Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Moravian Diet had its offices in the New Town Hall and the Provincial Chamber (Landhaus; literally, ‘Land House’ – i.e., House of the Land of Moravia), a grand official building on today’s Joštová Street. Designed by Anton Heft and Robert Raschka and built in 1867–1878, today it is the home of the Constitutional Court. The increasing workload of Moravia’s provincial institutions and authorities forced them to expand into various other rented premises, but it was more economical to build a new headquarters. The chosen plot for the new Landhaus was located on the outer ring of Brno’s ring road (the ‘Ringstrasse’), right outside the former Porta Laetorum (or Merry Gate) on the site of the several older buildings along Veveří Street and today’s Žerotínovo náměstí.
Detailed plans for the new building were approved in the spring of 1903, and construction work began exactly one year later. However, the initial excavation work for the foundations came across an old city cemetery and, deeper down, a brickworks. The transfer of the skeletal remains and the removal of the brick kilns significantly delayed the work, as did political events, in particular a general strike by construction workers in 1905 and a craftsmen’s strike a year later. As a consequence, the building was not completed until September 1909, although at that time the building was already partly in use.
The building’s exterior and interior were designed by the Viennese architect Ferdinand Hrach, a professor at the German Technical University in Brno. The layout, technical drawings and overall calculation of costs were done by František Utíkal. The building has an irregular footprint consisting of a series of interconnected concourses, conceived as open-air courtyards and glass-roofed atria so that these large areas would be sufficiently illuminated. The individual offices were situated around the concourses and were accessible via two triple-flight staircases placed opposite from each other. From the entrance atrium, visitors could access the Moravian Library, the Moravian Building Authority, the Czech Museum Association and the Association of Moravian History. Apartments on the ground floor were set aside for the building caretaker, the boilerman and the porters.
The mezzanine and three upper floors housed a number of provincial offices and institutions, including insurance, statistical and postal authorities, the cultural council and cultural technical office, the beer tax inspectorate, the provincial archives, various departments of the building authority and a conference room.
Ferdinand Hrach gave a lecture on his design of the building at the Association of Moravian Industrialists (Mährischer Gewerbe-Verein), at which he focused on the interior lighting design and the effects of light on the exterior. The facade is distinctly segmented through the use of avant-corps and cordon ledges. The building’s monumental base is accentuated by bossage on the ground floor and mezzanine. Mascarons above the windows on the raised ground floor reference German national symbolism; one example above the main entrance is the face of a Germanic warrior wearing a Viking helmet, surrounded by oak and olive branches. The classicist main entrance is flanked by pilasters with half-figures of caryatids.
The first and second floors are visually lightened by a row of columns and pilasters. The topmost floor was designed to resemble a gallery. The sculptural relief decoration by Heinrich Leger and Alfred Dressler depicts variations on the themes of industry, agriculture, art and science. The female figures at the top of the building are allegories of economy. The attic on the central avant-corps is decorated with the Moravian coat of arms (a motif that also appears on the building’s corner), flanked by two allegorical female figures – one holding a shield with a Moravian eagle and one holding a sword – symbolizing the sovereign power of the Moravian legislative and administrative bodies over the territory of Moravia. The centre of the facade is accentuated by a polygonal dome.
The building was originally meant to be higher, but this intention was prevented by its enormous mass. This sense of mass, monumentality and enormity characterize the entire facade. The interior design, by contrast, is very airy and open, thanks mainly to its bright atmosphere. The columns on the outside are complemented by fine décor and by the handcrafted details of the wrought-iron railings in the building’s interiors.
On account of its Neo-Baroque form and monumental nature, some believe that Hrach’s design drew inspiration from the Reichstag in Berlin, although similarities can also be found with the architecture of nearby Vienna, such as Gottfried Semper and Karl Hasenauer’s Museum of Art History and Natural History Museum, or some works by Otto Wagner. Particularly in the facade composition, one can observe certain affinities with Wagner’s 1898 design for a new wing of the Vienna Hofburg, although the multi-storey corridors of Hrach’s interior design more closely recall Wagner’s competition design for the Emperor Franz Josef City Museum from the same period (1903–1907).
The new building of the Moravian Diet was built at the same time as the new building for the German Technical University on nearby Joštová, which Ferdinand Hrach also designed. Hrach took a very similar architectural approach to both buildings, but where the character of the university building allowed him to use a more purist architectural vocabulary revealing the structural core of the building, the official nature of the administrative building, which was expected to represent the tradition and power of the Habsburg dynasty, did not allow for such stylistic expression, which therefore was hidden within a grandiose shell. A more subdued version of Hrach’s décor can be found in the Provincial Chamber’s extension, constructed in 1923–1924 and known as the Provincial Chamber III, for which architect Karel Náhůnek applied a restrained a Rondocubist style as a show of national pride – this time, Czechoslovak pride.
Hrach’s building still serves as the administrative seat of the regional authority, meaning today’s South Moravian Region.
Šárka Svobodová
