Václav Rojt

Václav Rojt

production manager, company director
(1885 - 1941)

Václav Rojt (1885-1941), born in Domažlice and trained as a salesman, arrived in Zlín after jobs in Most, Domažlice and Uherské Hradiště. From 1 June 1910 onwards, he rose up the company hierarchy until he was entrusted with a key task during the First World War - the management of shoe production. In 1923 he was appointed director of the shoe haberdashery workshops, and on 1 January 1926 he was appointed director of the shoe factories. In 1933, he was in charge of the company's export department and was responsible for organising sales in the Far East, where he regularly made inspection trips. In April 1939 he took over the Group's branch in Singapore, where he also died in April 1941 at the age of fifty-six.

Rojt's name appeared alongside Hynek Bata's in the official announcement of the establishment of the Bata concern factory in Zruč, addressed to the District Office in Ledč nad Sázavou at the beginning of June 1939. In it, the "protocol" Bata company announced the establishment of a branch plant of the main factory in Otrokovice-Batau, for the production, storage and sale of all kinds of footwear "according to the factory with a location in Zruč nad Sázavou". Hynek Bat'a and Václav Rojt were appointed responsible deputies of the branch plant of Bat'a, a. s., Zruč nad Sázavou (Bat'a, a. s., Production Plant in Zruč nad Sázavou).

Author of the article

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Doc. PhDr. Martin Jemelka, Ph.D.

Doc. PhDr. Martin Jemelka, Ph.D. (1979) is a Czech historian and music publicist specializing in the social, economic and religious history of the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of workers, housing and everyday life, historical demography, cultural history and the history of the Bata concern. He studied at the University of Ostrava and worked at foreign universities in Jena and Vienna. He is the author and co-author of more than a dozen monographs and numerous studies, chapters and articles in domestic and foreign publications and periodicals. He is the recipient of the Josef Pekar Prize (2009), the Academy of Sciences Prize for Outstanding Achievements in Research, Experimental Development and Innovation ( 2018), the Egon Erwin Kisch International Prize for Non-Fiction (2021), and the President's Prize of the Academy of Sciences for the Promotion or Popularization of Research, Experimental Development and Innovation (2023). He is systematically involved in the popularisation of science and collaborates with public media, for example as an expert advisor for the two-part TV film Dukla 61 (2018) or the TV documentary series Industrie ( 2021).

References used

  • Jemelka, M., Ševeček, O.: Bata Concern's Factory Cities: the European Chapter of Global Expansion. Academia, Prague 2016, p. 271.
  • Krejčí, V., Jemelka, M. (eds.): Noted: ten months with Jan A. Bata. Book Zlín, Masaryk Institute of the CAS, Prague 2019, p. 243.
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