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High Modernism in Theory and Practice: Karel Teige and Tomáš Bat'a

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2017

Jessica E. Merrill
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Abstract

This article compares Tomáš Bata's development of Zlín as a company town with the architectural theory of Karel Teige. Despite political differences— Bat’a was a champion of “American” capitalism, Teige a leader of the leftist avant-garde—they had unexpectedly similar ideas about architectural design and city planning. The article uses James C. Scott's definition of high modernism as a starting point to explain these commonalities, historically contextualizing the two men's thinking as a specific iteration of this ideology. Both, for instance, paradoxically sought to incorporate liberal, democratic values (typical of the rhetoric of state building in interwar Czechoslovakia) into their authoritarian plans. This analysis helps explain subsequent, socialist architectural developments, in which Teige's theory and Bat’a's practices were combined. In this, the article contributes to an understanding of Czechoslovakia's post-1948 cultural history not in terms of impositions from Moscow, but as building on native institutions.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , Summer 2017 , pp. 428 - 454
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2017 

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References

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17. At this time, the population of Czechoslovakia was comprised of Czechs (51%), Germans (23%), Slovaks (15%), Hungarians (5.5%), Ruthenes, Ukrainians, and Russians (3.4%), and Jews (2.5%). See Sayer, Coasts of Bohemia, 168.

18. This statement comes from T.G. Masaryk's memoirs and was also used as the title of a 1926 architectural manifesto “Without a Gilded Coach.” See Šlapeta, Vladimír, Czech Functionalism 1918–1938 (London, 1987), 162Google Scholar.

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21. Cited in Šlapeta, Czech Functionalism, 163.

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23. Cited in Švácha, “Form follows Science,” 20–21.

24. Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 18. Švácha, “Form follows Science,” 37. On the relationship between Teige and the Czech interwar architectural avant-garde see Švácha, “Form follows Science,” 44–45; Rostislav Švácha, “Karel Teige and the Devětsil Architects,” Rassegna Bologna, 6–21; and Cohen, “Introduction,” 23.

25. The book was intended as a critique of the Third CIAM Congress, held in Brussels in 1930. See Dluhosch, Eric, “Teige's Minimum Dwelling as a Critique of Modern Architecture,” in Dluhosch, Eric and Švácha, Rostislav, ed., Karel Teige 1900–1951: L'enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 142–193 Google Scholar.

26. Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 334, 351.

27. Ibid., 348.

28. Švácha, “Form follows Science,” 14–97.

29. Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 354, emphasis in original.

30. Ibid., 351, emphasis in original.

31. Švácha, “Form follows Science,” 39–41.

32. Perhaps prompted by geographic isolation, Bat’a's company aggressively pursued vertical integration, expanding into fields such as mechanical engineering (1903); tanneries (1915); power engineering (1917); railway and aviation (1924); brick-kiln and construction (1924); food processing (1927); rubber factories, plantations and tire production (1927, 1930); film production (1928); insurance (1930); coal-mining (1932); and gas-mask production (1935). Všetečková, Alena and Všetečka, Petr, The Eighth Level Exposition Guide (Zlín, 2008)Google Scholar, not paginated.

33. Bat’a made several trips to the USA. On subsequent trips, he visited Henry Ford's River Rouge plant in Michigan and the Endicott-Johnson company town in New York. See Cekota, Entrepreneur Extraordinary, 146–49.

34. Karfík, Vladimír, Prof. Ing. arch. Vladimír Karfík 1901–1996: Vzpomínky, trans. Voštová, Irena, (Luhačovice, 2012), 154Google Scholar.

35. Křeček, Vojtěch and Pokluda, Zdeněk, “První americká cesta Tomáše Bati,” Zlínsko od minulosti k současnosti 17, no. 1 (2000): 64–67Google Scholar.

36. Ibid., 66; See also Svoboda, Jiří, Jiří Voženílek, Architekt ve Zlíně (Brno, 2011), 19–24 Google Scholar. Unless otherwise noted all translations are my own.

37. Svoboda, Jiří Voženílek, 27; Karfík, Vzpomínky, 139–58.

38. Gahura, F. L., “Budování Baťova Zlína,” Stavitel 14 (1933–1934), 134–68Google Scholar. Gahura explained that “the architect's creativity had always to solve the problem of adapting a building meant for public use to the factory construction standard. This standard is the module (buňka) element of Zlín's architecture … the dimensions of which are 6.15×6.15 meters. From this unit the ground plans of all the buildings are formed. The exterior appearance of Zlín's architecture is accordingly distinguished by a stylistic unity, with many variations.” Gahura was a Zlín native whose education was sponsored by Tomáš Bat’a.

39. Cited in Novák, Pavel, “Průmyslová výstavba ve Zlíně,” in Zlín: Une ville industrielle modele, 1900–1950 (Le Creusot-Montceau, 2002), 19Google Scholar. Josef Gočár (1880–1945), a prominent Czech architect, worked as an architectural consultant for Bat’a's firm from 1923 to 1939.

40. From “Our Opinion Concerning the New Architecture” cited in Šlapeta, Czech Functionalism, 163. Sedlák, in “Poznámky,” 55, also makes this point.

41. The designs for the houses built in the 1920s and early 1930s have remained anonymous. Svoboda comments on this practice in Jiří Voženílek, 28.

42. Monika Platzer, “Zlín: A Special Case in Architecture,” The Bat’a Phenomenon, 211; Ševeček, Zrození, 108.

43. On costs of building see: Jan Sedlák, “Poznámky k malobytovým rodinným domům,” Zlínský Funkcionalismus, 57; Steinführer, “Stadt und Utopie,” 64; and Ševeček, Zrození, 241. On the construction process for Bat’a homes see Ladislav Babek, “K provozu stavebního oddělení firmy Bat’a,” Zlínský Funkcionalismus, 71–75.

44. Pokluda, “Přerod venkovského města,” 23.

45. See Ladislava Horňáková, “Brief Characteristics of Satellite Towns,” The Bat’a Phenomenon, 137–47. Some of these were quite extensive. The factory town Batanagar, founded near Calcutta in 1933, was the largest industrial complex on the Indian peninsula until 1960. Still in operation, workers there continue to live in company housing to this day.

46. Quoted in Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 234. She cites Jenkins, Eric, “Utopia, Inc.: Czech Culture and Bat’a Shoe Company Architecture and Garden Cities,” Thresholds 18 (1999): 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 94.

48. A list of Bat’a's slogans can be found in Evžen Erdély, Bat'a, Švec, který dobyl světa, 34–35. Theresa Adamski comments on this aspect of Bat’a's thinking in her chapter “Bat’a's Zlín—Space For The Individual Collective?,” Company Towns of the Bat'a Concern (Stuttgart, 2013), 221–48Google Scholar. Adamski calls attention to the influence of the Czech gymnastics club, Sokol, on Bat’a.

49. Uvahy a projevy, 60–61, 111.

50. Ibid., see especially the section on education “Vychovatel,” 100–20.

51. Devinat, Paul, “Working Conditions in a Rationalized Undertaking: The Bat’a Shoe Company and its Social Consequences,” International Labour Review, 45, no.1 (1930): 50–51, 60, 57, 59Google Scholar. Devinat reports on his 1928 inspection of Bat’a's factory made at the behest of the International Labor Board.

52. Ibid., 57, 50.

53. Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 93. Zarecor argues that Voženílek transferred this model to the organization of the state-run organizations in the 1940s (93–94).

54. Devinat, “Working Conditions,” 65–66.

55. Cekota, Geniální podnikatel, 203.

56. Ševeček, Zrození, 204, 196–97. Ševeček reports that in 1939, 8.4% of Bat’a family homes constructed were single-family homes, 69.5% were duplexes, and 22.1% were fourplexes. Ševeček draws a connection with the nineteenth-century housing tradition in Zlín, which entailed the admixture or even cohabitation of people of different social standing. See Ondrej Ševeček, “Socio-spatial Aspects of Zlín's Urbanization (1900–1938),” The Bat’a Phenomenon, 37–55.

57. Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 351, emphasis in original.

58. Ibid., 350. For Teige this was ideally 8.2 to 9 square meters.

59. On Teige's partner Jožka Nevařílová see Rostislav Švácha “Before and After the Mundaneum,” Karel Teige 1900–1951, 124.

60. See Teige, Karel “Poetismus,” Host 3 (1923–24), 197–204 Google Scholar (English translation in Karel Teige 1900–1951, 64–71) and Teige, Karel, Stavba a báseň (Prague, 1927)Google Scholar.

61. Zusi, Peter, “The Style of the Present: Karel Teige on Constructivism and Poetism” Representations 88, no. 1 (Fall 2004): 102–124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 112. On Teige's poetism see also Levinger, Esther, “Czech Avant-Garde Art: Poetry for the Five Senses,” The Art Bulletin 81, no. 3 (September 1999): 513–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muller, Vladimir, Der Poetismus: Das Programm und die Hauptverfahren der tschechischen literarischen Avantgarde der zwanziger Jahre (Munich, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62. Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 364, 346.

63. Zusi, “The Style of the Present,” 113, 116.

64. Švácha, “Before and After the Mundaneum,” 124.

65. Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 173.

66. The architect Jan Gillar submitted a proposal for a competition for workers’ housing in 1931 inspired by Teige's “residential cell,” which included both a “temporary layout” with several beds per apartment as well as a design for single-cell units as the “intended final state.” See Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 387. See also Karel Teige, “The Competition to design Blocks of Small Flats for the Včela workers’ association in Prague,” Form follows Science, 230–245.

67. Henrieta Moravčíková, “The Architecture of the Bat’a Company as a Factor of Modernization: The Example of Slovakia,” The Bat’a Phenomenon, 203.

68. Jaroslav Rudiš and Svatopluk Jabůrek, “It Was Extremely Modern and Nice,” A Utopia of Modernity, 140. Ševeček, for instance, reports that if fired, a worker had only one week to vacate his home (Zrození, 235).

69. Crawford, Margaret, Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns (London, 1995), 70Google Scholar.

70. Ibid., 73.

71. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 95–97.

72. In 1928 the Frenchman Devinat described Bat’a's factories as “installed at the back of beyond, in a region devoid of industrial traditions … other than those of village handicraft workers,” in Devinat, “Working Conditions,” 62. See also Ševeček, “Socio-spatial Aspects of Zlín's Urbanization,” 41.

73. Howard's book was translated in to Czech in 1923. On the popularity of his ideas in Czechoslovakia see Teige, Minimum Dwelling, 49.

74. Bat’a won a contract to provide boots for the Austrian army in WWI. As a result, Bat’a's workforce jumped from 400 to over 4,000 between 1914 and 1918. See Ševeček, “Socio-spatial Aspects,” 42.

75. See Kotěra, Jan, “Dělnické kolonie,” Stavitel 2, no. 5–6 (1921), 65–66 Google Scholar; Ševeček, Zrození, 223–25. This version of the plan was not realized. See also Horňáková, “The Building of Interwar Zlín,” The Bat’a Phenomenon, 59.

76. Moravčíková, “The Architecture of the Bat’a Company,” 203.

77. Karfík, Vzpomínky, 140–41. Completed in 1938, it was the tallest building in Czechoslovakia and the second-tallest in continental Europe at the time. On the “21 Building” see Jenkins, Eric, “The Bat’a Shoe Company's Elevator-Office in Zlín” Centropa 7, no. 3 (2007), 253–265 Google Scholar, and Ivan Bergmann and Ladislav Pastrnek “Building No. 21: Redeveloping and Revitalizing an Icon,” A Utopia of Modernity, 68–74.

78. Ševeček, Zrození, 272. After Moravia, the second largest category, 4.8% of the population, was from Bohemia.

79. Cekota, Antonín, ed., Do Nové Práce (Zlín, 1930), 6Google Scholar.

80. Cekota, Entrepreneur Extraordinary, 280; Erdély, Švec, který dobyl, 130–31. Boys from 14 to 17 boarded in dormitories and took night courses in subjects such as foreign languages or accounting after working eight hours a day in the factory. Bat’a placed special stress on financial responsibility; final grades were assigned based on students’ ability to balance a “personal yearbook,” which was based on weekly accounting. Ševeček provides an excerpt from a student's account of the daily routine (Zrození 247–48).

81. Tomáš Bat’a, Úvahy a projevy, 28, 115.

82. Kovářů, Věra, “Sídla, usedlosti, obydlí,” in Nekuda, Vladimír, ed., Zlínsko (Brno, 1995), 230Google Scholar. For Bat’a's views on this tradition, see Knowledge in Action, 108.

83. Cekota, Entrepreneur Extraordinary, 1, 7–8, 17, 34.

84. Bat’a, Knowledge in Action, 140, translation modified.

85. Vojtěch Křeček reports that in 1939, 56% of homes in Zlín had a bath while in Brno and Prague this figure was 26% and 22%. See “Ubytování zaměstnanců firmy Bat’a,” Zlínsko od minulosti k současnosti 18, no. 1 (2001): 106Google Scholar.; Ševeček, Zrození, 242.

86. Rudiš and Jabůrek, “It Was Extremely Modern,” 140.

87. Lucie Galčanová and Barbora Vacková, “Changes in Housing Culture in Zlín,” in A Utopia of Modernity, 246.

88. Adamski, “Bat’a's Zlín,” 228.

89. Steinführer, “Stadt und Utopie,” 34–35. The strangeness of Zlín for contemporaries is captured in the responses to Zlín gathered by Zbránková, Dana, “Napsáno na téma: Zlín,” Zlínsko od minulosti k současnosti 17 (2000): 121–88Google Scholar.

90. Steinführer, “Uncharted Zlín,” 110.

91. Ševeček, Zrození, 255. The percentage of workers who commuted to Zlín fell overall, however, from 58.3% in 1925 to 19.4% in 1935 (Zrození, 257).

92. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 93.

93. Ševeček, Zrození, 109, 130. Daniel Abramson in “Obsolescence and the Fate of Zlín” in Utopia of Modernity, 157–71, writes that buildings in Zlín were meant to stand for only 20 years.

94. Gahura, “Budování,” 165; Pokluda, Zdeněk, Zlín (Prague, 2008), 79Google Scholar.

95. Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, 131.

96. Ibid., 136.

97. Cited in Hays, K. Michael, ed., Oppositions Reader: Selected Essays 1973–1984 (Princeton, 1999), 595Google Scholar.

98. The society was conceived in opposition to the powerful Club for the Preservation of Old Prague, founded in 1900.

99. Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 315.

100. Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, 77, 264.

101. Cekota, Geniální podnikatel, 232; Bat’a, Úvahy a projevy, 138, 141.

102. Rostislav Švácha, “Tomáš Bat’a and the Destruction of Old Zlín,” A Utopia of Modernity, 83–84. Ševeček reports that only six, mostly public, buildings survived the first two land-use plans for Zlín of 1921 and 1931, which widened streets in the old city center and enlarged the original public square (Zrození, 82).

103. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 94.

104. Domański, Bolesław, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (Westport, Conn., 1997), 59Google Scholar.

105. Miroslava Štýbrová, “Zlín,” in Nekuda, ed., Zlínsko, 663.

106. Zdeněk Pokluda,“Historický vývoj” in Zlínsko, 180; and Pokluda, Zlín, 9. Interestingly, Bat’a's practice of advertising his worldview in large painted slogans on the outer factory wall may have been prompted by Haupt who, until 1929, painted “shameful and seditions statements against Bat’a and his system” on the wall surrounding the manorial park. See Horák, Antonín, Světla a stíny zlínského filmu: volné vyprávění (Vizovice, 2002), 13Google Scholar; and Erdély, Švec, který dobyl, 168.

107. Bat’a, Úvahy a projevy, 29, 19–21. See especially the section of his autobiography titled “Můj jinošský sen o pánech” (My youthful dream about gentlemen), 19–24.

108. Pokluda, Zlín, 67.

109. Bat’a, Knowledge in Action, 127.

110. Bat’a, Úvahy a projevy, 195–96.

111. Erdély, Švec, který dobyl světa, 31.

112. See also Ševeček, “Socio-spatial Aspects,” 40.

113. Rudiš and Jabůrek, “It Was Extremely Modern,” 139–40; Galčanová and Vacková, “Changes in Housing Culture,” 244.

114. Steinführer, “Uncharted Zlín,” 111; Moravčíková, “The Architecture of the Bat’a Company,” 199.

115. Cohen, Introduction, 4. See also Frampton, Kenneth, “A Modernity worthy of the Name: Notes on the Czech Architectural Avant-Garde,” in Anděl, Jaroslav, ed., The Art of the Avant-Garde in Czechoslovakia 1918–1938 (Valencia, 1993), 213–231 Google Scholar.

116. An outspoken critic of Socialist Realism, Teige was declared a “Trotskyite degenerate” after the Communist coup of 1948. See Eric Dluhosch, translator's Forward to The Minimum Dwelling, xi. On Teige's influence see Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 17–55.

117. Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 69–112.

118. See especially Zarecor's Chapter 5, “The Industrialization of Housing: Zlín and the Evolution of the Panelák,” 224–94.

119. Ibid., 78–9, 84.

120. In 1948, for example, Czechoslovak Building Works signed an agreement with the Bat’a company to establish a Department for Typification and Standardization of Industrial and Residential Buildings in Prague which was to be run under the direction of the Bat’a design office in Zlín (Ibid., 94).

121. Ibid., 23.

122. Svoboda, Jiří Voženílek, 141.

123. Ibid. On competition and Le Corbusier's stay in Zlín, see Jean-Louis Cohen, “Les projets de Le Corbusier pour Bat’a, entreprise mondiale,” in Novak, et. al. eds., Une ville industrielle modele, 58–77.

124. Svoboda, Jiří Voženílek, 128.

125. Ibid., 253. On Voženílek's work in Zlín see also Radomíra Sedláková, “Zlín—Gottwaldov: Architectural Changes between 1945 and 1960,” The Bat’a Phenomenon, 149–93.

126. Ibid.

127. Ibid., 126. These were not included in the final construction.

128. Ibid., 45–48, 81. Jan Bat’a, Tomáš’ half-brother, took over as president of the company after Tomáš’s death in 1932.

129. Ibid., 103.

130. Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 72.

131. Ibid., 77.

132. Ibid., 93.

133. In the 1950s and 1960s Voženílek was the first director of Stavoprojekt (a state-run system of architecture offices created to replace private practice), first director of the Institute of Architecture and Town Planning, deputy minister of the State Committee for Construction, and head architect for the City of Prague, where he also taught at the Technical University (ČVUT).

134. Ibid., 76.

135. Ibid., 97.

136. For instance, while Sweden was using five apartment building footprints, and Poland three, Czechoslovakia was only using one, see Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 98.

137. Ibid., 226.

138. Ibid., 242.

139. Ibid., 225.

140. Ibid., 294.