The Walter Factory in Jinonice

You're standing in front of what used to be the Walter factory in Jinonice. Josef Walter opened this place in 1911 making motorcycles and bicycle engines. Small operation, local ambitions. World War I changed everything. Walter pivoted to aircraft engines and never went back. By the 1920s, this factory was producing engines for Czechoslovak military planes. They got so good at it that Walter engines were being exported across Europe and South America by the 1930s. The Nazis seized control in 1939. They kept the factory running at full capacity. Aircraft engines don't lose their value during wartime. After liberation in 1945, the communists nationalized everything and renamed it Motorlet. Different flag outside, same work inside. Here's the strange part: this factory survived every political earthquake by making one product exceptionally well. Motorlet produced jet engines through the entire Cold War. MiG fighters, training aircraft, even rocket engines for the Soviet space program. They built engines in the 1960s that powered spacecraft. The factory outlasted the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Nazi occupation, and communist rule. Most industrial sites from 1911 are parking lots now. This one kept producing engines through five different governments, two world wars, and a revolution.