About the site
Located on Rooseveltova Street, this villa forms part of a pair built near the historic city centre at the corner of Tyršova and Rooseveltova streets. Together with the neighbouring villa for August Lassmann, it represents the most striking example of 1930s villa construction for the upper classes, offering a romanticized interpretation of contemporary modern architecture.
As noted for the August Lassmann villa, the neighbouring villa for Erich Lassmann (1900–?) is similarly composed of three stepped blocks with flat roofs. The arrangement almost mirrors that of the adjacent house. The roofscape is likewise treated in a similar fashion, with terraces on the two-storey and single-storey sections enclosed by masonry balustrades, accessible from rooms in the higher sections. All façades are articulated through a mix of symmetrical and asymmetrical compositions, with slightly rectangular double-leaf windows – Reichner’s favoured compositional unit – arranged in various groupings. In terms of layout, as in the neighbouring villa, Reichner applied the principle of a central hall to which other rooms, such as a study and a dining room linked to the kitchen, are connected. The whole was complemented by a landscaped garden and, like the August Lassmann villa, enclosed by a rubble-stone wall with concrete framing and wire-mesh infill.
Although the villa’s architecture draws on the modern tradition and contains no reference to the nationally accented German architecture favoured by part of the Nazi movement, Erich Lassmann was not only a member of the NSDAP but also actively participated in other Nazi organizations. This may have been an attempt to counterbalance the fact that his house reflected an interest in the international style – regarded in Nazi Germany as an undesirable cultural import.
After 1945, the Lassmann family was expelled to West Germany. The villa was subsequently used by the Health Authority, and today – like August Lassmann’s villa – it is owned by the Police of the Czech Republic. While the façades still have the appearance of a well-preserved building, the current use has, as in its neighbour, erased the individuality of the domestic life for which the house was originally built.
MSt
