Emil Pirchan (1884-1957), born in Brno, started his artistic career as a student of the Viennese art nouveau architect Otto Wagner, then switched to interior design. Soon he broadened his field into commercial art with the focus on poster art and in 1913 he founded a school in Munich for applied arts and set decoration whose promising development got interrupted by the First World War. As the head of stage design at the Bavarian State Theatre Pirchan caused a sensation with revolutionary expressionistic stage decorations. During the time of National Socialism he increasingly withdrew into writing and published diverse monographs and relevant works about theatre arts and dance.