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.