The Bloch Family in Brno

Un/Lost Hopes. The History of the Brno Jewish Family Bloch

From their arrival from present-day Rousínov to Brno around mid-19th century as leather manufacturers until their expulsion and murder of several members, the Bloch familyʾs story is closely linked not only to the history of the city and its multicultural society, but also to the experience of Central European Jewry before and after emancipation. In my talk, I will present the generations of the family in the context of a changing urban society, focusing in particular on the history of the women of the Bloch family. They developed an active civic life before and after the First World War. Finally, the everyday poetry of Lene Bloch (later Panofsky and Herrmann) is presented, which records, among other things, her experiences of her youth in Brno.

Ines Koeltzsch is a historian focusing on the history of Jewish-/non-Jewish relations in Central and Eastern Europe. She works at the Vienna Wiesenthal Insitute for Holocaust Studies and teaches as visiting professor at CEU Vienna. Her publications include, among others, the books Geteilte Kulturen. Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Prag 1918–1938 (Oldenbourg 2012) and Vor dem Weltruhm. Nachrufe auf Franz Kafka und die Entstehung literarischer Unsterblichkeit (Böhlau 2024); she is also co-author of two chapter of the book Prague and Beyond. Jews in the Bohemian Lands (Penn Press 2021).

The lecture will be complemented by Michal Doležel (ethnologist and historian of the Brno City Museum), who will talk about the importance of the E. Bloch & Söhne manufacturing plants in Brno during the First Republic, and the overall importance of Jewish industrialists in Brno.