This Week in Texas Methodist History July 7

Josef Dobes Informs Texas Methodists about Conditions in Czechoslovakia   July 1939

In 1938 and 1939 Hitler’s aggressions increased, and the small nations of Czechoslovakia and Austria paid the price for those aggressions.  In 1938 Hitler had incorporated both the Sudetenland and Austria into his empire, and on March 15 1939 the rest of Czechoslovakia surrendered.    Although England had promised to protect the integrity of  Czechoslovakia, the British sold them out.  Hitler was emboldened, and in a few months the invasion of Poland ushered in the most destructive 6 years Europe had ever seen.

Texas Methodists had a personal connection to the tiny nation of Czechoslovakia in the form of missionaries who had received their education at Southwestern University, Josef Dobes (1876-1960) and Joseph Paul Bartak (1887-1964) about 1910.  They both became Methodist preachers and were appointed as missionaries to Czech Texans.  Dobes entered the Texas Conference by transfer from the Central Texas Conference in 1912 and lived in Marlin where he could work among the Bohemian farmers of the Brazos Valley.  

After World War I the nation of Czechoslovakia was created from the wreckage of the Austrian Empire.  One of the emphases of the fund raising Centenary Campaign was to provide missionaries to Europe.   Dobes and Bartak volunteered and arrived in Europe in 1920.  They first provided humanitarian relief, but when that effort ended after five years, they continued to establish churches.   They continued corresponding with their Texas Methodist friends, and in 1925 Advocate editor, A. J. Weeks went to Europe and visited them in the company of Bishop Darlington.  

Their job was not particularly easy in either Europe or Texas.  Most Czechs were Roman Catholic, and those who weren’t were mainly Brethren.  

Nazi occupation made their task even more difficult.  Bartak had become a naturalized American citizen, so he was interned the day Germany declared war on the US.  He was later exchanged in a prisoner swap.  He served Texas appointments in Texas during the war but returned to Prague after the war, but then Communist regime forced him out.  He moved to Vienna. 

Dobes became a major interpreter of the war years 1939-1940 through letters to the Advocate.  In 1940 he returned to Texas and preached in many Texas Methodist churches, taught at Schools of Mission, and always found a ready audience.  Among the pulpits he filled were First Fort Worth, First Temple, First Houston, and Tyler Street, Dallas.   In one Advocate article he concluded his remarks thus:  Let us not forget our young daughters—Poland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia—in your prayers.  Let their burdens also be our burdens and their joy will also be our joy. 

Dobes spent his final years in Houston where he attended First Methodist.  He died in 1960 and is buried at Forest Park Cemetery.