Czech documentarian Tatana Markova says she became intrigued by the subject of the “Soap Bubble Kingdom,” a once-great Bohemian dynasty that is now being forgotten, after meeting one of its possible successors.
“One of the main characters in my last film, Libussa Unbound, was Konstantin Werner, a US-based film director and producer. He told me several family stories and I found them so fascinating that I wanted to know more about the Schicht family, from which he came.”
The name Schicht was once known in every household in what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and even beyond. It was built around the extraordinary success of Georg Schicht, an entrepreneur who rose to prominence during the final years of the Habsburg Empire and founded a soap factory in the present-day town of Linolce.
With bold innovations like Sideline’s Elida cosmetics and Calodont toothpaste, sourcing coconut and palm oil from Africa, and great branding and marketing with wholesome poster boys and clever silent movie promotions, the Schicht brand eventually became synonymous with “easy, cheap, and clean” in far-flung households.
And its signature product, Deer Soap, known for its distinctive symbol of a leaping deer, was almost as famous in the early 20th century as Apple or Starbucks are today.
Today, part of the family’s industrial infrastructure and nearby mansion remain in the Czech city of Üsti nad Labem, which was known as Ausig during the family’s heyday under the Habsburg Empire.
And when Markova’s documentary, which was screened in the Czech Joy section of the Flava Film Festival, begins, Markova’s camera rolls in the dimly lit halls and hallways of these buildings, nearly naked.
Malkova said she started writing in 2019, just as she was facing the challenges of the coronavirus lockdown, but soon faced another challenge just as big.
She wanted to film the company’s heirs stepping into their former family home, but “the descendants of the entrepreneurial Schicht family are scattered all over the world and are very busy. It’s impossible for them to travel to the Czech Republic often,” she says.
As the film tells it, the creation of Czechoslovakia after World War I “was not beneficial to Sicht,” as German was no longer officially used, throwing them into the middle of a linguistic power struggle in which many people resented anything other than Slavic.
The Schichts managed to survive and thrive, starting a company, merging with Unilever, establishing a movie theater, building an international network, and even taking to the skies in an airplane race.
But with World War II just around the corner, and the company’s location in the middle of what Nazi Germany called the Sudetenland, the family found themselves in an increasingly dangerous world — indeed, as the Third Reich rose to power, Schicht was under pressure to prove itself Aryan — and even had to work on parts for V1 rockets, Markova says.
Was she not allowed to ask questions on these subjects? “No,” Markova says. “They were very open.”
After the war, German Czech citizens were expelled from Czechoslovakia and their land and property confiscated.
“Collective guilt applied to the whole family,” Malkova says. “Georg Schicht’s Usti nad Labem property was confiscated after World War II, despite the fact that he lived in London, had British citizenship and his sons fought in the British army.
“I use Eleonor Schicht’s diary memories and Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk’s written recommendations in the film to prove this fact.”
When the country soon came under Soviet control, successful capitalists like Schicht were considered public enemies, and the factory became the state-run company Setuzha. Additionally, Czechs whose property was confiscated by the state after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 were allowed to get most of it back through the reparations system, but ethnic Germans who lost their property under the postwar Benes Decree were not.
“The Beneš Decree, which legally expelled Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II, was never repealed. There was no procedure to recover the property of Czech-Germans.”
After World War II, the Schicht family moved on to other businesses and investments in London, Zurich, and even Brazil, and were eventually able to buy back their former family home in Østí, with plans to open it to the public.
They were never forgotten, at least in this city, Markova says. One reason for this was that the company was known for its socially conscious local investments, building housing for its employees, and community pools.
“In 2006, the so-called ‘Soap King’ Johann Schicht was the winner of a local survey. Very many people know the name of the most important inhabitants of Oschig over the past 150 years. Outside of Üsti nad Labem, there are not so many,” Marková says.
“Johann Schicht (the next generation of directors to founder Georg) was a visionary and a philanthropist. He was connected to the places he did business and to his son Heinrich. This is not the case for many modern entrepreneurs.”
“While once famous names may be forgotten and great industrial empires may burst like bubbles, immaterial values such as social responsibility and philanthropy can be passed down through generations,” Markova says.
“Purchasing a vacation home with the vision of opening it to the public is a great act of respect for our ancestors.”
