Jindřich Brouček

Date –1932

Routes

Code Z18

Address Antonínova 741, Zlín

Public transport Public transport: Antonínova (TROL 1, 7, 11, 13, 14; BUS 13, 35)

GPS 49.2207050N, 17.6521478E

Literature

Michal Plavec, Osobní pilot Tomáše Bati Jindřich Brouček (1893–1932), Radek Slabotínský (ed.) Studie z hospodářských a sociálních dějin 19. a 20. století v českých zemích a na Slovensku , Acta musei technici Brunensis, 2021, s. 86-101
Jiří Deml, Jan Hrubý, Život, doba a kamarádi jednoho z mužů 18. června 1942 , Kunovice 2016

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The semi-circular streets of Zahradnická and Antonínova were subject to more intense construction from the beginning of the 1920s according to the masterplan of the architect Jan Kotěra. The new streets in the Letná district were gradually filled with several types of workers' houses. In addition to group (terraced) houses, quadruplexes with a mansard roof, designed by Kotěra, also appeared. It was in one of these houses on Antonínova Street that a Břeclav native, single and childless pilot Jindřich Brouček, found an apartment. The house was probably damaged by the bombing of the city in November 1944, because Antonínova, Kotěrova, Mostní, and Na Vyhlídce streets were among the most affected at the time. Today, the unique property reference number applies to another house in another of the workers' districts.

Brouček gained pilot experience during World War I, when he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. He first served with the military squadron on the Russian front and from February 1918 on the Italian front. He flew a total of 16 combat missions in Italy and also experienced his first serious accident there. During a night raid on enemy targets in the town of Crespano del Grappa, the plane piloted by Sergeant Brouček was shot down by Italian anti-aircraft gunners. The plane crashed onto the roofs of buildings in the town of Asolo. Brouček survived the crash and was taken prisoner by the Italians. Two other crew members, who served as observers and machine gunners, died in the crash.

After the armistice in November 1918, the Czechoslovak Home Guard was formed in Italy from prisoners of war from the Czech lands, Slovakia, and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It was established independently of the existing Czechoslovak legionary army abroad and in total over 62 thousand men passed through its units. Jindřich Brouček was assigned to the 4th company in the 53rd battalion with the rank of sergeant. From April to August 1919, the Home Guard returned in an organised manner by rail transport to Czechoslovakia, where many were deployed to fight in Slovakia, or else sent to the border areas. Older Home Guardsmen guarded the rail transports of material and food sent from the port of Trieste to Czechoslovakia. As the situation calmed down, these units were gradually demobilised.

After the end of the war, Jindřich Brouček moved to Vienna to live with his brother Friedrich. This was not his first visit to the Austrian capital; he had lived there as a child, received his school education and worked in his first professions. During his second, post-war, stay in Vienna, he worked as a fitter in his brother's workshop. His experience flying multi-engine aircraft and his ability to fly at night made him a sought-after pilot for Austrian airlines during the post-war recovery of the Austrian economy. He did not return to the Czechoslovak Republic permanently until the fifth year of its existence. On October 10, 1923, he joined the newly-created aviation department of the Baťa company in Zlín. From September 1924, when the company purchased its first aircraft, Brouček made regular promotional flights, during which he scattered advertising leaflets over Czechoslovak cities. From the beginning, he operated occasional air transport for company employees, and from 1929 Brouček provided commercial sightseeing flights operated by the company. By a stroke of luck, this service brought two extraordinary personalities from Zlín closer together. Pilot Brouček, as a regular guest of the Zlín Hotel Záložna, offered a free sightseeing flight over Zlín to two local waiters, Jan Hrubý (https://zam.zlin.eu/objekt/274-jan-hruby) and Jaromír Večerek. Jenda (domestic version of the name Jan) Hrubý, who was enchanted by the flight and later a member of the Bioscop airborne group, is said to have urged Brouček to take off again with such insistence after landing that Brouček happily complied and took the sightseeing flight with him once more.

The dynamics of Zlín aviation, especially in the field of technology and logistics, are perhaps best illustrated by the intercontinental air business trips carried out since the early 1930s. On one such flight, a small group of Baťa exporters, led by the head of the concern Tomáš Baťa, travelled from Zlín to the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia) and back from December 1931 to February 1932. Jindřich Brouček also participated in the flight as a co-pilot.

The development of Zlín air transport was far from straightforward, however. Air accidents became a sad reality. In the very beginning, on December 13, 1925, during one of the promotional flights over Brno, pilot Brouček had a plane crash. He and his colleague Mr. Piska from the advertising department escaped the accident with minor injuries.

Jindřich Brouček was fatally injured in an accident on July 12, 1932. On the instructions of the head of the concern, Tomáš Baťa, and despite poor atmospheric conditions, they took off together from Otrokovice airport early in the morning. Their journey to the Baťa factory in Möhlin, Switzerland, ended prematurely, in an accident on the green areas of Bahňák in Otrokovice. The pilot Jindřich Brouček and the factory owner Tomáš Baťa died in the wreckage of the plane. The final farewell to both took place two days later.

Jindřich Brouček was the prototype of a personality fulfilling modernist dreams of flying. His life story illustrates another key phenomenon of the 20th century, however, namely the issue of nationalism and national minorities. The image of the deceased pilot, formed for decades, does not cast even a shadow of doubt on his Czech origin. After all, with his tragic death alongside perhaps the most famous Czech self-made man, he was buried in the Zlín cemetery near the co-founder of the concern. In 1995, one of the Zlín streets was even named after him (https://zam.zlin.eu/objekt/251-brouckova). There is nothing in the cultivated image of Jindřich Brouček to suggest that his identity could be more complicated. And yet,

Jindřich's native Břeclav was a typical border town, economically linked to the Lower Austrian area for centuries. The city had a large German minority, partly made up of a German-Jewish community. Manifestations of national intolerance, but also of peaceful multicultural coexistence were commonplace here. In this environment, Jindřich's parents and siblings, including Jindřich, declared themselves almost exclusively as German-speaking in the censuses during the Austro-Hungarian era. Another place of residence also strengthened Jindřich's experience of linguistic and cultural plurality. Vienna, with a population of two million people at the beginning of the twentieth century, was the capital of a multinational empire, which was reflected in the composition of its inhabitants and the nature of coexistence. Jindřich himself moved throughout his life in both Czech and German language environments and, taking into account economic incentives and family ties, built his career alternately in both language areas.

After all, the way in which the identity of people from mixed areas was shaped with respect to the prevailing regime, family background, and their own strategies is best documented by the five sons of Jindřich's brother Jan Brouček, who were mostly employed in the Zlín concern since the late 1920s. Leaving aside Bohumír (Friedrich), who died prematurely in 1938 as a result of an accident, three of Jindřich's other nephews applied for German Reich citizenship during the Nazi occupation. The last one retained his protectorate (Czech) nationality.

And so, while the new Zlín leadership, in the anniversary days after World War II, at least for a while, publicly commemorated the fate of the tragically deceased pilot Jindřich Brouček, and his nephew Jan Brouček worked continuously for forty years in the Zlín operations of the Baťa company and in the successor company Svit until his retirement in 1967, two of his brothers, Theodor and Oswald Otto, surviving veterans of the German Volkssturm and the Wehrmacht, were forced to relocate to Germany with their families after the liberation. The last of the five Brouček siblings, Jindřich (Heinrich), did not live to see the end of the war, falling in 1944 as a Wehrmacht soldier.