The descendants of the Tugendhats officially requested the issuance of the villa

Prague - Descendants of the Tugendhat spouses have officially requested the city of Brno and the Ministry of Culture to return the Tugendhat villa, which the Jewish family left before the war in 1938. Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD) reports this. They wish to obtain the villa based on the law on alleviating injustices caused by the Holocaust.
    The villa, which now belongs to Brno, has been listed since 2001 as the only Czech modern architecture building on the UNESCO list. The villa in Brno-Černé Polohy was designed in 1928 by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Experts consider the building unique in its spatial concept, choice of materials, and furnishings.
    Its owners, spouses Gréta and Fritz Tugendhat, came from a family of prominent textile entrepreneurs. They used the house until 1938, when the family emigrated to Switzerland and then to Venezuela to escape the Nazis. After the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo confiscated the villa in 1940, and in 1945 it was taken as Nazi property by the then Czechoslovak state.
    According to the Ministry, the Tugendhat family did not apply for the property either between 1945 and 1948 or in the 1990s, nor did they apply for partial compensation through the Foundation for Holocaust Victims. According to information from ČTK, however, the original owners did request the villa after 1945, but the process, which is documented in the Brno archive, was not completed by February 1948.
    The Ministry of Culture has no legal instrument to intervene in the ownership relations of municipalities. Being listed on the UNESCO list imposes no obligations on the owner. The villa is a national cultural monument, and the state can only exercise its preemptive right if the city or any other potential owner wants to sell the villa. For private owners, the law imposes the obligation to care for the monument.