Villa Löw-Beer: From Communist Umakart to Luxury Restoration

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In Drobného Street in Brno‘s Černý Polý, next to Lužánky Park, there is at first glance an ordinary row of apartment buildings. On closer inspection, however, one anomaly can be noticed. A three-story family villa is unusually wedged in between tenements from different periods in the street row.

It is the famous Villa Löw-Beer, where a prominent Jewish family of businessmen lived in the first half of the 20th century. When I go through the freely accessible passage into the garden, I get a completely different impression from the opposite side. Instead of a flat facade aligned with the neighboring tenements, on this side it has the typical character of a segmented classy family house, with a terrace, a balcony and a turret. Here, art nouveau and historicism join hands in style.

The building thus turns into a large sloping garden, which reaches up to another, even more famous house – Villa Tugendhat. It is no coincidence that Alfred and Marianne Löw-Beer were the parents of Grete Tugendhat. They donated part of their land to her for the construction of the house, and Alfred also financed the construction of the functionalist gem.

The former gardener’s house, the so-called Customs House, now with a cafe and gallery completes the whole among the trees. The modest modernist building is clearly inspired in style by the British Arts and Crafts movement.

Today, you can also walk from the garden to the grounds of the neighboring Arnold’s villa, whose last owner was the sister of Alfred Löw-Beer. The connected gardens, which can be accessed free of charge, form a green enclave that offers residents of Brno the possibility of a peaceful rest away from the busy city as well as various events such as exhibitions, concerts, children’s day or summer cinema.

The villa was originally built in 1903 by the textile entrepreneur Moriz Fuhrmann, who had a lot in common with the Löw-Beers, according to the project of the Viennese architect Alexander Neumann.

“Not only was he of Jewish origin like the Löw-Beers, he was also a textile manufacturer, albeit on a smaller scale. And I would also like to remind you that he started with the Löw-Beers. Only then did he become independent and set up his own business. So there are relatively many of those connections,” Vladimír Březina, director of the Museum of Brno, which manages the villa and has offices here, tells me.

When Fuhrmann died, in 1913 his heirs sold the villa for 290,000 crowns to Alfred Löw-Beer. Together with Alfred and his wife Marianne, their three children Max, Grete and Hans lived here. They had four luxury apartments at their disposal, and the servants also found other accommodation here.

Alfred later had the interior partially modified, hiring the Viennese architect Rudolf Baumfeld. “At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, a modernist reconstruction of the staircase hall was carried out, which covered the original Art Nouveau appearance in the lower part. In the upper part of the villa, the appearance from the beginning of the twentieth century was preserved,” Vladimír Březina shows me. The two different periods can be easily distinguished even by the different color of the wood.

When the Nazi occupation came in 1939, most of the Löw-Beers managed to escape to Great Britain in time and went from there to other countries. Alfred stayed a little longer to save as much of the family property as possible. However, it was a fatal mistake. At Easter of the same year, he died on the run under unclear circumstances. His dead body was found on the railway line near Stříbr. Today, descendants of the family live in many places in Europe and the USA.

During World War II, the villa was seized by the Germans and used for the needs of their secret service, the Sicherheitsdienst, described as a sister organization of the Gestapo. “She had offices here and it is not assumed that there would be any cells or anything like that here,” explains director Březina.

After the war, the state did not return the villa to the family, but imposed national administration on it. Before 1948, it housed the American Institute for a short time. “This period has not yet been accurately mapped, but it was an official American institution. America probably tried to raise awareness of how things are going there – America as a model of what should be followed,” thinks Březina. The Institute offered screenings of documentary films and lectures about traveling in the USA and organized Independence Day celebrations.

In 1954, the villa officially became the property of the state, and the state established a youth home in it. It then operated for many decades until June 2012. “For the most part, there were girls here, then in the 1990s boys from the nearby conservatory. So it sounded like musical instruments here, former pupils remember it,” explains Vladimír Březina. Students from other schools also lived here with them.

The interior had to be adapted to accommodate a larger number of young people. “Some large rooms were crossed, bunk beds were moved in, washrooms and study rooms were built. The walls were lined with umakart and linoleum was put on the floors. So the interior looked completely different from how the visitor sees it today. But there were no irreversible interventions in the interior,” explains Director Březina.

As many students recalled in a documentary filmed by museum staff, they lived in rooms of six or seven and only had a minimum of furniture at their disposal. Table tennis tournaments or discos were also held in the villa. The boys played football in the garden and used it as a smoking room. They also experienced the filming of one of the episodes of the series Chetnické humoresky, in which the villa acted as a confectionery.

However, the condition of the villa gradually deteriorated, since the 1950s no major repairs were made. When it rained, the skylight flowed like a waterfall, and in 2006 there was a lot of leakage in two rooms as well. Students were awakened by dripping water and had to evacuate. There were usually large wet maps and mold on the walls. “When we were sleeping, I remember plaster falling on us. Not so much that it hurt us, but it woke us up,” former student Adam said in the documentary.

Although the villa has been a monument since the 1950s, it was only after the completion of the reconstruction of the neighboring Villa Tugendhat that more people began to talk about it and its value. Finally, the operation of the boarding school was closed and it was time for renovation according to the project of the Brno studio Arch.Design.

The years of non-maintenance and lack of funding also had their pluses. Due to the fact that the villa has not been affected much in terms of construction, it has been preserved very authentically. “During the operation of the youth home, there were plans to add one floor to increase capacity, but luckily they were not implemented due to a lack of funds,” says villa curator Eva Svobodová.

The villa is now owned by the South Moravian Region and managed by the Museum of Brno. It was opened to the public in 2016 after a thorough reconstruction financed by the region, during which, among other things, an elevator was added for accessibility. The historical equipment was not preserved, so it was appropriate to use it as a museum.

At first, it housed an exhibition about the family and the architecture of the villa. Three years ago, it was replaced by a new one, dedicated not only to the Löw-Beers and the villa, but also to the Jewish settlement in Moravia from the beginning to the present day. Otherwise, temporary exhibitions dedicated to various topics and contemporary art are also held here. The museum, under the leadership of curator Jana Černá, is also conducting research focused on the villa and its inhabitants, as well as on the history of the Jewish population in Moravia.

Simultaneously with the reconstruction of the villa, according to the design of the architect Radek Haška, the garden house was also given a new coat. “It’s called the Customs House, but it’s a myth. In reality, it wasn’t a customs house,” says Vladimír Březina. The name refers to the toll booths that stood at the access roads to Brno and where customs duty was collected on imported food. However, according to Březina, there was no road in these places and no such building stood here. So how the designation came about is a bit of a mystery.

Březina also refutes the often repeated mistake that the house dates from the 18th century. “We have the building plans for the building of the building preserved in the Archive of the City of Brno, and they are from roughly the same time when the villa was built,” confirms the director of the museum. The style of the building also corresponds to the beginning of the 20th century.

The house provided housing for the gardener, functioned as a stable and a garage for carriages and later for a car. During the time of the youth home, the administrator was accommodated in it. Today there is a cafe on the ground floor and a gallery on the first floor.

Thanks to the preserved photographs and plans, the garden also got back its form from the 1930s during the renovation. The project was prepared by Eva Damcová from the Garden and Landscape Architecture studio. In addition to the restoration of greenery, landscaping, renovation of fences or strengthening and drainage of some areas, the fountain was repaired, the water fountain was put into operation, and new lighting was added. The playground on which students played football or volleyball was removed, on the contrary, a children’s climbing frame with a slide was added. The plan was also to restore the porch, but it ended up not working.