Brno apartment preserved since 1930s opens to public after restoration
A remarkable apartment in Brno, preserved almost intact since the 1930s, has just opened to the public after several years of restoration. It once belonged to a Jewish family who left Czechoslovakia shortly before WWII.
The apartment, located on the third floor of a house on Hlinky Street near the Brno Exhibition Centre, came to light about six years ago. A friend of archaeologist and ethnologist Michal Doležel told him about an empty property with old furniture inside and offered to send him some photos.
Doležel recalls:
“I thought it would simply be an apartment where perhaps an old table or wardrobe had been left behind. But when I saw the photos, they absolutely stunned me. It was clear at first sight that this was an extraordinary apartment, an unknown interior, and one that must have been designed by an interwar architect or designer.”
Seeing it in person made an even stronger impression. Doležel and his colleagues immediately started researching who had lived there. The initials on a decorative grille soon gave them the answer.
“In the main living room there is a false fireplace with a decorative grille, and the grille bears the initials RH. We consulted a 1934 interwar directory of the city of Brno to see who had lived at Hlinky 46. When we looked at the people living there in the 1930s, only one person matched the initials RH: Richard Herdan, who was listed in the directory as a representative of the Škoda Works.”
Herdan was a Brno-born manager at the Škoda Works, one of the major industrial companies of interwar Czechoslovakia. He married Johanna Teltscherová, the daughter of Eugen and Elsa Teltscher, a Jewish family from Mikulov.
Eugen Teltscher was an important member of the Jewish community there and one of the founders of the Jewish museum in Mikulov. The family later moved to Brno and bought the house where the apartment was located.
Michal Doležel continues:
“As a wedding gift from the bride’s parents, the newlyweds received an apartment in their house on Hlinky Street. That same year, they had the apartment renovated by the architect Emerich Horvát, a Jewish architect who originally came from Hungary and worked in Brno. During the 1930s, shortly after their wedding and moving in, their son Leo was born. A few years later, they had a daughter, Felicitas.”
The Herdans lived in the apartment only for five years. In 1938, Richard took a job at the Škoda Works branch in Johannesburg, and the family left for South Africa, a decision that saved them from the Holocaust.
The Teltschers were not so fortunate. After the Nazi occupation in March 1939, their house was confiscated. The family was forced out, deported to a concentration camp and murdered.
After the war, the house was nationalised and became a municipal rental property. By another twist of fate, the apartment itself survived almost intact, as Doležel explains:
“From the 1950s until 2006, the Herdans’ former apartment was occupied by the same family, the Bílý family. They were aware of the qualities of the apartment and, above all, thanks to them it survived in its present condition because they made only minimal changes to it. There was then one more tenant who unfortunately made some alterations. After she left, the apartment remained empty until 2021, when my colleague contacted me.”
The rediscovery of the apartment also led Doležel and his colleagues to the Herdan family’s descendants, who later came to Brno and visited the apartment.
The restoration began in 2022. It brought together a large team of experts, restorers and conservators, as well as students from the Brno School of Arts and Design. Together, they carefully restored the apartment and its original furniture.
Today, visitors can see the restored interior, including much of the original furniture and built-in features. Doležel describes the main living room:
“The architect Emerich Horvát, who redesigned the apartment in 1933, divided it visually into two spaces using built-in furniture and a glass display cabinet. The cabinet is illuminated at night, creating a beautiful visual effect and becoming the focal point of the room. Along its axis is the false fireplace, with its decorative grille and the initials RH.”
The Museum of the City of Brno hopes to bring the apartment to life with more than guided tours. In the future, it also plans to hold lectures, readings and other events focusing on Brno’s architecture and history.
