R.I.P. professor Kraus who died in the early morning hours of today, 7th June 2013 aged 89...

Professor Vilém Kraus - Czech Republic

Born on 30th May 1924 into a bourgeois Prague family Vilém Kraus has lived through some of the most extraordinary events that have marked the Europe of the 20th century. In 1929 his family moved to Louny (a small town about 80 km from the capital). Here he attended elementary and higher school. His childhood coincided with the golden age of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia, and he was given a solid middle-class upbringing very much influenced by the democratic thoughts of T. G. Masaryk - the first president and virtual father of the nation. Since the age of six he was a member of the Sokol youth movement (similar to the Scouts) and ever since he can recall he wanted to be a gardener.

The first major disruption to the idyll of this way of life came with the German occupation of the country in 1939, an act quickly followed by the Second World War. The Czechoslovak nation effectively ceased to exist, with Bohemia and Moravia becoming a protectorate under direct rule from Berlin. As elsewhere, Jews and other 'undesirables' were soon being deported to concentration camps all over Europe. During this time his own mother and several relatives were arrested and sent to Auschwitz where they all perished. Meanwhile young Vilém was shipped away incognito to Mělník where he attended a boarding school specialising in landscape gardening. No doubt removing the boy from his home town to one where nobody knew who he was contributed to his survival, for this was an age when scores were easily settled by the mere whispering of a name to the local authorities, which would soon be followed by a rounding up or a disappearance. In any event after one year training in the gardens of Château Mělník he began to study viticulture in the same town. The local vineyards and the winemaking-technology classes fascinated him from the very outset.

Eventually peace was restored though it was not long until the communists in the government staged their putsch in 1948. The following year saw Vilém Kraus studying at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry of Charles University in Prague. Due to his staunch democratic views he soon found himself coming into conflict with Party members (for reading English literature and foreign oenological publications, for not being a member of the Party, for engaging in public discussions with fellow students etc.). This was the era of the cold war, brutal Stalinism, show trials, when walls really did have ears, and when silence was truly golden.

Nevertheless, due to his good work he was permitted to graduate in 1952. However, as a punishment for his poor attitude, he was sent to work in Chomutov, northern Bohemia, at a state farm which was engaged solely in livestock production. Again luck favoured him; the director at the co-op was sympathetic and sent him to the technical college at Lednice, in southern Moravia, where he could immerse himself in viticulture. This led to his appointment as technical researcher and vine cultivator at the Research Institute for Vines in Velké Žernoseky, north of Prague, during time which he undertook external studies at the Faculty of Agriculture in Brno, graduating in 1960.

In 1964 he became Reader in Wine Production Technology and Viticulture after which he was offered the post of Lecturer and Viticultural Instructor back at Lednice Technical College. In those days hardly any textbooks on vine growing and wine-making technology were available in this self-satisfied socialist state where wine was considered pretty bourgeois anyway unlike good old proletarian beer. Due to his ability to speak German, French and Russian he did manage to remain in contact with foreign viticulturists and winemakers, notably Lenz Moser in neighbouring Austria, who supplied him with much necessary literature.

Methods of wine cultivation were already much more advanced in Austria and the local viticulture here was finding life very hard under the prevailing collective farming system and the lack of a properly trained labour force. Kraus introduced the so-called Moser training and pruning methods, which involved the high cordon system, to the Czech and Moravian vineyards. Lenz Moser supplied his "Weinbau Einmal Anders" publication which Kraus translated into Czech and distributed amongst colleagues in Moravia and Mělník. The successful application of the high-cordon system (which increased yields of 15 hl/ha to 40 hl/ha) was so remarkable that the authorities eventually allowed his work to be published. On the basis of the Moser training system he subsequently invented a training method of his own, referred to as heart-shaped, he and later introduced the vertiko system, as generally used in the steep vineyards of the Mosel valley.

In 1965 Vilém Kraus founded the Moravín association which served for the education of local vine growers. Under the old regime people were not permitted to travel abroad so Moravín became active under the name of Czech Agricultural Society in inviting foreign experts not only from the Soviet Union and other socialist states, but also from Germany, Austria and France, to lecture to local viticulturalists and winemakers. He acted as interpreter at all these events, compiled and translated all notes and subsequently published papers on the meetings.

During the Dubček era the situation improved somewhat and groups comprised of agriculturists and students were allowed to travel abroad, first to Yugoslavia, then later to Austria and Germany. Kraus headed these groups, acting also as translator at the visits to wineries, nurseries, vine-research institutes etc. He endeavoured to better the conditions for mutual understanding between growers and winemakers at the international level and to initiate much needed improvements at home.

Among these latter he managed to reduce plantings of ubiquitous varieties such as Müller-Thurgau, Welschriesling and Grüner Veltliner to 50% of the total, replacing them with 25% of higher-quality white grape varieties such as Sylvaner, Riesling, Traminer, Pinot Blanc and the other 25% with black grape varieties such as Blaufränkisch (Frankovka) and Saint Laurent. However, his influence on improving the overall standard of wine production was much inhibited - mainly because, to produce first-class wine one needs first-class material!

Wine production was a state monopoly. Grape processing at agricultural co-ops was not allowed - the fruit had to be delivered to state wineries. Exceptions were the co-operatives at Práče and the State farms of Valtice and Znojmo. As one of the very few influential figures in the country Kraus - who never signed up for the Party - knew the directors and tried to influence them. Some apparatchiks saw his views as blatant capitalist propaganda but, on the other hand, the directors of the co-ops had to fulfil their quotas for the Five-Year Plans! Out of necessity more than for anything else, some of them started to listen.

His main strength during this time was his huge popularity amongst the ordinary village folk. Most communes had their own gardening associations and clubs where the indefatiguable Kraus delivered hundreds of lectures accompanied by slide projections in his spare time in the evening hours.

After the Warsaw Pact armies invaded the country in 1968, thus bringing the Prague spring to a sudden end, came the so-called Prague winter with its "normalisation" in the early seventies. This was yet another terrible blow. Many who had lived through the same years as Kraus decided they had had enough and emigrated. He too considered emigration. He had friends abroad as well as a reputation. He received several offers, one from Lenz Moser himself and another via the Geisenheim Research Institute in Germany with an offer to work in Toronto. But he never wanted to leave; he loved his country, its land and vineyards too much - they needed him - so he stayed on.

In 1970 the communists closed the Department of Viticulture at the Technical School where he was lecturing in Lednice, subsuming it into the Horticultural Department. On the day his five-year contract was coming to an end, he received a midnight visit from a state official who demanded he either hand over the keys or else sign a month-long contract, which he did. This cruel little charade was repeated every month without fail for almost a decade, and he was forced to renew his contract of employment in this way right up until late 1979. He was thus kept under strict control by functionaries of the regime, who only allowed him to continue because they themselves needed him, for, as the only worldly-wise authority on viticulture in the country, he might prove very useful to them although they could have easily removed him completely.

Luckily the spiteful regime was toppled without tears in the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Kraus was belatedly named Professor for Viticulture and Winemaking in the Czech Republic and received honorary awards at Masaryk University and the University of Agriculture in Brno. Since then he was increasingly active in working for the improvement of the nation's viticulture and winemaking to bring it up to world standards. To this end he devoted his life right up to the end.

text: Helena Baker

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