The Lidická Estate (Lidická kolonie), family homes

 
This district is now often called In the Sun (Na Slunci) from the German Zur Sonne, after the name of an inn documented there in 1764. The name Lidická Estate (Lidická kolonie) has been officially used since the end of the Second World War. Before 1939, it was an undeveloped area of the southern suburbs of the city. It is framed by the traffic routes of Znojemská and Brtnická Streets, Tylova Street in the north, and the Lidická Estate in the south.

With the arrival of the Nazi occupation forces on 15 March 1939 and with the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Jihlava's future development planning began to change radically. This was related to the central function of the city in the German-speaking island, as well as to the fact that German-speaking Jihlava residents mostly perceived the German army as liberators, which led to a strong desire to build the city in the spirit of National Socialist architecture. For example, in 1940, the city administration issued a ban on the construction of new houses with flat roofs, typical of Czech modern buildings of the previous era.

There had long been a housing shortage in Jihlava. Leo Engelmann, the government commissioner for Jihlava, even called the situation a housing calamity and promised to remedy it quickly. The first project started was the construction of a model housing estate ("Siedlung") in the south of Jihlava. The toponym In the Sun(Na Slunci) was gladly accepted by the German administrators of the town, in line with the Nazi myth of a fictitious solar race of the Aryans.

The project envisaged 73 single-family houses, 24 semi-detached houses, and 34 three-storey houses, as can be seen from the surviving drawing of the housing estate dated 13 November 1939. It shows that a wide street was to run through the centre of the housing estate, ending with a large central area and a community centre in the middle. There was speculation amongst those who remembered that this centre was supposed to be in the shape of a swastika. However, this is contradicted by a plan of the housing estate published in the local newspaper Mährischer Grenzböte.

On 19 August 1939, at 4 p.m., the first ceremonial dig for the new model housing estate In the Sun took place in the presence of Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Minister without Portfolio and patron of the project. Four thousand people, including local Nazi functionaries, the district governor Karl Koblischek, the regional NSDAP leader Raimund Siegel, and the mayor of Jihlava, Leo Engelmann, watched the ceremony. Jochem Tootsmann, chairman of the Jihlava Housing Association, announced at the time that the first building would be built there within six months. The first phase involved the construction of 90 flats, which were indeed completed within the deadline. The architects Anton Endler and Adalbert Teschner created the building designs for the residential buildings, and the building supervisor was Jochem Tootsmann, who was commissioned by the Race and Settlement Office in Berlin. Otto Scholz supplied the type documentation for the low houses in 1939, and the Brno architect František Kalivoda supplied the type documentation for the two-storey terraced houses in 1941.

However, only a fraction of the plan was implemented by the end of 1941. There was a lack of money for the project as the Nazi regime invested heavily in the war. Mayor Engelmann secured a loan of CZK 5 million at a low interest rate for the built part of the construction. The loan was later increased to CZK 10 million and a house for one family was to cost from CZK 50,000 to CZK 60,000.

The style of the buildings in the In the Sunhousing estate can be described as Heimatstil, typical of the National Socialist residential architecture of the 1930s and 1940s. Examples of this style in our country can be found particularly in areas with a significant German majority. TheHeimatstilwas characterised by rustic-style buildings, which were intended to fit in with the Nazis' ideas of the ideal German countryside. Its typical features included high gabled roofs with dormers and massive chimneys. The gables on the houses with their wooden cladding imitate half-timbered buildings. The plain façades are then decorated with distinctive stone jambs with a segmental relieving arch and wooden shutters.

The residential houses from the first phase of the construction, along what is now Znojemská Street, were designed as two-storey houses with a cellar and attic, always with two flats with an area of 52 m² on the ground floor and two on the first floor. The attic served as loft space. The lowest part was divided into cellars, common laundries, and an air-raid shelter. The architects placed the staircase in the middle section. The façades of the houses are plain and unadorned, with only the jambs of double glass-pane windows accentuated. The roof has a high gable shape, with dormers and chimneys jutting out.

Inside, the low single-storey houses were divided into a basement, a ground floor, and a habitable attic. The cellars housed an air-raid shelter, washrooms, and stables. The ground floor consisted of a living room, a bedroom and kitchen, while the attic contained small storage rooms. The high roofs had tile cladding with tongue and groove tiles, and the gables featured wooden cladding. Wooden shutters were often decorated with folk motifs.

The low single-family houses were given the shape of a simple cube. However, the terraced semi-detached houses with a stone base were of different sizes, arched into each other. Among the community residents were Franz Wehrmann and Ernst Schenk, both commanders of the Hitler Youth in Jihlava at different times.

After the Second World War, the German inhabitants of Jihlava were deported, including residents of the In the Sun housing estate. In memory of the victims of the Heydrich period, the settlement was named the Lidická Estate (Lidická kolonie). The new owners gradually rebuilt the houses, and just few of them have survived in their original state. Only the unmistakable high saddle roofs and dormers, and the preserved wooden shutters on several houses, remind us of the Heimatstil. Today, we consider the Lidická Estate an interesting testimony to the architecture of the Protectorate and to the tragic and painful time that irrevocably changed the fate of many Czechs and Germans.

MS
Literature and other sources 

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