by Unbreakable- The Woman Who Defied the Nazis in the World's Most Dangerous Horse Race (retail) (epub)
I have also drawn heavily on several meticulous studies of Pardubice’s history, notably Kniha o městě Pardubice, ed. Dagmar Broncová (Milpo Media, 1999); Český fašismus v Pardubicích a na Pardubicku 1926–1939, by Jiří kotyk (OFTIS, 2016); Všední život na Pardubicku v období nacistické okupace a druhé světové války, by Karla Jará et al (Krajská knihovna, 2012); Pardubický Zámeček a jeho osudy, by Jiří Kotyk (Klub přátel Pardubicka, 2015); Silver A a Heydrichiáda na Pardubicku, by Radovan Brož, Jiří Štěpánek and Jiří Kotyk (Evropské vydavatelství, 2012). Several of the authors also advised me personally. On a smaller scale, Vladimír Hellmuth-Brauner’s Všenor z minulosti blízké a vzdálené (Spolek pro zvelebování Všenor, 1937) was an essential starting-point for the story of Hanuš Kasalický.
The closer Lata’s story approaches to the present day, the more I have relied on eyewitness accounts and personal memories rather than published sources. However, some of the following might prove useful for readers wanting to learn more about specific aspects of Czechoslovakia’s post-war story: The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A study of Czech-German relations, 1933–1962, by Radomir Luza (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964); National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia, by benjamin Frommer (Cambridge University Press, 2010); The Collectivization of Agriculture in Eastern Europe, ed. Irwin T. Sanders (University of kentucky Press, 1958); The Lost World of Communism, by Peter Molloy (ebury, 2009); Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia, by Galia Golan (Cambridge University Press, 1973); The Prague Spring ’68, ed. Jaromír navrátil (Central european University Press, 2006); The Prague Spring and its Aftermath, by kieran Williams (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Remarkably little about Lata brandisová has been published online; less still is reliable or original. However, it would be wrong not to acknowledge the wealth of meticulously researched background material on the website of the venerable racing magazine (now online only) Dostihový svět. Much of this material has been translated into English by Robin Healey.
I have already mentioned Česká televize’s 2011 documentary, Příběhy předmětů: Podkova Laty Brandisové. I also recommend Petr Feldstein’s made-for-television film, Velká pardubická koňská opera (Česká televize, 1999). There is of course also plenty of Velká Pardubická footage on YouTube, some of it quite sickening; but I don’t think there are more than a few seconds in which lata appears – in Pathé news reports from 1937 and 1946. as for radio, Český rozhlas has broadcast a number of brief items relating to Lata over the years. I will not list them: most simply retell the same basic story. but I must acknowledge one ten-minute episode about Lata in Český rozhlas: Dvojka’s ‘Přiběhy slavných’ series, first broadcast on 8 October 2013. I happened to hear this on a podcast in late 2016 – which was when I encountered lata’s story for the first time.
I hope that, in addition to clarifying various arcane points, the notes below acknowledge all my other significant debts. If I have left any out, I apologise for the oversight. It should at least be clear that, in assembling this story, I have taken advantage of the prior work of many people, living and dead. I am grateful to them all.
Notes
Title page: the World’s Most Dangerous Horse Race
Some in the Czech racing world dispute this designation. They prefer ‘toughest’ to ‘most dangerous’ and argue that the Grand national is at least as severe. Traditionally, the Velká Pardubická was often described as ‘the toughest steeplechase in mainland europe’ – thus avoiding a direct challenge to aintree. but the Pardubice race is frequently described as ‘the most dangerous’ (for example, in ‘Jump off at the deep end’, by erlend Clouston, Guardian, 10 april 1999; or ‘The Velká Pardubická is the most dangerous horse race in the world’, by rob Sutherland, Daily Telegraph (australia), 30 September 2015); and, as I argue in chapter 32, the Velká Pardubická is unique in the sense that the danger is usually presented as its raison-d’ être.
p. 3: Emil Zátopek, the runner . . . the near-invincible national men’s icehockey team of 1947–49
Zátopek and Čáslavská supported the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring of 1968 and publicly opposed the resulting Soviet-led invasion. both were excluded from public life and prevented from working in their chosen fields. Fikotová-Connolly was denounced as a traitor after marrying an american, navratilová after seeking asylum in the US as an eighteen-year-old. The ice hockey team, whose crimes included allegedly considering defection and singing anti-Communist songs, received gaol sentences of up to fifteen years.
p. 6: under ‘restitution’
Following the fall of Communism in november 1989, a series of laws from april 1990 onwards allowed property confiscated in Czechoslovakia between 25 February 1948 and 1 January 1990 to be reclaimed by its original owners or their heirs. This often proved more complicated than it sounds, especially since many owners had gone into exile. Czech citizenship was required in order to benefit; and the millions who lost their homes in the three years following the Second World War are still excluded.
p. 11: three villages, two farms, several fish-ponds
like many details in my account of the brandis family’s life in Řitka, these are derived from a combination of three sources: Řitka v minulosti; kovář (who draws heavily on Šírl’s chronicle); and local memories. I am grateful to Petr breyer for the information that the other two villages were Čisovice and bojov. The brewery, which was in Řitka, appears to have been closed soon after the family acquired the estate.
p. 12: swam across the Danube for a bet
‘Dame gewinnt “Grosse Pardubitzer”’, Prager Tagblatt, 19 October 1937.
p. 12: tutoring princelings . . . in . . . horsemanship
According to Lata, he was a graduate of the riding Teachers’ Institute in Vienna.
p. 12: the resulting quarrel . . . was so violent that shots were fired
The version of the incident passed down in family tradition is quite lurid, and is partly supported by the local chronicler of křesetice, the village next door to Úmonín. I have exercised restraint to maintain consistency with known dates of birth, marriage and death.
p. 13: later accused of tampering with Christian’s will
This and other salacious details were recorded in the křesetice chronicle.
p. 13: whose grand friends included at least one royal archduke
leopold was on friendly terms with archduke Ferdinand karl Habsburskolotrinsky of austria, younger brother of the archduke Franz-Ferdinand whose assassination sparked the First World War. Ferdinand renounced his dynastic rights in 1911, after marrying inappropriately, and thereafter called himself Ferdinand burg; see correspondence in the Pospíšil papers.
p. 14: Johanna borrowed money to fund the purchase of Řitka
The money was borrowed from an order of nuns in austria, the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, to which leopold’s elder sister, Maria Theresia, belonged. See Pospíšil papers.
p. 14: allegedly rapacious vendor
Řitka v minulosti implies that previous owner, Dr karel klaudy, used legal trickery to enrich himself at villagers’ expense.
p. 15: those three villages would dwindle to one
This may be an over-simplification. Řitka v minulosti suggests that the family may still have owned a brickworks in bojov and a farm in Čisovice in 1917 (when Lata was twenty-two), at which point they sold them off along with their other land disposals (see page 64).
p. 15: not entirely banned from contact with village children
This was certainly true in Úmonín (according to Josef Vetřek) and there are indirect reasons – such as the number of village children who saw inside the château grounds – for supposing it to have been true in Řitka.
p. 16: ‘dogs barking from every window’
‘Kazí sport Žny’, un-bylined interview with Lata published in PraŽanka-Praha, 10 November 1937.
p. 16: a very formal kind of German
; This way of speaking, in which the third person (‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’) is used instead of the second (‘you’), is now obsolete; but the brandis sisters are remembered in Řitka as having used it. Lata did not, however, use it in correspondence in later life.
p. 16: German forms of each other’s names
Strictly speaking, this part of the story should describe the Graf and Gräfin von brandis, and their children Maria Theresia, Gabriela, leopold, nicolaus, Maria (Lata), Christiane, elisabeth, Margarete and Johanna. In fact, the siblings usually used nicknames: for example, ‘Velká’ for Marie Therese, ‘Mur’ for Gabriele, ‘Utzle’ for Lata, ‘Zecko’ for kristýna, ‘Peprl’ for alžběta and ‘Michla’ for Johanna. even Lata’s descendants sometimes find the variations confusing, so I have spared readers this challenge.
p. 16: expected to be fluent in French
For a comprehensive account of what was expected of daughters of the nobility, see Das Leben adeliger Frauen. The most rigorous demand was simply to stick with your own kind. William D. Godsey, Jr. (‘Quarterings and kinship: The Social Composition of the Habsburg aristocracy in the Dualist Era’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 56–104) calculated that there were 474 families in the Habsburg ‘court circle’ during this period, including the brandises. In terms of future spouses and future friends, this was supposed to constitute Lata’s entire world.
p. 18: our knowledge of her siblings
In addition to villagers and other family members, I am particularly grateful to Petr Jaroševský, Lata’s nephew, for his detailed recollections of the sisters’ lives and habits. These were however formed at a slightly later stage in their lives and include nothing about Lata’s two short-lived brothers.
p. 20: walls bristled with hunting trophies
There are several photographs in the Pospíšil collection, and also in the collection of Petr Jaroševský, which show walls bristling with trophies to a quite shocking degree.
p. 24: ‘would have given her life for her horses’
The friend was Jiří kocman, best-known today as a world champion harness racer, who worked at Chlumec as a stable lad from 1949 to 1951 and also knew Lata when, before that, he was an apprentice jockey at Velká Chuchle.
p. 25: more horse-focused
See: Farewell to the Horse; the first chapter makes a persuasive case that, because of slow uptake of technology and growing populations, the ‘last century of the horse’ – from 1815 to 1914 – ‘witnessed not only the exodus of the horse from human history, but also its historical climax: never before had humanity been as heavily dependent on horses as when benz and Daimler’s internal combustion engines began rattling away . . .’ Today, by contrast, to quote Cyril neumann, co-founder of Prague’s equestrian Club Ctěnice, ‘We have many more people who ride, but we have far fewer “horsemen”.’
p. 28: Wealthy Hungarians such as Count István Széchenyi
For a full and fascinating account of the early history of english-style steeplechasing in the Habsburg lands, see Velká Pardubická a Velká Národní Liverpoolská, from which many of the details in chapters 3 and 4 are taken.
p. 31: riding his horses . . . up the grand staircase
I am grateful to Count Francesco kinský dal borgo, whose branch of the family now owns the castle, for giving me a detailed tour of the scenes of Oktavian’s excesses. Some versions of Oktavian’s stunts seem implausible, given the width of the stairs – but presumably he knew what he was doing.
p. 32: the more flamboyant Count Karel Kinský
a definitive account of karel kinský’s remarkable life can be found in Liverpoolský triumf Karla knížete Kinského, currently available only in Czech but unlikely to remain untranslated for long.
p. 33: ‘It is impossible that we had such apes in our family!’
See: http://www.hrad-kost.cz/en/history-of-kinsky-family.php. In fairness to Oktavian, norbert was referring to other forebears as well.
p. 36: ‘If I want to kill myself in Czechoslovakia’
Quoted in Velká Pardubická a Velká Národní Liverpoolská.
p. 37: insisted that half of the race be run through ploughed fields
The most detailed and accessible accounts of the many changes in route, terrain and obstacles of the Velká Pardubická course can be found in Od Fantoma po Peruána. The current proportion of ploughed land is closer to a quarter and the ploughing is much less deep.
p. 38: the start of the first Velká Pardubická
My detailed accounts of individual runnings of the race, of which this is the first, are mainly based on contemporary newspaper reports (especially in Národní listy); on Od Fantoma po Peruána; and on the vast private archive of Miloslav nehyba, much of which has found its way into his own writings. but the fullest account of this particular race is probably that in Velká Pardubická a Velká Národní Liverpoolska (pp. 34–40).
p. 41: twenty-nine horses have died
This was the grim running total as of 2018. The vast majority of the deaths occurred before the Second World War; there have been four in the past twenty years.
p. 42: ‘the love child of Becher’s Brook and The Chair, on steroids’
‘Czech Grand national makes its european cousins look like a stroll in the park – as I learnt to my cost’, by Marcus armytage, Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2016.
p. 42: ‘Horses will often do a jump of that size in training’
Quoted in Taxis a ti druzí.
p. 42: ‘largely a question of letting the horse go’
kratochvíl was being interviewed on Všechnopárty, Českà televize, 19 January 2018.
p. 44: Sisi . . . made endless visits to Britain
For a full account of these visits, including the empress’s romance with bay Middleton, see The Sporting Empress.
p. 47: Leopold did not approve . . . more time with horses than trying to find a husband
See: kovář; and Příběhy předmětů.
p. 48: one of the world’s first private cinemas
Strictly speaking, this was not so much a cinema as a viewing-room for an improvised three-dimensional image-viewer. See: ‘Měl baron kast na zámku v Mníšku pod brdy domácí kino?’, by Marie Charvátová (novinky. cz, 25 February 2015).
p. 48: Lata was shy, and disliked dancing
Many people have testified to Lata’s shyness. It was Countess Génilde kinský, whom I interviewed in Žďár nad Sázavou in October 2017, who emphasised her dislike of dancing.
p. 50: A photograph in the family’s collection
The particular picture I have in mind is in the Pospíšil collection. Petr Jaroševský has another one, depicting the aftermath of a different ‘officers’ race’.
p. 50: a woman was obliged to do the housework
See: ‘equality at Stake: legality and national Discourses on Family law in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1931’, by Jana Osterkamp, in New Perspectives on European Women’s Legal History, pp. 97–121; and Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950, p. 69.
p. 53: Archduke Franz Ferdinand . . . had a reputation for being a demanding critic
See Twilight of the Habsburgs, p. 321.
p. 53: spend three times as much on beer, wine and tobacco
A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change, p. 398; The Decline and Fall of the Hapsburg Empire 1815–1918, p. 262.
p. 54: ‘That was how things were back then . . . ’
Quotations from Joseph roth’s The Radetzky March are from Michael Hofmann’s 2002 translation for Granta.
p. 55: ‘in even rhythm, leisurely and quietly’
Quotations from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday use benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut ripperger’s 1943 translation.
p. 55: she wasn’t allowed to take her seat
The bohemian diet was little more than a local assembly. none the less, when the Czech nationalist writer božena Vitková-kunětická was elected to it in 1912, the Habsb
urg-appointed governor declared the result void. The diet was finally dissolved the following year. See: The Feminists, p. 98; ‘equality at Stake’, p. 97; and ‘Czech Feminists and nationalism in the late Habsburg Monarchy: “The First in austria”’, by katherine David (Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 3, no. 2), pp. 26–45.
p. 57: ‘Whatever happens we two will always remain the same friends . . . ’
letter to George lambton, quoted in Velká Pardubická a Velká Národní Liverpoolská.
p. 57: There is reason to believe that Lata’s mother . . . did not cope well
The details of this supposition are vague: it is an item of family tradition, which in some parts of the family (for example, among Zdenko radslav kinský’s children) extended to the firm conviction that the Countess had permanently moved out, abandoning her family. Documentary evidence among the Pospíšil papers makes this hard to believe: she appears to have been on the premises in 1917 and 1918, at least. but she certainly had health problems, so perhaps she was incapacitated.
p. 57: left nineteen-year-old Lata in charge
See: Lata’s account in ‘Die Dame im rennsattel’; Pavel kovář’s accounts in Reflex and in Šampaňské s příchutí pelyňku; and Jiří Střecha’s in Příběhy předmětů. but the same caveats apply as for the previous note. It is possible that Lata’s responsibility related mainly to the horses and the stables.
p. 60: apprehended a notorious poacher at gun-point
Lata’s account is from František Šírl’s interview in Řitka v minulosti.
p. 60: Her father preserved a coin, dented in the middle by a bullet
The five crown piece is now in the possession of Petr breyer.
