Families of the textile magnates

Löw-Beers 

From the 19th century through to the early 20th century, the Löw-Beers were one of the most influential and wealthy families of South Moravian entrepreneurs. In the following text you can learn more about successive generations of the Löw-Beer dynasty. 

The very name Löw-Beer, referencing in German the lion and bear, might appear to predestine the family to qualities of strength, power, and pride. In fact, the surname Löw-Beer derives from the officially ordered renaming of all Jews in 1788 to new German variants of their previous names. Thus, the name Löw-Beer probably came about by Germanifying the Hebrew name of a Jewish couple from Boskovice, i.e. Löbl/Löb and Beer, although the precise origin of the surname has never been conclusively demonstrated. Anyhow, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” and so, whatever the derivation and meaning of their surname, the Löw-Beers were indeed an important and powerful family in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

From Europe as far as southern Africa 

Entrepreneurship was the bug that bit various members of the dynasty, who conducted their business across several generations especially in the textile and sugar industries, and in other sectors too. At the end of the 19th century, their textile firms were doing extraordinarily well and in the 1930s the Löw-Beers were even running branches in Germany, owned other smaller enterprises in Europe, and their goods were exported to southern Africa and the Americas. 

Where is Löw-Beerova Street?  

Despite the Löw-Beers playing an active role in the industrial, architectural, and social flowering of Brno for almost a century, the city has not erected many monuments in their honour or otherwise commemorated the family name. You will search the map of Brno in vain for a Löw-Beerova Street, although one did formerly exist in the suburb of Štýřice in 1911. The street Löw-Beer-Gasse was named after Jonas Löw-Beer (1845–1924), although by 1919 the street’s name had already changed to U Linie. From 1946 through to today, the street is called Celní Street. (Description in infographic under photo) 

One of the biggest factories operated by the extended Löw-Beer family was called the Aron und Jakob Löw-Beer’s Söhne, founded around the year 1820 unsurprisingly by the brothers Aron and Jakob themselves. In 1877 the factory’s operations shifted from Brněnec to Brno, namely to Ungartova Street (today Václavská Street). Here, top management was shuffled between several Löw-Beers, one exemplar being Jonas Löw-Beer (1845–1924), who was also a member of the city’s governing authority, and who, with his wife Lina, devoted himself to a fair share of charity. During WWI he founded a soup kitchen for wartime refugees, which subsequently functioned as a canteen for the poor (then administered by the Jewish Community of Brno). In Brno’s Štýřice neighbourhood a street was named after him – Löw-Beer-Gasse (today Celní Street). 

Opulent villas and workers’ slum housing 

Moses Löw-Beer was the name of another important factory owned by the Löw-Beer dynasty. It was originally situated in the village of Svitávka, though in 1862 a new factory was erected in Brno on Křenová Street (today Čechyňská Street). At that time the company was led by Max Löw-Beer (1829–1887), who had resettled in Brno from Svitávka. The same path was trod by his son Alfred Löw-Beer (1872–1939), who swapped one opulent villa in Svitávka straight for another, equally opulent Art Nouveaux palace, on Brno’s Sadová Street (today Drobného) in Černá Pole. This quarter was a popular among the Löw-Beers: they owned several villas here, e.g. the Arnold Villa, in which Alfred’s sister Cecílie lived, and of course Villa Tugendhat, which was occupied by Alfred’s daughter Greta with her family. Another locality prized by the Löw-Beers was Pisárky, where various members of the dynasty owned a total of seven detached homes. 

Besides their villas and detached family homes, the Löw-Beers’ property portfolio also encompassed tenement buildings and workers’ accommodation – so-called ‘colonies’ of very modest homes for aging and decrepit workers on Veslařská Street in Brno or for workers in Půlpecen and Brněnec, where Löw-Beer factories had outlying branches.  

The Löw-Beers’ entrepreneurial activities and lives in Czechoslovakia were foreclosed by WWII. Just like other Jewish families, they were threatened by deportation to concentration camps, which is why, at the end of the 1930s, most emigrated. The factories and family homes were seized during the war by the Germans, and later the property of the Löw-Beers was confiscated by the Czechoslovak state. 

Tugendhats 

Vila Tugendhat, designed by Mies van der Rohe, is one of the world’s most recognisable functionalist buildings. But what is the story of the family who commissioned their home from the famous architect? And who resided below its flat roof up until the onset of WWII? In the following paragraphs you will get to know several generations of Tugendhats and follow their progress from the 19th century right up to the present. 

At the turn of the 20th century the Tugendhats numbered themselves among Brno’s elite entrepreneurs in the textile industry. The first Tugendhat in Brno was Hermann (1834–1902), who arrived in Brno in 1854 from the Polish city of Bielsko. In his new home he set up a textile company with the entrepreneur Moritz Meiler, married a local girl Marie Löw (1844–1912), and had eleven children. This prodigious brood not only ensured the family business would flourish, it also improved the chances that – decades later – the Tugendhat name would be familiar around the world.  

Family business 

The truth is that Hermann Tugendhat, back in the 19th century, would no doubt have preferred his surname to gain its fame thanks to successes in the textile industry, but as we now know, it was the functionalist villa that midwifed its notoriety. Alfred Löw-Beer bought the plot of land (and financed the villa’s entire construction) for his daughter Greta and her husband Fritz Tugendhat, grandson of Herman and Marie and son of Emil Tugendhat. Emil (1867–1928) was a successful entrepreneur in the textile industry and was also highly popular in bourgeois society. He expanded his father’s enterprise, becoming director of the Max Kohn company, which owned a fine broadcloth and combed goods factory headquartered in Offermannova Street (today Vlhká Street). The factory had been founded in 1855 by the woollen industrialist Max Kohn (1834–1900), and Emil Tugendhat took over the business from 1896. Gradually, he engaged his sons Hans and Fritz in the firm. Emil Tugendhat was an energetic socialiser, played chess and tennis brilliantly, and was reputed to be the life and soul of every elite shindig. Equally adept in business was his younger brother Benno Tugendhat (1877–1942), who, alongside his partner Siegmund Feldhendler, ran a company for sorting rags and manufacturing artificial wool, as well as a spinning mill, under the name Feldhendler et Comp. on Velká Nová Street (today’s Lidická Street). Other Tugendhat siblings shared in developing the family business: the sons worked in the family enterprises while some of the daughters married local textile magnates. 

The Tugendhats were extremely clannish, scratching each other’s back in business and gradually amassing a fortune. As wealthy entrepreneurs they also engaged themselves in Brno’s social questions, and helped, e.g., create a so-called spolková čtvrt (associated neighbourhood) in the suburb of Černá Pole. This involved building an estate of fifty homes for factor workers. Also devoted to charity was Greta Tugendhat (1903–1970), who chaired the League for Human Rights in Brno. 

Emigration and post-war life 

The fruitful business activities of three generations of Tugendhats were terminated by WWII. Before the Nazi invasion, several Tugendhats emigrated abroad: Fritz took his family first to Switzerland, before moving on to Venezuela. Others that stayed were murdered: Benno was shot during the war, and other Tugendhats perished in the concentration camps, including Fritz’s mother Marie and cousin Erwin with his family. After the war, all their property was confiscated: Villa Tugendhat was snapped up by the town and the Max Kohn factory, as was the fate of many other local businesses, became part of the national enterprise Mosilana. Not during their management under socialism, nor in the years that followed, did these enterprises ever achieve their earlier prosperity or fame.  

The link that connected the living Tugendhat descendants to Brno was the Villa Tugendhat. Greta Tugendhat came to Brno and revisited her former home in the 1960s, and after her death, the spokesperson for the Tugendhat family in villa matters became Greta and Fritz Tugendhat’s daughter, Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat. A historian of fine art working at the University of Vienna, she was president of the international commission THICOM that supervised the villa’s monument restoration in the years 2010–2012.  

Stiassnis 

The Stiassnis represented another of the Jewish families successfully working in the textile industry in 19th- and 20th-century Brno. Originally, they came from Bučovice, and just like numerous other Jewish industrialists, they resettled in Brno during the latter half of the 19th century. Prior to 1848, the Discrimination Act had prohibited Jews from setting up companies in Brno, which explains why many such entrepreneurs plied their trade in the surrounding municipalities, before relocating to the metropolis during the 1850s. 

Rudolf Stiassni established his textile factory in Bučovice, before it was later relocated by his two sons Nathan (1841–1904) and Josef (1843–1916). The circumstances of their departure from Bučovice were quite dramatic: after a previous argument, Rudolf allegedly manhandled and drove out his Christian maidservant, which caused considerable antisemitic unrest in Bučovice. Rudolf decided therefore to terminate the activities of the factory in the town and hand the business to his sons. He himself upped sticks to Vienna. 

Expanding production 

The Stiassni brothers began their business in Brno in 1868. Their firm, Brüder Stiassni, was first located in premises beside the Ponávka Stream in Kožená Street (today a gap in the terraced frontage on Koliště Street); later on, they moved to the Bochnerova Palace on Nadační Street (today’s Přízova Street). The factory, with its Neo-Renaissance palace, was acquired by the Stiassnis after the death of Edmund Bochner (1832–1903), a German nobleman engaged in the production of woollen products and sugar. At the outset, the Stiassnis focused their production on cheap men’s fabrics; over time, however, they expanded their production to include all kinds of material, fine broadcloths, plaids, and flannels. They sold their fabrics on markets across the Habsburg empire and exported them even as far as Asia.  

Also taking up positions within the family business were Josef’s sons: Rudolf, Alfred, and Ernst. Alfred Stiassni (1883–1961) was in charge of the factory, together with his brother Ernst, right up until 1938, when they were forced to flee abroad from the impending Holocaust. Besides a prospering factory, Alfred also left behind in Brno a modernist villa, which he had had built in the 1930s in Brno-Pisárky according to a design by the architect Ernst Wiesner.  

Foundation for the Vlněna national enterprise 

During occupation, the Gebrüder Stiassni factory was seized and sold off, while straight after the war it was confiscated and incorporated into the Moravian-Silesian Woollen Works, national enterprise; later, it formed the core factory around which the company Vlněna was built. The Stiassni Villa in Pisárky was used after the war as showcase accommodation for Brno’s most prestigious guests, at which time people started to call it the ‘government villa’. Today, the villa is listed in the register of immovable cultural monuments and, together with its spacious gardens, it is open to the public. 

Alfred emigrated with his wife Hermine and daughter Susanne (1923–2005) in 1938. Their journey took them through London and Brazil, and on to Hollywood, where they settled. Even abroad, the Stiassni family did not relinquish its support for the Czechoslovak state. In the period press we can read, e.g., the following snippet: “The company br. Stiassni, a woollen goods factory in Brno, donated to the provincial president of the Moravian-Silesian province a sum of one million crowns for the defence of the state.” In 1946, in the USA, Susanne married the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, one Leornard (born Leonid) Victor Matveev, although the couple were later to adopt the surname Martin. Descendants of the Stiassnis still live in Hollywood to this day. Some have even rekindled their family’s historical connection with Brno – the grandchildren of Susanne, Yenny and Daria Martin, visited Brno’s Stiassni Villa in 2017, and Daria Martin, who is a documentary film maker, shot a short film based on her grandmother’s dream diary. 

Do you want to know more about other families of the textile magnats? Look at For Download and read our newspaper Brno INdustrial!