Client history
The house owners, Greta Tugendhat, born Löw-Beer (1903 Brno –1970, St. Gallen) and her husband Fritz Tugendhat (1895 Brno –1958, St. Gallen) came from German Jewish families of industrialists and businessmen. Greta’s father, Alfred Löw-Beer, gave an exclusive building lot to his daughter in March 1929. This lot was a part of a lot behind the Löw-Beer villa and gave beautiful views of the historic skyline of Brno. The Tugendhats and Löw-Beers were German speaking Jewish families of industrialists who had a significant influence on the industrialisation of Czechoslovakia between the wars. They owned and operated a number of textile factories.
War and after period
The house was confiscated by the Gestapo at the beginning of October 1939 and became the property of the German Reich from January 1942. Radical construction changes took place in the Villa at the beginning of the 1940s during the war. The cavalry unit of the Soviet Army contributed to the devastation of the house during the liberation of Brno in April 1945.
The private dancing school of an instructor at the Brno conservatory Karla Hladka consequently sat in the Villa from 1945 up to 1950. Later a rehabilitation centre for children with spine defects was established here as part of the nearby children’s hospital.
House Museum since 1994
Villa Tugendhat is an exceptional authentic installed monument of modern architecture. In addition, a symbiosis has been achieved between its uses as a museum on the one hand and as a living, fully functional building organism on the other.
Beside guided tours for visitors who pass through the house (as a museum exhibit, reopened after restoration in 2012) in a group led by a guide, the project also addressed new interventions in the operating background of the house. They are designed to be legible, inserted, removable structures with a high quality of design and execution. On the technical floor of the house in the former premises of the garden furniture warehouse and drying room, an exhibition on the Tugendhat Villa is located now. Its scope is deliberately limited to the period 1930 to 1938, when the Tugendhat family lived in the Villa. A 1:100 model of the villa is located separately. A museum shop follows after the exhibition. It includes a projection screen with two screens and storage of publications and souvenirs.