The Residenceof the Norwegian Ambassador

in Prague

A Czech journey throughthe 20th century

Due to their country’s location in the heart of Europe, only very
few nations experienced the turbulent events of the 20th century
with greater intensity than the Czechs. In Bohemia and Moravia,
economic boom, faith in democracy and immense creativity
alternated with Nazi atrocities, one-party dictatorship and Cold
War stagnation.
The residence of the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Norway in
Prague has borne witness to all the dramatic events that haveshaped, for good and for bad, both Czech and European modern
history. This beautiful villa also mirrors the major changes in therelations between our two countries after World War II.
The villa at No. 20 Na Zátorce Street represents a small cornerof Norway in one of Central Europe’s most distinctive residential
areas. This publication documents the turbulent history of thisbuilding. I would like to express my thanks to Terje B. Englund,
who has mapped out and written its story.
We would also like to honour the memory of the two people
who built the villa. The fate of Ema and Artur Melichar mustnever be forgotten, not least their conviction that it makes
sense to build bridges.
Prague, April 2019

Robert Kvile
Norwegian Ambassador to the Czech RepublicVillas for the nation’s elite
The city district of Bubeneč is in
the northern part of Prague. This
area was originally pasture landsurrounding the Zátorka estate,bounded in the north by the Royalhunting ground, today’s Stromovkapark, and in the south by therailway track to the small townof Buštěhrad, built in 1863. Whenthe estate ceased to operate as afarm in the 1870s, the land in rural
Bubeneč was available for theconstruction of residential houses.
The first to build a new
Renaissance villa close to theVilla construction, Bubeneč 1909
chestnut alleyway leading from
Stromovka to the Lesser Side in1872 was industrial magnate Vojtěch Lanna. Other ambitious individuals soon
followed suit. At that time, over 70 percent of Austro-Hungarian industrial
production was carried out in the Czech lands, and Czech nationalism wason the rise. For the country’s elite, owning a prestigious villa in Bubeneč had
not only become visible proof of individual success, but also of the growing
importance of the Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
After 1895, construction activity increased significantly when Bubeneč wasincorporated into the capital. An urban plan was drawn up which was carefully
adhered to by the builders. Clearly inspired by the iconic Bedford Park in
London, the urban plan designed an enclave of monumental villas with large
gardens and with Na Zátorce Street as one of its axes. Avenues of chestnut
trees accentuated the green and idyllic atmosphere of the new neighbourhood.
When Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918, as one of the states to emerge
from the ruins of the Habsburg monarchy, the villa district gained theunofficial status of a small power centre in the new state.
Leading architects such as Max Spielmann and Jan Kotěra were commissioned
to design prestigious houses for coal barons, bank managers and factoryowners, many of whom were of Jewish origin. Two of Czechoslovakia’s mostprominent sculptors transformed one of the streets in the southern part of the4

villa district into an art quarter, with villas inspired by Slavic mythology.
World-renowned painter Alfons Mucha was so enamoured with the locationthat he built a beautiful villa there, which he also used as his studio.
The special status held by Bubeneč’s villa district was finally confirmed in thesummer of 1926 when then Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš and his wife Hana
moved into a newly renovated villa at No. 9 Na Zátorce Street.
The building, which is today the Residence of the Norwegian Ambassador
to the Czech Republic, was completed in 1929 as one of the last villas to be
erected in Bubeneč. This was probably because the land in the southernpart of the villa district was on a steep slope. Moreover, it was bounded bya high railway embankment, with trains trundling by as they journeyed from
Prague to the coal town of Kladno.
Nonetheless, the location in the middle of Na Zátorce Street and at the endof the side street, V Tišině, showed great promise. The land was ideal fora builder who aspired to erect a majestic and prestigious villa and, at thesame time, possessed the financial resources to do so.
Ema and Artur Melichar, husband and wife, had both.

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The Zátorka mansion in 1926

Czechs, Germans, Jews
Ema Metzlová was born in 1887 in Telč, a picturesque town between Prague
and Vienna. At that time, the Kingdom of Bohemia was multi-ethnic, as was
the Habsburg monarchy of which it was part. Rivalry was growing between
the two largest of these groups, the seven million Czechs and three million
Germans.
The question of language was particularly delicate. In the second halfof the 19th century, the Czechs had established themselves as a modern
nation with an economic, political and intellectual elite. They had become
increasingly outraged that their Slavic mother tongue did not hold equal
official status to German.
Bohemia and Moravia’s 120,000 Jews were caught in the middle. They
were often bilingual, but since many Jews were engaged in business andentrepreneurial activities, and indeed had extensive contacts in other partsof the Habsburg Empire, they usually referred to German as their main
language. This was especially true of the Jewish population in the big cities.
The opposite was true of the Metzl family in Telč. The tannery owner Moritz
Metzl, his wife Karolina, and their six children spoke Czech to each otherboth in and outside the home. Their relatives later commented that Ema,
the “brains of the Metzl family”, and her sister Olga, who was three years
her junior, were completely assimilated into Czech society.
For Artur Melcher, born in 1878 to a Jewish family in Kolín, the desire to
assimilate into Czech society was completely evident. Once he came of age, hechanged his name to the Czech-sounding Artur Melichar and officially declaredhimself as having no religion. While around the turn of the century someBohemian Jewish intellectuals were attracted to Theodor Herzl’s Zionism,
Artur and his liberal friends in the Czech-Jewish movement endeavoured
enthusiastically to become closer to the majority Slavic population.
Artur himself made a crucial decision when in autumn 1900 he moved
to Prague to study. In what was then Bohemia, young men, who sought
to become lawyers, usually studied at the German part of Charles
Ferdinand University, but Artur decided to join the Czech part.
Ema Metzlová and Artur Melichar married in 1908, the same year that Artur
passed the final state examination in law studies. Sugar played a key rolein their life together.

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Telč around 1890

A class journey in sugar
At the end of the 19th century, Bohemia ranked among the most important
European producers of “white gold”. The town of Kolín, Artur’s birthplace, wasat the centre of the Czech industrial fairy tale. Due to its mild climate and clay
soil, the arable land along the Elbe is very suitable for growing sugar beet.
In 1880, the chemist Bernard Mandelík founded his first sugar refinery in
Ratboř near Kolín. Thanks to Mandelík’s expertise and business acumen,
the Ratboř sugar factory grew into one of the most profitable industrial
enterprises in Bohemia over the next few decades.
Artur and Ema Melichar were close to the Mandelík family thanks to theirprofessional and family ties.
Artur met Robert Mandelík,
Bernard’s eldest son, who wasthree years his senior, and his
father’s successor at the Ratboř
sugar refinery at the turn of the
century when both men were activein the Czech-Jewish movement in
Kolín. Their progressive attitudes
laid the foundation for lifelong
collaboration, whereby Artur’s role
was to act as legal adviser to the
expanding Mandelík corporation.
In 1909, family ties were alsoestablished. Ota Mandelík,
Robert’s younger brother, married
Ema Melichar’s younger sister,
Olga Metzlová. The same year
Ema lost her child immediately
after childbirth. Over time, shedeveloped a motherly relationshipwith her niece Hana Mandelíkova,
who was born in 1912, treating her
as if she were her own daughter.

Ema and Artur Melichar in 1908

The foundation of Czechoslovakia
in 1918 brought good times to the8

Ema’s driving licence from 1931

Managing clerk Artur Melichar, around 1920

Melichar couple. Ema and Artur lived in an apartment building in Prague city
centre, close to Palacký Bridge. Artur was the managing director and co-ownerof a metal trading company. It was a period of economic growth, and Artur
regularly travelled to Western Europe on business. By 1920, he was alreadyable to afford a stay at a Swiss sanatorium for Ema and himself. A few years
later, Artur was given his first of many assignments as member of the board of
directors of the various companies run by the Mandelík family.
One of these contracts was crucial to the Melichar family’s advancement up
the social ladder. In 1924, Artur was appointed legal advisor to the Union ofCzechoslovak Sugar Refineries. In reality this was a lobbying organization
run by Robert Mandelík and other sugar producers which, through cartel
agreements and good relations with the authorities, guaranteed stableprices. There were vast amounts of money involved. In 1926, Czechoslovakia
was rated as the second largest sugar producer in Europe. Sugar alone
accounted for more than 12 percent of the country’s total export revenue.
By the second half of the twenties, Ema and Artur had definitively become
part of the Czechoslovakian elite.

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Artur was accepted as a member of the Czechoslovak Automobile Cluband the Gentlemen’s Club, the latter established exclusively for rich
entrepreneurs. Ema officially used the title of “managing clerk’s wife” andplayed an enthusiastic role in cultural life, while simultaneously assisting
Artur with his investment activities. The social status of the Melichars was
definitively confirmed in 1926. The five hundred-crown banknote issuedthat year was signed by Robert Mandelík, a newly elected member ofDouble wedding in the Mandelík family, Prague 1908. In the back row from the left Artur, Ema and Bernard10
Mandelík. In the front row from the left Ema’s mother Karolína, Ota Mandelík and Olga Metzlová.

11the Board of Directors of the Central Bank and Artur’s friend and closest
business partner.
Ema and Artur’s advancement up the social ladder says a lot about
the relatively liberal atmosphere in Czechoslovakia between the wars.
Although anti-Semitism was still a reality in some parts of the population,
the political and economic elites respected the ideals set out in 1918 by
the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš G. Masaryk, on the occasionof the foundation of the Republic:
National identity was not associated with ethnicity but with loyalty
to the Czechoslovak Republic and its democratic and secular ideals.
Masaryk himself was of Slovak-German origin, Ema and Artur had Jewish
roots. They were all equally good Czechoslovaks.

A tribute to Masaryk in reinforced concrete
At its meeting on 20 July 1928, the City Council in Prague made the decision
to sell an undeveloped site with an area of more than twenty ares at No. 20
Na Zátorce Street to Ema Melicharová. The selling price is not listed.

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The fact that Artur’s name was left out of both the sales documents and allother papers related to the sale was most likely a mere security measure.
If, for some reason, his many business activities were threatened bybankruptcy, it would not have been possible to confiscate the villa in which
the couple had invested all their assets.
The building permit states that the projected house had a built-on area of ​​252 sqm, comprising two floors and a high attic. The façade is north facing,while a south-facing veranda and stairs lead down to the large garden.
The contract for the construction of the villa was awarded to Matěj Blecha’sbuilding company, which had already completed several residences in13Bubeneč. The company was in collaboration with leading Czechoslovak
architects, but the Melichars’ villa was probably designed by the company’s
then owner, Josef Blecha, who was also an architect.
Blecha’s drawings depict an elegant neoclassical building. The choice ofstyle was hardly random, as the Melichars wanted to demonstrate theircommitment to Czechoslovakia.
After its establishment in 1918, the young state needed numerous buildings
for state institutions, universities, courts and banks. Neoclassicism quickly
became the dominant architectural style of official Czechoslovakia.
The clean lines were timeless and in harmony with the surroundings, butalso marked a departure from the Austro-Hungarian era. The emphasison symmetry was inspired by antiquity, although the building material
used was modern reinforced concrete. Neoclassicism was elegant andmonumental, without being pompous or ostentatious, much like thefounding father of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš G. Masaryk. The president
determined the direction of the architectural style when in 1920 hecommissioned one of the leading proponents of neoclassicism, Slovenianarchitect Jože Plečnik, to modernize Prague Castle.

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Josef Blecha had just finished work on the magnificent residence of painterAlfons Mucha on the other side of the street when his firm began to build
Ema and Artur’s villa in summer 1928. The construction work progressed
remarkably quickly. As early as the end of February 1929, inspectors
from the Municipal Building Department declared that the villa had been
completed. Central heating was installed, and electricity, gas, water,
sewage, and a telephone line were connected.
One month later, the owners of the house were informed that it was
ready to move into. The newly built villa at No. 20 Na Zátorce Street was
designated building number 620 in Bubeneč. The formal completion of theconstruction process is dated 2 May 1929, when the villa was entered into
the land register.
Ema and Artur clearly intended their home to be used as a high-class venue
for gatherings and receptions. Guests enter the villa into a monumental
hall, the walls of which are covered with dark oak panels, drawing attention
to the exceptional style and taste of their hosts. Three lounges are
symmetrically located off the hall, one of which had a piano, another a bay
window looking out onto the beautiful garden, and a third with a dining areafor hosting large dinners.
The first floor was the couple’s private apartment. An impressive dark
oak staircase led from the hall up to their private quarters. Even from theoutside, the villa had an air of respectability. The neoclassical building
blended in with the villa across the street and with the redbrick house nextdoor, inspired by the Dutch architectural style, into which entrepreneur
Lumír Kapsa had recently moved.
The Melichars spent eleven years in their spacious villa in Bubeneč. Bothwere passionate about art and culture and held regular get togethersat their home, attended by leading Czechoslovak painters, writers andmusicians.

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Ema loved music, played the piano herself and spent considerable
resources supporting young talent. One of those who was able tocomplete his musical education thanks to her financial assistance was
the young pianist and composer František Pollak. Artur devoted muchof his time to the applied arts. During the 1930s, he built up an extensive
collection of crystal vases, handmade in Bohemia at the beginningof the 19 th century. The hospitable couple who lived in the house
at No. 20 Na Zátorce Street was undoubtedly among Czechoslovakia’s
cultural elite.

The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Although Ema and Artur were not interested in politics, they could not but
notice the horrific developments in Central Europe in the autumn of 1938.
By signing the Munich Agreement in September of that year, Britain andFrance had stabbed President Edvard Beneš in the back. Czechoslovakia
was forced to cede the Sudetenland to Hitler’s Germany. In the weeks that
followed, 130,000 Czechs, Jews and Germans opposed to the Nazis fled to
Prague and other Czech cities.
During the November pogrom – mockingly called “Kristallnacht” by
the Nazis (the Night of the Broken Glass) – synagogues were set on firein Liberec, Mariánské Lázně and dozens of other towns in the annexed
Sudetenland. Jewish shops and houses were looted on a massive scale;the flow of refugees grew stronger.
Racial persecution eventually spread to what was left of Czechoslovakia.
The Bar Association and the Sokol movement expelled Jewish members.
Prime Minister Beran’s government, which was installed after the Munich
Betrayal, took “preventative measures” by firing all state administration
employees of Jewish origin. In March 1939, the catastrophe came to a head,

Helga Weiss, 14 years old: Deportation to Theresienstadt 194216

with the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany. The country was
renamed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Adolf Hitler celebrated
the occupation with a gala dinner at Prague Castle.
It is uncertain whether Ema and Artur tried to get out of the Protectorate.
Maybe their identification with Czechoslovakia was so strong that they felt
safe there for a long time. Perhaps they did try to escape but left it until
it was already too late. In any case, Ema and Artur were not among theProtectorate’s 30,000 Jews who managed to be saved.
In August 1940, the Melichars were forced to hand over their villa to the
Auswanderungsfond für Böhmen und Mähren (Emigration Fund for Bohemia
and Moravia). The fund was created six months earlier to give a cloak oflegitimacy to the Nazi theft of Jewish property. Ema and Artur had tomove into a flat in an apartment building and were told they would receive
compensation for the villa once they had obtained their emigration permits.
This was a hideous scam. In October 1941, the couple were deported to theLodz ghetto in one of the first transports to leave Bohemia.

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The heavily guarded Lodz ghetto comprised more than a hundred factories
and workshops in which Jewish prisoners produced equipment forthe German war machine. Artur was 63 years old at the time, Ema was 54.
The Prague couple was held in a building for older prisoners. Here they
managed to survive for almost one year. In autumn 1942, the Germans
began the mass transport of prisoners to the Chelmno extermination camp,where mobile gas chambers had been introduced. Ema was included in thetransport, officially bound for work in Germany; Artur was too old.
Ema was murdered the day after she arrived at the camp, most likely on
12 September 1942. Along with about fifty Jewish women, she suffocatedto death, gassed with carbon monoxide in a sealed van that drove from
Chelmno to prepared mass graves in the forest. According to his prisoner fileat the Lodz ghetto, Artur died of heart failure on 8 May of the following year.
Their villa did not stay empty for long. As early as autumn 1940, senior
Protectorate officials and high-ranking Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst officers
moved into the villas of deported Jews. Ema and Artur’s villa was taken over by
Bohemia’s vice president Leo Schubert. The 55-year-old Sudeten German had
a long career as mayor in northern Moravia, was a decorated member of the
Nazi Party and held the rank of SS-Standartenführer.
Another Sudeten German, Karl Hermann Frank, lived across the street from
Schubert, in what was renamed Yorck Strasse in honour of the Prussian

Joseph Goebbels visits Na Zátorce 9, November 194018

commander. The former book dealer from Carlsbad, who ran the entire
security apparatus during the Protectorate, confiscated the villa from bankdirector Max Kantor. A little further to the west, the magnificent villa thatbelonged to the Jewish Petschek family, was turned into the headquarters ofGeneral Rudolf Toussaint, military commander in German-occupied Bohemia.
In 1942, immediately after the new year, Schubert was unexpectedly
removed from office and thrown out of the villa. The official explanation
was that he had enriched himself on the assets confiscated from thedeported Jews. The Sudeten German had evidently sold off Ema and Artur’svaluables to an extent that even caused a stir among Nazi circles.
Schubert was replaced by Horst Naudé. The year before that, the former
Berlin lawyer was a trusted collaborator of Reinhard Heydrich, Reich
Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, and one of the chief architects of the
Holocaust. The fact that the official owner of the villa now became theCzech Land Office (Das Land Böhmen) attests to Naudé’s importance.
Horst Naudé lived in Ema and Artur’s house until May 1945, when he and
the German occupation forces fled west. After two years in US captivity hebecame a free man. Leo Schubert hid in Austria after the war but lived inWest Germany from 1949 onwards. Neither of them has ever been declared
legally responsible for complicity in the murder of 77,297 Czech Jews.

In the service of the people’s democracy
In March 1945, President Beneš travelled from exile in Britain to Moscow
to meet with Klement Gottwald. The chairman of the Communist Partyof Czechoslovakia spent the war years in the Soviet capital. With thesupport of Stalin, he had been drafting an action plan for a National
Front government, a unification government that would assume power inCzechoslovakia as soon as the German occupation forces were defeated.

19

Gottwald’s draft government programme was adopted with minor changes
and subsequently published in April in the liberated town of Košice. The
main points of the programme involved radical changes: the nationalisationof all major banks and businesses, the banning of some political parties,
a limited number of approved parties, the appointment of communists to
key positions in the new government and the role of the Communist Party
as the largest party in the interim National Assembly.

The Košice Programme became the most important instrument used by
the Communists to promote the “people’s democracy”, the one-party
dictatorship in Czechoslovakia which would last four decades. The man
appointed prime minister and hence also a leading figure in the dismantlingof democracy was long-time Ambassador of Czechoslovakia to the Soviet
Union Zdeněk Fierlinger.
In July 1945, less than two months after the liberation, Prime Minister
Fierlinger moved into Ema and Artur Melichar’s villa.
At that time, the appalling extent of the Holocaust had started to become
evident, but there were no confirmed details of the fate of the Melichars. Ema’s
younger sister Olga survived the war in the United States and was the formal
heiress of the property. Nonetheless, in August 1945, Olga and her family did
not take over the house. Instead, it was taken over by the Czechoslovak state.
The villa at No. 20 Na Zátorce Street became part of the war settlement.
In response to what had happened in the years before the war, when many
Sudeten Germans had allowed themselves be used as a tool by Hitler’sGermany to break up Czechoslovakia, in May 1945 President Beneš issued
a decree on the confiscation of the property of “Germans, Hungarians,
traitors and collaborators”. This also applied to Ema and Artur’s villa.
Indirectly, therefore, the Czechoslovak authorities had acknowledged theconfiscation in 1940 by the Emigration Fund as legitimate and Das Land
Böhmen as the rightful owner of the villa.
The same procedure was followed for other buildings in Bubeneč that theGermans had stolen in 1940 from Jews who had either fled or were later
deported.
The opulent palace, which had been confiscated during the war frombanker Jiří Popper, was handed over to the Soviet Union in 1945 as its newembassy in Czechoslovakia. The following year, the newly elected Secretary
General of the Communist Party, Rudolf Slánský, moved into the villa of
Holocaust victim Vilemína Altschul Bondy. The Secretary General enjoyedliving in the beautiful house at the bottom of Na Zátorce Street for a shorttime only. In 1952 Slánský, who had himself lost his parents and brothersin the Holocaust, was sentenced to death as a “Zionist and bourgeois
nationalist traitor” and executed.
Zdeněk Fierlinger and his French wife Olga Theresie Favre lived in the
Melichar family villa for 19 years. In the last decade, he was Chairmanof the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia.

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Zdeněk Fierlinger with Joseph Stalin, 1945

In the period between the wars, Fierlinger pursued a successful career inCzechoslovakia’s foreign service and was considered to be one of Edvard
Beneš’s few close friends. The president’s personal trust was also crucial
to his appointment as head of the “Košice” government in 1945. However,
Fierlinger utterly betrayed his confidence. In the power struggle between
the president and the communists which led to the Czech coup in February
1948, Fierlinger systematically took the side of the Communist party.
Even when his friend Jan Masaryk was found dead on the pavement in the
courtyard of the Czernin Palace two weeks after the coup, Fierlinger did
not change course. Over the next few months, he made a significant effort
to merge his party, the Social Democrats, with the Communist Party ofCzechoslovakia. In practice, this meant the demise of the country’s oldest
democratic party.

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After emigrating to the United States, Marie Jana Korbelová, later known
as Madeleine Albright, studied Political Science. As part of her studies, shewrote her thesis on Zdeněk Fierlinger. Her conclusion is merciless: this man
was democratic Czechoslovakia’s answer to Vidkun Quisling.

The Kingdom of Norway moves into the villa
In the summer of 1964, Fierlinger retired and had to move out of his official
residence at No. 20 Na Zátorce Street. At that time, the decision was madeto transfer the villa to the Administration for Service to the Diplomatic
Corps, which had orders to rent the building to an ambassador seeking a
residence. Perhaps it was not entirely by coincidence that the Diplomatic
Service chose a country that had closed its embassy in Prague a few years
beforehand: The Kingdom of Norway.
When Norway opened its first embassy in Prague in 1945, relations
between the two countries were still in the romantic phase. Their common
experience of Nazi German occupation, coupled with the desire ofgovernments in Prague and Oslo to build bridges between East and West,
formed the basis of promising cooperation. Writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s
solidarity with Slovakia at the turn of the century was commemorated by an
official day of friendship, celebrated in both countries.
With the Communist takeover in 1948, and the surprisingly harsh
criticism of the coup by Norwegian Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen,
good relations between the two countries came to a sudden end. Overthe next few years, before the Iron Curtain ultimately divided Europe
in two, Norway had taken in more than 300 political refugees from
Czechoslovakia. In the 1950s, Skoda cars and JAWA motorcycles soldwell in Norway, but as the Cold War became even colder, political
relations fell to freezing point.
In 1957, the Communist party’s official newspaper Rudé Právo accused
the archivist at the Norwegian Embassy in Prague of being the handlerof a Czech television journalist accused of espionage. The journalist
was later sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for supplying intelligenceto the United States and “another NATO country”. That same year,
the Norwegian Security Police revealed that the Czechoslovak State
Security (StB) had been engaged in extensive espionage activities in
Norway.
By the end of 1958, the Norwegian authorities had run out of patience.
The embassy in Prague was closed and responsibility for diplomatic
relations with Czechoslovakia was transferred to the embassy in Vienna.
The Norwegian authorities officially argued that the closure was “foreconomic reasons”, but the Czechoslovaks perceived the act exactly as it
was intended – as a diplomatic slap in the face.

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It took seven years before Norway decided to reopen its embassy in
Prague. The fact that the Czechoslovak authorities immediately offered
the Norwegian ambassador a highly fashionable villa in Na Zátorce Street
as his new residence could be interpreted as a desire to forget the clashesof the past. The Communist regime had initiated a cautious liberalization
process, one of the elements of which was to become closer to the West.
Egil Ulstein was the first ambassador of Norway to have his official residence
at the Melichars’ villa. Like the rest of Prague, the building was also displaying
traces of decline at that time. Therefore, before the former war pilot moved inin April 1966, the villa was quickly renovated. Furniture was purchased in the
exclusive Forum department store in Oslo and transported to Prague, alongwith paintings, etchings and busts. The result was an exquisite and representative residence with a sophisticated design and excellent location.
The potential of the residence as a venue for meetings was only used toa limited extent. After Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, allattempts to become closer to the West were put on hold. Events at theresidence over the next two decades reflected the cold relations between
Czechoslovakia and Norway. Social functions rarely took place, and thevast majority were receptions held for employees of the Foreign Ministry
and members of the diplomatic corps, with the occasional dinner forcolleagues from friendly embassies.

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The Prague Spring raised high hopes

The most notable event at the time of normalization under Husák’s regime
was a gas explosion in the basement of the villa in the mid-1970s. In someplaces, the parquet flooring was badly hit on the ground floor, but the blast
did not cause any permanent damage. The most obvious reminder thattime had not come to a complete standstill in the Bubeneč villa district was
the trains to and from Kladno, which rambled by along the railway tracks
behind the garden every half an hour.

A meeting place in the spiritof Ema and Artur
After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Czechs set about redressing thedamage wreaked by 40 years of totalitarian rule. One of the first priorities
was to return the property confiscated by the communist regime to private
individuals, i.e. to the original owners. In the case of the Melichars’ villa,
Ema’s sister Olga’s descendants were considered.

Democracy at last. The Velvet Revolution, Prague 198924

In autumn 1940, Olga and her husband Ota Mandelík escaped miraculously
from the Protectorate. They spent the war years in the US, where they lived
with their daughter Hana. They only heard about Ema and Artur’s terrible
fate when they returned to their homeland after the liberation. Two of
Olga’s four brothers and their entire families were also murdered in the
Holocaust.
One of the few survivors with any ties to the villa at No. 20 Na ZátorceStreet was Ema’s former piano student, František Pollak. In 1936 heemigrated to Palestine where, under the name of Frank Pelleg, he becameover time one of the leading Israeli pianists, renowned for his interpretationof the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Pelleg also established himself inthe new state as a conductor and music teacher.
Olga and her relatives soon realized that developments in Czechoslovakia
after the liberation were heading in the wrong direction. Not only were
the sugar refineries and private properties confiscated from the Mandelíkfamily. In the summer of 1945, Ema’s niece Hana married Václav Beneš,a nephew of President Edvard Beneš. The family thus definitely fell out offavour with the new ruling elite.
When democracy was quashed three years later, they decided toemigrate to the United States for a second time. Ema’s piano was one of
the few things they could take with them from Czechoslovakia. And so,they decided to look ahead. Like many other families who had lost theirrelatives in the Holocaust, they found the memories too traumatic totalk about.
Unlike Olga, her daughter Hana lived to see the fall of the communist
regime. As early as autumn 1991, the District Court in Prague 6 handed
down a judgement stating that Ema Melicharová’s niece was to be granted
full ownership of the villa at No. 20 Na Zátorce Street. The democratic
Czechoslovakia had managed to put right the injustices of 1945 inrecord time.
The Norwegian ambassadors were Hana Benešová’s tenants for the next
14 years. During this time, the residence underwent extensive renovation,
both inside and outside. King Harald and Queen Sonja were able to see
for themselves its stylish interiors during their state visit to the Czech
Republic in spring 1997.

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In 2005, Hana Benešová’s daughters Nina Hajda and Eva Hanhardt decided
to sell the villa to the Kingdom of Norway.

Today, the building is owned and managed by Statsbygg, the Norwegian
Directorate of Public Construction and Property. Although the ambassador’sresidence in Prague is not one of the largest in the Norwegian foreign service,it undoubtedly boasts one of the richest histories. Its location is also unique.
Today, the villa district in Bubeneč has about one hundred buildings and is
one of the most compact and best-preserved residential areas in Central
Europe built between 1870 and 1930.
The last chapter of the history of the Norwegian residence was written
in May 2019.
Exactly 90 years after Ema Melichar was officially registered as the owner,
the Norwegian Embassy had two ​​stones of the disappeared (Stolpersteine)
placed in front of No. 20 Na Zátorce Street in memory of its original owners
and their tragic fate. At the same time, they confirm Norway’s respect for Ema
and Artur Melichar’s original intention – the villa will continue in the future to
be a meeting place that helps build cultural, musical and social bridges.

Acknowledgements: Daniel Baránek, Øystein Braathen, Susan H. Brock, Radim Dvorský,Petr Dvořáček, Nina Hajda, Eva Hanhardt, Ladislav Jouza, Jaroslava Kučerová,
Gunnar H. Lindeman, Zdeněk Lukeš, Hana Pokorná, Radana Rutová, Monika Sedláková,
Adam Sitarek, International Tracing Service, Jewish Museum in Prague, National
Archives in Oslo, National Archives in Prague, Parliamentary Archives in Prague,
Regional Museum in Kolín, University of Lodz Centre for Jewish Studies.
Photos: ČTK, Tomaš Krist, Mandelík family archive, National Archives Prague, Prague 6
Municipal District archives, Reddit, Jiři Staněk, Eva Beate Strømsted, Telč Museum34Norwegian Ambassadors residing in the villaat No. 20 Na Zátorce Street:
Egil Ulstein 1966 – 1969
Thor Brodtkorb 1970 – 1973
Torfinn Oftedal 1973 – 1975
Henrik Andreas Broch 1975 – 1976
Olav Lydvo 1977 – 1980
Georg Krane 1980 – 1988
Knut Elias Taraldset 1988 – 1993
John Egil Grieg 1993 – 1996
Mette Kongshem 1996 – 1999
Lasse Seim 1999 – 2004
Peter Nicolay Ræder 2004 – 2009
Jens Eikaas 2009 – 2014
Siri Ellen Sletner 2014 – 2018
Robert Kvile 2018 –