Stanislav Motl is behind this paraphrase of the well-known saying that fortune favours the prepared. A world-famous reporter and documentary filmmaker, Czech journalist and writer, awarded prestigious prizes of international importance, who has distinguished himself with his unique radio series Traces, facts, testimonies. Its first thirty episodes were recorded and broadcast by Czech Radio in 2010. The series was getting higher and higher ratings day by day. After the first series was broadcast, the number of listeners of this exciting series reached almost half a million. Motl was then asked by the radio management to continue his work, which he did. And in the summer of 2023, the 500th episode (!) of this unique series, unparalleled not only in Czech journalism, was broadcast.
Book of the Year
In the course of 2024, a voluminous publication of the same name was published Traces, facts, testimonies. In nearly four hundred pages of "stories from the depths of oblivion", the reincarnation of the fierce reporter Egon Ervin Kisch, as Motl is sometimes nicknamed by the media, offers us a selection of the best of his lifelong research work. This unparalleled publication undoubtedly deserves the title of Book of the Year.
In its introduction, our information hunter tells the reader how and why the series came into being, what all the work on individual topics required, and to what extent some of the episodes were quite thematically revelatory and provoked an extraordinary response, such as The case of Nikola Shuhaj or Last of the Titanic.
At the beginning of the book, Stanislav Motl reveals two of the imaginary cornerstones of his work, which is research in archives and memories of witnesses, which he personally searches for in the whole wide world, wherever his profession as a reporter takes him. The following lines should be taught in journalism school, or in various journalism writing courses:
"At the very least, I rely on the internet and try to follow the heuristic method of inquiry that we were taught at university - and by master journalists - to follow. What does it require? To search precisely in archives, in libraries, and not only in our country, to wander through authentic places linked to the stories and fates of specific people. The information obtained is then carefully analysed - beware, this ability is destroyed by working with the Internet... But let's talk about the newly discovered documents. Historical analysis is necessary, because we cannot always trust everything we read.
The heuristic method is challenging. Especially time-consuming. In addition, you have to be quite educated. And a lot of other skills. But for the researcher, it's an incredibly satisfying activity. The joy of a new discovery, the joy of filling in another white space on the imaginary map. But I still try to keep my feet on the ground..." Stanislav Motl confides in his readers. "For I have no patent on reason; I know that we are all fallible."
And what about the above-mentioned happiness? It is like, for example, the tragic fate of the legendary writer and wartime aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Stanislav Motl has searched for Exupéry's person and his fate not only in Francophone countries, but also in the Sahara desert in Egypt, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Spain, in Sardinia, wherever Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was active as an aviator, a war aviator or as a war reporter. Not only did he interview former German Luftwaffe pilot Horst Rippert seventy years after the war (many scholars consider him to be the pilot who shot down Saint-Exupéry over the Mediterranean on 31 July 1944), but he also had the opportunity to meet, for example, the diver and underwater archaeologist Luke Vanrell, who discovered the wreckage of Saint-Exupéry's plane 80 metres below the surface of the Mediterranean.
Not to be outdone, in one of the places where Saint-Exupéry worked as a wartime aviator, he deliberately stayed in the hotel where the famous author of The Little Prince lived. He suspected that in this region he might meet someone who had at least heard of Saint-Exupéry. When he came across one of the locals who asked him what had brought him here, he immediately told him that he had come here to look for traces of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The man beamed: "Yeah, my grandfather knew him." And the other day, the good man brought four unique photographs of Saint-Exupéry...
Well, tell me, folks, isn't that going against the reporter's luck?
Stanislav Motl worked this story into a television and later radio documentary, as well as in book form. He has just completed a book about his more than 30-year journey in the footsteps of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry across several continents. We look forward to its publication later this year, but that will be another article.
Honour to whom honour is due
Motl's radio series was already awarded the main and prestigious prize at the end of 2010 by the Association of International Broadcasters in London (The AIB International Media Excellence Awards) in the category "Best Investigative Documentary". In this case, it was a documentary The Boy and the Stars, which was the story of a talented Jewish boy, Peter Ginz, who founded a magazine in the Terezín ghetto and published it for almost two years until his death in the gas chamber. I run.
A year later, an international jury of representatives from 44 countries awarded the main prize, which is considered the Oscar of radio, to the documentary Airman and death, describing the search for the circumstances surrounding the death of one of the first fallen Czechoslovak wartime airmen, Timothy Hamsik.
Stanislav Motl is also a co-winner of the journalist award One World for television coverage of wartime Yugoslavia People under the bombs. In 2023 he was awarded the Slovak Vojtěch Zamarovský National Award for his lasting contribution to the field of nonfiction. In the Czech Republic, in 2003, he was awarded for his documentary film and book of the same name Nazis under protection the main prize of the festival of Czech-German-Jewish culture Nine gates. Seven years later he received the Egon Erwin Kisch Main Prize and in 2023 he was honoured with the Miroslav Ivanov Prize for lifetime achievement in nonfiction.
Stories from the depths of oblivion
Voluminous publication The trail, the facts, the secrets is four hundred pages long, with unique period and archival photographs corresponding to the individual stories. These are arranged thematically into dozens of blocks of enticing annotations, such as The sky has parted, Robber or hero? Assassin or patriot? And a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Warriors and warrior women, Ortels and conscience or at the end Between heaven and earth.
The attentive reader will find some of the stories in the publications Journeys behind the curtain of time publishing house Eminent, but it must be said that Stanislav Motl has done a great job with them in his new book. He has added to them and enriched them with facts that were unknown to him at the time of the radio documentaries.
The book is published by Euromedia Group, more at www.euromedia.cz
You know that...
Stanislav Motl (born in 1952) has written more than two dozen non-fiction books with stories of both ancient and modern history, in addition to radio and television documentaries. Although he is considered to be the author of books mainly on the subject of World War II (since 1990 he has been consistently dealing with the issue of Nazi war criminals in his journalistic work, and he personally tracked down fifteen men and women who committed murders in our country or gave instructions for murders abroad), his major topics also include literary experiences during sea, mountaineering or other sporting expeditions. He also deals with a wide range of mysteries, but especially literary mysteries.
Stanislav Motl continues his work on the radio series, recently finishing the 540th episode...
gnews.cz - Ivan Cerny
PHOTO - archive
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