Bedřich Klinenberger and Rudolf Popper's villas

   
Business partners Bedřich Klinenberger and Rudolf Popper owned a knitwear and hosiery factory at Mostecká Street no. 6, which they had transferred to Jihlava from Batelov. At the end of the 1920s, they approached the Prague architect Richard Goldreich to draw up a design for family villas, identical in construction, on adjacent plots with gardens on the sloping terrain of what is now Fibichova Street (formerly Přikopy). Richard Popper lived in house no. 22 with his wife and three daughters, and the Klinenbergers lived in the adjacent house at no. 20 with their two daughters. Goldreich designed a moderately shaped building with a flat roof and a semicircular avant-corps facing the garden. The façade is still decorated with cubically shaped window jambs with distinctive lintels. Nautical motifs on the façades in the form of tubular railings, round windows, and rounded shapes are reminiscent of the stylish purist background of the Prague architects of the 1920s "Purist Quartet" (Puristická čtyřka) consisting of Linhart, Honzík, Obrtel, and Fragner. The simple external cubic appearance of the house was complemented by a functionally arranged internal layout. The rooms faced south and east towards the garden, while the service rooms faced north. On the first floor, at the end of the semicircular avant-corps, a terrace opened onto the garden, which was built over during later modifications of both houses.

However, the owners and partners of Klinenberger and Co. (Klinenberger a spol. ) were not very successful in Jihlava. They had to sell both houses, which served as a guarantee for their business, at auction in 1933. The property was bought by Františka Heiligová, the wife of the prominent Jewish lawyer Moritz Heilig. Their family occupied house no. 20, renting out the other one until 1939, when they sold both houses again. The Popper and Klinenberger families were also of Jewish origin and all their members perished in concentration camps during the occupation. House no. 20 was adapted in the 1960s as a nursery, which is still there today. The second house, no. 22, is still used for residential purposes.

JL
Literature and other sources 

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