Felixe Blocha Villa

Originally a Jewish businessman from Rousínov (Neu-Raußnitz), Enoch Bloch (1802–1885), who settled in Brno as a leather trader no later than the 1850s, founded the company E. Bloch et Söhne in 1863, which dealt with leather goods and military equipment production. Four years later, he moved production from the original location in Křenová (now Mlýnská 15) to Rybářská Street, where the business successfully developed over the next 70 years. From the beginning, his two sons, the older Hermann (1827–1910) and the younger Josef (1836–1886), were involved in their father's company, fully taking over the business in 1877 after the founder exited.
Hermann Bloch had a total of six children with his wife Hermina (1836–1904), born with a relatively significant age gap. The eldest, August, was born in 1857, and the youngest, Felix, was born 16 years later in 1873. This third generation began co-owning the family business from the end of the 19th century, with Felix Bloch—whose fate and house this contribution is dedicated to—joining the firm as a public partner only in 1915.

Before we focus on Felix Bloch's house at Hlinky Street number 92, where he lived from its construction in 1926 until 1939, it is worth briefly analyzing the residences and their changes over time for all the sons of Hermann and Josef Bloch. This analysis can deduce the motives that led not only Felix Bloch to build his house in this specific location.
The Address Book of Brno from 1885 is the last city directory that still mentions the original founder of the company, the eighty-three-year-old Enoch Bloch, living at Großer Platz (now náměstí Svobody) number 28 at that time. His older son Hermann is marked in the directory as a Lederfabrikant (leather manufacturer) reported at Ugarterstrasse (now Václavské) number 10. The younger son Josef is identified in the directory as a Hausbesitzer (house owner) at Schreibwaldstrasse (now Hlinky) number 60.
When Josef Bloch died in 1886, his only son Ernst (1868–1923) inherited the house at Hlinky number 60, mentioned in the address books until his death in 1923. (1)
Directories from the following years list Hermann Bloch both at the mentioned address Václavské 10 (directories from 1885–1898)(2) and then from 1899 to 1901 at Basteigasse 22 (now Rooseveltova). From 1902 to 1908, he is noted at Pilgramgasse 2 (now Divadelní), until finally, the 1909 directory mentions Hermann Bloch's residence at Schreibwaldstrasse, or Hlinky, number 92.
Hermann's eldest son, August Bloch (1857–1921), is listed in Brno's directories with only two addresses, both on today's Hlinky Street. First, between 1896 and 1911, it is Schreibwaldstrasse 1, and then from 1912 until August's death in 1921, the directories list Schreibwaldstrasse 126.(3)
Concerning Hermann's second son, Leopold Bloch (1858–1933), we would find him in Brno's directories starting in 1885 at Fischergassse 148 (now Rybářské), and then already on Hlinky Street. Initially, the addresses are Schreibwaldstrasse 1 (directories from 1892–1903) and Schreibwaldstrasse 38 (directory from 1904). From 1905 until his death, Leopold Bloch lived at Flurgasse 18, in a now-nonexistent building on Křížkovského Street, approximately where the tram bridge is located.(4)
Another son, Johann Bloch (1869–1940), also chose Hlinky Street for his residence, as after leaving the house at Václavské 10, his address is listed firstly as Basteigasse 22 (directories from 1899–1901) and Wawragasse 11 (directories from 1902–1903), but from 1904 to 1907 his name in the directories indicates the address Schreibwaldstrasse 29, and from 1908 finally Schreibwaldstrasse 120.(5)
Finally, the youngest son of Hermann and Hermina Bloch, Felix, who first appears in the city address book as a bank official (bankbeamter) in 1898, thus at the age of twenty-five, is listed at Václavské 10. Together with his brother Johann and father Hermann, the address of his residence from 1899 to 1901 is the same: Basteigasse 22. From 1902, however, city directories list Felix Bloch's residence on Hlinky Street. Initially, it is house number 46a (directories from 1902–1903), then house number 29 (directory from 1904) and the neighboring house number 31 (directories from 1905–1925).(6) Later directories already list Felix Bloch's residence at the new address Hlinky number 92.

From the addresses listed, it can be deduced that the Blochs evidently aimed to seek their residences near the factory complex, which had been located on Rybářská Street since 1867.(7) Almost all the Bloch siblings gradually began to prefer Hlinky Street, which was not only within reach of their business but also a prestigious address with residences of other entrepreneurial families from Brno. Besides the Löw-Beer family, the Bloch family undoubtedly belonged to the most common property owners on Hlinky.

It is thus understandable that Felix Bloch, whom we are observing, did not deviate from the tradition of his siblings and chose Hlinky Street as his residence. He acquired the property at number 92 based on a donation contract dated February 12, 1919, concluded between him and his sister Helene (1862–1951), who had been married to Ignaz Petschek (1857–1934) since 1884—a lignite industrialist who was among the most influential and wealthiest individuals in interwar Czechoslovakia. Helene Petschek, who remained connected to her hometown through numerous charitable activities, became the owner of the house in 1911, after the death of her father, the previous owner of the property, Hermann Bloch, who apparently lived there from the time of property acquisition in 1908 until his death in 1910. We can get an idea of what this house, built around 1883 by Simon Haas, looked like from the Cadastral Plan of Brno from 1906, as well as from a panoramic photograph of Hlinky Street from 1911. As seen, it was a one-story house with a neo-Renaissance façade, situated on the corner of Hlinky and Vinařské Streets, with an entrance located in the right axis of the house from Hlinky Street.
Only six years after the conclusion of the donation contract did Felix Bloch have the house demolished and a brand-new house built in its place for himself and his family.
In 1901, Felix Bloch married Luisa Landesmann (1881–1942), a native of Ústí nad Labem, with whom he gradually had three children. The eldest son Erwin Ludwig was born on February 16, 1902. Two years later, on May 23, 1904, their daughter Helene Sofie was born, and finally, on August 19, 1907, their second son Franz Stefan Josef Bloch was born. It is at the time when Felix and Luisa had their first child that we can observe significant changes in the addresses of his residence and finally, his inclination towards Hlinky Street. Likely due to their growing family, in 1902, he acquired the pair of neighboring houses at Hlinky numbers 29 and 31, where the family lived for almost twenty more years. In 1922, the Blochs faced a tragic event when their youngest son Franz died in Vienna. Three years later, in 1925, the eldest son Erwin married a girl from Brno named Annie Scherbak (1904–1989), and a few months prior, their daughter Helene had married Alfred Panofsky and subsequently moved to Berlin. These family events likely led Felix Bloch to leave their current address Hlinky 31 and build a new house where he would live not only with his wife Luisa but also with his son—who was simultaneously the successor of the family business—Erwin and his wife Annie.
Felix Bloch was granted a building permit by the city council in August 1925: "To the application dated July 10, 1925, a building permit is granted to Mr. Felix Bloch in Brno, Hlinky number 31 based on a commission proceeding dated July 28, 1925 to construct a two-story house with four apartments on the site of the house Hlinky number 92, according to the submitted sketch..." The documentation of the new house, marked as "Plan for the construction of a family house on parcel number 126, file number 456, land registry Křížová at Hlinky 92 for Mr. Felix Bloch, factory owner in Brno, at Hlinky 31," is dated July 1925 and is preserved in the Archive of the City of Brno. This documentation is valuable in this case as it allows us to identify both the designer and the firm commissioned for the construction. In addition to the signature of builder Felix Bloch, the drawings contain the stamp of the construction company Artur Eisler, as well as the signature "Acad. Architect Pazdirek-Coreno."
In domestic literature, Adalbert Pazdirek-Coreno (1869–1932) is almost exclusively mentioned as an architect, under whom Bohumír Čermák trained. Austrian architects and art historians, such as Friedrich Achleitner or Antje Senarclens de Grancy, have dedicated much more attention to this not-so-well-known figure. Given that several brand new pieces of information and connections regarding the architect in relation to the city of Brno were discovered during the research on the house at Hlinky 92, I would now like to turn my attention to this remarkable, yet simultaneously controversial personality and one of the pioneers of Austrian modernism.

Adalbert Pazdirek (8) was born on December 10, 1869, in Nový Jičín (9) to c.k. state official Philipp Pazdirek and his wife Barbara, née Drbalová. As Adalbert Josef, he was to be baptized in the Roman Catholic Church on January 10, 1870. He completed his secondary education in Brno, first at the state gymnasium and then at the state commercial school, graduating in 1887. From 1888 to 1891, he studied under Karl Freihernn von Hasenauer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. At the end of his studies in Vienna, Pazdirek received a special school award and the Rosenbaum Prize.(10) He then spent time in Dresden from 1892 to 1895 and later in Budapest from 1896 to 1897. It was probably during this period that he matured the idea of adding the second surname Coreno to his existing name.(11)
Pazdirek-Coreno returned to Brno probably in 1897, opening his own studio there. During this time, a project for a villa for Rudolf Jappa in Tišnov likely emerged. Pazdirek-Coreno is first listed in the city directory in 1897 at Jakubská 5, where he remained until 1906. The land register shows that the property on Jakubská Street 5 was owned by his father Filip Pazdirek since 1844 and by his mother Barbara since 1883. From 1903, the co-owner of the house was also Adalbert Pazdirek-Coreno himself.(12) Since 1900, Pazdirek-Coreno was appointed a teacher of grade IX at the Technical School of Wood Processing in Bolzano and later also taught at the c.k Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna.
However, a significant period of his life is associated with his stay in Graz, Austria, which he left for in 1903 to join his brother Ladislav Hans, an academic painter and professor at a gymnasium who became a member of the city council in Graz.(13) Through his brother, Pazdirek-Coreno gained contacts with the local business elite for whom he began designing private villas. It was in this environment that distinct and progressive projects of buildings with flat roofs were created, including the villa Lug from 1905, the villa Pramberger from 1905, the villa Reimann from 1907, and the villa at Stiftingtalstraße 67 from 1908. Despite a number of modern buildings successfully realized by Pazdirek-Coreno, he also had to endure criticism from Austrian traditionalist circles and, above all, public disqualification due to a series of scandals he himself committed. In Graz, Pazdirek-Coreno was arrested for exhibiting himself in front of local girls' schools, which cost his brother his position in the city council in 1910. He definitively left Graz in 1915 and was last registered in Stittingtal. Pazdirek-Coreno reappeared in Brno after the republic was established. Two of his registration cards are preserved in the Archive of the City of Brno. The first is from October 23, 1919, listing his residence at his house on Jakubská 5, later crossed out and replaced with a new address, Hroznová 20. The land register indicates that Adalbert Pazdirek-Coreno acquired the parcel at this address in 1918, and in 1923, "the house number 65 pop. no. 20 on Hroznová Street was built." In the property card, this object is referred to as "a summerhouse," and it is not excluded that Pazdirek-Coreno designed it himself. Interestingly, Pazdirek-Coreno bought a parcel on Hlinky Street in 1919, which was purchased from him in 1921 by Artur Eisler's firm, where the house Hlinky number 158 (now Žabovřeská 4) was built in 1923. This suggests that even the architect Adalbert Pazdirek-Coreno, upon his return to Brno, took an interest in the Žlutý kopec locality and Hlinky Street, at least with the intention of building his own house there.
The second registration card of Pazdirek-Coreno, dated March 23, 1931, when Pazdirek-Coreno was already 62 years old, brings us interesting information about his personal life. Next to his name and signature, the architect also added further initials, "Adalbert J.W. Pazdírek-Coreno" (14), and in describing his occupation, he attempted to capture all his previous functions "acad. Architect, Ing. city master builder, emeritus professor of the eastern museum for art and industry." The registration card also reveals that Pazdirek-Coreno was single and childless. An unknown official then noted the date of the architect's death on the card, "21/XII 32".

Thus, the house of Felix Bloch at Hlinky 92 originates not only from Pazdirek's final stay in Brno but also from his later design period. The question remains regarding the connection and bond between the builder and the designer, as well as whether this was Pazdirek's only architectural realization in Brno.

The three-part structure, which is architecturally fairly demanding, was undoubtedly influenced by the diagonally oriented building parcel, which also rises parallel to Vinařská Street towards the slope of the Žlutý kopec. The portion oriented towards Hlinky Street connects in the right axis of the house with the adjacent development through a projecting risalit with a garage on the ground floor, a covered loggia on the raised ground floor, and a terrace on the upper floor. The remaining part of this structure, which contained a pair of staff apartments on the ground floor and then the owners' bedrooms upstairs, is set back from the street line, so as to create a front garden space in front of the house. In the middle, polygonal mass oriented toward Vinařská Street, the architect inserted the communication spaces of the house with an entrance and staircase. The mass oriented toward the slope of Žlutý kopec is partially sunken below the terrain level and is dominated by a pair of side polygonal risalits. In this section of the house were the social spaces of the owners, such as lounges and living rooms. With a sober, puristic façade, Felix Bloch's villa does not deviate from Pazdirek's existing work. The arrangement of the individual masses and their division through polygonal and rectangular risalits, or the chamfered corners of the house, are most reminiscent of the villa in Graz at Stiftingtalstraße 67 from 1908.
Felix Bloch's house is designed as a two-generation building, containing two smaller service apartments on the ground floor and two spacious apartments with practically identical layouts for the house's owners on the upper floors. The construction was completed sometime during 1926, as plumbing plans from June of that year, stamped by the company Samuel Klein, Brno, and an advertisement published in Lidové noviny stating: "Straight and spiral staircases, cheap for sale on the construction site, Brno, Hlinky 92."

After completion, Felix Bloch moved into the house with his wife Luise, utilizing the elevated ground floor apartment, while their son Erwin and his wife Annie occupied the first-floor apartment. Valuable materials preserved in the family archive of the descendants provided identification for the individual apartments and rooms. The first of these is an album of photographs, probably taken in the 1920s or 1930s, depicting nearly all the rooms of Erwin and Annie Bloch's apartment on the first floor. This album was saved by the couple during their emigration abroad. The second important interpretative guide is the post-war testimony of Erwin Bloch, in which he reveals, among other things, the authors of the interior furnishings of their apartment: "I, Erwin Ludwig Bloch, residing in London, N.6., 40 South Grove House, who lived before the war in Brno, Czechoslovakia. I was a procurator for the leather factory E. Bloch & Söhne and had an annual income of 120,000 crowns. My wife and I occupied an eight-room apartment on the first floor of a villa built by my parents in 1926 at Hlinky 92. Our furnishings were designed and executed partly by the Vienna architect Bamberger and partly by the Brno architect Norbert Troller. Our apartment consisted of the following rooms: bedroom, breakfast room, large guest room, small guest room, salon, gentlemen's room, dining room, girls' room, wardrobe, hallway, kitchen, pantry, one open and one covered terrace."
Erwin's wife Annie was active in the women's movement and the human rights movement. In addition, she was also the secretary for the Brno German-speaking section of the International League of Women for Peace and Freedom, whose secretariat was located in the house at Hlinky 92.(15) For this reason, the Bloch house was a place for frequent visits from individuals from social circles, including the French poet and writer Jean Genet.(16)

The fateful day of the Nazi occupation was experienced by the Blochs right in their home on Hlinky. The occupying forces were to occupy and seize their house. After all, in Erwin Bloch's post-war testimony, he also states that: "On March 15, 1939, our house was occupied by the Gestapo, and twelve Gestapo drivers were housed there." This memory allows insight into the necessary accommodation for the Nazi apparatus on the very day of the occupation. Felix and Luise were then to seek shelter in the house of Johann and Erna Bloch and later move together to Prague. The last address before the deportation of Felix and Luise was recorded as Richard Wagner-Strasse 3. However, probably even before the occupation, the families attempted to escape from Czechoslovakia to Britain, as Erwin and Annie obtained travel permits from the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia on March 18, 1939: "Dear Mr. Bloch, I am pleased to inform you that you have now been granted permission to enter this country. As you will see from the attached copy, you should communicate with the British Passport Control in Prague, to whom a telegram is sent." The sudden and fateful departure of Erwin and Annie into emigration is also described by Jean Genet in his book Chère Madame: 6 Briefe nach Brünn: "Immediately after the occupation, he managed to obtain a ticket for himself and his wife to leave the country by transferring all property to the German Empire and handing over all cash and family jewelry to an SS officer who, thank God, could be bribed. There was a lot at stake then. They were allowed a suitcase of laundry, hastily packed in fear and panic."

It wasn't until March 1941, as noted in the land register, that the building at Hlinky 92 was assigned a manager, Dr. Karl Bisom from Brno. It must be noted that this is also a fascinating and likely controversial figure, as in 2001, Karl Bisom was posthumously awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the State of Israel for saving a Jewish child during the war.
However, as early as August 1941, the property passed into the ownership and administration of the Emigration Fund for Bohemia and Moravia (Auswanderungsfond für Böhmen und Mähren), which pre-evaluated the property, along with all assets after Felix and Luise Bloch. (17) From the fund's documents preserved in the Moravian State Archive, we can learn about other users of the house. A monitoring report prepared by the Emigration Fund on January 12, 1942, indicates that "4 Germans" inhabited the house. However, their coexistence was far from as harmonious as one might expect. A fairly extensive correspondence from 1942 to 1944 directly mentions some of the house's residents, allowing us to reconstruct the structure of the house's inhabitants and describe some specific individuals more closely.

From the correspondence, it is evident that the pair of ground floor apartments were rented out by the Emigration Fund as less lucrative and service apartments. One of these units was maintained by the fund as an apartment for the caretaker, who was to keep order in the house, collect rent, and provide other services. Meanwhile, the spacious apartments of the original owners in the elevated ground floor and first floor were rented out to Nazi officers.
The first person employed by the Emigration Fund as the caretaker of the house was a certain Karl Holzer, a city tram driver. Holzer and his wife Steffi occupied a two-room apartment on the ground floor oriented towards Hlinky Street. At the same time, at the beginning of 1941, one of the spacious apartments upstairs was occupied by Hauptmann der Schutzpolizei Bernhard Jensen, who complained about the caretaker's behavior: "Jensen also reports that the caretaker repeatedly acted improperly towards various roommates." During an acute dispute between Holzer and Jensen, Gizela (Elly) Suzan also lived in the house. She was said to have moved in at the beginning of 1940 and occupied a one-room apartment, located similarly as Karl Holzer's apartment in the lowered ground floor. After the Emigration Fund terminated its previous incidents with Holzer, Gizela Suzan was offered the position of caretaker, which she accepted and began performing on March 1, 1942. However, even in this case, relations between tenants did not improve. This time, the tenant of the second spacious apartment, who was the commander of the Protectorate police in Moravia, SS-Standartenführer Georg Attenberger (1897–1984)(18), complained about Gizela Suzan's behavior. Attenberger lived here with his wife Erna (née Lauser) and their dog. "Attenberger called the caretaker, Mrs. Suzan, to reprimand her. Among other things, she threw a wet rag in Attenberger's face but then apologized that it happened accidentally. When Mrs. Suzan entered the office, she began swearing on the stairs and absolutely did not want to let me speak, so I, of course, made my view clear."

After the war, the house was subjected to national administration on September 5, 1945, according to the president's decrees. How the state used it between 1945 and 1948 is a question. However, no later than in 1948, the property caught the attention of the State Security, which turned it into its conspiracy villa. This was then to serve for the detention and imprisonment of inconvenient individuals. That the house served State Security is learned only from a slight mention in the documents of Brno's water and sewage, where the new owner of the property is noted as: "From 1./I.48 send water bills to the address of the Regional Office of State Security in Brno Hlinky 92." Luděk Navara and Miroslav Kasáček in their book Must Go Boldly Forward state that here Dr. Jan Koreis (1907–1949), a former sports representative, was to be detained, who died here under still unclear circumstances on August 8, 1949. Navara and Kasáček speculate about the hypothesis whether it was suicide or beaten to death during interrogation. Ironically, at the time when State Security was utilizing the house in this way, on September 30, 1949, a restitution claim for the estate of Felix Bloch was submitted according to §12 of the restitution law. However, in 1953 these claims were definitively erased from the land register, and according to the agreement on the transfer of real estate between the local national committee in Brno and Zbrojovka Brno, n.p. dated December 20, 1952, the owner became the Czechoslovak state—Zbrojovka Brno, n.p., and the national administration was erased. A year later, in January 1954, the owner changed again, this time to the Works of Jan Šverma, n.p., and the object served as a dormitory.(19)
Currently, the house is in private ownership and underwent renovations and extensions according to the project of architect Petr Uhlíř a few years ago. Unfortunately, no authentic elements have survived in the house's interior.

The conclusion of this contribution is supplemented by a family memory from Hans Panofsky (1926-2013), the grandson of Felix and Luise Bloch, from 1998: "My maternal grandparents lived on Schreibwaldstrasse in a modern house. Joseph lived on the first floor, a gardener/driver. Peaches were once stolen over the fence with a fishing rod. My grandparents had separate bedrooms. [...] The living room was mostly locked except for certain social events. Outside Brno, we spent most of our time in a village a few kilometers away called Bitýška. The top floor of the large family house in Brno was inhabited by their son Erwin with his wife Annie Bloch and two maids. Erwin was to head the family leather tannery, E. Bloch & Söhne. He loved playing four-hand piano, took his Leica camera, and raced his car. Annie maintained extensive correspondence in the field of women's and human rights. In Brno lived her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Scherbak. Dr. Scherbak was a gynecologist/obstetrician and possibly performed the first sex-reassignment surgery. The house in Bitýška was managed by Toni Eckstein, who was one of the daughters of the three Bloch brothers Leopold, Johann, and Felix." (20)

This contribution is dedicated to Felix and Luise Bloch.

Michal Doležel


Thanks:
John Panofsky, grandson of Felix Bloch
Ines Koeltzsch

Sources:
Archiv Gianna Panofsky
Archiv města Brna
Brněnské vodárny a kanalizace, a.s.
Geni.com
Internet encyclopedia of the history of Brno
Cadastral office for the South Moravian Region, cadastral office of Brno-country
Magistrate of the City of Brno, Department of Internal Affairs Moravian Provincial Library
Moravian State Archive
Museum of the City of Brno

Literature:
SMUTNÝ, Bohumír. Brno Entrepreneurs and Their Enterprises: 1764–1948: Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs and Their Families. Brno: Statutory City of Brno, Archive of the City of Brno, 2012.

Lenka Czajkowska, Petr Czajkowski, Development of Hlinky Street after 1850 and the Property Structure of Individual Buildings with Special Attention to 1910. Contribution to the Knowledge of Suburban Architecture in the City of Brno. In: Brno in the Past and Present: Collection of Contributions to the History and Construction of Brno, Brno 2006, pp. 445-477.

Notes:
1) Based on the land register extract, the house at Hlinky 60 was built around 1875 by Milde von Helfenstein Wilhelmine. It was owned by Josef Bloch in 1884–1888. From 1888 to 1918, it was owned by his son Ernst Bloch. It was owned by Otto Friedmann in 1918–1923.
2) According to the 1870 census, his residence was Kröna 24. According to the 1880 census, the address is already Ugarterstrasse 10.
3) According to the land register extract, the house at Hlinky 126 was built around 1878 by Sigmund Böhm. The house was owned by August Bloch from 1907 to 1927. Since August Bloch died single and childless, the house owners became Jindřich and Ludmila Žaloudkovi in 1927.
4) According to the land register extract, the house at Flurgasse 18 was built around 1885 by Franz Janke. From 1903 to 1931, it was owned by Franziska Kapoun, who married Leopold Bloch in 1929. Antonie Bloch-Schmeerová owned the house in 1931–1940 and later married Antonie Eckstein-Blochova.
5) According to the land register extract, the house at Hlinky 120 was built around 1873 by Anna Pafsorek. From 1906 to 1939, the house was owned by Johann Bloch. The house was renovated in 1906 and 1914.
6) According to the land register extract, the house at Hlinky 31 was built in 1903 by Felix Bloch. He was the property owner from 1902 to 1917. Siegmund Schwarz owned it from 1917 to 1923. From 1926, it was owned by Grete Drucker and Marie Tich.
7) According to the land register extract, the property at Rybářská 15 was owned by Josef and Hermann Bloch since 1867. From 1888, it was owned solely by Hermann Bloch, and since 1906 by the firm E. Bloch et Söhne. The properties at Rybářská 9 and 11 were owned by E. Bloch et Söjne since 1903, and Rybářská 19 was owned by the firm since 1909.
8) He is sometimes referred to as Pasdirek or Pazdírek. Or in the Czech version Vojtěch.
9) The birth date is sometimes incorrectly stated as October 12, and the place of birth as Vienna.
10) "Special school award: Mr. Adalbert Pasdirek from Nový Jičín in Moravia. Rosenbaum award for best task solution: "Bronze wing of the gate designed for the entrance to the Museum of Art (according to given program) Mr. Adalbert Pasdirek from Nový Jičín in Moravia."
11) The request for the change of surname occurred in 1895, see Digital Archive ZA in Opava (archives.cz)
12) The owners of the house Jakubská 5 from 1903 were: Anna Loos, Sofie Todl, Karoline Pazdirek, Ladislav Hans Pazdirek, Adalbert Pazdirek, Philippine Pazdirek, Marie Satory.
13) The 1890 Brno directory lists his brother, the academic painter Ladislav at the address Friedhofgasse 35 (now Kounicova).
14) The initial J likely refers to the first name Josef.
15) The Secretariat of the German Women's League for Peace and Freedom, Local Group Brünn at the address Hlinky 92 is mentioned in the Great Brno Directories from 1932 to 1935.
16) Jean Genet (1910–1986) is the author of the book Chère Madame: 6 Briefe nach Brünn, published in 1988, where he describes his relationship with the Bloch family.
17) The value of the house at Hlinky 92 was estimated at 707,650 crowns. Overall, the seized and removed property, including jewelry or paintings, was estimated at 1,611,700 crowns.
18) Georg Attenberger was born in German Regensburg. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, he became known for commanding the largest anti-partisan action, Tetřev, in November 1944. He died unpunished in Munich in 1984.
19) During the Nazi occupation, the legal successor to the firm E. Bloch and sons became the Brno Lower Leather Tanning Company, a.s. In 1946, ownership was transferred to the company Baťa, a national enterprise in Zlín, according to a presidential decree. From 1952, the owner became the Czechoslovak state Kras – clothing manufacturing, a national enterprise in Brno.
20) Hans here means "the three living brothers"; the fourth, the eldest brother August, had already died in 1921. Toni Eckstein was the adopted daughter of Leopold.