Prague Journal

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

Today is a holiday honoring Saints Cyril and Method (Methodius), Apostles of the Slavs, whose missionary activities during the Great Moravian period brought Christianity and education to the Slavs. This year marks the 1,120th anniversary of St Method’s death in today’s territory of Slovakia. The occasion inspired the Association of Slovaks in Switzerland to organize a celebration to remember the saints today at Devín castle, with a discussion on Cyril and Method’s message and a mass at Devín’s church.
After this morning’s WACRA conference plenary session in Brno, Eva and I walked to Tugendhat Villa, a “functionalist” art-deco mansion not far from the university grounds. http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Tugendhat_House.html
The Villa Tugendhat was built by the German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in his traditional Bauhaus-style. The three-story building is partially tucked into the hillside in the Brno residential quarter Černé Pole facing the city centre, Špilberk castle, and the spires of St. Peter and Paul Cathedral on Petrov Hill in the distance. A broad staircase joins the dining room with the garden which makes an integral part of the building, because of large windows that can recede into the walls by means of a mechanized pulley system. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also designed the furniture and interior details, such as door handles, curtains, lighting fixtures. Mies’s style is characterized by a severe simplicity and the refinement of its exposed structural elements. Although not the first architect to work in this mode, he carried rationalism and functionalism to their ultimate stage of development. His famous dictum “less is more” crystallized the basic philosophy of mid-20th-century architecture. Rigidly geometrical and devoid of ornamentation, his buildings depended for their effect on subtlety of proportion, elegance of material (including marble, onyx, chrome, and travertine), and precision of details. Mies was director of the Bauhaus School of Design, the major center of 20th-century architectural modernism, from 1930 until its disbandment in 1933. He moved to the United States in 1937, where, as director of architecture (1938-1958) at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, he trained a new generation of American architects. He produced many buildings in the United States, including skyscrapers, museums, schools, and residences. His 37-story bronze-and-glass Seagram Building in New York (1958; in collaboration with the American architect Philip Johnson) is considered the most subtle development of the glass-walled skyscraper, while his glass-walled Farnsworth House (1950, near Fox River, Illinois) is the culmination of his residential architecture. With the French architect Le Corbusier and the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies was one of the three most influential 20th-century architects. His skyscraper designs in particular have been copied or adapted by most modern architects working in the field.
We were told that the villa was closed for renovation, and in fact it has been scheduled for renovation for quite some time. However, before the renovation starts next year, the villa will be used as a movie set. Eva and I were fortunate to have arrived when some folks from the movie studio were taking measurements, and the caretaker of the villa allowed us to come in and gave us a personal tour. He apparently takes care of the machinery, so he was particularly enthusiastic about taking us downstairs into the bowels of the building to show us the heating, air conditioning, and electronics controls—to raise and lower the patio windows—and the storage areas for furs and valuables.
We returned to the university just in time for a hurried lunch before the bus left for an excursion to Lednice, about 45 km south of Brno. We had a guided tour of Lednice Castle, one of the two important castles of the Lichtenstein family (the other is in Valtice, not far away, but we didn’t get to go there), who lived there from the early 13th century until 1945. The renaissance chateau is decorated opulently and set off by ponds and gardens and a very impressive—and enormous—greenhouse.
On the way to Cejkovice, our dinner destination, the bus stopped at Mikulov, a sleepy, hilly South Moravian wine village on the Austria border. Pavel Zufan, our host in Brno, suggested we spend time shopping and walking around the old center of town, but Eva and I hiked up to the limestone cliff to the castle that dominates the skyline. Although the castle allegedly closes at 5pm, and we were there at 4:30, the last tour started a 4pm so we could not get in. However, we were able to see the High Synagogue in the old Jewish Quarter. At one time, Mikulov had a thriving Jewish community—the country’s second largest before WWII –with 16 synagogues. In the 15th century, Jewish people settled in the town and the Jewish community gradually took a leading position among Moravian Jews. Mikulov’s history of being a town of religious tolerance gave Jewish people a home after their exile from Vienna and Czech royal towns. The head Rabbi was in residence from the middle of the 16th century till 1851. Between 1553-1573, the legendary Rabbi Löw—the creator of the fabled Prague Golem—lived in Mikulov and founded a Yeshiva (religious college) here. In 1524 Anabaptists (religious emigrants from Switzerland) arrived and during their one hundred years’ stay gained recognition for the development of crafts and wine traditions. We went to the site of the old Jewish Cemetery, where the oldest tombstones date back to 1605, but could not get beyond the outer gate.
The bus then took us to our dinner destination, the Anabaptist restaurant and wine cellar at Cejkovice. Apparently, the development of wine production in Bohemia was largely due to Charles IV, Czech King and Roman Emperor, the very same monarch who built the Charles Bridge and founded Charles University in Prague in 1348, the oldest university in central Europe. Charles IV understood his priorities: three years before founding the University, he granted the right to produce ceremonial wine to the cellars of Kromeriz, which, after the 18th Century, became the Archbishop’s Wine Cellar. The first evidence of vine-growing relates to the Knights Templar, whose arrival to the Czech lands dates back to 1232; the Cejkovice stronghold and St. Kunhuta’s church were founded at that time. The might and wealth of the Knights Templar provoked envy and hatred that ultimately resulted in an allegation of heresy. The order was disestablished in 1312. After that, the stronghold often changed owners and was finally acquired by the Olomouc Jesuit college in 1624. This was the conference’s “gala party,” with folk music and dancing and a tour of the wine cellars—and more than enough wine to drink.

posted by JWinn @ 8:52 PM