Restorers have completed work on the Stiassni family tomb in Brno

Brno - Representatives of the Friends of the Stiassni Villa association today presented the restored tomb of the Jewish industrialist family Stiassni at the Jewish cemetery in Brno. The cost of the work exceeded 200,000 crowns, donated by private benefactors.

"The work was completed last year, but we decided to present the tomb in the year marking the 90th anniversary of the Stiassni family's move into their new family residence on Hroznová Street," said the association's chairman Zdeněk Musil.

The tomb, which is built for eight, contains only the founder of the industrial dynasty, Josef Stiassni, the father of Alfred, who had the famous functionalist villa built according to Ernst Wiesner's design. The name of Josef's wife, Friedrike, is inscribed on the tomb in memory in a special form - as Riki Stiassná.

"For a long time, neither we nor representatives of the Jewish community knew who had added her name to the tomb. Riki was unable to leave with her family for health reasons and died in the Terezin concentration camp in 1942," Musil added. Ultimately, through correspondence, they found out that the name was added to the gravestone by the grandson of Friedrike and Josef, Karl, who visited Brno after the liberation of Czechoslovakia.

The tomb, built in 1916, was overgrown with moss and neglected. Restorers had to remove the layers, clean the stone, and re-gild the inscriptions. "Fortunately, the tomb was structurally sound; only the left side of the balustrade was collapsing due to the terrain, but that has been successfully repaired," said Zuzana Hlavicová from the Pastiglia company that carried out the restoration.

At the cemetery, which has been a burial site since 1852, there are graves of several prominent personalities - for example, architect Otto Eisler, Ernst Wiesner, wool trader Heinrich Gomperz, or textile industrialists Löw-Beer and their relatives, the Tugendhats.

The Brno cemetery contains 11,500 graves and 6,500 tombstones. The entire area is monumentally protected, although the individual graves are not. Last year, it was visited by 7,500 people.