of little use except to buy time, but against a peasants revolt it would work, as castles could indeed keep enemies out, even if they couldn't get supplies in. After the Lichtenburgs, Hrad Lipnice passed through the hands of numerous other aristocratic families, but also was eventually used by at least two kings, including King John of Luxembourg, and the famous Bohemian king and Roman Emperor Charles IV (Karluv IV) of Luxembourg.