20. The White Dog’s House

20. The White Dog’s House

Bulharská 2

Between 1897 and 1898, Josef Wiatschka commissioned a new house in the style of late historicism on the site of the original Baroque building. It was designed by the Drexler brothers from Vienna. It served as the headquarters for Wiatschka chemists. It was the first building on the square which had electricity. The beauty of the house -- decorated with turrets, wind vanes and the gable relief of a St. Bernard with a barrel around its neck -- was admired by many. This earned it the name “The White Dog’s House”.

For several years, the second floor housed the dentist office of Oskar Gutwinski, who became famous as a pioneer of skiing in the Jeseníky Mountains. At a time when hiking trips and nature walks in the mountains were becoming popular among the townspeople, Gutwinski organised skiing lessons and the first ever races, earning him the nickname “Fast Oskar”. After the war, which he spent training military ski units, he permanently moved to his beloved mountains and rented the Lichtenstein’s cottage on the Králický Sněžník Mountain. Together with his wife, he transformed it into a renowned mountain hotel and winter sports resort. At one of the parties held at Gutwinski’s cottage, the wife of a painter from Šumperk, Kurt Halleger, became inspired to create the elephant sculpture, now a symbol of the mountain.