Jindřich Jindříšek

Significance

Jindřich Jindříšek (1857–1924) was a Czech businessman and community figure who worked in Kyiv for more than three decades. According to the Volhynian Czechs site (volynaci.cz), he built one of the largest music-instrument businesses in Russia, founded the Czech Jan Amos Komenský society with its Czech school, co-founded the Kyiv Sokol and chaired the Kyiv Czech committee. [JIN01]

Life

Jindříšek was born on 26 July 1857 in Poniklá near Jilemnice and died on 28 August 1924 in Prague. [JIN01; JIN02] He trained in commerce; according to Czech Wikipedia he returned to Russia in 1881 and in 1883 opened his own musical instrument shop in Kyiv (with a repair workshop from 1885). The shop later moved to Khreshchatyk and was reopened in 1909 at Khreshchatyk 41; besides instruments it sold sheet music, pianos and gramophones. [JIN02] According to a 1906 advertisement in Ruský Čech the shop was called the first Czech music shop in Russia. [JIN01]

Czech Wikipedia also discusses the Kyiv record company Extraphone (Extrafon). Only the introduction calls him its founder, while the body of the text speaks of a German company, International Extra-Record, which opened the Kyiv studio, and of a partner, Ernst Hesse, with the equipment; the factory in Shuliavka was, according to the article, built in late 1911 and operated until 1918. [JIN02]

After the revolution, according to Czech Wikipedia, the business declined and in 1919 the Bolsheviks seized his property; in June he fled Ukraine hidden in a freight car. After returning, in July 1919 he accused the Czechoslovak authorities in Národní listy of tolerating the Bolsheviks and was then branded a counter-revolutionary; he worked as an accountant in Terezín, headed a Russian gymnasium in Moravská Třebová and from December 1921 worked for the Foreign Ministry. [JIN02] Volynaci.cz is briefer: he returned "empty-handed" and briefly served as a consultant in a section of the Foreign Ministry. [JIN01]

Ukrainian connection

Kyiv was the place of his business and community work. He founded the Komenský society in March 1907; it helped set up a Sokol unit and supported a Czech park and a Czech school in Kyiv. Jindříšek co-published the weekly Ruský Čech (from 1906) and the periodical Čechoslovan (from 1911). [JIN02] During the First World War, according to Czech Wikipedia, he chaired the Kyiv Czech committee, supported the Czech Druzhina (August 1914), set up a fund for volunteers' families and on 29 July 1917 hosted Masaryk in Kyiv; volynaci.cz adds that he was a delegate to all three congresses of the Czechoslovak societies and presided over the Kyiv one. [JIN01; JIN02] The sources name no contacts with Ukrainian figures; his tie to Ukraine is the Kyiv Czech community and business in the city. [JIN01; JIN02]

He was recognised as a legionnaire by a decision of 25 April 1925; on 25 April 1926 a memorial plaque was unveiled on his house in Smíchov. [JIN01; JIN02]

Disagreements in the sources

Start of the Kyiv work: volynaci.cz dates his departure to about the age of 25 and, by a caption to a 1915 letter, the founding of the business to 1882; Czech Wikipedia dates his return to Russia to 1881. Founding of Extrafon: only the introduction of Czech Wikipedia calls Jindříšek the founder, while the main text attributes the founding to a German company. [JIN01; JIN02]

Membership of the Kyiv City Duma: the introduction of Czech Wikipedia calls him a member, but the body of the article does not elaborate and volynaci.cz does not mention it; this dossier does not present it as fact. Congresses: volynaci.cz speaks of his participation in all three congresses, Czech Wikipedia of the congresses in Moscow (1915) and Kyiv (1916). The address of the shop on Khreshchatyk is also given inconsistently within the Wikipedia article itself. [JIN01; JIN02]