Statue of "The Orphans" from Löw-Beer Villa found in Brno after ten years missing
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A marble statue titled "The Orphans," created by Italian sculptor Antonio Tantardini, has gone on display at the Löw-Beer Villa in Brno after being missing for more than a decade. The sculpture originally stood in August Löw-Beer's villa on Hlinky Street but vanished after the city sold the building to a private owner. It was only located this past February — in the storage depot of a museum in Vyškov — after the family offered a reward for information leading to its discovery.
The marble figure weighs nearly four hundred kilograms and could fetch as much as a million crowns on the market. But for the grandchildren of August and Alice Löw-Beer, its true value lies in its status as a family heirloom. August Löw-Beer gave the statue to his wife in 1923, shortly after their house on Hlinky was completed, and it adorned the mansion's entrance hall from then on.
"I'm truly happy that my grandfather bought this statue for my grandmother and gave her such a beautiful gift. I first saw it in 1992," said Katherine Boswell, granddaughter of August Löw-Beer. That was when the descendants of the textile magnate and philanthropist first traveled from Switzerland to Brno. They returned to the building in Brno's Pisárky district in 2017. "The first thing we noticed was that the Tantardini statue was gone. That's when we started searching for it," recalls Peter Koenig, another grandson of August Löw-Beer.
The sculpture appeared in no registry
The search for the mid-nineteenth-century statue only concluded this past February, after the reward was announced. All along, the piece had been sitting in the storage depot of the Brno City Museum in Vyškov — a building used for storage jointly by the museum and the Brno city hall. "It wasn't listed in any inventory or system. That's why it was somewhat forgotten," explained historian and South Moravian Region deputy for the TOP 09 party Michal Doležel. According to him, the reward ultimately never had to be paid out.
"The Orphans" in a children's home
August Löw-Beer built the villa in 1922 and lived there with his family until 1938, when he fled the Nazis. The building was later confiscated by the Gestapo, then nationalized after the war, and the Czechoslovak state turned it into a children's home. According to Doležel, the rest of the villa's original furnishings were likely looted during and after the war — the statue turned out to be the only surviving piece of the original interior.
After 1989, August Löw-Beer's descendants deliberately chose not to pursue restitution of the building, since it served a genuinely useful public purpose — caring for infants. "Since the statue is called 'The Orphans,' it symbolized something good and created a certain connection," Boswell explained.
The children's home in August Löw-Beer's villa operated until 2011. A year later, the city sold the building to a private owner — and it was around that time that the Tantardini statue disappeared from the villa. "We were somewhat surprised that the city sold the villa. At the time, the building was in fairly poor condition," Koenig noted.
The house on Hlinky awaits renovation
According to Doležel, the villa's current owner has for several years announced plans to renovate the building and open a rehabilitation center there, yet the house remains empty and no work has begun.
The sculpture has been temporarily placed in the Löw-Beer Villa, which is run by the Brno City Museum — symbolically reconnecting it with the history of the well-known Brno family. Its future is still being discussed: it is to be handed over to a restorer and then returned to the family's ownership. The plan, however, is for the sculpture to remain in Brno.
Source: ct24.ceskatelevize.cz
