Villa Tugendhat - History

History

Villa Tugendhat was commissioned by Jewish factory-owner Fritz Tugendhat on land he received as a wedding present from his in-laws. The construction company of Artur and Mořic Eisler began with the construction of the house in the summer of the year 1929 and completed it in fourteen months. Fritz and Greta Tugendhat, who were Jewish, enjoyed just eight years in Tugendhat before fleeing Czechoslovakia with their children in 1938 (including philosopher Ernst Tugendhat), shortly before the country was dismembered following the Munich Agreement. They lived in Switzerland and never returned. The house was confiscated by the Gestapo in 1939 and next used as an apartment and office; its interior was senselessly modified and many pieces disappeared. It suffered considerable damage during combat operations at the end of World War II and later, when it shortly served as quarters and stables for the Soviet military. It was partially repaired and used for various purposes (for example as a children's physiotherapy center) for several decades after World War II.

Greta Tugendhat returned to the villa in 1967 with a senior architect from Mies's Chicago studio and filled him in on the original design, and a group of Czech architects set out to fix up the place. It was inscribed on the National List of Cultural Heritage in 1969 and restored after 1980. In 1992 the political leaders of Czechoslovakia met there to sign the document that formally divided the country into the present separate states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Since 1994 the villa has been open to the public as a museum administered by the city of Brno.

In 1993 the Villa Tugendhat Fund and Friends of Tugendhat were formed to preserve the house. In 1995 Brno received a $15,000 grant to pay for preliminary research from the Samuel H. Kress European Preservation Program, part of the World Monuments Fund. Then the International Music and Art Foundation, based in Lichtenstein, got involved, pledging $100,000, because a trustee, Nicholas Thaw, was also a trustee of the World Monuments Fund. The Robert Wilson Foundation matched the $100,000. Villa Tugendhat was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2001.

In 2007 the heirs of Fritz and Greta formally applied for the restitution of the villa, citing a law covering works of art confiscated during the Holocaust. The reason for this application appears to be frustration over the failure of the municipality of Brno to carry out vital restoration work due to the deterioration of the concrete used in construction. Entire sections of the interior were missing. Later, parts of the original wood panelling were accidentally found at Masaryk University, a building used by the Gestapo as their Brno headquarters.

The house was a principal location in the 2007 film Hannibal Rising, serving as the Villa of the villain, Vladis Gutas. Simon Mawer's 2009 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, The Glass Room, is a fictional account of a house inspired primarily by the Villa Tugendhat.

A reconstruction and restoration of the villa started in February 2010 with estimated costs of 150 million CZK (app. 5,769,000 EUR; 7,895,000 USD). This reconstruction finished in February 2012 and the villa was reopened to the public in March. To celebrate the villa’s return to form, the Royal Institute of British Architects launched ‘Villa Tugendhat in Context’, an exhibition in London giving a visual history of the building and a record of the recent renovation through the testimony of three generations of photographers.