Construction of the Church of the Immaculate Conception was overseen by the building committee of the Society for the Construction of Catholic Churches in the Diocese of Brno, which was founded in January 1907. Both the society and the committed were chaired by the Bishop of Brno, Count Paul von Huyn. Donations for the church’s construction and furnishings were collected from all over the diocese. Huyn’s important contribution to the project’s realization is commemorated by an image of his episcopal coat of arms done in inlay work on the floor of the presbytery. The church has a capacity of around 2,000 worshippers and was built for what was then the third district of Brno encompassing the southern suburbs, whose distinctly industrial character is among other things visible in the area immediately north of the church – the site of the former Mosilana textile works. The land for the church building, located on the site of a former river island, was donated free of charge by the city. Sometime before the late 13th century, a leper hospital had been built here with a chapel dedicated to St. Stephen. The building later served as a shelter, dormitory, nursery school and guardhouse. In June 1909, Brno’s first city architect, Franz Holik, began drafting plans for a small square with a church, a rectory and two symmetrically placed school buildings.
Holik subsequently presented a series of sketches of various stylistic designs and volumetric arrangements for the new church. The chosen alternative was the most progressive of the designs, combining Neo-Baroque elements with Wagnerian modernism, which the architect was very familiar with, as he had studied under Otto Wagner for two years at the Vienna Academy. Construction work was carried out by the Brno building firm of Josef Müller under the supervision of the engineer Emanuel Straka.
The Jubilee Church of Emperor Franz Joseph I, as it was originally named, was built to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the emperor’s reign in 1908, and the foundation stone was laid on his 80th birthday on 18 August 1910. The church’s consecration on 18 January 1914 was attended by a member of the royal family, Archduke Friedrich, Duke of Teschen, who donated the main altar and was accompanied by his wife Isabella.
The church has a Latin cross floor plan with a nave and transept and a shallow, polygonal north-facing presbytery. A 60-metre-high tower rises above the main entrance, which is accentuated by a recessed artificial stone portal. The presbytery is flanked by the church’s sacristy and a chapel dedicated to the Betrothal of the Virgin Mary. The marshy ground beneath the building had to be strengthened with reinforced concrete. The church’s vaults are made of a concrete shell and the roof is metal. Inside, rich vegetal and zoomorphic wall paintings with symbolic references to the Virgin Mary produce an impressive display of Art Nouveau décor. These ornamental elements, painted by František Kolbábek according to a design by Hans Kalmsteiner, were restored during renovation work in 1967–1982. The stained-glass windows with medallions of saints and other motifs, including the final Swedish assault on Brno on 15 August 1645, were produced by Benedikt Škarda’s company according to designs by the painter Jaroslav Malý. Unfortunately, the stained glass on the church’s eastern side was destroyed by a blast wave from an exploding bomb towards the end of the Second World War.
The window above the main entrance depicting The Miracle of St. Elizabeth of Hungary dates from 1912 and was produced by the Tiroler Glasmalerei workshop in Innsbruck (after a design by Bernhard Rice). The altars, pulpit, pews, cabinets in the sacristy, the Holy Sepulchre and many other interior items and decoration were designed by Franz Holik and mostly manufactured by Brno companies. The painting and sculptural decoration of the altars was also entrusted to artists associated with Brno: the painters Friedrich Hans Wacha and Eduard Csánek and the sculptor Carl Wollek. The relief on the tympanum on the portal and the angel statues on the main elevation, however, were the work of Milán Havlíček from Prague. Wacha devoted great care to the painting on the main altar, which he worked on in 1910–1913 with support from Johann II, Prince of Liechtenstein. The triangular composition depicts the praying Virgin Mary with the kneeling patrons of the diocese, Saints Peter and Paul, above Brno at dawn.
In 1910, a four-storey school for boys was built to the west of the church, but the planned school for girls never materialized. Instead, the third side of the ‘church square’ – an analogous example of which can be seen in front of the Piarist Church of Maria Treu in Vienna – is home to the constructivist building of the Labour Office. Holik also designed the three-storey rectory built in 1912 to the north-west behind the church.
Aleš Filip
