Leoš Janáček came to Brno when he was eleven and remained faithful to the city for long sixty-three years. With his versatile work, he co-created the foundations for the present modern and cultural Brno. He lived, worked and composed in the city; he experienced the joys and tragedies of his life there. Just a few artistic figures have ever been so closely connected with a city like Janáček was connected with Brno. The city of Brno surely has not lacked important figures in its history. However, two names have a very special position although none of them had been born in Brno, they spent a substantial part of their creative life in the city. Gregor J. Mendel, the founder of genetics, is the first one and composer Leoš Janáček the other one. Janáček left his native village of Hukvaldy for the foundation of the Monastery in Old Brno in 1865, when he was eleven, and remained faithful to Brno his whole life. He lived his private as well as artistic and professional life there and his work has substantially influenced the cultural face of the city. It is necessary to realize that in the time when Janáček started to get involved in community matters, at the beginning of the 1870s, Brno was mostly German. It is an important fact because the young composer greatly contributed to the emancipation of the Czech minority. During the 1870s, he became the choirmaster of two outstanding Czech clubs, Svatopluk and Beseda brněnská. He organized concerts in which he performed not only as the conductor and choirmaster but also as a piano virtuoso. In 1881, he established an important Czech music school in Brno, the organ school, which was the predecessor of the Brno conservatory. He founded and managed Hudební listy, the first Czech music periodical in Moravia; he co-founded the Czech National Theatre and some Czech societies. He also promoted the establishment of Czech university education in Brno. After 1918, the situation changed completely, not only thanks to the annexation of surrounding Czech municipalities to Brno but mainly due to a new political situation. Brno became a Czech city, or more precisely, a multicultural city. Janáček immediately transformed the organ school into the conservatory and gave it the foundations of a premium music school. In the 1920s, Janáček was already a world-renowned composer. No wonder, that the world viewed Brno not only as a dynamic and modern city but also as a place where music of this genius sounded for the first time. In 1925, the Faculty of Arts of the Masaryk University awarded Leoš Janáček an honorary doctorate, the first one in its history. Janáček died in 1928, in a moment when the "Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in Czechoslovakia" was in full swing. Brno experienced its cultural climax, to which Janáček had contributed so much.