Two letters from Hans Scharoun from the year 1944

In 1944, Hans Scharoun wrote two letters to his Czech student and collaborator Lubomír Šlapeta, which faithfully illustrate the dramatic atmosphere of the final phase of the war and the suffering of the residents of Berlin, which was bombed daily. However, they also contain his memories on Prague, proofreading of Šlapeta’s industrial city projects and “last not least” fears, desires and concentration of creative energy in anticipation of a new beginning.

After graduating from the State School of Industry – College of Building Sciences in Brno, my father Lubomír Šlapeta spent 1928–1930 studying architecture alongside his brother Čestmír at the State Academy of Arts and Crafts in the Silesian town of Breslau/Wrocław. Along with the Bauhaus, the school – headed by the German painter Oskar Moll, a student of Henri Matisse – was then one of the most prestigious avant-garde teaching facilities in the Weimar Republic.[1] Architecture at the school was taught by Hans Scharoun (1893–1972) and Adolf Rading (1888–1957), who were both members of Berlin’s architecture group Der Ring. During their studies, the Šlapeta brothers worked on their teachers’ plans and projects in their shared studios in Breslau and Berlin [2] Afterwards, in the depths of the Great Depression and with support from the Masaryk Academy, they spent nearly half a year on a study trip that took them via Paris, Versailles, and Cherbourg all the way to New York. Here, they had the chance to briefly work in Frederick Kiesler’s architecture studio; in addition, Lubomír worked in the office of the renowned theater architect Norman Bel Geddes, where he worked on a design for the People’s Theatre in Kharkiv, Ukraine, that won an award in a prestigious international competition. While in New York, the brothers also met other representatives of architectural modernism, in particular Joseph Urban, George Howe, William Lescaze, and Richard Neutra, as well as the critics Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. After returning home in the spring of 1931, they founded their own architecture firm in Ostrava with a branch office in Prague. Over the subsequent thirty years, they became known for designing a number of original family houses, in particular in northern Moravia. Lubomír later nurtured close ties with his former teacher Hans Scharoun, visiting him in 1931 and 1936 and even spending ten weeks in the summer 1934 working on his projects in Berlin.[3] When Lubomír moved to Olomouc in mid-1936, his action radius moved to central Moravia as well.

One of Lubomír’s most capable clients was the entrepreneur Josef Studeník (1905–1967), owner of the First Moravian Saw and Tool Factory in Hulín. After founding the company in 1934, Studeník actively expanded his business and established himself on many western European markets. By the start of the war, he employed 1,200 workers. In order to provide them with housing, he planned to build a factory town called “Studeník” next to his plant that would offer all social and cultural amenities. In the fall of 1940, he commissioned plans from Lubomír Šlapeta in Olomouc.

At the beginning of the war, which sharply curtailed civilian construction projects and architects’ planning and drafting activities, such a task was a great challenge that offered the promise of extensive work over a longer period of time.

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[1] Poelzig Endell Moll und die Breslauer Akademie (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1965); Petra Hölscher, Die Akademie für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe zu Breslau. Wege einer Kunstschule 1791–1932 (Kiel: Ludwig Verlag, 2003)

[2] Pavel Zatloukal, Lubomír Šlapeta 1908–1983, Čestmír Šlapeta 1908–1999 (Brno: Obecní dům, 2003); Jerzy Ilkosz, Lubomír Šlapeta 1908–1983, Čestmír Šlapeta 1908–1999: Hans Scharoun’s Czech Students (Wrocław: Muzeum Architektury, 2004).

[3] At the time, Lubomír Šlapeta worked on the plans for Felix Baensch’s villa in Berlin-Spandau’s Weinmeisterhöhe neighborhood and on a group of recreational rental homes and a hotel in Vitznau, Switzerland.