Descendants of former owners likely to claim UNESCO-listed Tugendhat villa

The descendants of the Tugendhat family who owned the UNESCO-listed functionalist villa in the city Brno will probably apply for its restitution, Brno City Museum director Pavel Ciprian said on Thursday. According to unofficial information, the family's lawyers have already negotiated with the Culture Ministry as well as with representatives of the Brno city hall that owns the villa. The owners' descendants will probably apply for the return of the villa under the law mitigating property injustices committed during the Holocaust. The villa was designed by the world-famous German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1928. Its original owners, Greta and Fritz Tugendhat, lived in the house until 1938 when they Czechoslovakia and moved to Venezuela. The Gestapo confiscated the villa after the occupation of the Czech lands.