Looking For a Bridge Over Troubled Water

Though a man-made reservoir, Lipno possesses enough charms to match a natural lake. This is why, since its completion in the late 1950s, it has attracted visitors from far and wide. Lying in a scenic highland countryside at almost 730 metres above sea level, it fills the broad valley of the River Vltava running here south-east along the Austrian border. The summits of the Šumava Mountains, some of them reaching to an altitude of more than 1,300 metres, reflect in its vast surface of over 4,600 hectares.

Transformations of the Lipno Region

Sparsely populated since the 13th century, this was never a wealthy region. Local people lived here rather simply, making a modest living from forestry, wood processing, glassmaking and farming made difficult by the harsh climate, largely isolated from the tumult of the world by distance and difficult accessibility. All of this was to change dramatically in the 20th century with the outbreak of WWI. For historical reasons, Czech and German-speaking inhabitants had lived in this Bohemian-Austrian borderland alongside each other for centuries, peacefully at least, if not always idyllically. However, with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the rise of Czechoslovakia at the end of the war in 1918, the German-speaking inhabitants suddenly found themselves in a country they did not necessarily identify with. The rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, culminating in the annexation of the Sudetenland by the Germans, the subsequent expulsion of the Czech-speaking population and, eventually, the outbreak of WWII brought unprecedented turbulence to this once-peaceful region. And the turbulence did not stop with the liberation of the territory by American troops at the end of WWII in 1945. In retaliation for the death and devastation brought about by Nazi Germany, it was now the German-speaking population that was forced to leave their homeland of many centuries, effectively depopulating large border areas. The destruction of the region was completed after the communist coup in 1948. Whole villages were left to ruin or even blown up in order to create a virtually sealed and closely guarded zone marking what was known as the Iron Curtain, where only border guards operated, preventing people from fleeing the country and killing many in the process. While the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 brought new hope and a promise of a brighter future to the region, some scars refuse to heal.

One unintended consequence of the 40-year isolation of a substantial part of the region was the return of wilderness. The inland bank, where the original municipalities survived the transfer of German-speaking population, was used for farming and recreation throughout the communist era, however, mostly in the form of seasonal camping sites for tents and a large number of private weekend houses and cabins, usually modest affairs originally made of wood and strewn about the countryside. In contrast, across the water, the territory on the right bank as far as the Austrian border became a unique environment where natural processes were allowed to reclaim in a few decades what for centuries used to be cultivated land. Even a fleeting look at the map shows a striking absence of settlements on the Czech side, contrasting strikingly with the neighbouring Austrian territory – a phenomenon unparallelled elsewhere in Central Europe in the 21st century. Unsurprisingly, this secondary wilderness has become a tourist attraction in itself.

From Displacement to Tourism Development

A major transformation has also occurred in the population. While the pre-WWII inhabitants, Czech and German alike, were typically able to boast an uninterrupted family history of many generations living in the same place, the current inhabitants are relative newcomers; they moved in from various parts of the country (and some from abroad) after WWII, typically between the 1950s and 1970s and therefore are still only building their emotional attachment to the region. In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that after the transfer of Germans in 1946, when the territory of the Sudetenland became virtually uninhabited, many of the earliest arrivals were Czech "gold-diggers", coming only to loot as much as possible of what the Germans had to leave behind and quickly disappearing again into the interior of the country. As a result, photographs taken in the 1950s show a level of destruction suggesting that a frontline swept through the region, while in reality it never saw hot warfare.

The early 1990s presented a new challenge of how to approach the development of this region. Within years, most of the few local industrial enterprises, including a paper mill, a dairy, a sawmill and a few others closed down, reducing the opportunities for employment and forcing many to look for jobs across the border in Austria and Germany – a trend that continues to this day. A similar process affected local agriculture: dairy farms closed down and fields remained uncultivated.

Developing tourism seemed a viable alternative. Seasonal tourism had been part of the region's economy since the late 1950s, though never the only or even the dominant one. The recreation potential of the reservoir, the relatively unspoilt, open countryside and the new wilderness on the right bank were hoped to create new jobs and become the foundation of local economy.

Uncontrolled Tourism Boom and its Consequences

The years that followed suggested that the initial expectations had been overoptimistic. The first major problem occurred when the quality of water in the reservoir deteriorated dramatically during the 1990s. This resulted in excessive growth of blue algae prompted by phosphorus released into the reservoir from insufficiently treated wastewaters. In some cases, this led to a ban on swimming in some locations during the summer season – a major blow to what presented itself as a tourist paradise. For a while, this trend seemed to be successfully counterbalanced by the construction of new wastewater treatment plants in the major municipalities on the left bank and by new regulations on phosphate content in detergents. Unfortunately, after a brief period of improvement, the growth of blue algae started to intensify again around 2010, this time probably caused by increased volumes of insufficiently treated wastewater produced by new recreation resorts. This trend continues to this day and is made worse by the climate change, with higher water temperatures over longer periods in summer. This alone may bring tourism in the Lipno region to an end. 

Another negative trend is an ongoing transformation of individual tourism into an industry. The left bank of the reservoir includes vast expanses of open land - a luxury in itself. However, as most of the land ceased to be state-owned, the new private owners, typically living elsewhere, want to maximise the profit by turning what used to be farmland into buildable plots and to use them for the construction of huge, industrial-scale recreation resorts consisting of tens, and sometimes hundreds, new buildings of a uniform urban type, arising in locations where there had never been any settlements before. In the Lipno region alone, about thirty such projects are in different stages of planning, while some have already been completed. They permanently and irreversibly deface the countryside. However, experience, both local and from abroad, has shown that they remain unoccupied for most of the year, creating ghost towns of a kind. Currently available tourist beds in the region already significantly outnumber local inhabitants, and if the projects are realised, the imbalance will become even more dramatic.

           Bridging the Turbulent Waters

In spite of this unprecedented tourist development, and contrary to repeated promises of new jobs, the number of permanent residents in the region stagnates or even declines, and permanent all-year-round jobs are hard to find. It is not only that local residents have zero profit from what is currently happening – they are losing their home as they have known it, along with reasons to stay in the area, and many fear that the unbridled industrial tourist development threatens the very basis of tourism and poses a serious threat to the future of the region. Even now, some potential visitors to the region find this sort of tourism off-putting and might instead look for better alternatives. And if tourism, with its benefits dubious to the local inhabitants, collapses, as it did in the Covid years, the locals will be the ones to pay the price, and will be left out in the cold with nothing to replace it.

The waters of Lipno are troubled at present. If the region is to remain a place for life, not just for a week's holiday, a bridge must be found to cross the gaps between the different interest groups - and it must be done quickly because time is ticking away fast…