In front of the Potato Research Institute (HB-2366) in Havlíčkův Brod stands the Antonín Švehla (1873–1933) Memorial, which is not only down to the fact this First Republic politician was a landowner and chairman of the Czechoslovak Agrarian Party. Švehla had a much closer connection to the institute, which was established in Havlíčkův Brod in 1920. As early as 1908, he co-founded the Union of Czech Potato Growers, which went on to establish this research institution. He personally attended the union’s inaugural meeting in Německý Brod on 28 September 1908, where he delivered the closing address.

The memorial acquired its current form in 2009, when a sandstone bust of Antonín Švehla by local sculptor and stonemason Libor Šimon was placed on a granite pedestal. The fact that the pedestal appears disproportionately large for the bust is not by accident. The monument to Švehla at this site has a much longer history. What survives from the original memorial is the massive cylindrical pedestal set on a two-step base. After many years, the bust was placed here to replace Švehla’s bronze statue, for which the pedestal had originally been intended. 

The Committee for the Construction of the Antonín Švehla Memorial was established in the second half of the 1930s. Josef Zadina, a native of Vlkanov near Havlíčkův Brod, minister of agriculture and member of parliament for the Agrarian Party, was elected its chairman. The Potato Research Institute provided part of its garden for the memorial, and the town of Německý Brod donated another piece of land. The committee entrusted the creation of Švehla’s statue to the Prague sculptor and legionnaire Alois Bučánek (1897–1945). His relationship with Jan Štursa, in whose studio at the Academy of Fine Arts he had studied, may have influenced the choice of artist. Jan Štursa not only came from the Vysočina region, but he also created a statue in Brod for the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Memorial (HB-pc2259_44). Alois Bučánek had also been involved in memorial sculpture and, at the time of the Brod commission, had already completed two Švehla memorials in Přelouč (1936) and Říčany (1937).

The unveiling of Švehla’s monument had been planned for 18 September 1938, as a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the founding of independent Czechoslovakia and the 90th anniversary of the end of serfdom. Preparations for the ceremony took several months and the unveiling was to be a “national manifestation through which the highland people wanted to prove their love for their immortal leader, the army, and the republic.” In September 1938, however, Adolf Hitler’s pressure on Czechoslovakia intensified, and the country was on the verge of mobilization. The memorial was unveiled but without the celebrations, which were postponed indefinitely.

In 1942, the statue was confiscated by the German administration as part of a metal collection drive for the war. Although it probably survived the war in Prague’s metal depots, postwar developments in the country ultimately proved fatal. When the town of Havlíčkův Brod inquired about its monuments in the autumn of 1945, a note was added to the Antonín Švehla monument stating that it should not be sent over for the time being, as the town had other plans for it. The statue, however, was never recovered.

The pedestal was preserved in its original location, perhaps because of its massive size. In 1999, the Agricultural Party placed a memorial plaque on it, commemorating the fate of the monument. Ten years later, the new Švehla bust was installed.