Zprávy památkové péče 2014, 74(2):115-123

"W. A. Mozart lived here". On the construction history of the Bertramka estate home in the 19th and 20th centuries

Klára Mezihoráková

The former vineyard estate house No. 169 in Smíchov, known as Bertramka, is a generally well-known building due to its association with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who resided here in the years 1787, 1789 and 1791. Today it serves as a memorial to the composer. Literature has devoted considerable attention to Bertramka since the 1st quarter of the 19th century to the present, but this has mostly focused on seeking out traces of Mozart's former stays. The approach was probably one of the reasons why a detailed evaluation of the estate's architecture as a whole is still lacking.
Bertramka undoubtedly deserves a detailed art-historical study. It is one of the few farmhouses still standing in Smíchov, standing out among the several dozen vineyard buildings in the Smíchov cadastral territory from those which have mostly either disappeared completely or are hidden beneath new reconstructions. This article is dedicated to the residential home of the estate, especially to the transformations in its architecture during the 19th and 20th centuries. During this period, the attention that Mozart's admirers focused on the building exercised a specific influence on Bertramka's architectural history. These admirers included most of all the owners of the estate in the years 1838-1895, the Prague businessman Lambert Popelka (1798-1879) and his son Adolf (1826-1895), and later the representatives of the Mozart community in Czechoslovakia, which became Bertramka's owners in 1929.
Although it is clear that the period up until the end of the 18th century was the decisive period for the development of Bertramka's layout, the present appearance of the building suggests that it was significantly marked by the following period of the 19th and 20th centuries. The submitted article attempts to trace and summarize these structural modifications using preserved construction documents, iconographic material, and contemporary literature (including a considerable number of magazine and newspaper articles). This includes not only the reconstruction after 1800, hard to determine today, but also its subsequent renovation after a fire at the estate in the 1870's and two large reconstructions in the latter part of the 20th century.
The statute as a valuable Mozart monument that Bertramka has enjoyed since at least the 1830's provided a long-term guarantee for the reverent protection of particularly the areas of the house that were directly associated with the former composer's presence. In the 1940's, however, the rooms' appearance were determined to be non-original. The aim of construction activities in the 1940's and 1950's, then, became the restoration of the rooms and all of Bertramka to the state in which it supposedly or actually would have been during the lifetime of W. A. Mozart. This effort led to certain renovations which now appear to have been inappropriate. This particularly includes the removal of the "Mozart Room" as it looked before World War 2. What was certainly a very authentic and impressive space was replaced by a reconstruction that now rather comes across as sterile. At the same time, however, it is clear that Bertramka's status as a Mozart memorial was the very fact that ensured the continuation of the homestead house until today, when both its construction and its historically and aesthetically valuable architectural ensemble can be appreciated.

Keywords: Bertramka, estate, 19 th century architecture, Mozart

Published: June 1, 2014  Show citation