Geneze jednoho kolaboranta. Novinář František Josef Prokop a jeho role při medializaci soudního procesu s generálem Aloisem Eliášem

• Authors: Pavel Večeřa

Title variants

EN

The Genesis of a Collaborator: The Journalist F. J. Prokop and His Role in Publicizing the Trial of General Alois Eliáš

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The author describes the career of the journalist and chess writer, František Josef Prokop (1901–1973), who, after the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, joined the small group of leading pro-German journalists and became editor-in-chief of a Czech daily newspaper, České slovo , and, later, Lidové listy . The article focuses on the key moments of his career as he was trying to make his mark as a journalist in the Protectorate. It also seeks to interpret the causes of his rise and the motives for his collaboration. In addition, the author aims to assess the newspaper coverage of the trial of the former Premier of the Protectorate government, General Alois Eliáš (1890–1942), in which, in early October 1941, Prokop – together with a leading collaborator journalist, Karel Werner – played a considerable part. It was this act, according to the author, by which Prokop has ingloriously come to be remembered in the history of Protectorate journalism. The method of publicizing the Eliáš trial is, the author argues, extremely interesting. The press department of the arts and politics section of the Office of the Reich Protector, led by Wolfgang Wolfram von Wolmar (who actually ran the Czech press in the Protectorate), had to figure out how to portray to the Czech public Eliáš’s resistance activity, for which he was sentenced to death, without mentioning substantial facts about the existence of an active home resistance. No less important in publicizing the trial was the presentation of Eliáš the man. The Nazis were primarily concerned to ensure that the sentenced general came out of the confrontation vanquished and calling on his fellow-Czechs to be loyal to the occupying régime. Prokop essentially discharged this task under the strict supervision of the head of the German press department and, though later a less active collaborator, he remained in the service of the Germans right to the end of the Occupation. On trial before the National Court after the war, Prokop sought to trivialize his collaborationist activity and to persuade the court that he had actually supported the resistance by his work. The court did not accept this version, and sentenced him to four years in prison. According to the author, Prokop was not motivated to collaborate for ideological or political reasons, but chiefly for material gain and the advancement of his career. He represents the kind of person who clearly gives preference to his hobbies over his own work or the public interest, yet does not hesitate to accommodate pragmatically to the demands of those who hold power. In this psychological portrait the author concludes that the actual sphere of Prokop’s self-realization, and possibly even self-transcendence, was the game of chess, which he perceived as an art, and which provided him with an escape from onerous reality. The author puts forth the hypothesis that Prokop perhaps saw his problematic work as a journalist in the Protectorate as a kind of chess match.

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2010
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 82-120

Contributors

author

Pavel Večeřa

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic