Though today known as the Löw-Beer Villa, this luxurious Art Nouveau villa located close to Lužánky Park and Brno’s oldest villa estate was originally built for the textile industrialist Moritz Fuhrmann. At the time of the villa’s construction, Fuhrmann was a wealthy and respected entrepreneur who sought to establish his family among the city’s elite – a goal that the construction of a grand and technologically innovative home in an attractive location could help him achieve. In 1903–1904 Fuhrmann built his family villa at the lower end of the property, on the site of a vineyard and garden with a gardener’s dwelling (1860), greenhouse and garden house (1868). The plans were drafted by the Viennese architect Alexander Neumann, who produced an elegant home with four apartments for Fuhrmann and his nearly adult sons Hans and Heinrich, plus a separate stable and carriage house in the garden. The town house has a semi-basement, two aboveground floors and a spacious attic. The interior of the triple-pile building with a central stair hall is illuminated from above by a skylight in the form of a pyramidal glass roof that, seen from the garden, gives the house a touch of the exceptional. The villa has two different faces: a more compact street front and a more relaxed side facing the large garden that has the character of a suburban villa.
The five-bay main elevation on Drobného Street is flanked by two avant-corps of different widths. The lower part of the facade is covered in banded rustication, the ground floor is separated from the first floor by a cordon ledge with an egg-and-dart motif, and the entire facade is topped by a cornice with a plait motif. The main entrance is via the right-hand avant-corps, the service entrance via the one on the left. The narrower right-hand avant-corps has been visually accentuated to reflect its importance: The main entrance consists of two large doors that, when swung fully open, create a wide enough passage for a carriage to reach the carriage house in the garden. Above the gate is an arched window, above that a deeply recessed loggia with a wrought-iron railing, and above the loggia the right-hand avant-corps is topped by a bell-shaped roof with an arched dormer window in the gable.
On the generously sized left-hand avant-corps, Neumann placed a large arched window on the ground floor and decorated the first floor with extensive and exceptionally high-quality stuccowork: hydrangea branches stretch along the sides of the square window, blossoming above the crown cornice at the attic level. Above the window, stucco drapery hangs between two wreaths decorated with rose blossoms and ribbons. On the central and right-hand sections of the facade, the cornice is lined with a garland combining a laurel festoon with a laurel wreath and ribbon.
The rear side of the building is set off from its neighbours, thus giving it a villa-like character that is further accentuated by the use of asymmetry and articulation. The facade design is identical to that facing the street, including the stucco garland decoration underneath the cornice. Elements on the garden elevation that draw our attention include the stairs leading up to the ground-floor terrace and the tower. The terrace leads through the ‘tower’ into the central hall, visible on the exterior in the form of the large studio window with awning. The tower, which is not a functional staircase tower but a purely aesthetic element, is a typical example of Neumann’s work. The vegetal stucco decoration and the numerous elements made of metal (wrought-iron railings, fencing, metal elements on the roof, windows and doors) and wood (window frames, doors and door frames) are excellent examples of artistic craftsmanship.
In the interior, special emphasis was placed on the entrance areas leading from the main entrance to the central stair hall, where Art Nouveau vegetal motifs can be found on the wrought-iron radiator grille, the stairway railings and the ceramic tiles by the Rako company. There are also fine stucco garlands identical to those on the facade. The parquet floors have been preserved, but there is no trace of the textile wallpaper recorded in documents. The wooden panels on the railings of the gallery overlooking the stair hall were decorated with carved images of pinecones.
Neumann’s innovative technical solution for the house included a hot-air heating system that used a heat exchanger in the basement and a system of ducts and vents that blew the heated air into the interior through grilles. The skylight, which brought natural light into the house and was also used for ventilation, is a prominent feature. The heating and cooling system was complemented by the use of blinds and awnings that prevented overheating in summer and heat loss in winter.
When Moritz Fuhrmann died in 1910, he was a man of high social standing, a recipient of numerous awards and honours. On 24 August 1913, his son Hans’s wedding ceremony was held in the villa’s central hall. Nevertheless, this new generation chose not to live amidst the luxury such a grand building and decided to sell the house and invest the money in a new factory building (Cejl 72). The property was purchased by the textile entrepreneur Alfred Löw-Beer (1872–1939) from Svitávka, whose sister Cecílie had previously acquired Josef Arnold’s nearby villa in 1909. In 1929, Alfred’s daughter Grete Tugendhat began building her now world-famous villa by architect Mies van der Rohe on the upper part of the property, on a plot that Alfred Löw-Beer had given her just for this purpose.
The Löw-Beers modernized their home in 1934, probably according to a design by the Viennese architect Rudolf Baumfeld, who was working on other projects for them at the time. The renovations affected the central stair hall, whose walls were covered with smooth, dark-brown stained wood panelling. Similar panels were used on the staircase and the gallery railing on the upper floor, where they hid the original panels with Art Nouveau wood carvings. The heating system was also expanded, and a marble-clad gas fireplace with ceramic ‘logs’ was newly installed between two low cabinets with open shelves in the stair hall.
In the late 1930s, the family were forced to leave their home because of their Jewish heritage. The villa was subsequently occupied by the Gestapo, nationalized after 1945, and used as a student dormitory after 1954. Although it was made a cultural monument in 1958, numerous interior elements were destroyed in the second half of the 1980s during renovations for the dormitory (including the wooden inlaid bookcase and the cast-iron radiators with original wooden covers and marble ledges). The building gradually fell into disrepair, without any major renovations until 2012. In 2013 and 2014, it was the subject of a comprehensive heritage-sensitive restoration project. Today, the villa is the property of the South Moravian Region and is administered by the Museum of the Brno Region. In 2016, the museum inaugurated a permanent exhibition titled The World of the Brno Bourgeoisie Around the Löw-Beers and Tugendhats, which was replaced in 2023 by Jews in Moravia: The Villa and Its Inhabitants.
Veronika Lukešová