Martin Jemelka
Martin Jemelka (born 1979) is an research fellow at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v. v. i., Prague. His research is concerned with topics in modern economic and social history, urban history and history of the Baťa Concern. His publication activities include monographies Na Šalomouně: společnost a každodenní život v největší moravskoostravské hornické kolonii (1870–1895) [In the Colony: Life in the Miner´s Salomon-Colony in Moravian Ostrava into the Beginning of Socialistic Urbanization], Ostrava 2008, Lidé z kolonií vyprávějí své dějiny [People from Colonies Tell Their History], Ostrava 2009, or Tovární města Baťova koncernu [Company Towns of the Baťa Concern], Prague 2016 (with Ondřej Ševeček). He recently edited three-volume project Ostravské dělnické kolonie, Ostrava 2011, 2012 and 2015 [Workers’ Housing Schemes in Ostrava I, II, III], and coedited the volume Company Towns of the Bat’a Concern: History – Cases – Architecture, Stuttgart 2013 (with Ondřej Ševeček).
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Books by Martin Jemelka
The electoral culture of metropolitan cities is a topic in which the professional interests and methodological approaches of political science, history and other social sciences intersect. Therefore, this book also presents Prague and its electoral arenas as a heterogeneous space in which, according to historians and political scientists, different schools of thought and ideologies clashed, and electoral contests took place not only within the walls of city halls but also in public spaces, universities, and the grounds of joint-stock companies. Chronologically, the book is anchored in the years 1848-1945 and brings forgotten or overlooked actors of Prague's electoral struggles, both individual and institutional, onto the historical scene alongside well-known names of politicians.
Publikace mapuje vývoj a proměny náboženského života průmyslového dělnictva v meziválečných českých zemích na příkladu čtyř průmyslových měst různé dominantní výrobní orientace – Jablonce nad Nisou, Kladna, Ostravy a Zlína. Autoři usilují o objasnění role tradičních i nových náboženských aktérů ve specifickém průmyslovém prostředí i o analýzu různorodých podob dělnické religiozity. Stranou jejich zájmu nezůstává ani formulování sociálního programu náboženskými společnostmi a komunitami a jejich hledání odpovědí na otázky o ideálním společenském uspořádání.
This book analyses the religious life of the industrial working class in the Czech Lands in the period between the wars, taking the towns Jablonec nad Nisou, Kladno, Ostrava and Zlín as examples. It addresses the role and meaning of religion in the public sphere as well as in the private life of the working class. The monograph assumes that the influence of religion rises and falls in every economic and social context, whether pre-industrial, industrial or post-industrial. Religion and religious practice contribute to the creation of the collective identity of working class, social policy and the shaping of one’s idea of the ideal society. Although the publication follows up on previous Czech sociological research work on labourer religion, the ethnography of the working class and the beginnings of urban anthropology, it is the very first Czech monograph focused on the religious life of the industrial working class at the peak of its presence in the Czech Lands. The authors also seek to critically rethink the secularisation theories and meanings of religion in modern society.
The period addressed in the monograph is the era of the so-called First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) which, compared to the pre-war period of the otherwise confessionally tolerant Austro-Hungarian Empire and, especially, to the periods of 1939–1945 and 1948–1989, was a time of unprecedented religious freedom and the general development of various churches and religious cultures. The area is defined as the Czech Lands, then the most industrialised regions of the Czechoslovak state. Research into the religiosity and position of religion in society interlinks Kladno and Zlín, industrial towns with a predominantly Czech population, with Jablonec nad Nisou, where the population was mostly German, and with the ethnically mixed town of Ostrava.
The work itself is based on three main topics and the way they intertwine – religious (and secular) institutions, the religiosity of the working class, and the social question. The part dedicated to institutions, i.e., selected towns, churches, political parties and their representatives as institutional agents of religious life, accentuates the diversity, influence and competition of the traditional as well as new, big as well as smaller religious agents. In the first part of the book industrial towns are presented as socially and ideologically heterogeneous and competitive spaces. The key topics that this part focuses on are the flexibility of religious societies in the politically and socially unstable conditions of the Czech Lands between the wars and the strategies the churches used to respond to the growing liberalisation of faith and the increasing competition of secular ideologies.
The second, and largest, thematic part is dedicated to the religiosity of the working class, which includes religious practice and the everyday actions of individuals as well as collectives. This part is centred around the specific aspects and transformations of the religiosity of working class. The individual chapters herein address religiosity (devotion) in the personal sphere, in collective terms and in the field of professions. This section strives to present the religious practice of the industrial working class in various contexts (World War One, the post-war religious revolution and movement of conversion between faiths, the economic and political crisis of the 1930s) and in the spatial and institutional framework of industrial towns (religious infrastructure, clerics and religious education). The ritual practices (devotion, rites of passage), gender and generational differences (the religiosity of working-class women and generations) and opinion differences of alternative or substitutional religiosity (heterodoxy and atheism) are also addressed in this part. Great attention is paid to the as yet neglected new religious agents, peripheral religious cultures and heterodox groups, such as spiritualists and atheistic organisations. The research has shown that members of the industrial working class were far more open to their message and activities than other groups of inhabitants in the Czech Lands between the wars.
The final part is dedicated to how agents of religious life responded to social issues related to living conditions and the position of the working class in industrial society. It focuses on educating the clergy in social topics, the formation of scholarly groups and the creation of the individual churches’ social programmes. It also pays attention to how social question was used by individual churches and atheistic organisations for mobilisation and mutual criticism. It follows the competition and conflicting approaches stemming from the principles of social justice on the one hand and traditional charity on the other. This chapter also carefully explores the responses of working class to the churches intervening in social matters, whether through civil associations or trade union organisations.
The monograph outlines polemics with the generally prevalent ideas of the course, intensity and effects of secularisation in the Czech Lands in the 1st half of the 20th century. It refutes the ideas of the interwar industrial working class as the main and conscious agent in the process of the move away from religion and religious practice. On the contrary, it emphasizes the involvement of the working class in the post-war religious revolution, the conversional movement and the multi-layered religious life of the Czech Lands between the wars.
On 2 September 1936, Vladimír Krejčí entered the services of Zlín's Baťa Group headquarters. He began his career in the Legal Department before taking on the role of Personal Secretary Jan Antonín Baťa, the factory's last Czech secretary before leaving for the US in June 1939, for the next ten months. Krejčí had to follow Baťa across the ocean in the autumn of 1939, but the beginning of World War II forced him to stay in the Protectorate. At the turn of 1939 and 1940, he worked in the Prague office of Baťa, from where he was called back to Zlín in spring 1940, where he remained in company services until mid-1945. Protectorate leadership of the company counted with him before the end of the war as head of the personal department. The liberation of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of the new communist leadership of Baťa company forced him to leave Zlín after not completed 9 years in corporate services (1936-1945). Krejčí found a new job in the Czechoslovak Film Society. The post-February establishment detested Krejčí's past with Baťa and lack of interest in political partyism, and he therefore alternated his employment before he settled at the Ministry of Heavy Engineering (1950), at the air-conditioning plants in Radotín (1958) and at the company Laboratorní přístroje (Laboratory Instruments) in Prague (1961). August 1968 revived the memories of Krejčí's past with Baťa and contributed to his retirement in 1970.
The core of Krejčí's memoirs maps the events of 1938–1945, a tragic and breakthrough epoch in modern (central) European history and at the same time the peak period of the first half-century of Baťa's history (1894–1945). At the beginning of the 1938–1945 period, a series of strategic decisions by the corporate management stood at how the multinational Baťa concern operating on several continents established itself in the conditions of world conflict and let it benefit from an armed conflict on both sides of the warring world. On the eve of World War II and at the time the most up-to-date problems of corporate strategic decision-making (e.g. planning town factories and constituting so-called units), Krejčí describes the atmosphere on the top floors of the corporate leadership credibly, including the difficult journey of the Baťa family beyond the Protectorate borders in spring and summer 1939. At the end of the 1938–1945 period, there was the collapse of Europe dominated by Nazi Germany, the beginning of the Soviet dominion over its Middle East, and the nationalization of large industrial factories headed by the Bata Group, that took the form of a media-wise billing with the pre-Munich Republic and its economic elites, including Baťa's family.
In Krejčí's memoirs, the post-Munich and wartime period of the group's history comes to life first through the eyes of Jan Antonín Baťa's personal secretary, after Baťa's departure overseas through the eyes of an important corporate official, economic law expert, wage issues and human resources, charged with contact with the central occupation offices in Prague and with the German administration of Baťa. Krejčí's memoirs are not memories of a resistance fighter, but a loyal corporate clerk who tried to fulfil the corporate strategy of tacking among the Protectorate administration, the Reich-German military and economic interests, the domestic and foreign leadership of the Baťa Group and the ideas of the post-war organization of Czechoslovakia and Baťa Group. We cannot deny Krejčí his personal bravery and engagement in favour of war-torn Protectorate citizens, not only among family members and corporate employees. At the beginning of the war he intervened in favour of his brothers affected by the closure of Czech schools, Jiří was even interned in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. After the war, there í was not forgotten the help Krejčí provided to Czech medical students as an influential clerk of the group, when they had to decide between the unfinished studies or morally and politically problematic continuation at the German universities after the closing of Czech universities in November 1939. The more Krejčí's breadwinner Baťa moved away from the Protectorate reality, the more Krejčí converged with the directors Dominik Čipera and Josef Hlavnička, key players of the Baťa Group during World War II. The decision to make Krejčí the Czech "superintendent" of the German manager of the firm Dr. Albrecht Miesbach, and finally, after the war, an influential head of the Human Resources Department, at the time of billing with the Nazis, collaborators and also innocent employees of German nationality, testifies to Krejčí's influence and trust he enjoyed at the Bata Protectorate leadership. Although Krejčí's memories are a detailed testimony to Baťa company in 1938-1938 and they contain dozens of specific names and events, they cannot be confused with the company's chronicle, let alone the precise and necessary processing of the Group's history during World War II. Despite the many details and frequent exaggeration related to the author's literary talents, Krejčí's language and expression are correct, without the ambition of scandalizing the actors or events.
The key question remains which passages of memoirs are the most valuable testimony to Baťa's Zlín, its backdrops and actors in the years around World War II. Readers of the author rightly expect a precise description of the operation of the Legal Department, which he had been employed since September 1936. The depiction of press disputes, publicized cases of the oil and concrete cartel and the utilitarian approach of the group management to the purchase of the spinning mill in Chrastava near Liberec from the property of the Jewish entrepreneur Schnabel, threatened by the onset of Nazism, does not cover the unscrupulous business strategy of the 1930s. The memoirs take on drama in memories of foreign travels at the turn of 1938 and 1939, an attempt by the Baťa family to leave the Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Protectorate on 14 March 1939 and Baťa's trip to the southeast and western Europe in June 1939 culminating in his departure overseas. Vol. II. of Krejčí´s memoirs is devoted to the School of Art, its teachers and the unique atmosphere in which they worked. Valuable information includes passages dedicated to German director Miesbach, the Germans from Zlín and some clearing with some of Zlín's myths. The highlights of Krejčí’s memoirs are the memories of the last war months and the establishment of post-war national administration in the hands of unscrupulous communists. The stage of the last part of Krejčí's memoirs is not only post-war Prague, but also social contacts created at the time of his work in Zlín.
Das Buch Menschen aus der Bergwerkskolonien erzählen ihre Geschichte ist weder in der tschechischen noch europäischen Geschichtsschreibung etwas außergewöhnliches. Durch Umfang, Format, Verarbeitung und Ausnutzung der Erinnerungen inspirierte mich die Publikationsreihe „Damit es nicht verlorengeht“, die in den 80. Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts vom Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte der Wiener Universität herausgegeben wurde. Die Erinnerungen sammelte ich in den Jahren 2008–2009 und einschließlich der schon publizierten Erzählungen habe ich 44 Erinnerungen von 50, in den Jahren 1886–1955 geborenen Einwohnern aus 17 Bergwerkskolonien gesammelt. Trotz der Unterschiedlichkeit der Texte, kann nicht übersehen werden, dass sich Erinnerungen an entscheidende Augenblicke im Leben dieser Menschen, ihrer Familien, Kolonien, Städte, Staaten oder auch der Weltgeschichte wiederholen. Das Buch enthält Informationen über das Leben im alten Österreich, im I. Weltkrieg, während der Hungeraufstände im Juli 1917, der Ereignisse im Oktober 1918, in der Zeit der Wirtschaftskrise in den 30. Jahren, über das Leben im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, während der Bombardierung Ostravas im August 1944, nach der Befreiung und über die politischen Änderungen nach 1948. In den Erinnerungen wiederholt sich der alltägliche Stereotyp: Kinderspiele, Bergwerksfeiern, die Anwesenheit von Juden oder Personen, die während des II. Weltkriegs in den Bergwerken oder in der Eisenhütte Vítkovice totaleingesetzt waren. Lebendig sind Erinnerungen an die Arbeiterkörpererziehung und den Sport, an Verbände, das politische und kirchliche Leben. Die Erinnerungen der Bewohner der Bergwerkskolonien in Ostrava sind unvorstellbar ohne Erwähnung der Familienwurzeln in Galizien, aus den Gegenden um Teschen oder Ostrava und ohne die extrem anstrengende, gefährliche und fatalistische Arbeit in den Steinkohlengruben. Das Buch ist in der Region Ostrava einzigartiger Versuch zur Sammlung von Informationen mehrerer Generationen einer konkreten sozialen Gruppe. Im Vergleich mit ähnlichen tschechischen und deutschen Publikationen akzentuiert es aber Bilddokumentation, welche die Rolle einer weiteren Informationsschicht erfüllen soll, mit der die Wissenschaftler arbeiten können.
Książka „Ludzie z kolonii opowiadają swoje dzieje“ nie jest w czeskiej ani europejskiej literaturze historycznej niczym wyjątkowym. Swoim zakresem, formalnym opracowaniem i wykorzystaniem wspomnień inspirował mnie szereg publikacji „Damit es nicht verlorengeht“, wydawany w latach osiemdziesiątych XX wieku przez Instytut historii gospodarczej i socjalnej Uniwersytetu w Wiedniu. Wspomnienia zacząłem gromadzić w latach 2008–2009 i łącznie z już opublikowanymi zgromadziłem 44 wspomnień 50 mieszkańców z 17 kolonii górniczych narodzonych w latach 1886–1955. Pomimo zróżnicowania tekstów nie da się przeoczyć, że powtarzają się w nich wspomnienia decydujących chwil w życiu opowiadających, ich rodzin, kolonii, miasta, państwa i historii światowej. Książka zawiera informacje o życiu w dawnej Austrii, podczas I wojny światowej, buntów głodowych w lipcu 1917 roku, wydarzeniach październikowych 1918 roku, kryzysu gospodarczego lat trzydziestych, o życiu w Protektoracie Czech i Moraw, bombardowaniach Ostrawy w sierpniu 1944 roku, wyzwoleniu i zmianach politycznych po 1948 roku. We wspomnieniach powtarzają się też codzienne stereotypy: zabawy dziecięce, uroczystości górnicze, obecność Żydów lub osób podczas II wojny światowej przymusowo wysłanych na roboty w miejscowych kopalniach lub Vítkovickiej hucie żelaza. Żywe są wspomnienia robotniczego wychowania fizycznego i sportu, życia związkowego, politycznego i religijnego. Wspomnienia o ostrawskich koloniach górniczych są niewyobrażalne bez przypomnienia rodzinnych korzeni w Galicji, na Ziemi Cieszyńskiej lub w okolicach dzisiejszej Ostrawy oraz bez refleksji ekstremalnie ciężkiej, niebezpiecznej i fatalistycznej pracy w kopalniach węgla kamiennego. Książka jest na ziemi ostrawskiej unikalną próbą zgromadzenia wspomnień kilku pokoleń konkretnej grupy społecznej. W porównaniu z podobnymi czeskimi i niemieckimi publikacjami akcentuje jednak dokumentację obrazową, która ma pełnić rolę następnej warstwy informacyjnej, z którą badacze mogą pracować.
a) the period 1871–1889/1890: The first period of Šalomouna mining colony’s existence can be delimited by inspection and passing houses of building stage I (1871) and by actuation of the first three mass lodging houses for unmarried workmen and commuter miners without families (1889–1890). In this period, for which a maximum use of housing with high number of habitants per flat and house is characteristic, Šalomouna was unstable and just forming society with considerable number of fluctuating persons, with crushingly high level of masculinity and markedly disrupted population structure in age and marital status. Among the eldest Šalomouna inhabitans there predominated migrants from both Silesia parts and contiguous Moravian districts while newcomers from Galicia, compared with other colonies, were fewer. but it were people from Galicia who totally preponderated among sleepers and a presence of a high number permanently moving persons with low culture level was not helping in stabilization of family relations. Over-night lodging, maximum use of housing and generally unstable housing and population conditions did not allow development of social relationships among colony dwellers and of creating a social control system of which there was a risen criminality level and tense family relations the most visible demonstration.
b) 1889/1890–1914: The second period is delimited by opening of three mass lodging houses in 1889–1890 and by issuing the first of many following laws for tenants protection in company flats. Repeating infectious disease epidemic in company colonies in OKR in the 80’s and the 90’s of the 19th century and an attempt to civilize and to control young blue-collar experts better led to a pressure from management of VKD on single and married miners without families to accommodate mainly in barracks and not in the families as it was by then. In the second half of this period, definitively from 1900 to 1910, the number of sleepers really reduced considerably, being an encumbrance for miners’ families and colony housing before. The housing was increasing in quality during years 1906–1907 and 1914–1917 by construction of new flats in eight-families houses. Although the 90’s was still bearing problematic heritage of the first two colony decades a gradual expanding and improving of civic facilities (till 1906 only first school, later company’s nursery as well and company’s library in the barracks) had been helping to create stable society in which, before World War I, there appeared small stratum of long-run residents and there were formed a social control and relationships network restricting criminality and characterizing the whole period between the World War I and II.
c) 1914 – the turn of the 40’s and the 50’s of the 20th century: A period between the World War I and II, tending to be named as „Golden Age of Šalomouna“ and delimited by the first of reformatory laws about the company’s flats at the beginning and by a final condemnation of Šalomouna to be demolished at the turn of the 40’s and the 50’s in the end, finds the colony as fully stabilized settlement with developed social relations (local neighborhood) and with the social control system. Although aggregative society liberalization and democratization finally made a progress in political, associational, cultural and sport activities of inhabitans possible there had appeared stagnation in a population growth and the population began getting older. In period between the World Wars there were integration processes definitively crowned in the colony – this fact is, among others, supported also by structured political life with preferences for left-wing and middle-left-wing parties with relatively low preferences for extremist parties. Šalomouna did not grow in with its environment only in the meaning of space but mainly by its social bindings whose keepers were more and more often members of professions out of a coal industry.
d) the end of the 40’s of the 20th century to 1977: In the 30’s of the last century among Ostrava architects and city planners were appearing plans to construct a modern housing estates for laborers which would replace unsatisfactory and hardly sustainable built-up area of Šalomouna. At the turn of the 40’s and the 50’s there was finally decided to leave the colony to mining retirees to spend the rest of their lives there or as a temporary accommodation reserve for young families of in-coming workers. The plan was to prepare Šalomouna for a demolition gradually. In 1957 the demolition of the first buildings began and twenty years later there was not a single house in once the largest mining colony in Moravian Ostrava. An improving level of civic facilities was only a seamy side of a gradual social relations decline being created in long-run. Local neighbourhood was weakening together with dying out of long-term residents and with temporary stay of young workers’ families: the colony with rich communication bindings was replaced by anonymous blocks of flats in which the last Šalomouna natives were spending the rest of their lives.
It is basically possible to depict dual picture of Salomon colony using archive sources and memories of two inhabitans generations. There are two ever during traits common to both colony forms – to dynamically developing 19th century settlement with number of blatant population and social phenomenon and to stable society during a period between the World Wars as well – which results from settlement status as company colony. Relative availability of job opportunities and mainly workplace proximity for majority of earning persons were considerably influencing the way of thinking and behaviour of colony residents to whom the Šalomouna mine management was determining their everyday rhythm, it was interfering their privacy influencing a choice of miners’ children future jobs, it was allocating dwellings in the colony in dependence on age and job position (repeated move of dwellers being recorded in memories of informers and in census). The management was influencing a habitation quality by adjustments or by new flat units construction etc. Paternalistic company relation to the inhabitans of socially and in labour homogenous locality was at first weakened by housing legislation and terminated for ever by a mining end in years 1931–1939. An intensive attitude of the inhabitans to soil and to small farming (which was meeting substantive part of the fundamental life requirements still in the 30’s) remained characteristic attribute of Šalomouna in its pathbreaking period and gold age.
A development of many specific elements for collective colony dwellers’ lives could come about only after stabilization of population and housing circumstances and after finishing of integration process in years closely before the World War I. Family, school and work place were the main socializing factors before transformation of Šalomouna to suburban workmen settlement with developing local neighbourhood. Later a nursery, political party and union organizations were added after the transformation. Mainly there were neighbours who were standing in parents duties not only for incomplete families. however, in the both periods the key role of socializing space was played by a street and by richly structured outside area of colony with number of retreats and gaps offering enough room for communication. In the late 30’s the colony stayed half-open (half-closed) world in which many individual and intimate events were occurring before the eyes or with cognizance of neighbours and colony inhabitants. In my work I depicted the first three periods of Salomon colony using the archive material and eyewitnesses’ testimonies. I placed emphasis on years 1868–1950. Monographic work about Šalomouna has set many questions for whose satisfying resolution it will be needed to go through further archive research. It has already brought the first model results along with it (mainly in chapters about colony population growth and about every-day live invariables) which are applicable in studies of other workmen localities of Ostrava. The monograph of company colony of Šalomouna mine has become (contrary to limits given by assignment and due to attempt for complex problematic interpretation) a starting point for synthesizing study about population, housing culture and life conditions in miner‘s and metallurgical settlements in Moravian Ostrava and Vítkovice which are comparable with similar workmen colonies of other European regions.
Papers by Martin Jemelka
The electoral culture of metropolitan cities is a topic in which the professional interests and methodological approaches of political science, history and other social sciences intersect. Therefore, this book also presents Prague and its electoral arenas as a heterogeneous space in which, according to historians and political scientists, different schools of thought and ideologies clashed, and electoral contests took place not only within the walls of city halls but also in public spaces, universities, and the grounds of joint-stock companies. Chronologically, the book is anchored in the years 1848-1945 and brings forgotten or overlooked actors of Prague's electoral struggles, both individual and institutional, onto the historical scene alongside well-known names of politicians.
Publikace mapuje vývoj a proměny náboženského života průmyslového dělnictva v meziválečných českých zemích na příkladu čtyř průmyslových měst různé dominantní výrobní orientace – Jablonce nad Nisou, Kladna, Ostravy a Zlína. Autoři usilují o objasnění role tradičních i nových náboženských aktérů ve specifickém průmyslovém prostředí i o analýzu různorodých podob dělnické religiozity. Stranou jejich zájmu nezůstává ani formulování sociálního programu náboženskými společnostmi a komunitami a jejich hledání odpovědí na otázky o ideálním společenském uspořádání.
This book analyses the religious life of the industrial working class in the Czech Lands in the period between the wars, taking the towns Jablonec nad Nisou, Kladno, Ostrava and Zlín as examples. It addresses the role and meaning of religion in the public sphere as well as in the private life of the working class. The monograph assumes that the influence of religion rises and falls in every economic and social context, whether pre-industrial, industrial or post-industrial. Religion and religious practice contribute to the creation of the collective identity of working class, social policy and the shaping of one’s idea of the ideal society. Although the publication follows up on previous Czech sociological research work on labourer religion, the ethnography of the working class and the beginnings of urban anthropology, it is the very first Czech monograph focused on the religious life of the industrial working class at the peak of its presence in the Czech Lands. The authors also seek to critically rethink the secularisation theories and meanings of religion in modern society.
The period addressed in the monograph is the era of the so-called First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) which, compared to the pre-war period of the otherwise confessionally tolerant Austro-Hungarian Empire and, especially, to the periods of 1939–1945 and 1948–1989, was a time of unprecedented religious freedom and the general development of various churches and religious cultures. The area is defined as the Czech Lands, then the most industrialised regions of the Czechoslovak state. Research into the religiosity and position of religion in society interlinks Kladno and Zlín, industrial towns with a predominantly Czech population, with Jablonec nad Nisou, where the population was mostly German, and with the ethnically mixed town of Ostrava.
The work itself is based on three main topics and the way they intertwine – religious (and secular) institutions, the religiosity of the working class, and the social question. The part dedicated to institutions, i.e., selected towns, churches, political parties and their representatives as institutional agents of religious life, accentuates the diversity, influence and competition of the traditional as well as new, big as well as smaller religious agents. In the first part of the book industrial towns are presented as socially and ideologically heterogeneous and competitive spaces. The key topics that this part focuses on are the flexibility of religious societies in the politically and socially unstable conditions of the Czech Lands between the wars and the strategies the churches used to respond to the growing liberalisation of faith and the increasing competition of secular ideologies.
The second, and largest, thematic part is dedicated to the religiosity of the working class, which includes religious practice and the everyday actions of individuals as well as collectives. This part is centred around the specific aspects and transformations of the religiosity of working class. The individual chapters herein address religiosity (devotion) in the personal sphere, in collective terms and in the field of professions. This section strives to present the religious practice of the industrial working class in various contexts (World War One, the post-war religious revolution and movement of conversion between faiths, the economic and political crisis of the 1930s) and in the spatial and institutional framework of industrial towns (religious infrastructure, clerics and religious education). The ritual practices (devotion, rites of passage), gender and generational differences (the religiosity of working-class women and generations) and opinion differences of alternative or substitutional religiosity (heterodoxy and atheism) are also addressed in this part. Great attention is paid to the as yet neglected new religious agents, peripheral religious cultures and heterodox groups, such as spiritualists and atheistic organisations. The research has shown that members of the industrial working class were far more open to their message and activities than other groups of inhabitants in the Czech Lands between the wars.
The final part is dedicated to how agents of religious life responded to social issues related to living conditions and the position of the working class in industrial society. It focuses on educating the clergy in social topics, the formation of scholarly groups and the creation of the individual churches’ social programmes. It also pays attention to how social question was used by individual churches and atheistic organisations for mobilisation and mutual criticism. It follows the competition and conflicting approaches stemming from the principles of social justice on the one hand and traditional charity on the other. This chapter also carefully explores the responses of working class to the churches intervening in social matters, whether through civil associations or trade union organisations.
The monograph outlines polemics with the generally prevalent ideas of the course, intensity and effects of secularisation in the Czech Lands in the 1st half of the 20th century. It refutes the ideas of the interwar industrial working class as the main and conscious agent in the process of the move away from religion and religious practice. On the contrary, it emphasizes the involvement of the working class in the post-war religious revolution, the conversional movement and the multi-layered religious life of the Czech Lands between the wars.
On 2 September 1936, Vladimír Krejčí entered the services of Zlín's Baťa Group headquarters. He began his career in the Legal Department before taking on the role of Personal Secretary Jan Antonín Baťa, the factory's last Czech secretary before leaving for the US in June 1939, for the next ten months. Krejčí had to follow Baťa across the ocean in the autumn of 1939, but the beginning of World War II forced him to stay in the Protectorate. At the turn of 1939 and 1940, he worked in the Prague office of Baťa, from where he was called back to Zlín in spring 1940, where he remained in company services until mid-1945. Protectorate leadership of the company counted with him before the end of the war as head of the personal department. The liberation of Czechoslovakia and the establishment of the new communist leadership of Baťa company forced him to leave Zlín after not completed 9 years in corporate services (1936-1945). Krejčí found a new job in the Czechoslovak Film Society. The post-February establishment detested Krejčí's past with Baťa and lack of interest in political partyism, and he therefore alternated his employment before he settled at the Ministry of Heavy Engineering (1950), at the air-conditioning plants in Radotín (1958) and at the company Laboratorní přístroje (Laboratory Instruments) in Prague (1961). August 1968 revived the memories of Krejčí's past with Baťa and contributed to his retirement in 1970.
The core of Krejčí's memoirs maps the events of 1938–1945, a tragic and breakthrough epoch in modern (central) European history and at the same time the peak period of the first half-century of Baťa's history (1894–1945). At the beginning of the 1938–1945 period, a series of strategic decisions by the corporate management stood at how the multinational Baťa concern operating on several continents established itself in the conditions of world conflict and let it benefit from an armed conflict on both sides of the warring world. On the eve of World War II and at the time the most up-to-date problems of corporate strategic decision-making (e.g. planning town factories and constituting so-called units), Krejčí describes the atmosphere on the top floors of the corporate leadership credibly, including the difficult journey of the Baťa family beyond the Protectorate borders in spring and summer 1939. At the end of the 1938–1945 period, there was the collapse of Europe dominated by Nazi Germany, the beginning of the Soviet dominion over its Middle East, and the nationalization of large industrial factories headed by the Bata Group, that took the form of a media-wise billing with the pre-Munich Republic and its economic elites, including Baťa's family.
In Krejčí's memoirs, the post-Munich and wartime period of the group's history comes to life first through the eyes of Jan Antonín Baťa's personal secretary, after Baťa's departure overseas through the eyes of an important corporate official, economic law expert, wage issues and human resources, charged with contact with the central occupation offices in Prague and with the German administration of Baťa. Krejčí's memoirs are not memories of a resistance fighter, but a loyal corporate clerk who tried to fulfil the corporate strategy of tacking among the Protectorate administration, the Reich-German military and economic interests, the domestic and foreign leadership of the Baťa Group and the ideas of the post-war organization of Czechoslovakia and Baťa Group. We cannot deny Krejčí his personal bravery and engagement in favour of war-torn Protectorate citizens, not only among family members and corporate employees. At the beginning of the war he intervened in favour of his brothers affected by the closure of Czech schools, Jiří was even interned in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. After the war, there í was not forgotten the help Krejčí provided to Czech medical students as an influential clerk of the group, when they had to decide between the unfinished studies or morally and politically problematic continuation at the German universities after the closing of Czech universities in November 1939. The more Krejčí's breadwinner Baťa moved away from the Protectorate reality, the more Krejčí converged with the directors Dominik Čipera and Josef Hlavnička, key players of the Baťa Group during World War II. The decision to make Krejčí the Czech "superintendent" of the German manager of the firm Dr. Albrecht Miesbach, and finally, after the war, an influential head of the Human Resources Department, at the time of billing with the Nazis, collaborators and also innocent employees of German nationality, testifies to Krejčí's influence and trust he enjoyed at the Bata Protectorate leadership. Although Krejčí's memories are a detailed testimony to Baťa company in 1938-1938 and they contain dozens of specific names and events, they cannot be confused with the company's chronicle, let alone the precise and necessary processing of the Group's history during World War II. Despite the many details and frequent exaggeration related to the author's literary talents, Krejčí's language and expression are correct, without the ambition of scandalizing the actors or events.
The key question remains which passages of memoirs are the most valuable testimony to Baťa's Zlín, its backdrops and actors in the years around World War II. Readers of the author rightly expect a precise description of the operation of the Legal Department, which he had been employed since September 1936. The depiction of press disputes, publicized cases of the oil and concrete cartel and the utilitarian approach of the group management to the purchase of the spinning mill in Chrastava near Liberec from the property of the Jewish entrepreneur Schnabel, threatened by the onset of Nazism, does not cover the unscrupulous business strategy of the 1930s. The memoirs take on drama in memories of foreign travels at the turn of 1938 and 1939, an attempt by the Baťa family to leave the Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Protectorate on 14 March 1939 and Baťa's trip to the southeast and western Europe in June 1939 culminating in his departure overseas. Vol. II. of Krejčí´s memoirs is devoted to the School of Art, its teachers and the unique atmosphere in which they worked. Valuable information includes passages dedicated to German director Miesbach, the Germans from Zlín and some clearing with some of Zlín's myths. The highlights of Krejčí’s memoirs are the memories of the last war months and the establishment of post-war national administration in the hands of unscrupulous communists. The stage of the last part of Krejčí's memoirs is not only post-war Prague, but also social contacts created at the time of his work in Zlín.
Das Buch Menschen aus der Bergwerkskolonien erzählen ihre Geschichte ist weder in der tschechischen noch europäischen Geschichtsschreibung etwas außergewöhnliches. Durch Umfang, Format, Verarbeitung und Ausnutzung der Erinnerungen inspirierte mich die Publikationsreihe „Damit es nicht verlorengeht“, die in den 80. Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts vom Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte der Wiener Universität herausgegeben wurde. Die Erinnerungen sammelte ich in den Jahren 2008–2009 und einschließlich der schon publizierten Erzählungen habe ich 44 Erinnerungen von 50, in den Jahren 1886–1955 geborenen Einwohnern aus 17 Bergwerkskolonien gesammelt. Trotz der Unterschiedlichkeit der Texte, kann nicht übersehen werden, dass sich Erinnerungen an entscheidende Augenblicke im Leben dieser Menschen, ihrer Familien, Kolonien, Städte, Staaten oder auch der Weltgeschichte wiederholen. Das Buch enthält Informationen über das Leben im alten Österreich, im I. Weltkrieg, während der Hungeraufstände im Juli 1917, der Ereignisse im Oktober 1918, in der Zeit der Wirtschaftskrise in den 30. Jahren, über das Leben im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, während der Bombardierung Ostravas im August 1944, nach der Befreiung und über die politischen Änderungen nach 1948. In den Erinnerungen wiederholt sich der alltägliche Stereotyp: Kinderspiele, Bergwerksfeiern, die Anwesenheit von Juden oder Personen, die während des II. Weltkriegs in den Bergwerken oder in der Eisenhütte Vítkovice totaleingesetzt waren. Lebendig sind Erinnerungen an die Arbeiterkörpererziehung und den Sport, an Verbände, das politische und kirchliche Leben. Die Erinnerungen der Bewohner der Bergwerkskolonien in Ostrava sind unvorstellbar ohne Erwähnung der Familienwurzeln in Galizien, aus den Gegenden um Teschen oder Ostrava und ohne die extrem anstrengende, gefährliche und fatalistische Arbeit in den Steinkohlengruben. Das Buch ist in der Region Ostrava einzigartiger Versuch zur Sammlung von Informationen mehrerer Generationen einer konkreten sozialen Gruppe. Im Vergleich mit ähnlichen tschechischen und deutschen Publikationen akzentuiert es aber Bilddokumentation, welche die Rolle einer weiteren Informationsschicht erfüllen soll, mit der die Wissenschaftler arbeiten können.
Książka „Ludzie z kolonii opowiadają swoje dzieje“ nie jest w czeskiej ani europejskiej literaturze historycznej niczym wyjątkowym. Swoim zakresem, formalnym opracowaniem i wykorzystaniem wspomnień inspirował mnie szereg publikacji „Damit es nicht verlorengeht“, wydawany w latach osiemdziesiątych XX wieku przez Instytut historii gospodarczej i socjalnej Uniwersytetu w Wiedniu. Wspomnienia zacząłem gromadzić w latach 2008–2009 i łącznie z już opublikowanymi zgromadziłem 44 wspomnień 50 mieszkańców z 17 kolonii górniczych narodzonych w latach 1886–1955. Pomimo zróżnicowania tekstów nie da się przeoczyć, że powtarzają się w nich wspomnienia decydujących chwil w życiu opowiadających, ich rodzin, kolonii, miasta, państwa i historii światowej. Książka zawiera informacje o życiu w dawnej Austrii, podczas I wojny światowej, buntów głodowych w lipcu 1917 roku, wydarzeniach październikowych 1918 roku, kryzysu gospodarczego lat trzydziestych, o życiu w Protektoracie Czech i Moraw, bombardowaniach Ostrawy w sierpniu 1944 roku, wyzwoleniu i zmianach politycznych po 1948 roku. We wspomnieniach powtarzają się też codzienne stereotypy: zabawy dziecięce, uroczystości górnicze, obecność Żydów lub osób podczas II wojny światowej przymusowo wysłanych na roboty w miejscowych kopalniach lub Vítkovickiej hucie żelaza. Żywe są wspomnienia robotniczego wychowania fizycznego i sportu, życia związkowego, politycznego i religijnego. Wspomnienia o ostrawskich koloniach górniczych są niewyobrażalne bez przypomnienia rodzinnych korzeni w Galicji, na Ziemi Cieszyńskiej lub w okolicach dzisiejszej Ostrawy oraz bez refleksji ekstremalnie ciężkiej, niebezpiecznej i fatalistycznej pracy w kopalniach węgla kamiennego. Książka jest na ziemi ostrawskiej unikalną próbą zgromadzenia wspomnień kilku pokoleń konkretnej grupy społecznej. W porównaniu z podobnymi czeskimi i niemieckimi publikacjami akcentuje jednak dokumentację obrazową, która ma pełnić rolę następnej warstwy informacyjnej, z którą badacze mogą pracować.
a) the period 1871–1889/1890: The first period of Šalomouna mining colony’s existence can be delimited by inspection and passing houses of building stage I (1871) and by actuation of the first three mass lodging houses for unmarried workmen and commuter miners without families (1889–1890). In this period, for which a maximum use of housing with high number of habitants per flat and house is characteristic, Šalomouna was unstable and just forming society with considerable number of fluctuating persons, with crushingly high level of masculinity and markedly disrupted population structure in age and marital status. Among the eldest Šalomouna inhabitans there predominated migrants from both Silesia parts and contiguous Moravian districts while newcomers from Galicia, compared with other colonies, were fewer. but it were people from Galicia who totally preponderated among sleepers and a presence of a high number permanently moving persons with low culture level was not helping in stabilization of family relations. Over-night lodging, maximum use of housing and generally unstable housing and population conditions did not allow development of social relationships among colony dwellers and of creating a social control system of which there was a risen criminality level and tense family relations the most visible demonstration.
b) 1889/1890–1914: The second period is delimited by opening of three mass lodging houses in 1889–1890 and by issuing the first of many following laws for tenants protection in company flats. Repeating infectious disease epidemic in company colonies in OKR in the 80’s and the 90’s of the 19th century and an attempt to civilize and to control young blue-collar experts better led to a pressure from management of VKD on single and married miners without families to accommodate mainly in barracks and not in the families as it was by then. In the second half of this period, definitively from 1900 to 1910, the number of sleepers really reduced considerably, being an encumbrance for miners’ families and colony housing before. The housing was increasing in quality during years 1906–1907 and 1914–1917 by construction of new flats in eight-families houses. Although the 90’s was still bearing problematic heritage of the first two colony decades a gradual expanding and improving of civic facilities (till 1906 only first school, later company’s nursery as well and company’s library in the barracks) had been helping to create stable society in which, before World War I, there appeared small stratum of long-run residents and there were formed a social control and relationships network restricting criminality and characterizing the whole period between the World War I and II.
c) 1914 – the turn of the 40’s and the 50’s of the 20th century: A period between the World War I and II, tending to be named as „Golden Age of Šalomouna“ and delimited by the first of reformatory laws about the company’s flats at the beginning and by a final condemnation of Šalomouna to be demolished at the turn of the 40’s and the 50’s in the end, finds the colony as fully stabilized settlement with developed social relations (local neighborhood) and with the social control system. Although aggregative society liberalization and democratization finally made a progress in political, associational, cultural and sport activities of inhabitans possible there had appeared stagnation in a population growth and the population began getting older. In period between the World Wars there were integration processes definitively crowned in the colony – this fact is, among others, supported also by structured political life with preferences for left-wing and middle-left-wing parties with relatively low preferences for extremist parties. Šalomouna did not grow in with its environment only in the meaning of space but mainly by its social bindings whose keepers were more and more often members of professions out of a coal industry.
d) the end of the 40’s of the 20th century to 1977: In the 30’s of the last century among Ostrava architects and city planners were appearing plans to construct a modern housing estates for laborers which would replace unsatisfactory and hardly sustainable built-up area of Šalomouna. At the turn of the 40’s and the 50’s there was finally decided to leave the colony to mining retirees to spend the rest of their lives there or as a temporary accommodation reserve for young families of in-coming workers. The plan was to prepare Šalomouna for a demolition gradually. In 1957 the demolition of the first buildings began and twenty years later there was not a single house in once the largest mining colony in Moravian Ostrava. An improving level of civic facilities was only a seamy side of a gradual social relations decline being created in long-run. Local neighbourhood was weakening together with dying out of long-term residents and with temporary stay of young workers’ families: the colony with rich communication bindings was replaced by anonymous blocks of flats in which the last Šalomouna natives were spending the rest of their lives.
It is basically possible to depict dual picture of Salomon colony using archive sources and memories of two inhabitans generations. There are two ever during traits common to both colony forms – to dynamically developing 19th century settlement with number of blatant population and social phenomenon and to stable society during a period between the World Wars as well – which results from settlement status as company colony. Relative availability of job opportunities and mainly workplace proximity for majority of earning persons were considerably influencing the way of thinking and behaviour of colony residents to whom the Šalomouna mine management was determining their everyday rhythm, it was interfering their privacy influencing a choice of miners’ children future jobs, it was allocating dwellings in the colony in dependence on age and job position (repeated move of dwellers being recorded in memories of informers and in census). The management was influencing a habitation quality by adjustments or by new flat units construction etc. Paternalistic company relation to the inhabitans of socially and in labour homogenous locality was at first weakened by housing legislation and terminated for ever by a mining end in years 1931–1939. An intensive attitude of the inhabitans to soil and to small farming (which was meeting substantive part of the fundamental life requirements still in the 30’s) remained characteristic attribute of Šalomouna in its pathbreaking period and gold age.
A development of many specific elements for collective colony dwellers’ lives could come about only after stabilization of population and housing circumstances and after finishing of integration process in years closely before the World War I. Family, school and work place were the main socializing factors before transformation of Šalomouna to suburban workmen settlement with developing local neighbourhood. Later a nursery, political party and union organizations were added after the transformation. Mainly there were neighbours who were standing in parents duties not only for incomplete families. however, in the both periods the key role of socializing space was played by a street and by richly structured outside area of colony with number of retreats and gaps offering enough room for communication. In the late 30’s the colony stayed half-open (half-closed) world in which many individual and intimate events were occurring before the eyes or with cognizance of neighbours and colony inhabitants. In my work I depicted the first three periods of Salomon colony using the archive material and eyewitnesses’ testimonies. I placed emphasis on years 1868–1950. Monographic work about Šalomouna has set many questions for whose satisfying resolution it will be needed to go through further archive research. It has already brought the first model results along with it (mainly in chapters about colony population growth and about every-day live invariables) which are applicable in studies of other workmen localities of Ostrava. The monograph of company colony of Šalomouna mine has become (contrary to limits given by assignment and due to attempt for complex problematic interpretation) a starting point for synthesizing study about population, housing culture and life conditions in miner‘s and metallurgical settlements in Moravian Ostrava and Vítkovice which are comparable with similar workmen colonies of other European regions.