"A completely devastated house, because in about three places it was leaking in such a way that the steel fillings and everything were already corroded. Of course damaged, partially damaged furnishings, all the floors, the tiles were very much, I mean damaged. Well, and of the built-in interior, basically, part of the library in the living great room was preserved and nothing else. Yeah, all the parents' bedrooms, the kids' bedrooms, it was all gone. Completely, but I guess that's gone. Of course, that was just after the Second World War, apart from the furnishings. The main living area, that's gone too, but it was all beautifully described at the time. The Moravian Gallery had the Brno armchair, the Barcelona armchair, this leg and the greenhouse in its deposits, so it was all there. It was all traceable. But there was no will on the part of the investor. These original elements that were produced in the West and the furnishings were somehow financed and brought here. So not even one, not one chair, not one chair is original. Since Mies, it's basically failed to make its way over here, and it was all been substitutes."
"Mies' villa was basically totally unsuitable for these climatic conditions. Every winter totally shake the house. But when it was repaired over and over again, when someone would live there, the details were still wrong, that is, it had to be painted and repaired endlessly. It was cracking, leaking, condensation. Which it still there is today, so it's got to be done again. I guess you always have to look at it, it's such a beautiful big statue. Which doesn't meet any thermal standards or anything like that, but it's nice, and so I have to decide that I'm going to put money into it and I'm going to maintain it the way it is. And yet, I have to accept that it's going to cost some money. Well."
"That was such an interesting shock, because as they were shooting into the flats, they were actually shooting into the flats from below, just the upper passages, the living rooms. And my uncle was making models, nice models of ships, and they shot them all up. When he came home from work the first day and saw it, he was very, I mean, not careful in his choice of words. But it was a funny situation that he was actually angry that they shot up his models, and he wasn't maybe angry that they were occupying. Yeah, too, but it was kind of funny.
But it was sad, well, it was crazy sad because two years before that, two and a half years, was basically freedom. We were going West, I was doing sports, so we were in West Germany, no problem in Austria. We were still going to West Germany in the 1980s. I played handball, so we had a friendship."
Josef Janeček was born on 3 February 1953. His grandfather Josef Janeček was a builder. In 1938, he built a hydrotherapy and examination institute from a dilapidated hotel in Lázně Bělohrad, which had very modern equipment, including an X-ray machine. However, after the Protectorate was established, the building was taken over by the German administration. The spa served German youth, including the Hitlerjugend. After the war, the institute returned to the ownership of MUDr. Josef Janeček, the father of the witness, but this did not last long. After 1948, the institute was nationalized, as were other local spa facilities. However, the builder Janeček indirectly influenced his grandson Josef. He decided to study at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague, specializing in the reconstruction of protected buildings. He obtained a job at the State Institute for the Reconstruction of Monumental Towns and Buildings, which was the only one in Czechoslovakia to deal with this field. Josef Janeček thus participated in the reconstruction of Villa Tugendhat, Villa Stiassni and other important buildings, especially in Brno. After the fall of the communist regime, he became, together with his sister, the restituent of the hydrotherapy and examination institute in Lázně Bělohrad. As a designer, he participated in the reconstruction of the entire spa complex and thus completed the work of his grandfather.
