Interwar modern architecture showed up in some strange places. Capitalist mass production had lead to the imagining of a new town in Austria-Hungary, I mean Czechoslovakia, I mean Bohemia and Moravia, I mean Czechoslovakia, I mean the Czech Republic, I mean Czechia. The building on the stamp is now the local tax authority, so it is important that you closely follow to whom it is you owe. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
One thinks of modern architecture as arising from thinking from the political left as to how to organize the movement toward the cities as part of industrialization. Great mind though travel similar lanes and Zlin’s modernity resulted from capitalism only to be embraced by socialist, communists, and during this period even national socialists. For fans of architecture, it means the building still stands after the enabling shoe factory is long gone. One modern feature of Bata’s skyscraper that was not much copied is that the bosses’ office functioned as an elevator containing a phone, a sink, and air conditioning.
Todays stamp is issue A8, a 3 Koruna stamp issued by the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939. It was part of a 22 stamp issue in various denominations showing items of architectural interest in the newly occupied territory. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.
Thomas Bata founded a shoe company in the small town of Zlin in modern day Czechia. Over time the shoes became ever more mass market. Canvas replaced leather and machines for mechanical sewing were used. This expanded the market and lead to the factory and surrounding area expansion. Czech architects influenced by trends in Germany and France, were contracted to design a modern industrial city in Zlin. For example, even residential housing used bricks and stressed concrete matching the factory. The factory benefited from World War I orders but then felt deeply the recession that followed. One aspect of the recession was that the new Czech currency was devalued. Bata sensed the opportunity and cut in half the price of his shoes. The workers took a pay cut in exchange for stock ownership in the company. The ploy was a big success and the skyscraper on this stamp was a result of the new prosperity. New Bata factories, also with matching surrounding urban utopias, sprang up as far away as India, the USA, and Canada.
With the German conquest of Czechoslovakia, the Bata family posted it’s Jewish workers overseas and left for the USA. Factory production continued at Zlin and benefited again for war time orders but some workers were then sourced from the Auschwitz concentration camp. When the USA entered the war against Germany, the Bata family further emigrated to Brazil to be seen as noncombatants.
The post war communist government of Czechoslovakia seized the Zlin assets using the excuse that the Bata family had not done enough to resist the Nazis. That was just an excuse, the Batas had supported the old Czech government in exile and tried to make places for Czech expatriates in the worldwide operations still owned. Thomas Bata was sentenced to 15 years in jail in absentia for collaboration. The remaining worldwide operations were now run from Canada.
The velvet revolution of 1989 gave the Bata family a chance to bid on the old factory complex in Zlin. The family chose not to as shoe production was leaving developed countries for the third world. The shoe factory in Zlin struggled on until the year 2000 and then closed. At it’s height, it had employed 14,560 people. Bata shoe factories have also closed in the USA, Canada, and the England but still continue in India. The organization is now based in Switzerland. Interesting, given that people still wear shoes, that the quest to maximize profit was eventually worse for this shoe business than either the communists or the Nazis. Well at least the Bata’s are still rich, I guess that is all that matters.
The city of Zlin bought Bata’s skyscraper from the bankruptcy and refurbished the building for local administration and the tax authority. I bet those two employ more people than the 30s equivalents, while still managing not to make anything. Wonder whose office rides the elevator?
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Thomas Bata’s attempt to create an urban utopia around his factories. Who doesn’t love an urban utopia? Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.