EN
Literature on the subject, legal acts as well as social consciousness have for all practicial purposes replaced the concept of „cultural property” with „historical monument”. These are by no means identical concepts although we can assume that every historical monument is part of cultural property. It is precisely historical monuments which according to the law of 1962 are subjected to legal protection! In a definition of this concept and its attitude towards the terms „relic and monument”, the author recalls that the most important for the historical monument, its protection and even its existence are not so much its connections with national culture, which is at times excessively permeated with ideological contents and treated instrumentally, but with people for whom, for various reasons (personal, scientific, artistic...) it remains a document of the past. The article also places emphasis on the fact that the term „cultural property” was for the first time applied in Nazi regulations formulated in the Third Reich (Reichskulturkammergesetz 1934) for ideological purposes. It is a metalegal concept from which future regulations should resign and return to a uniform employment of the historical term of a monument.