Michal Brummel

* 1933

  • “You enter the stairwell, Goethe-esque, as I said. And on the front-facing wall, there was supposed to be a painting of Hedvika Liebsteinova – Jana’s mother and co-owner of the apartment. It was a two-generation apartment. There was supposed to be her portrait and Loos wanted to commission Kokoschka, back then a young unknown artist from Vienna. Kokoschka did not have the time, or couldn’t be bothered to come to Plzen, unfortunately for us. So he asked a Plzen painter of a Hungarian origin Kemeny, to paint the portrait of Liebsteinova. He did the portrait, at this time it is in the National Gallery, unfortunately in the depository, we only have a small copy. When Kemeny finished it, Mrs Liebsteinova apparently did not like it, presumably because it was too realistic and she probably thought herself prettier. So it was not hanged here, as far as I know, for very long, instead, there was a nice copy of Reubens for as long as I can remember.”

  • “Then we enter the rooms that belonged to Hedvika Liebsteinova. The so-called yellow room is very colourful. Expressive. She loved van Gogh, which at the time wasn’t usual. So Loos made it very colourful. In … yellow, blue. It’s interesting that such an old lady was far more progressive in her – let’s say – taste and lifestyle than the younger generation. They had such a conservative living room - in 19th-century English style, the bedroom is conservative as well, in comparison, she had it made very colourful.”

  • “Mrs Behalova was an art historian. I don’t know if by training originally, or if she studied Philosophy. She was a woman who was locked up for a long time after February 1948, because, I think, she was a Catholic activist. I think she came from the Ostrava region. After she was released, she came to Pilsen, where she worked at the heritage department. And she registered and documented all interiors by Adolf Loos. On that occasion, she became close to Jana and mother – Valerie – and visited us often. In ’68 she left for Austria.”

  • “Loos was according to my non-expert opinion a genius; he was able to recreate everything pretty – or what he liked – in the world. Starting with Crete, the Minoan civilization, which – when you visit Crete and the palace in Knossos – you immediately see Loos and Raumplan. That is so interesting. I don’t even know if Loos could have … you know the excavations happened sometime in the 30s or at the end of the 20s, I don’t know if Loos knew about it, but it is precisely Loos. What you can see there. I don’t know if that’s what inspired him, but everything he did had some grounding. It could be American armchairs from the American West, or an Egyptian tripod from a British museum, or it’s Biedermeier armchairs from 19th century Vienna. That apartment of ours, it has that living room, that is an English room from the end of the 19th century”

  • “On Chodske namesti, which wasn’t far away from where we lived, there were German barracks, actually, it was a school where the Germans resided. When the Americans came, they stayed there also, African Americans. Back then, there was segregation in the US army. There was a white unit and a black unit. We liked the black people better than white people. They were nicer.”- “You liked black people better?” – “Yeah, because they were somewhat nicer to us. We were always begging. The first English words I learned was when we were saying ‘saramabeč’, which was in fact ‘son of a bitch’. We used to say ‘goddamn – fucking – son of a bitch’, those were the first English words we knew. And the Americans had a few Czech sentences typed up on a typewriter. One of them was ‘Máš sestru?’ (‘Do you have a sister?’). And whoever had a sister had an advantage, because they brought the American home. And that was a benefit for the family since the Americans didn’t just have an interest in the sister, they were happy to be in a family, they would bring them food. So having a sister was advantageous.”

  • “When mum wanted to marry dad, it was not received well on either side of the family. In Austria, in some village...she is supposed to marry some Jew – it was viewed as little offensive. Even worse in the Jewish family – dad’s. So she converted before she married my father, she converted to Judaism. (This is very important.) This is important, but these days, as I’ve heard, it’s a very difficult ceremony. Back then, not so much. They did it sort of quickly. So she was Jewish when I was born. Only when grandmother died did she convert back to Catholicism and was very devout.”

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Loos is modern even now, says the heir of an iconic Plzen house

Michal Brummel with his mother Valeria, 1960s
Michal Brummel with his mother Valeria, 1960s
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Michal Brummel was born on May 27, 1933, in Klatovy. He comes from a wealthy Jewish family on his father’s side. His story is connected with a house on Husova street nr. 58 in Plzen, which was rebuilt in 1928 for his uncle Jan Brummel by the architect Adolf Loos. The Jewish Brummel family was tragically affected by the Holocaust as most of the relatives died in concentration camps. Michal himself was not affected by the deportations since his mother was not Jewish and Michal was classified as a mixed-race by the Nuremberg Laws. The house of Jan and Jana Brummel was Aryanized, and after the war – when the husband and wife both miraculously returned from concentration camps – it returned to the owners. Michal lived on Husova street in the years 1945 – 1964. In 1962, the house became state-owned, however, Michal’s aunt and mother lived there until the 1980s. At the start of this millennium, Michal Brummel began a complicated process of renovation and returned the house to a condition, in which he remembered it from his childhood. Brummel’s house opened to the public in 2015.