The Aloisia Braun Foundation was founded in 1856 with the goal of providing education to poor orphaned Moravian girls in Brno and the city’s surroundings. Its stated aim was ‘To provide poor and neglected girls in Moravia, as well as those at risk of falling into desolation, with full or partial support and the education and training needed to become decent and proper domestic help and workers.’ The foundation was a successor to the Women’s Society of St. Joseph for the Education of Abandoned Girls, which had been taken over by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in 1853. The sisters ran an orphanage in a building they had purchased on Petrská Street and were also entrusted with an orphanage in Dornych. Sometime later, the Brno-born Aloisia Braun of Vienna purchased an enamel factory at Cejl 84 (today roughly the site of nos. 84–88) with the goal of expanding the institution, and in 1855 the German girls’ school and Vincentinum educational institution for orphaned and neglected girls was opened at this site.
The building on Veslařská Street was built as a replacement for the buildings on Cejl and Petrská Street, and once completed the Vincentinum and the German girls’ school were moved here. Excavation of the foundations was begun on 15 April 1899, and the completed building, including a Chapel of the Divine Heart of the Lord, was consecrated by the Bishop of Brno, František Saleský Bauer, on 19 August 1900 to commemorate the 70th birthday of Emperor Franz Joseph I. With the Emperor’s blessing, the new institution was named the Emperor Franz Joseph Girls’ Orphanage for Moravia in Jundrov. The number of charges at the orphanage was around 110; the three-class school was also attended by poor girls from the surrounding area. During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the school was bilingual, but after the establishment of Czechoslovakia the institute was made Czech. The building was designed by the architect and building official Josef Karásek, co-designer of the Neo-Classical building of the Moravian Institute for the Blind in Černá Pole (1909–1915), today’s Mendel University. Construction was carried out by the builder Franz Pawlu, one of Brno’s most important and active builders at the turn of the 20th century.
The monumental Neo-Renaissance building with Mannerist elements, set into the gentle slope of Juranka Hill, has been a dominant feature of Veslařská Street ever since its completion. It is an indelible component of the panorama of villas on the right bank of the Svratka River, especially when viewed from the opposite slope of Pisárky and nearby Kamenný Mlýn, the latter of which was still on the city’s periphery in the early 20th century and a popular destination for Brno residents’ day trips. Thanks to its size, symmetrical design and many decorative details, in terms of monumentality the building surpassed similar institutions from the late 19th century (such as the Municipal Boys’ Orphanage on Gorkého Street or the Emperor Franz Joseph Welfare Institute on Kounicova Street) that made a far more austere impression. Its significance was further enhanced by the presence of a chapel in its courtyard, where some of the stained-glass windows have been preserved. The original interiors of the orphanage (surviving images indicate that at least some of the rooms were decorated with murals and that the dining room had a flat ceiling with decorative paintings done in the Neo-Renaissance style) were extensively altered to meet the needs of the institutions that succeeded the orphanage after it was closed in 1942 and taken over by the German occupying forces. The sisters were expelled and the wards transferred to other institutions in the surrounding area. After the war, the building housed a boarding school for apprentices of the Mosilana company, and in 1951–1992 it served as the headquarters of various sections of Brno Technical University’s Faculty of Civil Engineering, in particular the Department of Water Structures and Water Management. Later, new laboratories were built here for the Department of Chemistry, and in 1993–1998 the building was used by the Faculty of Chemistry. Since the late 1990s, the building has been the seat of the Military Research Institute (originally the Brno Military Technical Protection Institute).
Karolína Králiková