The bishop’s seminary (alumneum) for the education and spiritual formation of future priests was founded in Brno in 1807 by the third Bishop of Brno, Vinzenz Joseph von Schrattenbach. To this end, he acquired the building of the former Dominican monastery by St. Michael’s Church. Over time, this building proved unsuitable on account of its size, and so in 1901–1903, at the initiative of the seminary’s regent, professor Josef Pospíšil, and under the auspices of the eighth Bishop of Brno, František Saleský Bauer, a new seminary was built on land acquired from the city of Brno. First proposed in 1889, the construction project was supported not only by the municipal and provincial administrations but also by the central authorities in Vienna: the Ministry of Culture and Education provided a subsidy, and the Ministry of the Interior, specifically its Department of Civil Engineering under the leadership of architect Emil von Förster, supplied the plans for the building. An important source for determining the plans’ authorship is an article in a 1905 issue of Allgemeine Bauzeitung, in which Förster states that, after an architectural brief had been elaborated, a draft plan was drawn up by the technical office of the Moravian governorship. When his department’s staff received it for assessment, they reworked it ‘in simple Baroque forms’. The engineer Rudolf Bauer then put it into project form under Förster’s guidance. As there was a financial limit of 600,000 crowns for construction costs, the project had to be scaled back before it was eventually accepted by the Ministry of Culture and Education. Bauer was not able to supervise construction, for he died shortly before it began on 15 August 1901. The engineer Josef Matzenauer from the technical department of the Moravian governorship took charge of the construction, and as he had not designed the project himself, all the detailed plans were supplied by Förster’s department. The construction contract was won by the Brno builder Antonín Tebich, who, despite earlier information to this effect, did not have a hand in its design. The seminary’s plans were presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition, though in its more elaborate form before it was scaled back for financial reasons. The building served as a school and residence for 100 seminarians, which was the maximum capacity (numerus fixus) laid down in 1908.
The four-wing, three-storey building with mansard roofs is situated on the edge of a former city cemetery, from which several gravestones were left in the seminary garden as contemplation aids (not preserved). The building has a large park enclosed by a wall, with a fountain in the middle (and, today, an underground car park). The property comprises an entire block bounded by Antonínská, Botanická, Smetanová and Kounicová Streets. The Neo-Baroque forms promoted by Emil von Förster were intended as references to the prosperous era of the Catholic Austrian Empire in the 18th century. The rectangular building’s facade, with restrained decoration in the tradition of the classicist Theresian Baroque, is accentuated by a central avant-corps with two tower-like protrusions flanking a portal with a balcony and a cartouche with the coat of arms of Bishop Bauer. Another prominent feature is the arched side portal on Antonínská Street, inspiration for which can be found in the radical Roman Baroque or, more specifically, in architects who drew on this style. Projecting from the garden wing, the second floor of which was built in 1935–1936, is a two-storey central avant-corps with the chapel of Sts. Cyril and Methodius (who were depicted in the stained glass above the altar). In 1911–1913, a new altar was built, murals were painted according to a design by Karel Ludvík Klusáček, and four paintings by Klusáček were hung in Neo-Baroque frames. Since being converted into an auditorium, the only reminders of the chapel’s original purpose are the organ loft and stucco decoration.
During both World Wars, the seminary was used as a military hospital and barracks. In 1919–1932, a part of the building was occupied by Masaryk University’s Faculty of Law. The communists closed the seminary in 1950, and the building was later taken over by Brno University of Technology. Since its renovation in 1998–1999, when the courtyard was covered in a glass roof and two toilet shafts were added, the building has housed the university’s rectorate.
Aleš Filip