Mendel Walking Tour

Last weekend we did the Gregor Johann Mendel in Brno self-paced walking tour published by the Tourist Information Centre.

The tour is about 7,5 km (4.5 miles) and takes 2,5 to 4 hours depending if you add museum visits or not.  The tour connects sites across the city associated with Gregor Johann Mendel, the father of modern genetics, and his life in Brno.

At Mendlovo náměstí (Mendel Square) is the Augustinian Abbey.  In 1843, he joined the monastery as a novice and lived there for more than 40 years.

The abbey sits between the Mendel Museum and the basilica.

After Mendel completed his theology studies in 1848, he served as a pastor for sick people at St. Anne's Hospital. 

At Šilingrovo náměstí is the Barceló hotel.  A very nice, posh hotel that opened in 2012.  The building used to be called the Municipal Courtyard where Mendel hosted meetings and lectures as vice-chairman of the Natural Science Society.

Mendel regularly contributed to the Moravian Academy of Sciences which was housed in Bishop's Court.

After he was ordained as a priest, Mendel gave his first church service at St. Michael's Church, at Dominikánské náměstí on 15 August 1847.

The New Town Hall was one of the places where Mendel participated in flower exhibitions as part of the Agricultural Society.

Mendel was a chief advisor and judge for horticultural exhibitions of the Agricultural Society.  In the 1860s many of these exhibitions were held in the Reduta Theatre.

Mendel taught physics and natural history for 14 years at the German State High School.

There's a plaque on the building in Czech, English, and German.

He gave many presentations at the German Technical University that was established in 1849.  Today it is part of Masaryk University.

In 1881, Mendel served as director of the Moravian Mortgage Bank which was headquartered at the Moravian Land Assembly.  Today the building is the seat of the Czech Constitutional Court.

Near the Bishop's Court is Mendelianum.  The premises used to be home to the Agricultural Society where Mendel was an active member.  Mendelianum presents modern genetics with other branches of science.

Lužánky Park opened in 1786 and is one of the first public parks in Central Europe.  Mendel participated in gardening exhibitions here.

Mendel is buried in the Augustinian Tomb at the Central Cemetery.  I still haven't made it out to the Central Cemetery but it's still on my list.

While we were at the New Town Hall we say some people who were protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Я за Україну. Я за Україною. Слава Україні  Stojím za Ukrajinou!  I stand with Ukraine. 

Mahenův památník

Mahenův památník, (the Mahen Memorial), is a museum-library / cultural centre dedicated to Jiří Mahen.  Jiří Mahen was a well-known novelist, playwright, and journalist.  

Mahen was the first director of the Brno Municipal Library and the Brno's Mahen Theatre is named after him.

The centre is located in the first-Republic villa where he lived from 1935 until he passed away in 1939.

The memorial was established in 1992.  There was a major renovation and it reopened in March 2019.  Officially it is a branch of the Jiří Mahen Library, which is the biggest public library in Moravia and the second largest in Czechland.

On the first floor, (the ground floor), is a public library.  The second floor is a museum with a reconstructed study. 

The attic is used as an exhibition room for lectures and other events. 

Mahen believed that libraries were a cultural hub.  In keeping with this the centre offers lectures, author readings, theatre performances, creative writing workshops and educational programmes for schools and community groups.

I found out that Jiří Mahen was actually born in 1882 as Antonín Vančura.  When he was around 19 years old, he took "Jiří Maheu" as a literary pen name but the there was a printing mistake and he was published as "Jiří Mahen" but he liked the way the misprinted version sounded and he decided to keep it.  It's kind of funny to me that so many things in Brno bear his misprinted pseudonym.  I guess things work out sometimes for the better.

23rd Strážnice Vinobraní

This past weekend was the 23rd annual vinobraní in Strážnice. 

We went on Saturday morning.  It was a full-day wine and folk festival.

Lots of wine and burčák, plus beer and slivovice, along with performances by local music and dance groups.

Here are a couple of videos I filmed at the festival.

78th International Folklore Festival

We spent the weekend in Strážnice with Kája's family.  Every year, Strážnice hosts the International Folklore Festival, the largest and oldest folklore festival in Europe.  

Czech TV even broadcasts it across the country.  This year was the 78th edition. 

The festival is organised by the National Institute of Folk Culture which is part of the Ministry of Culture. 

The festival includes dancing, music, and various competitions for both children and adults.  This year there were over 31.000 visitors who came to see 3.150 performers from across the country.

There were another 230 performers that came from Slovakia, Hungary, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the USA.

The first festival was in 1946 and it was only for ensembles from across Czechoslovakia.  In 1957, the first foreign folklore ensembles participated.  The festival is for both amateur and professional groups.

On Saturday, there was a parade that proceeded to the open-air museum and stadium.

It was pretty interesting.  It's interesting to see how each region and village's traditional costumes vary.

Malý Mehrin Museum

Today's Brno adventure was brunch and then we went to check out the new Malý Mehrin Museum which opened back in February.  Malý Mehrin means "Little Mehrin" and it is the temporary Moravian Jewish Museum which is located in a house until a permanent museum is built.

"Mehrin" is the Yiddish slang word for Moravia.     

There's currently an exhibition of 13 stops focused on stories of Moravian Jews.  

Due to the Nazi occupation and anti-Semetic policies of the post-war Communist government, the vast majority of the information in the exhibits came from outside of the country.

The museum will offer talks, lectures and children's programmes.  It will operate until the new "big Mehrin" gets built.

Back in 2021, it was announced that Brno was going to get a new Moravian Holocaust Documentation Centre.  In 2022, the name was changed to the Mehrin Moravian Jewish Museum.  

The Japanese architect Kengo Kuma won the competition for the design of the new museum.  There were three other firms in the running but the winning design was unanimously selected by a nine-member international jury.  

The building will be in the shape of an endless white ribbon with a tree in the centre.  It should be built in the city centre, between the bus and train stations, where there's currently a parking lot.

There's an endowment fund in place but the total cost of the new museum is expected to run hundreds of millions of Czech Crowns so it's not known when construction will actually begin.

Petrov Birthday Wine Cellar Party

Yesterday we went to Petrov, about 4 km (2,5 miles) southeast of Strážnice, to celebrate his friend Verča's birthday. 

The area has about 80 wine cellars that date back to the 15th century.  

The wine cellars form a street with two squares and is frequently visited by wine tourists.  In the past, local farmers weren't able to build wine cellars under their houses due to the high groundwater level.  So instead, they set up cellars on a slope a short distance behind the village where it wasn't suitable for cultivation.

During WWII the cellars served as shelters for people who were illegally escaping from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the Slovak puppet state.  

The wine cellar area was declared a monument reserve by a decree of the Ministry of Culture of the Czechoslovak Republic on 15 September 1983.  I understand that it took more than 10 years of effort before the government listed it as a monument.

The party was a lot of fun and obviously there was plenty of wine for the celebration.

The Slav Epic

The Slav Epic, Slovanská epopej), was painted by the famous Art Nouveau Alphonse Mucha between 1910 and 1928, and is a cycle of 20 large canvases.  The cycle shows the mythology and history of the Slavic people.

The paintings are on display in Moravský Krumlov, about 51 km (31 miles) from Brno.

Mucha worked on these paintings for 18 years and the cycle is considered his biggest success.  After finishing the cycle in 1928, it first went on display in Prague and Mucha bestowed it to Prague, on the condition that the city build a special pavilion to display it.

Mucha died in July 1939.  He was interrogated by the Gestapo because he was culturally important in Czechoslovakia.  During WWII, the paintings were hidden away to prevent the Nazis from seizing them.

After the 1948 Communist Coup, the communist government wasn't keen on Mucha who they considered a bourgeois artist and whose art wasn't in line with socialist realism.  So building a special pavilion to display Mucha's work wasn't a priority for the communist government so they were put on display in Moravský Krumlov in 1963.

The Slav Epic was on display in Moravský Krumlov for almost 50 years.  Prague waged a decade-long legal battle to move the paintings to the city which intensified in early 2010.  The city of Prague felt the paintings would be seen by more people...tourists...if they were located in Prague but none of the city's galleries had space for the pieces.  They are huge; up to 6 metres tall and 8 metres wide (19.8 feet tall by 26.25 wide).

In 2012 the paintings were moved to the National Gallery and stayed there until the end of 2016.  In 2017 they were taken on a two-year tour of Asia before returning to Prague in 2019.  The Asian tour was controversial and Mucha's grandson unsuccessfully sued Prague to stop the tour.

The paintings returned to Moravský Krumlov in July 2021 where they are to remain for up to five years.  In 2022, Prague signed an agreement to renovate Savarin Palace, in Prague, which is to be the painting's new home.  In my humble opinion, Prague being the capital and all, the city has more than enough things to see and do.  There weren't any problems with having the paintings in Moravský Krumlov and having the paintings outside of Prague brought tourists to South Moravia.  

Seeing The Slav Epic has been on my list of things to do for a long time.  Claudia and Nat went and saw it about 12 or so years ago but on a weekend when I was out of town somewhere.  It was worth the wait. 

Here's a Rick Steves video I found out on YouTube about Alphonse Mucha and The Slav Epic.

©Rick Steves