Behind the Glass

The Villa Tugendhat and Its Family

Michael Lambek

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Hardback

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English

University of Toronto Press
06 October 2022

Social & political philosophy; Cultural studies; Social & cultural anthropology

The Villa Tugendhat, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928, is an icon of architectural modernism. Behind the Glass tells the true story of the large family connected to it, who rose to prominence through industrial textile manufacturing.

The book traces the transformations in the life of the family, from their roots in a Jewish ghetto to part of the wealthy bourgeoisie in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to adaptation in interwar independent Czechoslovakia and flight in the face of Nazi invasion. Michael Lambek examines the generation born in the first decade of the twentieth century, especially Grete Tugendhat

Lambek's maternal grandmother

who commissioned, inhabited, championed, and relinquished the distinctive modern house.

An exploration of life in and surrounding the Villa Tugendhat offers a factual portrait that runs counter to the fictional one portrayed in Simon Mawer's The Glass Room. The book also provides unpublished correspondence between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Tugendhat, Grete's son, as well as a description of the impact of a 2017 family reunion.

Behind the Glass reflects on the meaning of a ""family"" and suggests that it is more than a nuclear household

a family reproduces itself over generations, a product of how it represents itself and is represented by others.

By: Michael Lambek
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 36mm
Weight: 720g
ISBN: 9781487542191
ISBN 10: 1487542194
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 06 October 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Illustrations Preface Part I: House and Family 1. People Who Live in Glass Houses 2. Writing the Family Part II: Family and Firm 3. Before Löw-Beers 4. Founding the Firm 5. The Patriarch and His Siblings 6. The Sister Wives 7. The Double Cousins, before the War 8. Departures and After 9. The Patriarch’s Son Part III: Grete and Her World 10. Grete and Her Family, in Former Times 11. Grete and Her Family, the War Years 12. Grete and Her Family, after the War 13. The Philosophers: Helene Weiss, Käte Victorius, Ernst Tugendhat, Martin Heidegger 14. Tugendhat, after Heidegger Part IV: The Family Regrouped and Represented 15. The Reunion 16. Reconciliations in Brno 17. Looking Back: Conundrums of Identity and Representation Notes Timeline Acknowledgments Index

Michael Lambek is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He holds a Canada Research Chair in the Anthropology of Ethical Life, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2000.

Reviews for Behind the Glass: The Villa Tugendhat and Its Family

Behind the Glass is the story of a great Moravian Bavarian Jewish family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the architectural marvel in which they lived. The aAnthropologist Michael Lambek writes of his kin and their world with frankness, affection, and deep social insight. A fascinating and timely account. - Natalie Zemon Davis, Professor of History, University of Toronto Exceptional architecture depends on enlightened clients. This book focuses on the remarkable Tugendhat family and sheds some light on the courage, patience, and foresight that helped create one of the most spectacular houses of the twentieth century. - Dietrich Neumann, Professor of the History of Modern Architecture and Urbanism, Brown University Through the lens of both an ethnographer and a son, Lambek takes us to the symbolic heart of his extended family -- Tugendhat House, a striking early example of Mies van der Rohe's modernist work, commissioned by his grandparents in the years between world wars. Lambek offers us a sophisticated and thoughtful examination of how the idcea of a family is rooted in the sources - both material and symbolic -- that come to represent it. - Camilla Gibb, award-winning author of Sweetness in the Belly