Semi-detached houses for German workers and employees of Škoda Works, the so-called “Little Berlin”

The project for the construction of semi-detached houses for German workers in Silesian Suburbs was approved on 15 June 1940 by Mayor Pilnáček. The construction of the eleven semi-detached houses (No. 500 to 510; their descriptive numbers were divided later, so each house represents two residential units) took place from 26 June 1940 to 30 December 1940. The houses had two parts: the main gable-roofed part and a rear ground-floor utility part with a laundry, woodshed and chicken coop /pigpen.
 

The main part of the house had a partial basement with a cellar room. The ground floor contained a separate hallway leading to the living kitchen and parents’ bedroom and a separate staircase to the first floor. Upstairs there was one room, and the design indicated the furnishings: three single beds, a wardrobe, and a desk with two chairs. There was an attic in the space, which was lower due to the slope of the roof.
 

According to the municipal authority’s protocol of 28 January 1941, these were “family houses, containing two apartments, intended for German nationals (German workers)”. According to the statement of construction costs for the Ministry of the Interior dated 21 April 1942, the construction costs for one house were CZK 50,000. František Dus, the architect of the Agrarian Credit Union and subsequently an employee of the municipal technical office, designed the houses.
 

The construction of the semi-detached houses was followed by the construction of five semi-detached houses No. 511–515 for the employees of Škoda Works. Their construction took place from 25 July 1940 to 15 February 1941 in today’s Jánošíkova Street; two houses were built in the eastern front in front of Markovická Street and three houses in the western front behind Markovická Street. They had slightly different layout: the cellar was larger, extending under the entire service wing, the houses had a common automatic water pump, the service wing had a bathroom instead of a laundry room, a laundry room instead of a woodshed, and a storage room instead of a pigpen/chicken coop. The loft layout was also slightly different: instead of a children’s room for three offspring facing the yard, a larger room was placed in the middle of the house with two smaller lofts on either side of it. The design is apparently a modification of Dus’s design, signed by architect Bešta, who was probably an employee of the construction division of Škoda Works.
 

LZL