Pojkart Oskar -

After the war, when the new Czechoslovak border was drawn, Strání found itself suddenly closer to Slovakia than to Vienna. Many German-speaking craftsmen left. Oskar stayed. He learned Czech formally, though he’d spoken a rough dialect of it for years. His workshop sign became bilingual: Pojkart Oskar – Klempíř / Spengler .

The most famous story about him dates to the winter of 1938. As Nazi forces occupied the Sudetenland, a Jewish family from a neighboring town—the Goldmanns—fled east. They arrived at Oskar’s door on a moonless night, half-frozen, with a terrified four-year-old girl. Oskar didn’t hesitate. He hid them in his attic for six weeks. During that time, he made a small, palm-sized lantern for the girl, with a blue glass pane instead of clear. “So you can pretend the night is the sea,” he told her. Pojkart Oskar

What made Oskar’s work remarkable was his signature: inside every lantern, stamped into the tin base, was a tiny embossed star and the words "Světlo věrně vracím" — "I faithfully return the light." He believed a lantern was not a possession but a companion. If a lantern broke, owners would bring it back to him, and he repaired it for free, no questions asked. “A broken lantern is a promise you kept,” he’d say. After the war, when the new Czechoslovak border

Oskar Pojkart died in 1965, at age 78, in the same house where he was born. His workshop closed, but not because of disinterest. His last apprentice, a young Roma man named Štefan, continued the trade in a nearby town until the 1990s. And every year, on the winter solstice, a small group of hikers in the White Carpathians carries a single Oskar lantern up the peak of Velká Javořina—lit, faithful, and returning the light. Pojkart Oskar represents the unsung craftsmen of 20th-century rural Europe—people whose technical skill, moral clarity, and quiet courage shaped community survival far more than grand historical events. His lanterns are functional artifacts of resilience, and his motto, “I faithfully return the light,” serves as a metaphor for care, repair, and solidarity in dark times. He learned Czech formally, though he’d spoken a

Oskar inherited his workshop from his father, a German-speaking Bohemian who made household goods: pots, milk pails, and roof gutters. But young Oskar had a peculiar fascination with lanterns. While other smiths focused on durable farm tools, he perfected the art of the putovací lucerna —the traveling lantern.