In April 1945, horses stood in the main living area of Villa Tugendhat. In front of the onyx wall, which Mies van der Rohe designed as the pinnacle of European luxury, Red Army troops chewed hay. The white linoleum, a technical marvel for its time, was trampled by hooves. The house, which was meant to be a celebration of modern civilization, served as a stable.
This is an image that usually doesn't make it into modern architecture textbooks. And yet, it tells more about Villa Tugendhat than any floor plan. This house wasn't just beautiful. It survived the twentieth century with all its challenges.
The house that was a miracle
Let's briefly recall what it's all about. The villa was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and built between 1929 and 1930. The main living space is a single open area without load-bearing walls, divided only by an onyx wall and a curved ebony partition. The glass walls could be electrically lowered into the floor. The house had its own mechanical ventilation system. In the late 1920s, it was architecture from the future. Since 2001, it has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
All of this is taught. Now, what isn't taught.
Eight years of happiness
The villa was commissioned by Greta and Fritz Tugendhat, a married couple from prominent textile entrepreneurial families. They lived in it for only eight years. In May 1938, under the escalating Nazi threat and due to their Jewish origin, the family left the villa and emigrated, first to Switzerland, then to Venezuela. They had to leave behind the house into which they had poured everything.
This part is important because it changes how we view the villa. It's not just an exhibit. It's a stolen home.
Office, stable, gymnasium
What followed is a series of humiliations that the house went through. In 1940, the Gestapo seized the villa and began the first insensitive modifications. In 1942, it served as offices for the Nazi Messerschmitt aircraft factories; Willy Messerschmitt himself had an apartment there. After the liberation of Brno in April 1945, the Red Army housed a military unit there, and it was then that it also served as a stable.
After the war, the house did not remain empty, but no one treated it as a treasure. It served, among other things, as a gymnasium for children with spinal defects and as a dance school. An architectural gem in the role of an ordinary public building that no one perceived as a gem.
Where the country divided
And then came a moment that also made the villa a piece of political history. In 1992, right here, in Brno and especially in the garden of Villa Tugendhat, a key conversation took place between two prime ministers about the division of Czechoslovakia. The house, built by a German architect for a Jewish family, became the backdrop for the split between Czechs and Slovaks. It is difficult to find a building that encapsulates more of the twentieth century in one place.
Last-minute rescue
A definitive turnaround came with its inscription on the UNESCO list in December 2001, and especially with the comprehensive reconstruction between 2010 and 2012, which cost approximately 174 million Czech crowns and restored the villa to its original form in detail. Today, it is a museum and one of the most visited buildings in Brno. The story may not be over yet: the descendants of the Tugendhat family considered requesting the return of the villa. The house, which also inspired the novel and film The Glass Room, thus continues to write new chapters.
What to take away from this
Villa Tugendhat is usually presented as a perfect object, a clean floor plan, and the famous onyx wall. However, its true value also lies in what it has experienced. It is a house that survived Nazism, war, communism, and the breakup of a state, and each time it emerged battered but whole. Architecture of this caliber is not just aesthetics. It is a witness. And when you stand before that onyx wall today, you are standing in a place where horses, officials, and prime ministers once stood.
That buildings carry memory and that quality can survive even the worst, is precisely what attracts us to architecture and what we continue to write about in brote. journal.