Fritz Neumann's villa

   
The villa on the corner of Jiráskova and Fritzova Streets located at no. 34 has a turbulent history. It is marked by four stones of the disappeared placed at its entrance from Fritzova Street. At the beginning of the 1930s, it was built here for Fritz Neumann, a factory owner of Jewish origin, who owned a glass grinding plant on Srázná Street in Jihlava. However, he had hardly lived in the villa for ten years before he, his wife, and their two children were deported to Terezín in 1939, and then on to Auschwitz.

The villa was designed in 1929 by the Highlands architect Ervín Glaser and built the following year. In 1934, however, the Jihlava builder Konrad Weigner intervened in its form and added several new bay windows on the first floor. The villa is quite large as Fritz Neumann bought two plots for it. Therefore, there was plenty of space for a garden too. Glaser designed the house as a two-storey building, but thanks to the slightly sloping site, the basement of the building extends above the ground when viewed from the garden. The formal appearance of the villa can be defined as purist. The materially impressive building originally stood on a compact, almost rectangular floor plan. The silhouette was rather dynamic from the beginning, with wide cornices forming somewhat strip applications that lend seriousness to the building.

The defining feature of the villa's interior layout was the large hall serving the main living rooms, with staircase leading to it. The dining room, living room, and kitchen were on the ground floor. The bedroom, two children's rooms, a guest room, and a bathroom were situated upstairs.

The floor plans and sketches of the façades by Ervín Glaser are missing from the villa's building documentation today. However, there is a letter in which the Jihlava Building Authority asks the Brno architect Bohuslav Fuchs to "be so kind" as to return the four plan sheets he had borrowed in the autumn of 1945. At the same time, the villa was undergoing the most extensive structural changes in its history. The modifications, however, were designed by the Jihlava builder Jan Dintar, not by Bohuslav Fuchs. When the villa was confiscated from the Neumann family at the end of the 1930s, it was purchased by the German businessman Josef Offenböck. After the end of the war, it was divided into three units – one in the basement, one on the ground floor, and one on the first floor. One of its occupants was MUDrMiroslav Roch, who also ran his medical practice from the house. He also had a new ground-floor extension added to the villa, facing the garden. It housed a surgery and waiting room, while a new garage was built in the raised basement. Jan Dintar was very sophisticated in his treatment of the then fifteen-year-old villa, choosing a modest morphology for the extension that matched the basic structure of the villa. Since he gave the extension a flat roof, it also functioned as a terrace accessible from the first floor.

The villa has not undergone any major material changes and has been preserved in a very authentic way. However, its purpose changed several more times. In 1962, a nursery for the District Institute of National Health (Okresní ústav národního zdraví) in Jihlava was established in the villa. This mainly involved further interventions in the villa’s internal layout and interiors. After 1989, the villa was used for residential purposes again. It was restored to the Neumann family. Marianna Singer – a daughter of Fritz Neumann and the only family member to survive the war – moved in. Today, the villa houses the editorial office of the Jihlava newspaper (Jihlavské listy).

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