Department store Bachner (Obchodní dům Bachner) (1932)

In the 20th century, department stores were built in several locations in the centres of cities. Until shortly after World War II, the facade of this building was used to draw attention to the Bachner company. Where Erich Mendelsohn drew attention to the dynamic form of the Schocken department stores, for example, by using round or curved architectural forms, in this cubic building he focussed particularly heavily on the placement of large advertisements. This was once part of the architecture and created an exciting appearance. Flags could be lowered from four large, vertically mounted flagpoles. A circular logo with a B was mounted on the corner. On the facade was a sign advertising the product range in Czech: ‘This is the new department stores' for everyone’. In Zámecká Street, the company's lettering was placed between the ground floor and the first floor. The high letters B and h protruded into the windows of the first floor.

With the ground floor, the front building has six floors. The windows made it possible to display goods on the outer walls beneath the windows. Unfortunately, the windows were changed during the reconstruction of the building between 1988 and 1990. The light and vertical emphasis was disturbed by installing four windows of the same size with horizontal bars.

The construction of the building is made of reinforced concrete. The steel comes from the local Vítkovice steelworks. The grid of the individual bays is 5.62 x 5.69 metres. The walls are masoned and the facade is clad with ceramic tiles supplied by RAKO, as is so often the case in the Czech Republic. 

The Bachner company was successful and needed to build a larger department stores'. The son Erich Bachner of the investor Moritz Bachner met the architect Erich Mendelsohn during a winter sports holiday in Switzerland. Whether he visited Ostrava is not documented. As Mendelsohn already had a lot of experience with public buildings and department stores, he was certainly a trustworthy partner. Construction began on 18 August 1932 and ended just one year later on 5 October 1933. It sold everything from food to household items, fashion and textiles.

As Erich Mendelsohn had already fled from Germany in 1933 when the Nazis seized power, he was no longer able to follow the construction of the department stores'.

With the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Germany on 14 March 1939, most members of the Bachner family fled. The house was subsequently aryanised and served as a branch of the Czech department stores' chain Brouk a Babka.In 1944, only the windows were destroyed by air raids. In contrast, the RIX department stores' not too far away was hit and later demolished. After the end of World War II, Erich Bachner got the building back. However, he was expropriated again, but this time by the communist rulers in 1948. Shortly afterwards, the store's name was changed to Horník, which means miner in Czech and was intended to emphasise one of the city's industrial pillars.

Already in 1984 the house was declared national heritage.

In the 1990s, the building was still used as a department store. In the following years. the individual floors were subsequently used for different purposes. As the activities within the city centre of Ostrava have now shifted to other areas, both the Bachner department stores' and this part of the city centre are uninteresting and less frequented by the majority of people.

• NPÚ Obchodní dům Bachner
• historickaostrava.cz Obchodní dům Bachner Horník
• encyklopedie.ostrava.cz Obchodní dům Prior