Jaroslav Böhm was born on 3 December 1888 at 44 Milínov, Plzeň Region. His father, Prokop Böhm, was a shoemaker who inherited his trade from his father; his mother came from the nearby village of Kornatice and was the daughter of a landowner. Between 1908 and 1914, Böhm studied civil engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he received relatively conservative training: he was taught by Josef Schulz, Adolf Liebscher, and Jan Koula. Subsequently, he decided to continue his studies at the Jan Kotěra’s Academy of Fine Arts, where he enrolled in the academic year 1918/1919. Although he dropped out of his studies in the same year, he met Jindřich Freiwald, who returned to Kotěra’s school after serving in the army a year before. They joined to establish a construction company, with Jindřich Freiwald as an architect and Jaroslav Böhm as a designer and engineer. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Freiwald and Böhm specialized in several types of buildings: family houses, urban tenement row houses, apartment buildings, theatres, and savings banks. After the death of Freiwald, Böhm made his living as a contractor between 1945 and 1948, retiring after 1948. He probably died in 1961 in Prague.

 

The author would like to thank Pavel Šimáček and Gabriele Pavlišová for their archival research at the Czech Technical University Archives in Prague.
 

LZL