The authors of the libretto for the new Napoleonic exhibition distance themselves from the created form that is to be presented to the public

The city of Slavkov u Brna and the historical battlefield finally had the opportunity to obtain a corresponding and attractive presentation of the history of the Battle of Slavkov and the Napoleonic Wars in general after many long years. The establishment of a five-year exhibition was the purpose of the reconstruction of the castle stables, funded by the European Union. A libretto was created, authored by Jakub Samek and Vladimír Kočan, as well as project documentation by the company Saura, s.r.o., which enabled the city to actually receive the grant for the reconstruction of the spaces and the implementation of the exhibition. The exhibition includes three thematic areas: it introduces three emperors and their era, the Napoleonic Wars and the Battle of Slavkov, and lastly, it addresses the revived military history, which has been conveying the history of the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in an attractive way for decades through reenactments involving hundreds of enthusiasts in replicas of period uniforms. The implementation of the exhibition was awarded to the construction company SKR stav based in Brno due to the lowest bid.

The authors of the libretto find the individual components of the exhibition, with which they had the opportunity to become acquainted, to be unsuitable for the libretto and the specification list. If the exhibition is realized in this manner, it will not only devalue their authored work, which the contractor handles arbitrarily and without a licensing agreement and without consultation with the authors (the text author for the panels and comments for the videos, PhDr. Fidler, had access to the full text of the libretto for inexplicable reasons only on March 16, 2013), but it will also damage the prestige of the city, as instead of a well-prepared and attractive exhibition, it will offer visitors an unprofessional and hastily created variant on a topic that is certainly very important for the city of Austerlitz, which will be a bitter disappointment for the expert public and an uninformative and unattractive experience for the casual visitor.

The initial outputs from the contractor's team were presented to the client, i.e., the city, for unexplained reasons only at the beginning of March this year, i.e., two months after the original deadline for submission. To us, as the authors of the libretto, the matter was presented practically as finished, with the claim that there was neither time nor resources for significant changes. Instead of being informed about the exhibition's script and incorporating our comments into it, the components of the exhibition were produced, and to our surprise, the contractor and presumably the city expected us to approve them without comments.

The authors of the libretto noted serious formal and substantive deficiencies in the texts for the exhibition panels (in the Czech versions, translations were not provided to them). They find substantial shortcomings in the way the contractor approached the individual videos, especially those relating to reenactment, i.e., revived history. The original exhibits provided by the contractor are also inadequate and do not correspond in significance to the historical event that the exhibition aims to present, often due to the incompetence of the project team and at inappropriate prices.

The authors of the libretto, who were initially referred to by the contractor's team as very good, were also responsible for the city receiving a high grant for the project's implementation, were not allowed effective authorial oversight. The city did not respond to their numerous requests to review the materials on the basis of which the contractor was preparing the exhibition. During the so-called control days, substantive questions were hardly addressed at all, or were addressed insufficiently, as indicated by all notes taken by the technical oversight of the investor. For the above reasons, the authors of the libretto and the company AusterlitzPro s.r.o. filed a complaint with ROP Jihovýchod, which is to contribute to the exhibition from EU funds. Our argument is that conditions changed during the implementation of the exhibition, it was carried out non-standardly, the contractor's team is incompetent, and the result is far below the level that the project anticipated and the expert public expected.

For the Austerlitz Project, it must be added that the manner and form in which our actions are presented in the exhibition is disgraceful and unacceptable. Although both the city of Slavkov u Brna and the contractor signed contracts stipulating the condition to respect intellectual property, they absolutely did not comply.
The city also does not respect trademark law. In both cases, regarding copyright infringement and trademark issues, they did not comply or respond to our calls for the conclusion of non-exclusive licensing agreements for the use of the libretto or trademark.
Therefore, we have turned to the relevant courts to seek redress.