Gisela Feldmann’s apartment building on Brno’s main avenue was constructed in 1913 by the builder Adolf Bacher. Located directly opposite the Church of Mary Magdalene, it replaced several buildings demolished during Brno’s clearance and redevelopment around the turn of the 20th century. Feldmann (née Hofmann) was born in Vyškov on 14 January 1881 and married her husband Arthur Feldmann on 23 August 1903. A Brno lawyer of Jewish origin, Arthur was also an important art collector whose collection of drawings contained more than 700 works by German, Italian, Dutch and French artists from the 15th to the 18th centuries plus a lesser number of 19th-century works. Arthur and Gisela Feldman were members of the elite of Brno society and owned several properties in the city. In 1910, they built a family villa at Hroznová 13 (B072), where the couple lived with their two sons. The villa was designed by the architect and builder Adolf Bacher, who at the time was living in the neighbouring house at Hroznová 11, built a year earlier. The fruitful collaboration between the Feldmanns and Bacher would continue in the years that followed. Apart from Gisela Feldmann’s apartment building on Masarykova, Bacher also constructed the buildings at Kobližná 11 and 19 that housed Arthur Feldmann’s law office.
In 1939, as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws enacted by Nazi Germany, most of Arthur Feldmann’s property, including his extensive collection of artworks, was confiscated. Feldmann died of a stroke on 16 March 1941 at his home in Brno. On 28 January 1942, Gisela Feldmann was deported to Terezín (the Theresienstadt Ghetto), and on 23 October 1944 she was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she perished. The couple’s sons, Otto (born 1904) and Karl (born 1909), escaped the Nazis by emigrating to Palestine. After the war, drawings from Arthur Feldmann’s collection ended up at various museums. Until 2003, the largest number of works from his collection (more than a hundred drawings) was held by the Moravian Gallery in Brno. These works have gradually been returned to the collector’s descendants, along with important drawings from Feldmann’s collection that had been held by the National Gallery in Prague.
The five-storey apartment building on Masarykova Street, done in the style of late geometric Art Nouveau, is a perfect example of an ambitious residential project built after 1910. The first, third and fifth window bays of the symmetrical five-bay facade are crowned by Baroque-influenced voluted gables with relief festoons above small oval windows. Two rectangular oriels add depth to the facade. On top of them, a balcony with an Art Nouveau wrought-iron railing spans the width of the central three window bays. The economical, predominantly vegetal late Art Nouveau décor is most prevalent on the apron walls. The capitals of the pilasters framing the lateral bays are decorated with striking zoomorphic motifs in the form of eagle reliefs. A distinctive architectural element is the fact that the commercial premises incorporate both the ground floor and the first floor, a typical feature of Bacher’s work. Another hallmark can be found in the wrought-iron elements – stylistically, the balcony railings on the second floor bear a close formal resemblance to those on the Feldmanns’ family villa on Hroznová Street. Besides the impressive facade, the building also boasts a valuable interior in which many original elements have been preserved. The richly decorated entrance doors open onto a hall with stucco decoration, original floor tiling and marble cladding on the lower part of the walls. Original features on the staircase include the Art Nouveau railing, the metal window frames with marble sills and the stained glass with motifs of stylized flowers and geometric ornamentation. According to press reports from 1913, there were eight apartments in the building, plus two shops on the ground floor. One modern amenity was the passenger lift.
Pavla Cenková