Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism 9781350172272, 9781350172326, 9781350172319

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Designing Transformation Jews and Cultural Identity in ­Central ­European Modernism

ii

Designing Transformation Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism Edited by Elana Shapira

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 © Editorial content and introduction, Elana Shapira, 2021 © Individual chapters, their authors, 2021 Elana Shapira has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image: Lajos Kozma, Holiday Home in Lupa Island north of Budapest, 1935; Reproduced in Kozma’s book Das Neue Haus (The New House, Zurich: H. Girsberger, 1941). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shapira, Elana, editor. | Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism (Symposium) (2019 : Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien) Title: Designing transformation : Jews and cultural identity in Central European modernism / edited by Elana Shapira. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021004876 (print) | LCCN 2021004877 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350172272 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350172296 (epub) | ISBN 9781350172319 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and society–Europe, Central–History–20th century. | Modern movement (Architecture)–Europe, Central. | Jewish architects–Europe, Central. | Jewish artists–Europe, Central. Classification: LCC NA2543.S6 D45 2021 (print) | LCC NA2543.S6  (ebook) | DDC 720.943–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004876 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004877 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-7227-2 ePDF: 978-1-3501-7231-9 eBook: 978-1-3501-7229-6 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgments

vii xii xvi

Introduction: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism  Elana Shapira

1

Part 1  Designing Their Homes in Central Europe

39

1 2

3 4 5 6

The “Bauhaus Shtetl”: Opposing Conservatism in New Leopold Town in Budapest  Rudolf Klein

41

Shaping Modern Bratislava: The Role of Architect Friedrich Weinwurm and His Jewish Clients in Designing the Slovak Capital  Henrieta Moravčíková

59

Adolf Sommerfeld—Co-Producing Modern Architecture and Urban Design in Berlin  Celina Kress

73

Entangled Histories: The Contribution of Jewish Architects to Modernism in Croatia  Jasna Galjer

89

An International Style Synagogue in Brno: Otto Eisler’s Agudas Achim Synagogue (1936)  Zuzana Güllendi-Cimprichová

105

Identity and Gender as Obstacles? A Comparison of Two Biographies of Jewish Architects from Krakow  Kamila Twardowska

121

Part 2  Outsiders/Insiders—Cultural Authorship and Strategies of Inclusion

137

7

Lajos Kozma, “Judapest,” and Central European Modernism  Juliet Kinchin 139

8

Refuge and Respite: Oskar Wlach, Max Eisler, and the Culture of the Modern Jewish Interior  Christopher Long

157

The Art and Design of Anna Lesznai: Adaptation and Transformation  Rebecca Houze

173

9

Contents

vi 10

The Art of Survival: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Children’s Art at the Theresienstadt Ghetto  Megan Brandow-Faller

Part 3 Survival Through Design—Projecting Transformative Designs onto the Future 11 12 13 14

189

205

Flights of Fancy: Willy de Majo and the Youthful Foundations of a Lifelong Design Practice  Lesley Whitworth

207

Sustaining Independence: Marie Frommer’s Networks and Architectural Practices in Berlin and in New York  Tanja Poppelreuter

221

“Memory’s Instruments and Its Very Medium”: The Archival Practices of Émigré Designers  Sue Breakell

237

Facing the Sun: German-Speaking Émigrés and the Roots of Israeli Climatic Building Design  Or Aleksandrowicz

253

Bibliography Index

267 295

Illustrations 0.1a Adolf Foehr, Brandeis Toy Department Store, Provaznická 13, Prague, 1930. Institute of Art History CAS. © Petr Zinke 2020 0.1b Adolf Foehr, Drawing for Brandeis Toy Department Store, Prague, 1930, in Adolf Foehr, Bauten und Entwürfe aus fünfundzwanzig Jahren, Neubert & Söhne, Prague, 1934. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. Photo: Institute of Art History CAS. © Eva Janáčová 0.2 Ferdynand Kassler, Sprecher House, Shevchenko Avenue 7, Lviv. The former seat of the management of the State Mineral Oil Factory “Polmin” in Lviv. Currently the seat of the Lviv Oblast Trade Unions. Source: National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 3/1/0/8/1424 1.1 View of New Leopold Town from Margit Island. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020 1. 2 Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány, the apartment building of Alföldi Sugar Factory, Pozsonyi Street 38-40-42, 1935–1936, view from South-East. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020 1.3 Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány, the apartment building of Alföldi Sugar Factory, Pozsonyi Street 38-40-42, 1935–1936, staircase in Nr. 38. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020 1. 4 Frigyes Spiegel and Endre Kovács, apartment building in Pannónia Street 19, 1928–1929. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020 1.5 Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány, Dunapark Restaurant in the apartment building of Alföldi Sugar Factory, Pozsonyi Street 38-40-42, 1935–1936. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020 1.6 Dávid Jónás, Phönix-Courtyard, 1928, Katona József Street 27. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020 2.1 Friedrich Weinwurm, Hugo Stein Villa, Porubského 4, Bratislava, c. 1927. Source: Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau, 14, no. 2 (1928): 65 2.2 Friedrich Weinwurm and Ignác Vécsei, Jewish hospital, Šulekova 16, Bratislava, c. 1932. Source: Forum 1932, 2, no. 2 (1932): 35 2.3 Friedrich Weinwurm and Ignác Vécsei, Housing Complex Unitas, Šancová 21–63, Bratislava, 1931. Photo: Josef Hofer, Bratislava City Archives

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16 41

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48 50

63 65 67

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Friedrich Weinwurm and Ignác Vécsei, Department Store Schön, Obchodná 4, Bratislava, 1935. Photo: Josef Hofer, Bratislava City Archives 69 3.1a Adolf Sommerfeld, Synagogue in Berlin-Köpenick, Postcard, 75 c. 1912. Source: Archiv der Museen Treptow-Köpenick, Berlin 3.1b Adolf Sommerfeld, Drawing for the construction of a new synagogue for the Jewish community in Köpenick, street and court (street view and court view), c. 1912. Source: Bauaktenarchiv des Bezirks TreptowKöpenick. BA Treptow-Köpenick von Berlin. Bestand: Baupolizei Köpenick Freiheit 8; signature: 1214, page 26 76 3.2 Sommerfeld House, the topping-out ceremony, December 18, 1920, view from the entrance side, Limonenstraße, Berlin. Architects: Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, 1920–1921. Source: Courtesy of Paul Sommerfeld 80 3.3 Tenement housing block, “Freimietenhaus” near the Botanical Garden in Berlin-Steglitz. Architect: Otto Rudolf Salvisberg, 1925–1926; Source: AHAG Sommerfeld project folder. Courtesy of Paul Sommerfeld 81 3.4 Large-scale settlement Zehlendorf “Onkel-Toms Hütte,” terrace houses. Architect: Bruno Taut, 1926–1931. Photo: © Markus Hilbich, Berlin 2010 83 3.5 Andrew Sommerfield and family relatives in the hall of the Sommerfeld house designed by Walter Gropius, 1920–1922 (destroyed). Collage by Andrew Sommerfield, c. 1961. Source: AHAG Sommerfeld project folder. Courtesy of Paul Sommerfeld 85 4.1 Mathias Feller, Villa Feller, Jurjevska Street 31–31a, Zagreb, 1909/11. Photograph of the interior; hall and gallery. Paintings and reliefs: Fritz Hegenbart, Furnishings: M. Ballin, Munich. Source: Innen-Dekoration (Darmstadt, 1914) 92 4.2 Robert Deutsch Maceljski’s apartment at N Square, n. 2 (today Trg žrtava fašizma / the Square of the Victims of Fascism, Zagreb) with paintings by Milivoj Uzelac—Allegory of Work (left) and Allegory of Beauty (right), 95 1925. Source: Illustrated magazine Svijet [World] (Zagreb, 1927) 4.3 Slavko Löwy, Office and residential building Radovan, Masarykova Street 22, Zagreb, 1933/34. Photo: Josip Donegani. © Ranko Horetzky Archive 97 4.4 Stjepan Gomboš, Mladen Kauzlarić, Villa Spitzer, Novak Street 15, Zagreb, 1931/32. © Ranko Horetzky Archive 99 5.1 Otto Eisler, Agudas Achim Synagogue, Skořepka 247/13, Brno. 105 Photo c. 1936. Source: Brno City Museum 5.2 Otto Eisler, Agudas Achim Synagogue: women’s gallery, Skořepka 247/13, Brno. © FOTO STUDIO H, Ludmila Hájková, Ústí nad Labem 109

Illustrations 5.3 5.4 5.5

6.1 6.2

6.3

6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

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Otto Eisler, Agudas Achim Synagogue: interior main hall, 110 Skořepka 247/13, Brno. Photo c. 1936. Source: Brno City Museum Peter Behrens, New Synagogue [Neolog Synagogue], J. M. Hurbana 220/11, Žilina, 1931. Exterior during the 1930s. Source: Nová Synagóga Žilina 112 Leopold Ehrmann, Smíchov Synagogue, Stroupežnického 290, Smíchov Prague, 1931. © FOTO STUDIO H, Ludmila Hájková, Ústí nad Labem 113 Fryderyk Tadanier (the man in the bright coat) at the construction site, 1932. Source: Krakow Museum, MHK-1793/III/88 123 Fryderyk Tadanier and Stefan Strojek, The Apartment Building of the Pension Fund of the Community Service Bank, Szczepański Square 5, Krakow. Photo: © J. Matla, 2015 125 Fryderyk Tadanier, The Holiday House for underprivileged children, Podlesie Street 157, Radziszów, photographer unknown, 1938. Source: National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 3/1/0/10/2911b/1 126 Diana Reiter photo on the application for the identification card. Collection of the National Archives in Krakow 128 Diana Reiter, Elsner Residential-Building, Pawlikowskiego Street 16, Krakow. Photo: © Kamila Twardowska, 2020 131 Lajos Kozma, Cover of A Ház magazine, October 1908. Source: Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest. Photo: © by Ágnes Soltész-Haranghy 141 Emil Tőry and Móric Pogány, Hungarian Pavilion at the Turin 143 International exhibition, 1911. Source: The Studio (London, 1911) Lajos Kozma, View of a bedroom suite for a lady, Budapest. 146 Source: Innen-Dekoration (Darmstadt, 1924) Lajos Kozma, Book cover designed in 1917 for Hét mese (Seven Tales) by Béla Balázs (Gyoma: Kner Izidor, 1918) 147 Living room in the Budapest apartment of Lili and Győző (Victor) Márkus, renovated by Lajos Kozma in 1936. Photograph by Zoltán Seidner 150 Haus & Garten Store, Bösendorferstraße 5, 1010 Vienna. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv 157 Oskar Wlach, c. 1950. Collection of the author 160 Oskar Wlach, Bedroom of the Wallner House, c. 1921. Source: Innen163 Dekoration (Darmstadt, 1922), 75. Photograph from author’s collection Max Eisler, c. 1932. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv 166 Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach, Living room of the Krasny House, Fürfanggasse 5, 1190 Vienna, 1930. Photo: Julius Scherb. © MAK—Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna 167

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Anna Lesznai Portrait, c.1910. Photograph by Aladár Székely. Source: Petőfi Literary Museum, Collection of Fine Arts, Budapest. F 5576 9.2 “Embroidered cushions designed by Anna Lesznai, sewn by peasant women,” in The Studio Year Book of Decorative Art. 1914. London: The Studio, Ltd. (1914), 233. Ady cushion II, lower left. Photograph from author’s collection 9.3 Anna Lesznai painting outdoors, Körtvélyes, 1920s. Photographer unknown. Source: Petőfi Literary Museum, Collection of Fine Arts, Budapest. F.2009.149.1 9.4 Anna Lesznai, Nagymihályi vásár (Fair in Nagymihály), 1930s. Tempera on paper. 49.5 x 62 cm. Source: Szépművészeti Múzeum/Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, 2020 10.1 Helena Mandlová, Untitled collage, 1943. Source: Jewish Museum Prague 10.2 Friedl Dicker, early 1920s, photograph. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: Michele Vishny 10.3 Atelier-Singer-Dicker, Städtischer Kindergarten Goethehof, Schüttaustrasse 1–39, 1220 Vienna, Interior (Activity Room), 1930–1932. Source: Bauhaus Archive Berlin 10.4 Atelier-Singer-Dicker, Stackable chairs for the Städtischer Kindergarten Goethehof, Schüttaustrasse 1–39, 1220 Vienna, 1932. Source: Bauhaus Archive Berlin 10.5 Sonja Spitzová, Untitled collage, 1943. Source: Jewish Museum Prague 11.1 Advertisement for JH Jersey Modelle, showing a change of business premises in Vienna. Undated. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives 11.2 Christmas Greeting, 1936. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives 11.3 Business card representing Graforel Relief Lettering. Undated. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives 12.1 Lotte Jacobi, Photo of Marie Frommer, c. 1960. Source: Alamy, R9NW5X 12.2 Marie Frommer, Seidenhaus Leiser, Königsstraße (today Rathaustraße), Berlin, 1927. Source: Ernst Pollack. Moderne Ladenbauten: Außen- und Innenarchitektur. Berlin-Charlottenburg: Ernst Pollak Verlag, 1929, 43. © MAK—Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna 12.3 Marie Frommer, Hotel Majestic, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, 1928/29, Great Bar. Source: AKG-Images, AKG26960 12.4a Marie Frommer. Speciality Shop “Regina,” New Rochelle, NY, 1945/46. Photograph: Ezra Stoller. Source: “Inexpensive Design of Speciality Shop.” Progressive Architecture: Pencil Points (New York, August 1946), 73 9.1

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182 190

194

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197 200

208 212 215 222

223 225

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12.4b Marie Frommer, Cases. Speciality Shop. “Regina,” New Rochelle, NY, 1945/46. Source: “Inexpensive Design of Speciality Shop.” Progressive 229 Architecture: Pencil Points (New York, August 1946), 75 12.5 Marie Frommer, Library in the Law Office of Mansbach & Paley, New York, 1948. Photograph: Ben Schnall. Source: “New Light on Forensic Interiors.” 230 Interiors 5 (1948): 97 12.6 Marie Frommer, Showroom and Building for Creative Looms, Inc. Photograph: Ben Schnall. Source: “Showroom and Building for Creative 231 Looms, Inc.” Architectural Record 106, no. 4 (New York, 1949): 124 13.1 HA Rothholz, Photograph of an installation featuring his book cover design for Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1938. Student work from the Reimann School, indicated by his inclusion of the Reimann School logo in the label. HA Rothholz Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives, RHZ/1/2/1/3 240 13.2 FHK Henrion in Paris, 1933. Photographer unknown. FHK Henrion Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives, by courtesy of the Henrion Estate 243 13.3 Willy de Majo, Letterhead, late 1930s. Featuring a stylized self-portrait, it shows his twin connections with Belgrade and Vienna. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives 245 14.1 Walter Strauss’s and his wife’s application for a certificate of naturalization in Mandatory Palestine, signed on August 29, 1939. Source: Israel State Archives, Mem-6397/35 257 14.2 Newspaper ad for the Hachlama sanatorium in Ramat Gan, designed by Werner Joseph Wittkower and opened in 1937. Source: Tel Aviv Municipality Yearbook, 1939, 3 259 14.3 Werner Joseph Wittkower, a schematic study of the shading effect of awnings on a southern façade in Palestine at different dates and times as appeared in his unpublished manuscript “Bauliche Gestaltung klimatisch gesunder Wohnräume in Palästina,” 1942. Source: Rudolf Feige Collection, The German-speaking Jewry Heritage Museum, Tefen, Israel 260 14.4 The south-western corner of the southern wing of Gilman Building in Tel Aviv University Campus, designed by Werner Joseph Wittkower, Erich Baumann, and Israel Stein, and completed in 1965. The design of the sun protections, as applied to the southern (right) and western (left) facades, reflects Wittkower’s emphasis on sun protection design in the Israeli context and the difference in the sun angle incidence on differently oriented facades. Source: Tel Aviv University Archive, Tel Aviv, Israel, photograph by Isaac Berez 262

Contributors Or Aleksandrowicz is an architect, researcher, editor, translator, and Assistant Professor at the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. Aleksandrowicz graduated from Tel Aviv University (2002) and wrote his master’s (2012) and doctoral (2015) theses at TU Wien. His doctoral study focused on the history of building climatology in Israel and its effects on Israeli architecture. Since 2006, Aleksandrowicz has been the editor in chief of Architectures series at Babel Publishers (Tel Aviv), a leading Hebrew book series on architecture and town planning. His book Daring the Shutter: The Tel Aviv Idiom of Solar Protections (coauthored with Israel Architecture Archive, 2015) recounts the technological history of shading devices in Tel Aviv. Megan Brandow-Faller is Associate Professor of History at the City University of New York, Kingsborough. Her research focuses on art and design in Secessionist and interwar Vienna, including children’s art and artistic toys of the Vienna Secession; expressionist ceramics of the Wiener Werkstätte; folk art and modernism; and women’s art education. She is the editor of Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, 1700–Present (Bloomsbury 2018), the author of The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy (Penn State University Press, 2020), and co-editor with Laura Morowitz of Erasures and Eradications in Viennese Modern Art, Architecture and Design (Routledge, Forthcoming). Sue Breakell is Archive Leader and Principal Research Fellow at the University of Brighton Design Archives. She formerly worked in archives in national museums, including as Head of Tate Archive and as War Artists Archivist and Museum Archivist at IWM London. Her research is located at the intersection of critical archive studies and twentieth-century art and design history. Breakell edited a special issue of Archives & Records (2015) on the theme of visual arts archive. She contributed, with Dr. Lesley Whitworth, to the catalogue of Designs on Britain, a 2017 exhibition at the Jewish Museum London produced in collaboration with the Design Archives. She is coeditor, with Wendy Russell, of Materiality and the Archives of Creative Practice (Routledge, 2021). Jasna Galjer is an art historian and Professor at University of Zagreb. Before joining the university in 2001 she worked at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb as a curator of the collection of design and architecture. Her research interests focus on history and theory of architecture, design history and cultural history, and the relations of modernism and nationalism in art historical discourses of the twentieth century. She has published on art and architectural criticism, cultural history of modernist magazines, curated and co-curated several exhibitions, including Art Deco and Art in Croatia between the Two Wars and Automobile: Culture of Mobility. Her most recent book is The Foreign Designer Antoinette Krasnik and the Wiener Moderne (2020).

Contributors

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Zuzana Güllendi-Cimprichová is an art historian and conservator of monuments. In 2018 she completed her postdoctorate, Successful Intermezzo. German Speaking Jewish Architects in Czechoslovakia 1918–1938, in History of Art at the University of Bamberg. She is a lecturer in the department of Slavonic art history and Chair of Heritage Sciences at the University of Bamberg. Her recent publications include contributions to art history with a special emphasis on architecture of the nineteenth century up to the twenty-first century, the work of Jewish architects in the Czech Republic and the transformation of their work after forced emigration and exile, as well as theory of monument preservation. From November 2020 to March 2021, Güllendi-Cimprichová was the scientific project manager of the transnational project “Cisterscapes – Cistercian Landscapes Connecting Europe” with sixteen partners in five European countries at the district administration of Bamberg. Rebecca Houze is Professor of Art and Design History at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Textiles, Fashion, and Design Reform in Austria-Hungary Before the First World War: Principles of Dress (2014) and New Mythologies in Design and Culture: Reading Signs and Symbols in the Visual Landscape (2016). Her research explores the history of fashion, textiles, women designers, and the applied arts in Central Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She has also written about national parks, world’s fairs, and international exhibitions in both Europe and North America. Juliet Kinchin is an independent design historian and the former Curator of Modern Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Her exhibitions at MoMA include The Value of Good Design (2019), Century of the Child: Growing by Design 1900–2000 (2012), Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen (2010), Designing Modern Women 1900–2000 (2013), Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye (2015), and How Should We Live? Propositions for the Modern Interior (2016). Dr. Kinchin has held faculty positions at the University of Glasgow, and The Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, and Bard Graduate Center, New York; and also curatorial positions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and in Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries. Rudolf Klein is Professor of nineteenth- and twentieth-century architectural history at Óbuda University, Ybl Miklós in Budapest. He has taught at the Tel Aviv University, Saint Stephen University in Budapest, and Novi Sad University. Klein was guest professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Kyoto Institute of Technology, and Oulu University. Klein researches nineteenth-century synagogues, Jewish contributions to modern architecture, and Jewish cemeteries in Central Europe. He authored and coauthored twelve books in the field of architectural theory and history, synagogue art and monographs on architects Zvi Hecker, Peter Eisenman, Tadao Ando, and Jože Plečnik. His books include Synagogues in Hungary 1781–1918 (2017) and Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries in Central and Eastern Europe (2018). His forthcoming book is on the unique art nouveau synagogue in Subotica (2021). As an architectural photographer he has exhibited in over seventy exhibitions.

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Contributors

Celina Kress is an architect and historian. She is an affiliated member of the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technische Universität Berlin. She was Visiting Professor for Urban Design History and Planning Theory at the University of Applied Sciences in Erfurt (2014–2015) and at the HafenCity University Hamburg (2013). She is founding partner of the urban design team [BEST] projekte für baukultur und stadt (projects for building culture and the city) and acts as a curator at the interface of spatial communication, architecture, and urban development. Kress is a board member of the Society of Urban and Planning History (GSU). Her academic work focuses on the history and theory of urbanization, the new urban-rural space, and affordable housing concepts. Her recent publications include “Aldo Rossi und die Poesie urbaner Dinge” (Mettele and Kerschbaumer [eds.], 2020), “The German Traditions of Städtebau and Stadtlandschaft and Their Diffusion through Global Exchange” (Hein [ed.], 2018), and she is the coauthor of the book Neues Bauen in Berlin. Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (2020). Christopher Long is Martin S. Kermacy Centennial Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. His recent books include The New Space: Movement and Experience in Viennese Modern Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016); The Rise of Everyday Design: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019, exhibition catalogue, coedited with Monica Penick); Essays on Adolf Loos (Prague: Kant, 2019); and, most recently, Adolf Loos: Poslední domy/The Late Houses (Prague: Kant, 2020). Henrieta Moravčíková is Professor of Architecture History in the Faculty of Architecture at Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, and Head of the Department of Architecture at the Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Her field of interest is twentieth- and twenty-first-century architecture with focus on the Modern movement and architecture heritage. She is chair of the Slovak DOCOMOMO chapter. She has published several monographs, tens of studies and critiques on architecture of the twentieth century, and has prepared several architecture exhibitions. Her book, Architect Friedrich Weinwurm (2014), was awarded the International DAM Architectural Book Award (2015). Tanja Poppelreuter is a Lecturer in the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Salford, Manchester. Her research interests lie in the field of twentiethcentury art and architecture with a focus on the perceptions and development of architectural space, German-speaking architects who fled the Nazi regime, and women in twentieth-century architecture. She has published on refugee architects to New Zealand and to the United States, on projects to modernize Baghdad during the 1950s, and on projects by modernist architects such as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. She is the editor of Glamour and Gloom that discusses the modern architecture of the 1930s in Belfast. Poppelreuter is a member of the Board of Advisors of the International Archives of Women in Architecture (IAWA) in Blacksburg, Virginia, of the Historic Buildings Council in Belfast, and of the Equality, Inclusivity and Diversity (EDI)-group of the RIBA North West, Liverpool.

Contributors

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Elana Shapira is a cultural and design historian and the editor of this anthology. She is the project leader of the Austrian Science Fund research project entitled “Visionary Vienna: Design and Society 1918–1934” (2017–2021) and lecturer in Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Shapira is the author of the book Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna (2016); editor of Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism (2018); and coeditor of Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture (2017) and Freud and the Émigré (2020). Her forthcoming symposium is on “Women, Design and Society in Vienna in the Interwar Period” MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (September, 2021). Kamila Twardowska is an art historian, curator, and PhD candidate at the Institute of the History of Art at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her academic interests are Polish architecture and urban planning of the twentieth century. She concluded her dissertation dedicated to the output of architect Wacław Krzyżanowski. She is an author of the monograph on the work of architect Fryderyk Tadanier (2016), as well as author and coauthor of other academic and popular publications on Polish modern architecture. At the Museum of the City of Krakow she curated the exhibition With the City in Mind. The Architecture of Jan Zawiejski (2018–2019). Twardowska participated in multiple research, curatorial, and educational projects regarding modernism in Poland and Central Europe. Lesley Whitworth is a historian and founding staff member of the University of Brighton Design Archives, where she is Deputy Curator and Senior Research Fellow. She has published on many aspects of the history of the UK Design Council in relation to changing consumer habits in the twentieth century. She is the coeditor and contributing author of Women and the Making of Built Space, 1870–1950 (2007). She curated the exhibition Design Research & Its Participants in association with the fiftieth anniversary of the Design Research Society (2016). She contributed to the planning and delivery of the exhibition Designs on Britain: Great British Design by Great Jewish Designers (Jewish Museum London, 2017) and the accompanying symposium at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Acknowledgments The idea for this book originated in the International Symposium “Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism,” which took place at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (May 16–17, 2019). The aim of the symposium was to explore the role of Jewish architects, designers, and patrons in shaping and coproducing Central European Modernism. Many thanks to colleagues Jasna Galjer and Rudolf Klein for their contributions to the planning of the symposium. I am grateful to Rector Gerald Bast and the head of the Research Center Alexander Damianisch at the University of Applied Arts Vienna for supporting our symposium. Special thanks to colleagues in partner academic and cultural institutions, who collaborated to enable the realization of this symposium including administrative director Elisheva Moatti at the Center for Austrian Studies at the European Forum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, deputy curator Lesley Whitworth at the University of Brighton Design Archives, and curator Rainald Franz at the MAK—Museum of Applied Arts (MAK— Museum für angewandte Kunst) in Vienna. Many thanks to the following Austrian institutions for their support of the symposium The Future Fund of the Republic of Austria (Zukunftsfonds der Republik Österreich), Cultural Department of the City of Vienna (Wien Kultur) and Wienerberger AG. This book is the result of inspiring and fruitful exchanges with colleagues and participants in the symposium. We are indebted to the authors who contributed to this anthology for their groundbreaking research and discussions in their chapters, critically advancing the scholarly discourse on the formative role of Jews in shaping Central European Modernism. Many thanks to colleagues who contributed to the research in this book including Marek Adamov, co-founder of the independent cultural center New Synagogue / Kunsthalle Žilina; architectural historian Eve Blau (Harvard University); director of Bratislava Jewish Community Museum Maroš Borský; curator of architecture Jindřich Chatrný (Brno City Museum); archivist Szandra Gero (Magyar Zsidó Múzeum és Levéltár • Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives); senior curator Éva Horányi (Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest); art historian Eva Janáčová (Art History Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences); architect and pioneer in the documentation and preservation of Jewish heritage in what today is the Czech Republic Jaroslav Klenovský (Brno); historian Ines Koeltzsch (Vienna and Prague); art historian Żanna Komar (Research Institute of European Heritage, International Cultural Centre in Krakow); author and publisher Ewa Mankowska (Krakow); historian and Jewish history scholar Michael L. Miller (Central European University Vienna / Budapest); Milica Mihailovic (former director of the Jewish Historical Museum Belgrade); art historian Mirjam Rajner (University of Bar Ilan, Israel); architectural historian Timothy

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M. Rohan (University of Massachusetts Amherst); social and cultural historian of the Jews Marsha L. Rozenblit (University of Maryland); cultural historian and GermanJewish studies scholar Lisa Silverman (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee); and Ulrike Unterweger (The University of Texas at Austin). I am grateful to the Austrian Science Fund for supporting the research leading to this book in the frame of the research project “Visionary Vienna: Design and Society 1918–1934” (FWF Nr. 619) at the Design Institute at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

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Introduction: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism Elana Shapira

Acculturation as Survival Strategy of the Jewish Minority in Central Europe The book Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism offers a contemporary scholarly perspective on the role of Jews in shaping and coproducing public and private, as well as commercial and socially oriented, architecture and design in Central Europe from the 1920s to the 1940s, and in the respective countries in which they settled after their forced emigration starting in the 1930s. It examines how modern identities evolved in the context of cultural transfers and migrations, commercial and professional networks, and in relation to conflicts between nationalist ideologies and international aspirations in Central Europe and beyond.1 The overarching thesis in this anthology is that the cultural identities “Central European” and “Jewish” were far from homogenous constructs and yet were critically related to each other; furthermore, it posits that these identities were newly reconfigured according to changing political conditions, social agendas, public discourses, and cultural networks in the interwar period.2 In order to understand the richness and complexity of the relation between Jews and cultural identity in Central European Modernism, we reconsider here how Jewish perspectives developed and further passed from one generation to another and from one cultural network to another in manners that stimulated creativity, granted meaning to artistic expressions, and contributed to cultural renewal of their cities. This anthology offers, for the first time, in-depth insight to the subject of Jewish participation in shaping and coproducing Central European Modernism. Acculturated Jews were proud members of a German Kulturnation, while maintaining their status as local citizens of Austro-Hungary.3 After the First World War and the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s rupture into the Republic of Austria, the Hungarian Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and after Galicia became part of Poland, and after Transylvania and Bukovina became

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part of Romania, Jewish inhabitants of these regions successfully reconfigured new cultural identifications in the face of threatening nationalist trends and the further rise of antisemitism. The protagonists in this anthology showed their innovation and progressiveness in forming new cultural expressions through architecture and design. This book explores plural and inclusive concepts of modernism as dynamic artistic negotiations fostering new design languages appropriate for modern men and women in the interwar period, ranging from avant-garde but well-known expressions of modernism, principally the German Neues Bauen (New Building) and the “International Style,” to lesser-recognized alternative iterations that engaged with earlier and other contemporary stylistic trends such as National Romanticism, Expressionism, and Surrealism. This broad identification of modernism also includes the works of leading architects and designers who incorporated “anti-modernist” design, namely, historicism and/or folkloristic, in their works. This self-aware engagement with the notion of plurality in modernism aimed to accommodate the challenges of Jewish identity and its transformations in the first half of the twentieth century.4 Reconsidering the role of Jews in fashioning and coproducing Central European modern design languages, and in a multiplicity of cities, remaps the rich heritage of, and  broadens the perspectives on, Central European Modernism; the cities where the Jewish protagonists of our book realized themselves in a number of ways include Belgrade, Berlin, Bratislava (German Pressburg), Brno (German Brünn), Budapest, Krakow, London, New York, Ostrava (German Mährisch-Ostrau), Tel Aviv, Vienna, and Zagreb (German Agram). There was a diversity of groups among the Jewish communities, as well as groups of Jews who lived outside these communities. Jews were separated by their association with East or West Europe, Sephardic or Ashkenazi, Orthodox, Neolog, Reform, rich, bourgeois, poor, Zionist secular or orthodox, socialist, communist, or national-conservative;5 there were those who lacked access to shared cultures or who rejected acculturation, as well as those of different professions who participated in the public discourse to different degrees, and who came within different degrees of closeness to or distance from Jewish culture and/ or who formed alternative Jewish identifications, further reflected in their cultural activities. Designing Transformation offers multiple methodologies to discuss figures who were representatives of different groups and who were engaged in the projects of modernization in their cities. It also examines the richness and the immediate relevance of these historical discourses to today’s society and design practices. Acculturation means social, psychological, and cultural adaptations to the prevailing culture. This cultural process, aiming at self-improvement, includes imitations of chosen models yet draws upon its own unique experiences to develop a self-determining character. Jewish acculturation as discussed here further means that architects, designers, and entrepreneurs negotiated their positions as cultural producers in larger society through their chosen expressions. In his book The Jews of Europe in the Modern Era (2004), French-Hungarian historian and sociologist Victor Karady raises critical questions relevant to our understanding of the acculturation processes: Why did Jews choose to live in cities more readily than non-Jews? What accounts for the particular Jewish occupational structure in the modern era? Why

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were Jews statistically more highly represented in higher education institutions and within a wide range of cultural initiatives? Karady suggests that the marginal and threatened position of Jews in European societies offers keys to these questions. Moreover, the skills achieved through narrow occupational niches available to Jews before emancipation,6 including medicine,7 together with Jewish traditions of literacy and learning, granted acculturated secular and religious Jews alike the advantage of becoming agents of modernization in these countries.8 Addressing individual and collective responses to Jewish emancipation and stressing the differences between Jewish integration processes in Western and Eastern Europe, Karady suggests that the West’s centralized states with homogenous cultures offered a clear path of linguistic and cultural assimilation, whereas Eastern states such as Romania and Poland resisted Jewish emancipation and sanctioned anti-Jewish violence, specifically in the interwar period.9 Karady discusses Jews’ reaction to the challenge of multiethnic environments for acculturation, noting that they held rewards and risks. In these contexts Jews ultimately were forced to “choose sides” in the increasingly fierce competition among national groups. This happened, for example, in Lviv (Lwów) in the competition between Poles and Ukrainians. Until the end of the First World War, today’s Ukrainian Lviv (German Lemberg) had belonged to the Habsburg monarchy and, in the period from 1918 to 1939, to the Second Polish Republic. Nevertheless, in Lviv, Jewish bourgeoisie and technology experts were “the flywheel of the creation of a modern image for the Galician capital.”10 When Karady addresses the question of identity construction, he views the processes of assimilation not as spontaneous, “natural,” or self-explanatory, but rather as “a life strategy that often demanded the daily mobilization of energies.”11 The chapters in this anthology are witness to the amount of creativity and innovation applied to realize this life strategy, here identified as “acculturation,” and as documented in modernist architecture and design.12 The Jewish residents forced out of their homes, persecuted and sent to concentration camps, or forced to emigrate during the Holocaust were robbed of their enterprises, properties, personal possessions, household effects, and clothes, as well as their social and cultural identities.13 However, along with these losses, there was the further loss of knowledge of a “Jewish living culture” in Central Europe that was consciously disabled, distorted, denied, and mostly forgotten.14 Through an interdisciplinary methodology involving cultural studies, design, architectural history, and archival documentation, this anthology’s chapters present the possibility for redress. They reconstruct and address the critical role of architecture and design in shaping Central European Jewish culture and the role of Jewish architects, designers, and patrons in shaping and coproducing Central European Modernism.

Central European Jews I—The Missing Link As sociologist Sharon Zukin argues in her book The Cultures of Cities, “culture is also powerful as means of controlling cities. As a source of images and memories, it symbolizes ‘who belongs’ in specific places. As a set of architectural themes, it plays

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a leading role in urban redevelopment strategies based on historic preservation or local ‘heritage.’”15 The question arises regarding the position of Jews and a Central European modernist heritage: Could the acknowledgment of Jewish participation in the shaping of Central European cities—as a whole cultural-political construct and on the local level—help promote policies of inclusion and reconsider the meaning of belonging? In his introduction to his volume on Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe (2012), art historian Matthew Rampley addresses current heritage discourse from the perspective of heritage and commodification, which expands the engagement with heritage through tourism and museum and cultural management.16 Addressing the subject of “Heritage as Cultural Memory,” Rampley points to an inspiring source, a publication by historian and Holocaust survivor, Pierre Nora, in France, who presents investigations of the intertwining of collective memory and heritage.17 Rampley refers to the processes by which a society deprived of “real memory” compensates itself with “sites of memory,” which are transformations of communal historical experiences into a sequence of hypostasized symbols. A quote by Nora offers insight to the perspective of the minority which wishes not to be swept away: “When certain minorities create protected enclaves as preserves of memory to be jealously safeguarded, they reveal what is true of all lieux de mémoire: that without commemorative vigilance, history would soon sweep them away.”18 Similarly, this anthology aims to show the relevance of integrating Jewish narratives and further material traces of Jews as part of Central European cultural heritage. It is surprising that the only Jewish quarter in Central Europe that has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site is the “Jewish quarter” of a Czech town in Moravia called Třebíč. One of the criteria for granting the Jewish quarter and the Basilica nearby the status of World Heritage Site is the appreciation of a coexistence: “The Jewish Quarter and St. Procopius Basilica of Třebíč bear witness to the coexistence of and interchange of values between two different cultures, Jewish and Christian, over many centuries.”19 It should be added, as it is briefly stated on the homepage of the World Heritage List for travelers, that “all Jewish inhabitants were deported in WWII, nobody returned.”20 Given the rich heritage Jews have in European cities, the question arises as to why this is the only “Jewish space” (today absent of Jews!) in Europe that has been recognized as part of the World Heritage List. Only in the past two decades have new publications tried to address the challenge of defining a “Jewish space.” In Magdalena Waligórska’s essay “Jewish Heritage Production and Historical Jewish Spaces: A Case Study of Cracow and Berlin” (2007), the author reviewing the Klezmer revival argues that in “happenings” such as these within the Jewish quarters, “revivalists sustain a very strong bond with physical Jewish space.” Yet Waligórska recognizes the problem in the possibility of using Klezmer to denote Jewish space.21 The authenticity of the medium, in this case Klezmer music, is less relevant, since the emphasis in these happenings is on constructing a dialogue. In other words, for Waligórska, the relevance is not to use the Jewish quarters in these cities to “produce heritage” but to rather offer a “virtual space of encounter” between Jews and non-Jews.22 Waligórska makes clear that one should not confuse what she considers “Jewish space” with Jewish communal life, but rather appreciate

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“‘an open, cultural and even political agora,’ where Europeans channel their interests in Jewish themes.”23 In contrast, this anthology aims to show the relevance of studying historical cases and exploring the complex and, at times, “unfriendly” historical realities, which literally “took place” before inventing new traditions, as critical to processes of establishing pluralistic citizenship and offering meaningful identifications in democratic societies today. In their essay, “Exploring Jewish Space. An Approach” (2008), Anna Lipphardt, Julia Baruch, and Alexandra Nocke refer to the production of Jewish space as “doing Jewish space,” and “lived Jewish spaces,” and point out the differences between Jewish places as sites that are geographically located, bound to specific location, while Jewish spaces are spatial environments in which Jewish activities are performed, in short: “Jewish place is defined by location, Jewish space by performance.”24 The anthology Designing Transformation argues that “location(s)” and “(spatial-medial) performance(s)” were interrelated and bound to each other in the construction of cultural identities in Central European Modernism.25 An important historical anthology edited by the Polish art historian Jacek Purchla and economy historian Monika Murzyn-Kupisz, Reclaiming Memory: Urban Regeneration in the Historic Jewish Quarters of Central European Cities (2009), offers extended discussions of Jewish heritage in different Central European cities including Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and Brno, directing specific attention to the cases of reclamation of Jewish heritage in Polish towns and cities.26 Yet this current anthology also addresses the preservation of Jewish heritage in Central Europe and the tension between invented tradition and historical research. The threat in inventing tradition is that it may prefer to avoid confronting complex realities and thus propel cultural stereotypes.27 In her enlightening book Becoming Austrians. Jews and Culture between the World Wars (2012), historian Lisa Silverman aims to probe these cultural stereotypes and addresses the subject of “Jewish difference,” reconsidering “Jewish” as a socially constructed ideal that stems from, but is not necessarily equal to, Jews. Silverman examines how Vienna’s inhabitants navigated both the physical spaces and the metaphorical coding of the city. Applying an interdisciplinary methodology using history and literature studies, she explores how Jews reacted to and inhabited the urban spaces of interwar Vienna; she brings forward the complexity of the subject of “Jewish space” as documented in fictional representations.28 In the introduction to their anthology, Space and Spatiality in Modern GermanJewish History (2017), German historians Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup raise the critical role of Jewish space on shaping and impacting history, referring to difference between concrete “Jewish place” and the creative fluidity of boundaries of “Jewish space” also in relation to the processes of changing signifiers of belonging.29 The Designing Transformation anthology examines how Jewish clients, designers, and intellectuals, who saw themselves as integral to their cities, actively initiated and participated in exhibitions, publications, and shared modernist projects in different locations. It is further suggested that Jewish protagonists discussed in this anthology consciously integrated historical knowledge and political awareness to creatively reconfigure relations between materially built locations and performed/imagined intellectual spaces as part of their distinct stake in the modernization processes of their cities in the interwar period.

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Toward the end of his introduction to “Contested Histories,” Rampley makes an apt reference to Polish Jewish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman regarding contested heritage as “modernity’s tragic inability to come to terms with ambiguity and ambivalence.”30 Rampley counters with the possibilities and progressive potential in drawing forth interwoven memories.31 He refers to the renewed interest in Jewish heritage in Central and Eastern Europe, alluding to different places in Poland and Czech Republic but does not point out the challenges of discussing this heritage. In a rather problematic manner, the author refers to the “Holocaust industry,” which prompts the questions: How do we integrate the Holocaust into the heritage of Central Europe? Furthermore, how can we integrate this complex heritage in the reality of these European countries today? We open for the readers of this anthology different ways of reflecting on the possibilities of understanding Jewish participation in modern architecture and design in Central Europe beyond the question of historical understanding, namely also its relevance to the making of contemporary culture.

Central European Jews II—An Outsider’s Modernity In November 1935, in a letter to the dentist and patron of Jewish Moravian culture, Siegfried Fehl, Sigmund Freud noted that in his family history the experience of moving from one place to another in Austro-Hungary repeated itself at least twice: “I hope it is not unknown to you that I have always held faithfully to our people and never pretended to be anything but what I am: a Jew from Moravia whose parents come from Austrian Galicia.”32 Fehl, a Moravian from Nikolsburg (Czech Mikulov) who migrated to Vienna in 1906, headed the efforts to found a Jewish museum in Nikolsburg. Freud donated twenty-three objects related to his accomplishments as the founder of psychoanalysis.33 From the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century, Jewish migration was generally directed west to east following discrimination laws, pogroms, and expulsions—specifically from Germany to Poland–Lithuania. Following the Enlightenment movement and as a result of liberal politics—the reception of civil rights in Germany, starting with the initiative of the German state, Prussia (1812), followed by other German states and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867)—there was a change of direction from east to west: from Moravia and Hungary and from Galicia to urban centers in Austria and Hungary. Between 1869 and 1910, for example, the Jewish population of Vienna increased from 40,000 to more than 175,000 (from 6.6 percent to 8.6 percent).34 Jews in these cities participated in the economic boom of liberalism and recognized that higher education often led to prosperity and integration. For example, Jews were 5 percent of the general population yet over 25 percent were enrolled at the universities of Vienna and Budapest.35 Shortly before the First World War, 617,000 Jews were living in the German Empire (as defined post 1871), and approximately 2.5 million in the Habsburg realms. During the interwar period, there was a promotion of German cultural hegemony in which German-speaking Jews participated (most spoke German or had some knowledge of it in addition to the local language). In Hungary, there was extensive knowledge of German among Jews, parallel to a strong loyalty

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to Magyar culture. Following the nationalist Christian takeover of Milós Horthy and the passing of the numerus clausus law (1920), Jewish architects and designers further secured their participation in German cultural scenes and/or adopted the German modernist language to oppose conservative politics which aimed to discriminate against them.36 From the beginning of their participation in public life and parallel to receiving equal rights, Jews did not take their claim as cultural producers in the process of modernization for granted: “Vernacular cultures, notably language and customs, [were] more highly prized than legal equality, and popular mobilization more than citizenship […] in place of a civic, mass culture, ethnic nationalisms [extolled] native history and a more circumscribed ethnic culture.”37 Even those contemporaries who remained loyal to democracy and saw the rise of antisemitism as a threat to democratic society, such as Czech author and politician Tomáš G. Masaryk, perceived “the Jews” as “a nation completely different than ourselves.”38 Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Jews fashioned themselves in the public sphere as carriers of the enlightened German cultural hegemony, yet they were treated by the majority with a certain degree of suspicion, as was their use of the modernist language. For these Jews, modernism offered critically chosen tools not only for integration and cultural mediation but for cultural renewal as well. Their own perspectives and interpretations as the traditional outsiders led them to approach this chosen modernist language in a unique fashion, whether within German, Austrian, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, Polish, or Croatian culture. After the rise of xenophobic nationalism and the increase of racial antisemitism, Jewish patrons, architects, and designers in the interwar period were intent on securing their position as equal citizens. Though they were a minority, they nevertheless claimed key roles as cultural producers for everyone. Historian Richard I. Cohen argues that there are critical factors integral to the formation of Jewish modern cultures: “Migrations, modernization, national and ethnic feuds, and new gender roles fueled the interrelations between Jews and others and among the Jews themselves and created patterns of identity and belonging that transformed the city into a formative framework of Jewish life in the modern period.”39 Cohen further suggests that “although they were aware of their visibility, sensed their ‘otherness,’ and were conscious of discrimination, they managed to forge new forms of Jewishness.”40 In the context of our book, it is particularly important to reconsider the Jewish reactions to nationalistic trends.41 In their local cities and neighborhoods they promoted the formalism and ideology of the global European city42 and practiced a “cultural mediation” that allowed for the construction of an innovative modernist hybrid language, overruling the limitations of those provincial perspectives that tended to exclude or push them aside.43 This anthology reconsiders the Czech author Milan Kundera’s argument that Jews were “the principal cosmopolitan, integrating element in Central Europe: they were its intellectual cement, a condensed version of its spirit.”44 In the historiography of Central European Modernism, “Jewish spirit” is referred to as intellectual discourse, and indeed prominent early-twentieth-century philosophers and sociologists such as Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács and his German friend, the philosopher and

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cultural critic Ernst Bloch (both students of German sociologist Georg Simmel), embodied this. Likewise, we have the perspectives of the German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin on modern aesthetics and consumption, sociologist Siegfried Kracauer on popular culture and urban modern life and that of the Zionist cultural philosopher Martin Buber, who promoted a Jewish Renaissance based on the renewal of the arts; and the above-mentioned Austrian neurologist and author, Sigmund Freud, who formulated the theory of psychoanalysis; and the cultural critic Karl Kraus, who wrote on German language and mass media; and last but not least, the Austro-Hungarian journalist and Zionist, Theodor Herzl, who promoted a national revival of Jewish identity at the beginning of the century. Each of these thinkers expressed their Jewish identification at different times and with different degrees of self-criticism and they are indeed critical to our understanding of Central European Modernism. Ernst Bloch’s writings against “Modernism” have been recently reviewed in detail and offer insight into the experience of Jewish identity in this time period.45 Bloch, who came from an acculturated, well-to-do Jewish family, refers in his essay “Symbol: Die Juden” (Symbol: The Jews, 1912–1913) to both “us” and “these people,” revealing a double perspective, one of belonging to a Jewish milieu and another of critical distance. He outlines an individual visionary outlook: “Finally there is a certain pride to be Jewish that has awakened in us Jews and beats restlessly. These people remain mixed and ambiguous. There are flexible and hard, chatty and practical individuals among them, like everywhere and not like everywhere.”46 In Bloch’s utopian vision, “hope” is defined as a “place” which is “as inhabited as the best civilized land and as unexplored as the Antarctic.”47 His book The Principle of Hope, written in exile (1938–1940), has been recently discussed as showing how people who live in poor places with dreams of a better life “would draw an imaginary vision of the future and a simple action plan to achieve it.”48 This anthology thus addresses the “Jewish spirit” as originating in close interrelations between Jewish intellectual and material cultures but rests on the complexity of particular protagonists’ experiences. Each of the figures discussed in this book expressed their Jewish identification differently, either as an individual or as part of a cultural network. Almost all were educated and many chose pioneering paths in their careers, for example, as women professionals in fields dominated by men or through ambitious urban projects. They chose modernism to secure their integration, taking part in the construction of a new shared language and, furthermore, using this language to declare their belonging.

Jewish Perspectives I—The “Enlightenment” Project and the Paradoxes of Jewish Identity A canonical architectural masterpiece demonstrating yet one example of Jewish patronage of modern architecture in Central Europe is the Villa Tugendhat (1929–1930) in Brno. The young Tugendhat couple first considered the modernist Jewish architect Arnost (Ernst) Wiesner for the commission but later preferred the most modernist architect at the time, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Their preference for Mies is not the

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subject here, nor is the aim to reconsider Mies’s architectural achievement in Brno in relation to the critical role Wiesner had in modernizing Brno. What is noteworthy, rather, and troubling, is the reasoning and problematic rhetoric behind the publicized decision to place Villa Tugendhat in Brno on the World Heritage List (2001): The Tugendhat Villa is essentially the work of a German architect, inserted in a Czech environment. […] […] Grete and Fritz Tugendhat, together with Greta’s daughter from her first marriage Hanna and their son Ernst moved into the villa in December 1930. On 12th May [?] this Jewish and above-all very progressive and anti-Nazi family, which had grown with the birth of a son, Herbert, was forced to leave Czechoslovakia in the face of growing fascist expansion.49

This anthology argues that descriptions such as these highlight the need for serious research into how Jewish patrons actively participated in shaping Central Europe’s built environment in the interwar period. In order to reconsider the distinct Jewish perspective and its role in shaping modernist home culture as explored in this book, it is important to understand the paradoxes of Jewish emancipation as established at the end of the eighteenth century. The first paradox is that the Enlightenment discovered the man in the Jew but refused to acknowledge the existence of the Jew in the man. This led to an invention of a “humanistic perspective” that denied the Jewish identification and attempted to erase specific, shared Jewish religious customs and memories. As philosopher Hannah Arendt pointed out, this mindset preferred “rational truth” at the expense of “historical truth/claims.” Yet the reality of the Jewish past was one shaped by prejudice.50 This explains why many leading Jewish intellectuals and designers referred to a cultural network that promoted a “utopian collective” or individual subjective truth rather than acknowledge historical claims: the price of being acknowledged as a “man” or a “woman” in the larger intellectual society was denial of Judaism.51 Yet ironically many Jews who participated in modernization constructed distinct perspectives of the pariah figure, often appropriating this trope.52 This identification developed as a result of or in parallel to a second paradox applied to Jewish identity: the idea that while the desire was to eliminate the Jew in the man/woman, the Jew was simultaneously, constitutionally incapable of eliminating his/her difference.53 What do these two paradoxes reveal about the Jewish take on modernization and eventually the Jewish contribution to constructing progressive cultural identities and promoting strategies of inclusion in Central European Modernism? For Arendt it was clear, as suggested in her critique of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s notion of tolerance: regarding the question of “human equality,” it could only manifest itself through insistence on difference. In this anthology it is suggested that, paradoxically, the Jewish protagonists who embraced modernity and pushed its discourses in their cities and in international platforms were aware that their choices of professional networks and artistic languages expressed their cultural difference. Each of the chapters herein tackles the question of the individual who shapes their acculturation and the choices of artistic language that successfully allowed him/her to navigate between cultures, bridging Jewish and nonJewish cultures, and enabling identity transformation. In other words, the protagonists

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here overruled the paradoxes of Jewish identity, expressing difference while securing the possibilities for change. Social change in Central Europe involved securing possibilities of coexistence and the “interchange of values” between Jewish and Christian cultures. As discussed in this anthology, these include the monumental social housing designed by architect Friedrich Weinwurm in Bratislava; the socially engaged architecture in the Siedlungen of Zdenko Strižić (Steiner) in the Trešnjevka neighborhood of Zagreb; the entrepreneur Adolf Sommerfeld’s affordable housing settlements in Berlin; the neighborhood of Újlipótváros (New Leopold Town) in Budapest; the design of Viennese living culture to which architect Oskar Wlach critically contributed; the construction of the Nowa Huta—an ideal, socialist city of workers in Krakow after the Second World War, a project in which architect Fryderyk Tadanier fulfilled an important role; and Croatian Ernest Weissmann’s work as an officer in the United States on housing and urban and regional development as well as his role heading the Industrial Reconstruction Department in UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) after the Second World War. The chapters in this collection suggest that Jewish architects, designers, and patrons solved the paradoxes of Jewish identity by their choices of networks and artistic languages. The authors reconstruct Jewish culture from material traces and historical witnesses. Included are architects Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány’s central role in fashioning a modernist neighborhood with a Jewish cultural character in New Leopold Town in Budapest; Weinwurm’s designs of buildings for the Jewish community in Bratislava; Otto Eisler’s modernist synagogue in Brno; Studio Kauzlarić & Gomboš fashioning modernist villas in Zagreb; Diana Reiter who cofounded Association of Jewish Engineers in Krakow; Hungarian Lajos Kozma’s houses and interiors in Budapest; Oskar Wlach’s innovative projection of Viennese living culture; and Polishborn German architect Marie Frommer’s cooperation with Jewish and women’s professional networks in Berlin, Ostrava, and New York. All mostly, but not exclusively, catered to Jewish clients. Furthermore, we can add Werner Joseph Wittkower working toward advancing climatic building design in Mandatory Palestine, later Israel, contributing to the Zionist project. At the same time, it is critical for the understanding of Central European Modernism to reconsider how professional networks developed in relation to designers’ Jewish narratives and how cooperations with Jews and non-Jews influenced the careers of figures such as Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, Anna Lesznai in Budapest, Vienna, and New York, and German-British Hans Arnold Rothholz, FHK Henrion, and Austro-Serbian-British Willy de Majo in Britain and in Europe.

Jewish Perspectives II—A Visionary Central European Modernism In “Towards a Minor Modernism?,” the introduction to their thought-provoking book, A Reader in East-Central-European Modernism 1918–1956 (2020), Beata Hock, Klara Kemp-Welch, and Jonathan Owen begin with an acknowledgment of the theory of “minor art” as presented in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s booklet, Kafka: Toward

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a Minor Literature (1975).54 The French authors as well as the Central European and British editors are aware of the multiple cultural identifications of Kafka as a Germanspeaking Jew from Austro-Hungarian Prague yet prefer to present a theory politicizing and generalizing Kafka’s perspectives on “small literatures” as documented in his diary entries. Curiously, besides a few side references, a discussion on cultural identities from the Jewish perspective is strangely absent in the Reader. In exchange, Designing Transformation refers to the constructions of specific Jewish cultural identities of key protagonists in architecture and design to reopen the discussion on the relationship between art and identity formation in Central Europe. Our discussion critically reconsiders Deleuze and Guattari’s attempt at theorization of the specific characteristics of the Jewish creative experience and the resultant notion of “minor art” in relation to challenging territorial limitations.55 In contrast, we address the strategies of “reterritorialization” through architecture and design in the case of Jewish entrepreneurs and architects to ask what role identification played in redefining the concept of Central European “territorialization,” for example in relation to “Besitz” (property) and “Bildung” (education) in the interwar period.56 Deleuze and Guattari’s undermining of the sociological perspective and emphasis instead on an aesthetic theory of “minor art”57 continues cultural stereotypes not only of Jews but also of Central European art, thus devaluing the historical study of individual cases.58 A critical question arises: Did Jews help develop new grammars within modes of communication that would lead to a new collective, shared Central European consciousness? I reformulate here the argument by curator Timothy O. Benson in his source reader, Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes 1910–1930 (2002), suggesting that the avant-gardes in the cities of Belgrade, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Krakow, Prague, Vienna, and Zagreb were at once regionally diverse and undeniably international. Benson’s aim is to “comprehend a world of locales without center or peripheries,” in which artists sought to “develop the grammar of a new mode of communication that would lead to a new collective consciousness.”59 It is here suggested that reconsidering narratives of Jewish participation in the modernization of Central European cities helps us redefine their/its modernism not as minor art, but rather as integral to the formation of a shared East, Central, and West European collective consciousness. Furthermore, it is argued that this was projected in a global vision before and after the forced emigration of Jewish patrons, intellectuals, architects, and designers in the 1930s.60 Historian and critic of architecture Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968), whose book Befreites wohnen (Liberated Dwelling, 1929) is mentioned briefly in connection with the origins of climatic building design in this anthology, was the scion of the textile machinery–manufacturing firm, J. Giedion, which succeeded in trading their goods in the economic markets of Austro-Hungary and later Central Europe and beyond. The son Sigfried was born in Prague, studied at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna (today’s Vienna University of Technology), collaborated with Swiss-French gentile architect Le Corbusier in founding internationally oriented architectural movement CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) (La Sarraz, Summer 1928), and enjoyed a successful career as teacher and author in the United States. He is a critical example of a Jewish Central European perspective realizing a visionary

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modernist idea. Later in the summer in which CIAM was founded, Austrian architect Josef Frank, three weeks after completing his assignment in Mandatory Palestine, as he was invited to head of the jury of the design competition for the Zionist headquarters in the Rechavia neighborhood in Jerusalem, wrote to Giedion that he would promote the CIAM’s idea among architects in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Palestine.61 Many of the figures discussed in this volume crossed paths. Like Frank, Croatian architect Hugo Ehrlich studied at the Vienna Technische Hochscule and was also invited to the founding congress of CIAM.62 A different example of the Jewish perspective on the distribution of modernist language in Central Europe and beyond is the “future looking” and fashionable architecture of Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953) in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. In the current anthology, we also encounter the role of Jewish businessmen and architects in designing department stores: the chapters on the architects Weinwurm (Schön fashion house in Bratislava) and Frommer (Leiser Shoe and Silk store in Berlin, and Textilia in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia) and on the entrepreneur Sommerfeld (department store in Tempelhof, and an extension of the famous department store Wertheim in Berlin). The department stores in Central Europe took part in a “consumer revolution” representing economic, social, and cultural developments “that altered the way people acquired and used goods, changed how they spent their time, transformed the face of the modern city, and challenged traditional social and gender roles and hierarchies.”63 Transporting customers in space and time via interiors, goods and marketing, and in parallel challenging and redefining chauvinistic barriers, broadening the potential of the (mainly middle-class) individual’s self-enactment and transformation, department stores furthered debates over the integrity of local culture and the character of national identity. Department store owners patronized modern architecture in different cities in Central Europe, as in the groundbreaking example of the Breda & Weinstein building in the city of Opava (German Troppau). The owners were Max Breda and David Weinstein and it was designed by Viennese gentile architect Leopold Bauer (1872–1938), a student of Otto Wagner, in 1926–1928.64 Erich Mendelsohn, born in Allenstein in East Prussia (today Olsztyn in Poland), successfully set a new mode in shaping a modernist language to fit capitalist economy. Mendelsohn developed his own design signature with his prudent representation of the potential of concrete and steel construction in the Einstein Tower in Potsdam (1921) and successfully revolutionized department store architecture through his design for Salman Schocken’s chain stores in Nuremburg, Stuttgart, and Chemnitz and for Rudolf Petersdorff ’s stores in Breslau (today Wrocław in Poland) between 1926 and 1929.65 Mendelsohn’s modernist vision also promoted a secularized concept of the dynamic city as “a thing to be consumed” and included redefining the notion of the “house” with the traditional lobby, upper floors and inclined roof as its highest point. Accordingly the façade underwent a radical transformation. Walls, openings, girders and loads lost their meanings as established principles. Steel-girder construction permitted large expanses of windows without numerous interruptions. The emphatically horizontal layered ribbon-like façade gained acceptance as the prototype of the department store.66

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Mendelsohn’s streamlined modern language influenced architecture in Central Europe, including Germany, Poland, Romania, Austria, and Czechoslovakia as well as in countries to which his students or followers emigrated, such as the United States and Mandatory Palestine. His design, for example, of Petersdorff ’s fashion department store in Breslau, inspired the Czech-German gentile architect Adolf Foehr’s design for the Brandeis toy department store in Provaznická 13, Prague (1930–1932) (Figures 0.1a and 0.1b).67 As mentioned in the chapter in this anthology on Frommer, Mendelsohn also designed the modernist Bachner department store in Ostrava in the Czechoslovakia (1933).

Figure 0.1a  Adolf Foehr, Brandeis Toy Department Store, Provaznická 13, Prague, 1930. Institute of Art History CAS © Petr Zinke 2020

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Figure 0.1b  Adolf Foehr, Drawing for Brandeis Toy Department Store, Prague, 1930, in Adolf Foehr, Bauten und Entwürfe aus fünfundzwanzig Jahren, Neubert & Söhne, Prague, 1934. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. Photo: Institute of Art History CAS © Eva Janáčová

Even though this was his only building in Czechoslovakia, Mendelsohn’s modernist architecture influenced Czech architects.68 Furthermore, his renovation and addition to the Mosse media house for Rudolf Mosse, publisher of the Berlin Tageblatt in Berlin-Mitte (1921–1923),69 inspired the Austrian partners’ Jewish architect Egon Riss and his gentile partner Fritz Judtmann in their design of the outpatient clinic for the workers’ health insurance in Vienna’s third district (1926–1927).70 Moreover, German

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architect Rudolf Fränkel (1901–1974) followed Mendelsohn’s lead yet clearly offered his own novel model in the monumental and modernist Cinema Lichtburg in Berlin 1931 (a multifunctional building including a cinema, hotel, restaurant, and dancing hall, demolished 1970) and, after his forced emigration to Romania, through the Scala Cinema and Office Building in Bucharest 1937, which still exists. As mentioned above, Jewish participation in coproducing, constructing, and promoting a visionary Central European Modernism reveals close interrelations and fruitful correspondence between material and intellectual cultures as documented in the following publications. A group of forced émigré and exiled historians, critics, and architects demonstrated in their books their active participation in the making of Central European perspectives and proved that these were an integral part of Western and global discourse. Their publications include German architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983), Pioneers of Modern Design. From William Morris to Walter Gropius (1936), An Outline of European Architecture (1943),71 and The Buildings of England series (1951–74).72 With a similar agenda, German architectural historian Julius Posener (1904–1996) published Anfänge des Funktionalismus. Von Arts and Crafts zum Deutschen Werkbund (Beginnings of Functionalism. From Arts and Crafts to the Deutscher Werkbund), 1964. Among the many critical publications of Austrian art historian Ernst Gombrich, we find his masterpiece The Story of Art (1950). Another ambitious example is German architect Erwin Anton Gutkind (1886–1968), who published the eightvolume series, International History of City Development 1964–1968. There is also the Czech architectural historian and theorist Felix Haas (1925–1993), who survived the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt (Theresienstadt Ghetto) and the death camp Auschwitz to return to Brno, where he later taught at the Faculty of Architecture at the Brno University of Technology. With his Modern World Architecture (Bratislava, 1968), Haas was one of the first to publish on contemporary architecture and was awarded a Union of Czech Architects prize in 1970. He secured for the Czech public contact with recent trends in modern architecture through his publications.73 Perhaps the most known outside the field of architectural history is the above-mentioned Sigfried Giedion’s Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete (originally published in Germany, 1928), and his canonical Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (1941). Could it be that these authors, scholars, and architects aimed to promote and advance a Central European Jewish mission of “Zusammenstoß der Geister”—the encounter of creative spirits or “encounter of intellects”?74 One architectural critic who did raise the subject of “Jewish architecture” was the Berliner Posener, yet he identified it as a “difficult word combination.”75 Posener was aware of the early attempts to convey through architecture a representative “identity construction”76 but rejected the idea that there was something specifically Jewish in the architecture of Jewish architects. Nevertheless, it was important for him once he was in exile in Paris, starting a new career, to document specifically Jewish-German and Central European architects, among them Germans Mendelsohn and Alfred Gellhorn (1885–1972), Austrian Richard Neutra (1892–1970), Romanian-German and later British Walter Segal (1907–1985), and Hungarians Ernő Goldfinger (1902– 1987) and Marcel Breuer (1902–1981).77 Posener’s address of the subject revealed not only his awareness of the achievements of these Central European architects, but also

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his perception of a possible tension in the relations between Jews and Christians in configuration of minority and majority dynamics. The role of Jewish patrons in fashioning Central European Modernism is still largely unexplored. A groundbreaking architectural exemplar of the role of Jewish investors and clients in the modernization of Lviv is the city’s first “skyscraper” on Mickiewicz Square 8 (originally Moryatsky Square), built by the Jewish architect Ferdynand Kassler (1883–1942) and commissioned by Jonasz (Jojne) Sprecher, who possibly made his fortune through the iron trade.78 The latest building technologies were applied in the construction of this six-floor multifunctional building, and it sparked a controversy at the time (1912–1921). A decade later, Sprecher had established himself as a patron of modernism. Kassler designed for him another modernist building representative of Functionalist style with no decorations at the very center of the city, at Shevchenko Avenue 7 (originally Akademicka Street) (1929–1931) (Figure 0.2).79 Taller than the neighboring Historicist houses, with its seven floors, it marked a new chapter in the chronicles of Lviv’s modern architecture.80 Today, Kassler is identified as founder of the “harmonious modernism” within the prevailing style of Lviv’s modernist architecture.81 These monumental buildings and others, prominent and less so, in Lviv’s city landscape are witness to the once-flourishing Jewish community.

Figure 0.2  Ferdynand Kassler, Sprecher House, Shevchenko Avenue 7, Lviv. The former seat of the management of the State Mineral Oil Factory "Polmin" in Lviv. Currently the seat of the Lviv Oblast Trade Unions. Source: National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 3/1/0/8/1424

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To conclude this review, it is impossible to speak about Jewish perspectives in Central Europe without reassessing cultural intersections and the engagement of patrons and architects in fruitful and progressive networks shared by Jews and non-Jews as integral to this visionary modernist heritage. An interesting historical note related to the Austrian gentile architect Adolf Loos (1870–1933) is worth mentioning. It further concerns the role of Jewish architects and artists in shaping Romanian Modernism. In 1925, while being mostly unemployed during his chosen exile in Paris, Loos was addressed by Romanian avant-garde Dada artist Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) to design his city house (1926). Tzara approached Loos more than a decade after his fruitful collaboration with the Romanian architect and Dada artist Marcel Janco (1895–1985) in the avant-garde scene in Bucharest. In contrast to Tzara, Janco returned to Bucharest after the First World War, helping shape local modern architecture there.82 Marcel Janco and his brothers Georges and Jules, as well as the Romanians Leon Stern and Harry Stern (1909–1954), and German refugee Rudolf Fränkel, played critical roles in modernizing Bucharest. This historical side note reveals once more the potential of productive exchanges between Jewish and nonJewish professional protagonists as part of the making of the progressive character of Central European Modernism.

Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism The anthology Designing Transformation offers critical discussions addressing the role of Jewish architects, designers, and patrons in shaping and coproducing Central European Modernism. The chapters explore the relevance of understanding complex patterns of Jewish cultural identities to scholarly discourses on Central European Modernism. In doing so, this book aims to rewrite art and design historiography by challenging current narratives which tend to overlook and literally write “out” of the discourse the role of Jews in coproducing Central European Modernism, in most countries, except in Austria and Germany, in which in recent years this subject has been critically and more consciously approached. The discussions in this book further contribute to reconstructing Jewish cultures in the interwar period and their aftermath in order to push forward a transformation in the historical consciousness of Central Europe. This collection is divided into three parts, each presenting different perspective on the role of Jews in the shaping and coproducing of public and private, as well as commercial and socially oriented, architecture and design in Central Europe from the 1920s to the 1940s, and in the respective countries in which they settled after their forced emigration began in the 1930s. As noted already, Central European Modernism is explored here in plural and even if the leading modernist models were taken from the German Neues Bauen, the Bauhaus, and from Mendelsohn, distinct and canonical alternatives within the modernization discourses occurred such as Kozma’s Budapesti Műhely (Budapest Workshop) and Wlach’s Haus & Garten, who, together with Josef Frank, helped shape the Wiener Wohnkultur (Viennese living culture).

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This anthology further reconsiders Jewish approaches to the role of women in public life in the interwar period. The pioneering achievements of four women designers in different countries are discussed here in detail: the Polish Diana Reiter, the Hungarian Lesznai, the Austrian Dicker-Brandeis, and German Frommer. Reiter was the first woman architect in Krakow, and her sister was the first woman lawyer in the city while Frommer was the first woman to complete her doctoral studies in architecture in Germany. (On a side note, Ivana Fischer, the daughter of architect Ignjat Nathan Fischer, was the first woman musical conductor in Croatia.) Four prominent protagonists in our book are the German-British entrepreneur Sommerfeld, the Polish architect Tadanier, the Czech architect Eisler, and German architect Frommer, all self-made men and woman who succeeded in imprinting their character and design on the landscape and heritage of the cities in which they worked. The Hungarian Lesznai, the Austro-Serbian de Majo, and the Croatian Slavko Löwy came from well-to-do families, which allowed them to freely cross European frontiers in a manner that served their claims to cultural authorship, even after forced emigration. The graphic designer FHK Henrion and architect Frommer successfully secured cross-border careers through the help of Jewish and non-Jewish networks. Jewish networks include, for example, B’nai B’rith, the international and oldest Jewish humanitarian, human rights, and advocacy organization, with men’s lodges, and women’s chapters in many countries, to which Croatian architect Ignjat Nathan Fischer and Austrian architect Wlach were members. Similar to the successful Hungarian architect and designer Lajos Kozma, Slavko Löwy started his career by working in the office of another Jewish architect. Kozma worked in the office and even settled in a building built by the renowned Béla Lajta. Löwy worked in the office of Ignjat Nathan Fischer. Few were second generation of fathers or mothers who set a professional model. The father of Fischer was a prominent construction engineer. All protagonists discussed here shared patriotic interests, albeit in different manners and with an open creativity, marking their cities with ambitious architectural projects and/or fashioning nationalist design culture. For example, Tadanier designed with his gentile colleague Stefan Strojek the first skyscraper in Krakow (1932–1936) and Slavko Löwy built the first skyscraper, the Radovan Building in Zagreb (1933). Many architects, designers, and patrons perished in the Holocaust including architects and designers Friedrich Weinwurm, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Diana Reiter, Béla Hofstätter, and Ferenc Domány and patron Ludvik Brandeis, owner of the above-mentioned Brandeis toy department store in Prague. Few returned to their countries like Eisler, who returned to Brno after surviving Auschwitz; Kozma survived and remained in Budapest, Tadanier survived and remained in Poland, and Fischer and Löwy were among several architects who survived and remained in Zagreb. Most emigrated to other countries around the globe. Those discussed here are Wlach, Frommer, and Lesznai, who settled in New York, Sommerfeld for few years in London, returning after the war to Berlin; the designers Hans Arnold Rothholz, FHK Henrion, and de Majo settled in London, and Wittkower settled in Mandatory Palestine, later Israel.

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Part I: Designing Their Homes in Central Europe Jewish architects and patrons grafted their belonging onto different cities and towns in Central Europe through their design choices. They developed close relations and a patriotic outlook on the cities they considered homes. Budapest Jews wrote themselves into history both as actors and spectators in the public spaces of their city. They “identified with, and came to be defined by, the urban institutions they had helped create.”83 Similarly to Jewish residents in other Central European cities, they “celebrated the imposing boulevards, the teeming coffee houses, the lively music halls, and the witty cabarets of the city, in which they saw embodiments of their own, as well as of their city’s, modernity.”84 The question arises: how did Jewish investors and architects who were confronted with the rise of conservative nationalism express their distinct cultural identifications once they turned their attention to creating a new neighborhood in Budapest in the late 1920 and during the 1930s? In the first chapter, “The ‘Bauhaus Shtetl’: Opposing Conservatism in New Leopold Town in Budapest,” Rudolf Klein reconsiders how this neighborhood developed into a progressive community associated with Jewish culture and modernism. Klein emphasizes the structure of the neighborhood as an ideal arrangement of a community through interrelations between urban planning, modernist architecture, and bourgeois lifestyles. He recontextualizes the modern buildings in it, many designed by the architects Hofstätter and Domány, as having historical relevance beyond the common reference to them as examples of the Bauhaus style in the city. Klein describes why the moderate modernism fitted best the cultural character of the Jewish middle-class and educated investors and inhabitants. In a city that knew some dark periods of history, the smart urban arrangement and the moderate modernism granted this neighborhood its distinct progressive character and further continue to secure this place’s cultural identification with pluralistic citizenship today. Henrieta Moravčíková examines in the second chapter, “Shaping Modern Bratislava: The Role of Architect Friedrich Weinwurm and His Jewish Clients in Designing the Slovak Capital,” this architect’s ambitious building projects for the Jewish community and further his groundbreaking and socially engaged cooperative housing estates “Unitas” (1931) and “Nová doba” (1934–1942). It is through Weinwurm’s works that the earliest examples of an architecture of “New Objectivity” entered Bratislava’s city landscape. Weinwurm was typically commissioned by Jewish families for several projects: a private villa, residential buildings, and an office building or department store. Further attention is dedicated to one of the architect’s most ambitious collaborative projects with Jewish doctors, with the support of state and city authorities, on the city’s modern Jewish hospital. Although Weinwurm worked mostly for Jewish clients, his work was crucial to Bratislava’s modernization. According to Moravčíková, newly regulated streets and entire neighborhoods were designed by him or later by his followers, who adopted his architectural language. A different approach is presented in Celina Kress’s third chapter, “Adolf Sommerfeld Co-Producing Modern Architecture and Urban Design in Berlin,” regarding the successful career of this self-made entrepreneur and important patron of Walter Gropius. In the early 1920s, Sommerfeld invested his assets from his wartime hangar

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construction into larger properties in Berlin’s prominent western outskirts. Affordable, healthy housing was bitterly needed all over Germany after the war. With the aim to experiment in this new market, Sommerfeld collaborated with leading modernist and avant-garde architects in Berlin, including Gropius, Mendelsohn, the young Richard Neutra, Bruno Taut, Otto Rudolf Salvisberg, Fred Forbat, and many others. Together with these architects, Sommerfeld shaped a whole sector of innovative social housing settlements in Berlin’s southwestern periphery. According to Kress, the effects of Sommerfeld’s collaborative work spanned from city planning to housing scale, and from a modernist avant-garde style to a more moderate modernity. The beginnings of modernist architecture in the urban centers of Croatia are directly connected with two architects Leo Hönigsberg and Julio Deutsch, who studied under Heinrich von Ferstel at Vienna Technische Hochschule. They both played, as Jasna Galjer suggests in the fourth chapter, “Entangled Histories: The Contribution of Jewish Architects to Modernism in Croatia,” a central role in this transformation of Zagreb into a modern city. A student and a close friend of above-mentioned Adolf Loos, Zlatko Neumann further played a critical role in the chronicles of modernism in Croatia and he was among several high-profile Jewish architects who continued to work in Croatia after the Second World War. Galjer further reconsiders how Jewish identity contributed to the modern architectural discourse of the interwar period in Zagreb. She explores the multilayered roles of Jewish architects in constructing modern architectural discourses, and their formative impact on multiculturalism in the Central European cultural context to which Croatia belonged. It was through inter-urban networks that Adolf Loos’s, as well as his mostly Jewish students’ careers, for example, architects Jacques Groag and Heinrich Kulka, advanced modernism in Vienna and in different cities in Czechoslovakia.85 The influence of Loos’s modernist model on public and private architecture is further evidenced in the work of his Czechoslovakian followers, the modernists Wiesner and Eisler, who worked in Brno in the 1920s and 1930s.86 The synagogue Agudas Achim in Brno (1936) was built for a group of refugees fleeing the Russian army from Galicia and Bukovina, who arrived in this city during the First World War, and it was designed at the time in which German refugees fleeing Nazi Germany settled there. Did the choice of design of this synagogue also express the threatened experience of Jewish refugees in the early twentieth century? In the fifth chapter, “An International Style Synagogue in Brno: Otto Eisler’s Agudas Achim Synagogue (1936),” Zuzana Güllendi-Cimprichová examines the positive dialogue between the architect Eisler and the Eastern European orthodox community, which resulted in a radical modernist synagogue building. Its international modern character was the result of a series of transnational exchanges between Central Europe and the United States and within Central Europe. It is the only synagogue that survived in Brno following the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent destruction of the partly damaged synagogues during the Communist period in the city. GüllendiCimprichová analyzes Eisler’s innovative architecture in relation to the history of Jews and the development of Jewish topography (topographical networks of Jewish institutions, residences, and businesses) in the city and further positions it in relation to contemporary synagogues in Germany and Czechoslovakia.

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In the sixth chapter, “Identity and Gender as Obstacles? A Comparison of Two Biographies of Jewish Architects from Krakow,” Kamila Twardowska analyzes the biographies of the architects Fryderyk Tadanier and Diana Reiter, who were forced due to the strong links between Polish nationalism and antisemitism to oscillate between two poles—“Polish” and “Jewish”—of their identity. Tadanier, who distanced himself from his Jewish background and fashioned for himself a Polish identity, was among the few architects of Jewish origin who had access to significant, prestigious public contracts in Krakow. Reiter, who was a cofounder of Krakow’s Association of Jewish Engineers in 1930, lost her job at the Public Works Department of the Provincial Office during the first wave of dismissals due to the economic recession following the Great Crisis in 1931. Twardowska carefully reconstructs the development of their careers, networks, and reception from the perspective of the choices they made specifically regarding their Jewish identifications, which further influenced their career possibilities.

Part II: Outsiders/Insiders—Cultural Authorship and Strategies of Inclusion The chapters in the section “Outsiders/Insiders” explore how Hungarian and Austrian designers solved the paradoxes of Jewish identity by their choices of professional networks and catering to their mostly Jewish clients through their innovative artistic languages. Hungarian and Austrian architects and designers Kozma, Wlach, Lesznai, and Dicker-Brandeis developed and coproduced modernist languages that secured their position as “insiders” within artistic circles in contemporary culture. In the seventh chapter, “Lajos Kozma, ‘Judapest,’ and Central European Modernism,” Juliet Kinchin examines the constraints and opportunities that shaped the successful designer Kozma’s stylistic transformations. Kozma’s career in Hungary spanned two world wars, a Bolshevik Revolution, and the redrawing of national boundaries following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This chapter explores the functioning of the Jewish collaborative networks in which Kozma was embedded. According to Kinchin, Kozma worked through networks of Jewish clients, manufacturers, designers, publishers, and retailers and adopted a new repertoire of Baroque sources before embracing the abstract forms of international modernism around 1930. Kozma’s crossing genres and media creatively pushed the boundaries of first National Romanticism, then the neo-Baroque, and finally modernism. Christopher Long explores in the eighth chapter, “Refuge and Respite: Oskar Wlach, Max Eisler, and the Culture of the Modern Jewish Interior,” the critical role of the architect and designer Wlach in forging what became known as the Wiener Wohnkultur, and further how the writings of cultural critic and art historian Max Eisler granted it distinct Jewish cultural identification. Max Eisler, who published extensively, and who paid special attention to works of Central European Jewish architects and artists, played a critical role in promoting Viennese living culture, and further encouraged self-awareness in developing Jewish design. Examining the interiors designed by Wlach and by Frank and Wlach for their firm Haus & Garten (House and Garden), Long identifies their furniture as “reconceived historicism,” one that appropriated

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varied features of older traditions, but which had been “modernized” = “tuned down” to secure physical comfort and psychological relaxation. Long reconsiders how Wlach’s approaches served the interests of Vienna’s Jewish middle-class, both as a source of escape from modern life and as buffer from rising antisemitism between the wars. Did women designers offer a different perspective on constructing modern artistic languages? This anthology sheds new light on the relation between Jewish women designers and architects’ self-awareness and their successful artistic practices. As Rebecca Houze notes in the ninth chapter, “The Art and Design of Anna Lesznai: Adaptation and Transformation,” Lesznai already sold her internationally acclaimed embroidered cushions and other decorative items in the Wertheim department store in Berlin and in the Wiener Werkstätte store in Vienna before the First World War. Lesznai settled in Vienna after she was forced into exile and became an integral part of the intellectual and artistic networks in the city during the period of 1919–1931. According to Houze, Lesznai’s engagement with traditional folk art, especially with embroidered textiles from her native Hungary, provided not only a source of inspiration for her own imaginative art and design, but also a model for stitching together a meaningful identity in response to the many forms of exclusion that she faced. There were a few Viennese Jewish women students who joined the Bauhaus after taking a course with artist and designer Johannes Itten in Vienna. Itten’s Viennese female students included Grete Wolf-Krakauer (1890–1970), who in 1925 moved to Mandatory Palestine, joining there her husband, the architect Leopold Krakauer, Sofie Korner (1879–1942), and Friedl Dicker (later married name Dicker-Brandeis). Korner and Dicker who studied at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts, today’s University of Applied Arts Vienna) followed Itten when he was invited in 1919 to the Bauhaus in Weimar.87 Megan Brandow-Faller offers in the tenth chapter, “The Art of Survival: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Children’s Art at the Theresienstadt Ghetto,” an insight into the brave work of Dicker-Brandeis’s teaching art in the Theresienstadt concentration camp also serving as a transit camp to death camps. This chapter explores how Dicker-Brandeis’s schooling both at the Kunstgewerbeschule and at the Bauhaus influenced the designer and art educator’s pedagogical work with children. While most of Dicker-Brandeis’s students ultimately perished, those who survived spoke of their teacher’s remarkable ability to create, as Brandow-Faller points out, a nurturing atmosphere where students could express hopes, fears, and dreams as a temporary release from the brutal conditions around them in the ghetto. When it came to securing psychologically and physically their survival in light of discrimination and Nazi persecution, the four designers Kozma, Wlach, Lesznai, and Dicker-Brandeis adapted their artistic charisma to confront existential threat and brutal suppression of human dignity.

Part III: Survival Through Design88— Projecting Transformative Designs onto the Future In his book Survival through Design (1954), Austrian émigré in the United States Richard Neutra explores how design could become a tool to impose meaningful order and secure survival. Neutra raises the questions, “How do ‘values’ come into existence,

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enter the life of the group, and effect the self-image? How do individual habituation and social tradition, with which design is so closely linked, evolve as powerful forces?”89 The third section “Survival through Design” addresses the potential of design to cross frontiers and to offer different models of inclusion of hybrid or multicultural identities and further shows the relevance of scientific research aimed at securing interrelations between community, health cultures, and habitation. Austrian-Serbian, and later British, graphic designer Willy de Majo, grew up in a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family that had homes in both Vienna and Belgrade. In the eleventh chapter, “Flights of Fancy: Willy de Majo and the Youthful Foundations of a Lifelong Design Practice,” Lesley Whitworth carefully reviews the designer’s biography in relation to the complex histories of Central Europe and the Balkans provided as an uneasy backdrop and yet inspiring cultural exchanges in the early life of the designer. Whitworth offers several historical hypotheses to locate de Majo, a recognized graphic designer and the founding president of Icograda (International Council of Graphic Design Associations), in the places where he grew up, which may account for the later emergence of a diverse range of travel references in his mature visual work. This chapter further locates de Majo’s self-aware fashioning of a successful career in relation to Central European and Viennese Jewish graphic designers, such as the celebrated Austrian Joseph Binder (1898–1972), who may have served as a role model for the Majo. Yet it further explores the historical reasons behind de Majo moving to Belgrade in order to start his professional career and open his studio there in the 1930s. One of the few Austrian architects who made a career in Vienna and Berlin was the architect Ella Briggs, one of two women architects (the second is the gentile Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky) who contributed to the project of “Red Vienna” in her monumental social housing “Pestalozzi-hof ” and the neighboring Ledigenheim (home for single persons) in Vienna-Döbling, 1925, and further designed housing complex in BerlinMariendorf, 1930.90 When we reconsider the career of the Viennese architect Briggs, the career of the Hungarian artist and designer Lesznai, explored in this anthology, specifically their tactics of confronting discrimination as Jewish women creators, but also their ability to enter Central European and American networks, it is worthwhile to reconsider the promises of professional networks of another German-Jewish woman architect, as discussed in the twelfth chapter by Tanja Poppelreuter, “Sustaining Independence: Marie Frommer’s Networks and Architectural Practices in Berlin and in New York.” Poppelreuter explores the Jewish and feminist networks of a strong-willed career woman, who started her career specializing in commercial projects in Berlin in the mid-1920s. Persecution and occupational bans instigated by the Nazi Regime from 1933 forced Frommer into exile, first to London, where she was unable to reestablish her practice, and then to New York in 1939. Here, as Poppelreuter describes, Frommer was again among the few women in architecture who ran an independent practice. Positioning herself within familiar feminist- and new émigré networks, Frommer successfully obtained similar types of commissions as she did in Berlin from Jewish professionals. The thirteenth chapter offers a different perspective on the subject of professional and cultural networks as documented in the archives of three émigré graphic designers, held at the University of Brighton Design Archives. These archives offer an opportunity to examine questions of archival documentation and cultural identity. Sue Breakell

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reconsiders the relationship between archival documents and constructed biographies in her chapter “‘Memory’s instruments and its very medium’: The Archival Practices of Émigré Designers.” Breakell’s protagonists include the German-British graphic designer Hans Arnold Rothholz, who arrived in London with his family when he was only fourteen. In London, he studied at the Reimann School, which was founded by Jewish sculptor Albert Reimann in Berlin in the early 1900s and was relocated following Nazi persecution in the 1930s. Another prominent graphic designer FHK Henrion left Germany in the same year as Rothholz, as a lone adult, traveling first to join relatives in Paris, where his design education began, and moved to Britain in 1936. Henrion’s career critically relied on cultural networks established partly already in Europe before arriving in London. Breakell further closely examines the biographical narratives of the designer Willy de Majo, offering a complementary discussion on identity constructions to the cultural contextualization presented in Whitworth’s chapter. This chapter explores these designers’ strategies to employ their archives objects in manners that make possible the transmission of memories across time and place. The fourteenth and last chapter in our anthology tells the innovative work of the German architect Werner Joseph Wittkower who joined forces with the Viennese émigré physician Walter Koch to promote bioclimatic building design. The Wittkower family was German and British since their father was born in England. Yet the children who became known in different fields ended up emigrating to different countries: photographer Käte to Argentina, the renowned art historian Rudolf to Britain, and later to the United States, Werner Joseph and his sister Elly to Mandatory Palestine. Käte Wittkower published her documentary photographs in leading journals in Germany and in Austria. Rudolf became well known for his book Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949). His wife Margot was an interior designer, exhibition designer, and art historian.91 When Margot was searching for a job as a young designer in Berlin, she received an offer which she accepted from Adolf Sommerfeld to work as a garden designer in his Zehlendorf housing settlement. The third sister, Elly FriedmannWittkower, was a teacher of health, physical education, and dance and taught at the Hebrew Teachers’ college in Haifa. Or Aleksandrowicz explores in his chapter “Facing the Sun: German-Speaking Émigrés and the Roots of Israeli Climatic Building Design” how in Mandatory Palestine, the bioclimatic design imperative received an additional, national justification because of the Zionist ideal of building a new, healthy Hebrew Nation in Eretz Israel. A central protagonist of this shift was Wittkower, who pioneered a professional cooperation with émigré scientists from diverse backgrounds (physiology, meteorology, and physics) to promote climatically effective and evidence-based building design. Aleksandrowicz reconsiders how the public discourse contributed to the ambitious interdisciplinary research, describes in detail their shared efforts, and points out that their toils had a lasting effect on the way bioclimatic design was later perceived and promoted in Israel during the second half of the twentieth century. Designing Transformation offers groundbreaking discussions on the versatility of the contributions of Jewish architects, designers, and patrons to Central European Modernism in Europe and beyond and further demonstrates the critical relevance of these to shaping progressive, pluralistic civil society in Central Europe today.

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Past and present institutes which organized symposiums and encouraged publications related to this subject include the institute Bet-Tfila (Research Unite for Jewish Architecture in Europe) at the Technical University Braunschweig, the Free University of Berlin, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Exhibitions addressing Jewish architects and designers were curated specifically in Jewish Museums but not exclusively in all European capitals, yet without offering a critical overview or pointing out the relevance of this discussion to European cultural heritage. An extensive research on Central European German speaking architects is presented in Myra Warhaftig, Deutsche jüdische Architekten vor und nach 1933—Das Lexikon (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 2005). Recent publications on Central European Jewish émigré architects and designers in United States, Britain and Palestine include: Alison J. Clark and Elana Shapira, eds., Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), Monica BohmDuchen, ed., Insiders Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019), Naomi Games, Julia Weiner and Rebecca Birrell, eds. Designs on Britain: Great British Design by Great Jewish Designers (London: Jewish Museum London, 2017), and Jörg Stabenow and Ronny Schüler, eds. Vermittlungswege der Moderne—Neues Bauen in Palästina (1923–1948)/ The Transfer of Modernity—Architectural Modernism Palestine (1923–1948) (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2019). Steven Beller has argued that urban culture is “as much as about networks as it is about boundaries” (Steven Beller, “Big-city Jews: Jewish big-city—the dialectics of Jewish assimilation in Vienna c. 1900,” in The City in Central Europe. Culture and Society from 1800 to the Present, eds. Malcolm Gee, Tim Kirk, and Jill Steward [London: Ashgate Publishing House, 1999], 144–58, here 145.) I further refer to Hillel J. Kieval’s argument that Jews in Czechoslovakia reacted to the challenging of their cultural authority by redefining their group identity, cultural loyalty, and memory. They further created new points of intersections with surrounding cultures, groups, and individuals in their countries and, I add, beyond their countries’ borders (Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community. The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands [Berkley: University of California Press, 2001], 4). See discussion in Marsha L. Rozenblit, “Jewish Ethnicity in a New Nation-State: The Crisis of Identity in the Austrian Republic,” in Search for Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria, 1918–1933, eds. Michael Brenner and Derek Jonathan Penslar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 134–53. For a critical approach offering methodology to address “Jewish difference,” see introduction in Lisa Silverman, Becoming Austrians, Jews and Culture between the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). A different historical framing starting with early modernity (early seventeenth century) and ending in late modernity (mid-twentieth century) addressing the role of Jews in urban modernization is presented in Cristiana Faccini, ed. Modernity and the Cities of the Jews, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 2, 2011. The book focuses “primarily on the relationship between Jews and modernity, using cities as a kind of lens to examine how Jews contributed to the development of modern European culture, and, conversely, how the cities of modern Europe shaped Jewish culture” (ibid., 5). Faccini defines the term “modernity” in relation to processes that

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contributed to the rise of capitalism and industrialization, as describing geographical displacement (migration) and intellectual method, granting science a prominent role at the expense of traditional worldview and, furthermore, public discussions that challenged the relationship between individual and state, promoting a new concept of “citizenship” (ibid., 3–4). The edited volume includes discussions on the positioning of Jews in the cities Venice, Livorno, Trieste, Odessa, Alexandria, Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw, New York, and Tel Aviv, yet ignores the role of Jews in actually shaping modern architecture and design in these cities. A further exploration of the cultural history of Jews and modernity in European capitals is presented in Tobias Metzler, Tales of Three Cities: Urban Jewish Cultures in London, Berlin, and Paris (1880–1940) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014). 5 A further witness to how Central European Jews were caught in, forced to reconsider their cultural position within, and came to terms with the dichotomy between West and East are the writings of Czernowitz lawyer, poet, journalist, and politician Salomon Kassner, who advocated the Westernization of the Jews in the Bukovina. Moreover, as has been noted, according to Kassner “Bukovinian Jews could not be classified as Eastern Jews because, unlike in Galicia, the power of the rabbis had always been limited in Bukovina” (H. F. van Drunen, “A Sanguine Bunch”: Regional Identification in Habsburg Bukovina, 1774–1919, PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2013, 209, 211. Source: Salomon Kassner, Die Juden in der Bukowina [Vienna/Berlin: Löwit, 1917], 45). Kassner’s book was written in the years he spent in Vienna during the First World War. 6 Victor Karady, The Jews of Europe in the Modern Era: A Socio-Historical Outline (Budapest: CEU press, 2004), 51–3. 7 Karady refers to the high percentage of doctors and notes that “substantial Jewish overrepresentation was likewise evident from the early days of modernization in other therapeutical disciplines, associated to medicine (among dentists and veterinarians, then later on among clinical psychologists and, most spectacularly, psychoanalysts).” Ibid., 91. 8 Ibid., 91. 9 Ibid., 131: “Though legal emancipation was formally instated everywhere in Europe, the process of integration came to a standstill during the inter-war period. The presence of Jews stirred up conflict of unprecedented magnitude, and their further assimilation into society almost everywhere took a turn for the worse.” A recent critical discussion is presented in Dieter J. Hecht, Louise Hecht and Eleonore LappinEppel, “Das jüdische Erbe Mitteleuropas,” in Geschichtsbuch Mitteleuropa: Vom Fin de Siècle bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Anton Pelinka (Vienna: New Academic Press, 2016), 106–41. The authors further examine why the “Jewish question” became international at the end of the First World War. 10 Jacek Purchla, “The Central European City and Its Identity,” Politeja 6, no. 57 (2018): 125–48, here 139. Reference to: Ż. Komar, “W poszukiwaniu stylu żydowskiego. Archeologia lwowskiego modernizmu” [In search of the Jewish style. Archeology of Lviv modernism] Herito, no. 2 (2011): 99–101. Komar argues that fundamental to the culture of Galician Jews is the perception of being in a diaspora, which produced a characteristic fusion of local rootedness and the sense of universality. 11 Karady (2004), 113. See further Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983);Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, eds., A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry (New Brunswick, USA; and London: Transaction Publishers, 1990). For discussion

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on the rise of antisemitism and politics of discrimination in the interwar period, see Dittmar Dahlmann and Anke Hilbrenner, eds., Zwischen großen Erwartungen und bösen Erwachen. Juden, Politik und Antisemitismus in Ost- und Südosteuropa 1918–1945 (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007). Regarding Jewish acculturation and modern architecture, see Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016). Further related literature Fredric Bedoire, The Jewish Contribution to Modern Architecture, 1830–1930 (Boston: Ktav Publishing House, 2004). For extensive research on Jewish architects in Vienna, see Ursula Prokop, Zum jüdischen Erbe in der Wiener Architektur: Der Beitrag jüdischer ArchitektInnen am Wiener Baugeschehen 1868–1938 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016). On modern architecture and Jewish cultural networks, see Elana Shapira, ed. Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018). The subject of stolen business and private property in Berlin was addressed in an exhibition “Geraubte Mitte. Die ‘Arisierung’ des jüdischen Grundeigentums im Berliner Stadtkern 1933–1945” that took place at the Stadtmuseum Berlin in 2013. An adaptation of the German exhibition with the title “Stolen Heart: The Thefts of Jewish Property in Berlin’s Historic Center, 1933–1945” took place in Leo Baeck Institute in New York (2017), see https://www.lbi.org/exhibitions/stolenheart-exhibition/ (accessed August 24, 2020). A recent important exhibition titled “Returning Identity” in The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague (2019) showed stolen Jewish property whose original owners have been identified, see https://www. upm.cz/returning-identity/ (accessed August 24, 2020). The exhibition followed a series of earlier displays and book publications, including Helena Krejčová and Mario Vlček, Memories Returned. Jewish Property at the Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, 2008. An exhibition titled: “Invent ARISIERT. The looting of Furniture from Jewish Household at the Imperial Furniture Collection in Vienna” took place in 2000. For an attempt to reflect on “Jewish taste” based on Berlin and Parisian Jews’ “property declarations,” enforced by Nazi rule as part of the persecution and terrorizing of Jewish citizens, see Leora Auslander, “‘Jewish Taste?’ Jews and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life in Paris and Berlin, 1920–1942,” in Histories of Leisure, ed. Rudy Koshar (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 299–318. The reference to “Jewish living culture” is from Burcu Dogramaci, “Forms of Migration, Migration of Forms: Sigmund Freud in Exile and the Dispersion of Things,” in Design Dispersed. Forms of Migration and Flight, eds. Burcu Dogramaci and Kerstin Pinther (Bielefeld: transcript, 2019), 37–57, here, 37. Dogramaci refers in her enlightening discussion also to Dieter Hecht, “Der große Raubzug. ‘Arisierungen’ entlang der Ringstraße,” in Topographie der Shoah. Gedächtnisorte des zerstörten jüdischen Wien, eds. Dieter J. Hecht et al. (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2015), 42–81. Sharon Zukin, The Culture of Cities (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, [1995] 2006), 1. See further discussion in relation to Jewish quarters in Europe, in Eszter B. Gantner, “Interpreting the Jewish Quarter,” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23, no. 2 (2014): 26–42, here 31. Matthew Rampley, “Contested Histories: Heritage and/as the Construction of the Pat: An Introduction,” in Heritage, Ideology, and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe: Contested Pasts, Contested Presents, ed. Matthew Rampley (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2012), 1–20, here 4.

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17 Ibid., 7. For further discussion on Nora, see Benjamin Ivry, “Building a Collective Consciousness on a National Scale,” Forward, June 8, 2011. https://forward.com/ culture/138461/building-a-collective-consciousness-on-a-national/ (accessed November 3, 2020). 18 Quoted in Rampley, 2012, 7. See Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), I, 7. 19 For a detailed report on the decision to recognize Třebíč Jewish quarter and St. Procopius Basilica as a world heritage site, see https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1078/ 20 I assume WWII is a “reference” to the Holocaust: “Trebic’s Jewish Quarter is the most representative in its kind in Central Europe. It is considered the most complete, including synagogues, Jewish schools, a hospital and a factory. The quarter has a characteristic condominium structure: there were often several owners in one house and buildings were internally subdivided. […] All Jewish inhabitants were deported in WWII, nobody returned.” https://www.worldheritagesite.org/list/Trebic 21 Magdalena Waligórska, “Jewish Heritage Production and Historical Jewish Spaces: A Case Study of Cracow and Berlin,” in Jewish Space in Central and Eastern Europe Day-to-Day History, eds. Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė and Larisa Lempertienė (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge scholars Publishing, 2007), 225–50, here 248–9. 22 Ibid., 247. 23 Ibid. Diana Pinto coined the term “Jewish space” (1996) and Waligórska’s reference to agora originates in another essay by Pinto, “Toward a European Jewish Identity”: “It is an open cultural and even political agora where Jews intermingle with others qua Jews, and not just as citizens” (Diana Pinto, “The Third Pillar? Toward a European Jewish Identity,” Central European University, Budapest, Jewish Studies Lecture Series. March 1999. http://web.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/01_pinto.pdf [accessed July 1, 2020]). In a recent essay, “In the Cellars and Attics of Memory. Mapping Jewish and non-Jewish spaces in Contemporary Poland,” Magdalena Waligórska further developed the idea that the interconnectedness between Jews and non-Jews grants the Jewish space its identity (Waligórska, “In the Cellars and Attics of Memory.” in Jewish and non-Jewish Spaces in the Urban Context eds. Alina Gromova, Felix Heinret, and Sebastian Voigt [Berlin: Neofelis, 2015], 243–58). A more critical approach in the same anthology is presented by Eszter Gantner in “Jewish Quarters as Urban Tableaux,” which points out the heterogeneous character of past and present Jewish communities in different European cities. Relating the phenomenon of Jewish space to concrete physical urban space and to specific architectural sites, Gantner focuses on imagining the Jewish character of two districts in Budapest and the Scheunenviertel in Berlin in relation to past narratives. She points out that “In many places, the everyday experience of Jews and non-Jews living side-by-side is not present in any form other than historic records. Only the tableaux, the groups of images, containing fractures and splinters of the past, have remained” (Gantner, “Interpreting the Jewish Quarter,” 32–7; See further: Eszter Gantner, “Jewish Quarters as Urban Tableaux,” in Jewish and non-Jewish Spaces in the Urban Context, 197–212). Gantner criticizes how the construction of “Jewish” quarters, related to past narrative and economic interests, “communicates a very homogeneous picture of the local Jewish culture, reflecting elements selected at the discretion of these actors, and not reflecting the possible diversity of self-understandings that comprise the existing urban Jewish culture” (ibid., 38). Yet, her own examination of urban tableaux ignores concrete stories of architects and their clients in the quarters she reviews in

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Budapest and Berlin. Klein’s chapter in this anthology examines the relation between architectural heritage and the cultural identity of “New Leopold” in Budapest. Ann Lipphardt, Julia Baruch, and Alexandra Nock, “Exploring Jewish Place. An Approach,” in Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place, eds. Julia Baruch, Anna Lipphardt and Alexandra Nocke (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 1–23, here 4. This book was the outcome of a Potsdam-based postgraduate research Makom (2001–2007). A Viennese example of deterritorialization of the experience of “place” through creative interior design is discussed in Elana Shapira, “Sense and Sensibility: Architect Josef Frank and his Jewish Clients,” in Josef Frank: Against Design, eds. Christoph Thun Hohenstein, Hermann Czech and Sebastian Hackenschmidt. Exh. Cat. MAK—Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2015), 60–71. Monika Murzyn-Kupisz and Jacek Purchla, Reclaiming memory: Urban regeneration in the historic Jewish quarters of Central European Cities, Krakow: International Cultural Centre, 2009. Critical discussions in this anthology include: Ruth Ellen Gruber, “Beyond virtually Jewish… balancing the real, the surreal and real imaginary places,” Sandra Lustig, “Alternatives to ‘Jewish Disneyland.’ Some approaches to Jewish history in European cities and towns,” and Monika Murzyn-Kupisz, “Reclaiming memory or mass consumption? Dilemmas in rediscovering Jewish heritage of Krakow’s Kazimierz.” Similar critique appears in Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup, “Introduction: What Made a Space ‘Jewish’?” in Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History, eds. Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2017), 1–20, here 8. See “Vienna’s Jewish Geography. The Leopoldstadt in Interwar Literature,” in Silverman, Becoming Austrians, 103–40. Silverman refers to the representations of Leopoldstadt as a territory both isolated and connected, allowing the individual and universalized Jewish experience, the identification of Vienna as an opposing force to provinces, and Austria as a separate entity located between Eastern and Western Europe. Lässig and Rürup, “Introduction: What Made a Space ‘Jewish’?,” 1–3. Lässig and Rürop point out how past historiography set boundaries for “Jewish space.” The cities addressed in the anthology Designing Transformation are discussed also as models for reconsidering historiographies of other cities and towns in Central Europe. Lässig and Rürup aim to show German and Jewish history as “entangled history” and hope that their book will contribute to overcoming the “still common binary division of ‘Jewish’ and ‘non-Jewish’” (ibid., 4). Unfortunately, civil, cultural and political “binary division” developed and evolves in relation to past and present antisemitism. Essays in an earlier edited volume, Jewish and non-Jewish Spaces in the Urban Context, eds. Alina Gromova, Felix Heinret, and Sebastian Voigt (Berlin: Neofelis, 2015) addressed the different agendas of Jews and non-Jews projected into “Jewish space.” Jewish creative forces preserved cultural differences in the past mostly in order to secure shared progressive platforms. The importance of reconstructing Jewish Central European cultural and design history as integral to shared histories is explored in the chapters in Designing Transformation. It should further be noted that parallel developments to those discussed in this anthology, which focuses on Central Europe, occurred in Eastern Europe, including Lithuanian cities such as Kaunas and Vilnius. Jewish architects and clients are noted in the documentation yet discussion

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Designing Transformation of their contributions to the modernization of their city is incomplete in Julija Reklaité und Rüte Leitanaite, Architekturführer Vilnius (Berlin: Dom Publishers, 2015). In her book on Kaunas, Reklaité mentions several examples of Jewish clients and architects who embraced modern functionalist architecture, as in the case of the clinic of the prominent doctor Elchanan Elkes (1879–1944) in Kęstučio St. 8 (1930, today the Europa Institute at the Technical University in Kaunas). Reklaité further mentions that this building housed the first Montessori Kindergarten in Lithuania (Julija Reklaité, Architekturführer Kaunas [Berlin: Dom Publishers, 2015], 56). Regarding the new interest in discovering the contribution of Jewish architects in East and Central European Modernism by Günter Schlusche, TDM Welterbetag, jüdische Architekten Ost- & Mitteleuropa (2020) https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OoRS2M9cY-o. We hope that this anthology will encourage and inspire research on the role of Jewish architects and patrons in fashioning modernism in Eastern European countries. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993); quoted in Rampley, 2012, 16. The notion of “homeland” in Central and Eastern Europe as Rampley points out as a result of the history of political interruptions and displacements has been critically loaded throughout the twentieth century (Rampley, 2012), 11. He further points out that “the annihilation of the Jews after 1939 and the expulsion of the German populations of the Region after 1945 have ensured a disconnect between past and present in cities such as Brno (Brünn), Cracow [Krakow], Lodz, Wroclaw (Breslau) or Maribor (Marburg)” (ibid.). Ibid., 17. Sigmund Freud Archives B2 Library of Congress, quoted in Peter Gay, Freud: A Life of Our Time (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 597. Michael L. Miller, “A ‘City and Mother in Israel’ and Its Place of Memory: The Jewish Cemetery in Nikolsburg (Mikulov), Moravia,” in Jewish Studies at the Central European University VIII 2011–2016, eds. Carsten Wilke, András Kovács, and Michael L. Miller (Hungary: Central European University, 2017), 185–95, here 191. The Jewish population of Budapest increased from less than 45,000 to more than 200,000 (from 16 percent to 23 percent of the city’s population) primarily due to internal migration from the countryside to the capital city. Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe. Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 146. In Poland, in which only 10 percent of the population considered themselves as Westernized acculturated, the majority of the Jews spoke mainly or also Yiddish. Yet as suggested in Chapter 6 here, discussing the biography of architect Fryderyk Tadanier, there was an acknowledgment to a certain extent among Orthodox Polish Jews of the possibilities in acculturation following a German model. Anthony D. Smith, “Ethnic Nationalism and the Plight of Minorities,” Journal of Refugee Studies 7, no. 213 (1994): 187–9, here 188. Quoted in Joanna B. Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 21. Michlic refers to Smith’s identification of “ethno-nationalism” as an ideology and movement “according to which national membership lies in genealogy and in common vernacular culture and history.” Jewish cultural producers positioned themselves in different manners in relation to the vernacular culture in Central Europe in the interwar period as witnessed in the works of Hungarians architect Lajos Kozma and designer Anna Lesznai.

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38 T. G. Masaryk, “Ernest Renan o źidovství jako a náboženstvi (Le Judaisme comme race et comme religion)” (Ernest Renan on Judaism as a race and a religion), Sbornik historický, I (1883) reprinted in Masarykuv sborník, ed. V. K. Skvech (Prague, 1924–1930), 67–8. Quoted in Kieval, 2001, 205. 39 Richard I. Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions. Jewish Culture in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 731–98, here 744. 40 Ibid. 41 For critical discussion about the positioning of Jews in the process of nationalization, see Silverman, Becoming Austrians, 2012. 42 The reference here is to the preference to fashion architecture as European or what could be described retrospectively as “glocal,” inasmuch as European and global issues took on local forms. The term “glocal” is discussed in Katherine Arens, Vienna’s Dreams of Europe: Culture and Identity beyond the Nation-State (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 17–18. 43 Historian Kieval refers to the aims of the fathers who arrived from small Czech towns to secure the social mobility and professional success of their children, while the children aimed to use their linguistic advantage and cultural exposure to build bridges between the cultures (Hillel J. Kieval, “Choosing to Bridge: Revisiting the Phenomenon of Cultural Mediation,” Bohemia 46, no. 1 [2005]: 15–27, here 22). Architectural historian Ákos Moravánszky has suggested that for philosopher Georg Lukács the “breakup of the closed culture was not only a loss but also a change that carried the promise of enrichment” (Ákos Moravánszky, Competing Visions. Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture [Boston: MIT Press, 1999], 22). The chapters in our book further develop the possibilities of breakup of the “closed culture” as it offered promises for Jewish intellectuals, designers, and patrons to promote inclusive ideologies and designs. 44 Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” translated from French by Edmund White, New York Review of Books (April 26, 1984): 33–8, here 35. Kundera offers a romantic approach based on his high appreciation of leading intellectuals and authors: “Indeed, no other part of the world has been so deeply marked by the influence of Jewish genius. Aliens everywhere and everywhere at home, lifted above national quarrels, the Jews in the twentieth century were the principal cosmopolitan, integrating element in Central Europe: they were its intellectual cement, a condensed version of its spirit, creators of its spiritual unity. That’s why I love the Jewish heritage and cling to it with as much passion and nostalgia as though it were my own.” 45 There are few publications on each of these including discussions on his Jewish identification. Another example of a Central European Jewish intellectual who opposed modern design is the Czech author Max Brod (Max Brod. Über die Schönheit häßlicher Bilder. Essay zu Kunst und Ästhetik [Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014]). Brod’s book includes a critical text against modern furniture in which he notes: “Ich will der Einteilung wegen bemerken, daß ich moderne Möbel a) aus Zeitschriften, b) aus Möbelausstellungen und c) aus bewohnten Räumen kenne—[…]” (“For the sake of the argument, I want to note that I know modern furniture a) from magazines, b) from furniture exhibitions and c) from actual living rooms— […]”). “Gegen moderne Möbel” (ibid., 24–32, here 24). My translation. 46 Ernst Bloch, “Symbol: Die Juden,” in of Durch die Wüste. Frühe kritische Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1964), 122–40. The essay originally appeared in Geist der Utopie in the edition of 1918 but was omitted in the edition of this book in 1923.

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It appeared that same year in Bloch’s Durch die Wüste; quoted in Jack Zipes, Ernst Bloch: The Pugnacious Philosopher of Hope (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 3. The “symbol” has also been identified with Jewish messianism (Elke Dubbels, Figuren des Messianischen in Schriften deutsch-jüdischer Intellektueller 1900–1933 [Göttingen: De Gruyter, 2011], 153). 47 Quoted in Hilde Heynen, “Building on Hollow Space: Ernst Bloch’s Criticism of Modern Architecture,” in Architecture and Modernity. A Critique (Boston: MIT Press, 1999), 120. For further discussion on Bloch’s criticism of modern a-la Bauhaus architecture, see Matthew Rampley, “‘We Have Suddenly Become Severe’: Ernst Bloch as a Critic of Modern Architecture,” in Nowhere Somewhere: Writing, Space and the Construction of Utopia, eds. José Eduardo Reis and Jorge Bastos da Silva (Editora Da Universidade do Porto, 2006), 171–80. 48 An argument presented in the abstract to the thought-provoking essay: Hisham Abusaada and Abeer Elshater, “Studying the Concept of ‘Hope’ as a Tool for Better Living,” in Regional Studies Association Annual Conference, Graz, 2016. The urban design experts explain that they chose to discuss Bloch’s philosophy as an introduction to “how the urban designer can create a better life for the future based on the concept of hope” (accessed August 1, 2020): https://www.academia. edu/25138926/Studying_the_Concept_of_Hope_as_a_Tool_for_Better_Living. 49 See https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/1052.pdf p. 7, 9 (accessed August 16, 2020). My emphasis. 50 For an enlightening discussion on Arendt and her take on the relation between German Enlightenment and Jewish identity, which also includes reference to Arendt’s biographical study of the Jewish salon woman Rahel Varnhagen (early 1930s), see Liliane Weissberg, “Humanity and Its Limits: Hannah Arendt Reads Lessing,” in Practicing Progress. The Promise and Limitations of Enlightenment, eds. Richard E. Schade and Dieter Sevin (Amsterdam and NY, 2007), 187–98, here 190. 51 In her essay “Enlightenment and the Jewish Question” (“Aufklärung und die Judenfrage”) published in 1932, Arendt argued that Gottlieb Ephraim Lessing did not vote for the emancipation of Jews as Jews but rather for the emancipation of Jews as human beings. As has further been pointed out by the German studies scholar Liliane Weissberg, Lessing’s notion of the “human being” and thus humanity turned into nothing but an abstract and finally a meaningless term (Weissberg, Humanity and Its Limits, 190). 52 Weissberg refers to Arendt’s criticism of the assimilationist path taken by German Jews. Arendt described these Jews as social outsiders and pariahs, and that their wish for assimilation has turned many of them into parvenus. “As pariahs, Jews could maintain a critical existence, and a special perspective on their social surroundings. As parvenus, however, they are dependent on their surroundings, have to resign their own position, and assume the role of the proper slave” (Weissberg’s wording, ibid., 191). Weissberg further refers to Adorno’s critique of the Enlightenment and its totalitarian properties. 53 Nethaniel Katzburg, “Central European Jewry between East and West,” in A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry, eds. Yehuda Don and Victor Karady (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 33–46, here 39. For a reference to the antisemitic perspective see further Kerry Wallach, Passing Illusions. Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), 9. Yet, even liberal politicians pointed out this “impossibility,” supposedly to

Introduction

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explain their failure to secure politics of tolerance. In her book The Invisible Budapest, Mary Gluck argues that while the populist nationalists aimed to expose “the Jews,” rejecting Jewish attempts to assimilate and keep their Jewishness “invisible,” liberals accused acculturated Jews of failing to assimilate and become properly Magyarized. Gluck refers to a pamphlet by the Hungarian liberal Péter Ágoston on the “Jewish question” in 1917, who stated that “those contemporary Jews who, in spite of their emancipation, insist on giving expression to the fact that they are Jews, that they always want to remain Jews, and want to publicly display their Jewishness, have failed to understand the goals that emancipation had hoped to achieve. Emancipation was not for making possible the retention of [Jewish] differences, but for creating the means for them [Jews] to become equal citizens” (Mary Gluck, The Invisible Jewish Budapest. Metropolitan Culture at the Fin de Siècle [Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2016], 59. Source: Péter Ágoston, A zsidók útja [The Path of the Jews], Nagyvárad, 1917, 294). 54 Beata Hock, Klara Kemp-Welch and Jonathan Owen, “Introduction: Towards a Minor Modernism?,” in: A Reader in East-Central-European Modernism 1918–1956, 2020, https://courtauld.ac.uk/research/courtauld-books-online/a-reader-in-eastcentral-european-modernism-1918-1956/introduction-minor-modernisms. In the text on Kafka the word “minor” is a construct to denote the positioning of the minority group in relation to the majority of society. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polen (Minnesota and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, 7th edition, 2003). Few attempts were dedicated to address the critical role of Jewish artists in Central Europe specifically in exhibitions in Jewish Museums. One recent, extensive research project on the topic is: Beatrix Bastl, Die jüdischen Studierenden der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien 1848–1948 (Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, 2019). 55 Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka, 12–13. 56 For an enlightening discussion on Jews obtaining property in Prague, see Martina Niedhammer, Nur eine “Geld-Emancipation”? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten des Prager jüdischen Großbürgertums 1800–1867 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), chapter 5, “Die Portheimka” 187–219. I thank Ines Koeltzsch for this reference. For further discussion on Jews obtaining property in Central Europe, see Lisa Silverman, “On Jews and Property in Provincial Central Europe: Leopold Kompert’s 1848 Publications,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (2019): 424–42. Jewish Austro-Hungarian politicians attempted to address historical and contemporary attacks on Jewish property. For example, Romanian member of the Austro-Hungarian parliament, Dr. Benno (Beno) Straucher’s speech about the inability to grant security for Jews, referring to the attack against Jews in Prague in December 1897 (“Eine Rede des Abg. Dr. Straucher,” Die Neuzeit, March 14, 1902, 107). After the First World War, recurrent attacks on Jewish properties occurred in Krakow, Prague, Berlin, and in the Ukraine. These events were reported in the newspapers and had a haunting effect on Jews. For reports on antisemitic street riots in the Scheunenviertel in Berlin in November, 1923, see discussion in Metzler, Tales of Three Cities, 198–205. For reports on pogroms in 127 communities in the Ukraine between November 1918 and May 1919: “Was geht in der Ukraine vor?” Wiener Morgenzeitung, August 23, 1919: 3, and further more than a decade later “Bej Shidow! (Schlagt die Juden!). Der Passionsweg des ewigen Juden,” Der Kuckuck, February 5, 1933, 15–16. At the same time there were antisemitic campaigns aiming

34

57 58 59 60

61 62 63

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Designing Transformation to undermine the link between Jews obtaining higher education and their economic success, for example, in Hungary through the Numerus Clauses law (1920), and in Austria through an “unofficial” policy to reduce Jewish students in the faculty of medicine at the University of Vienna in the 1920s (Birgit Nemec/Klaus Taschwer, “Terror gegen Tandler. Kontext und Chronik der antisemitischen Attacken am I. Anatomischen Institut der University Wien, 1910 bis 1933,” in Der Lange Schatten des Antisemitismus, ed. Oliver Rathkolb [Vienna University Press, 2013], 147–71, here 154–5). Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka, 46. For further critique on their theory, see Stanley Corngold, “Kafka and the Dialect of Minor Literature,” in College Literature, February 1994, 89–101. Timothy O. Benson, “Introduction,” in Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation 1910–1930, ed. Timothy O. Benson (Los Angeles and Cambridge, Mass.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and MIT Press, 2002), 16, and, 19. For a discussion on Central European Jewish émigré architects in the United States, see Donald Albrecht, “Avant-Garde Belongs Neither to the Gentile Nor Jew,” Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism, Exh. Cat. The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, 2014, 13–27. For critical discussion on the role of Central European émigré and exiled architects and designers in shaping today’s global design culture, see Elana Shapira and Alison J. Clarke, “Introduction—Émigré Cultures and New Design Dimensions,” 2017, 1–26. Christopher Long, Josef Frank: Life and Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 112. For discussion on architect Frank in relation to his partnership with architect Oskar Wlach, see Chapter 8 in this anthology, and for discussion of Hugo Ehrlich career, see Chapter 4 in this anthology. Paul Lerner, The Consuming Temple. Jews, Department Stores, and the Consumer Revolution in Germany, 1880–1940 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015), 10. Lerner focuses on the Jewish identification of the department stores in Germany and sees this phenomenon in relation to other European countries and to the United States as distinct German: “Nowhere outside of Germany did Jews own such a sizable percentage of department stores firms, and nowhere else was the association between the department store and Jews as strong” (ibid., 13). For a detailed analysis of this monumental building with no reference to the clients Breda and Weinstein, see Jindřich Vybíral, Leopold Bauer. Häretiker Modernen Architektur 1872–1938 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2018), 405–11. There is a current plan to destroy the building and there is a public initiative trying to prevent it, Steffen Neumann, “Demonstrieren Für eine Architekturlegende” (May 21, 2019). http:// landesecho.cz/index.php/unterwegs/945-demonstrieren-fuer-eine-architekturlegende (accessed July 14, 2019). For an enlightening discussion on Mendelsohn’s fruitful collaboration with Salman Schocken, owner of a department store chain, based on the rejection of the “German”style department store, as exemplified in Alfred Messel’s Wertheim department store in Berlin, as well as the rejection of the Jewish assimilation course in Germany, and further encouraging revitalization of Jewish culture, see Lerner, The Consuming Temple, 149–73. Yet, Lerner also points out that the groundbreaking collaboration between Schocken and Mendeloshn did not hinder Schocken and his brothers from welcoming Bauhaus influence on their stores and marketing including selling furniture inspired by Bauhaus and applying Bauhaus aesthetics in their ads, and

Introduction

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67

68 69 70

71

72

35

further enlisting “Moholy-Nagy to develop advertisements and direct the concern’s promotional films” (ibid., 171). Christian Schramm, “Architecture of the German Department Store,” in Broken Threads. The Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria, ed. Roberta S. Kremer, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 29–47, here 41. The reference to the city increasingly becoming “a thing to be consumed” is presented in Lerner, The Consuming Temple, 14. The source is Erika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End (Princeton, NJ, 2000). Ludvik Brandeis (1898–1944) owned the toy department store. It was founded by his grandfather E. H. Brandeis and was highly recognized. The firm was granted the title “court and chamber deliverers” to the Austro-Hungarian Kaiser (1889–1918). Ludvik Brandeis encouraged the German conservative architect Foehr, “an outsider” in the modernist scene, to design a striking functionalist architecture at the center of the city. Ludvik Brandeis, his wife, and his young children were murdered in the Holocaust. Mendelsohn’s architecture influenced several buildings in Prague, including Ervin (also Erwin) Katona’s residential building at the corner of Veverkova and Veletržní in 1938. That same year Katona was forced to emigrate to Britain where he became known for his concept of building prefabricated concrete houses. For further information on Katona, see Max Eisler, “Erwin Katona – Prag / Wohnbauten,” Moderne Bauformen (1932): 619–25. For further references to Mendelsohn’s influence on modernism in Prague: Kateřina Racková, “Modern Toy Store,” in https://www.prahaneznama.cz/jine-zajimavosti/moderni-hrackarstvi/and Filip Meszaros, Jewish architects in Prague (5), http://www.maskil.online/2020/05/07/ zidovsti-architekti-v-praze-5-erwin-katona/ (both accessed October 22, 2020). The art historian Max Eisler’s critical role in shaping Viennese modernism is discussed in Chapter 8 in this anthology. http://bachner.cz/katalog-erich-mendelsohn-dynamika-a-funkce-vizekosmopolitniho-architekta/?lang=en (accessed July 1, 2020). It was originally built by Wilhelm Cremer and Richard Wolffenstein, who specialized in residential and commercial buildings and synagogues in 1901–1903, and renovated by Mendelsohn and Neutra with additional construction. Egon Riss (1901–1964), who migrated from Galicia to Vienna, and studied at Vienna Technische Hochschule, also designed the renowned Tuberculosis Pavilion in Lainzer Hospital in 1926. He wrote a city-planning book called Raumveredelung. Die neue Stadt (Urban Environment Refinement. The New city), 1936, arguing for the creation of small communities within green environment and with all necessary social, medical, cultural, and commercial services. This book was also published in Hungarian in 1972 and is still popular there. József Sisa, “Nikolaus Pevsner’s Thoughts on Hungarian Architecture,” in Britain and Hungary. Contact in Architecture, Design, Art and Theory during the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Centuries, ed. Gyula Ernyey (Hungarian University of Craft and Design, 2003), 70–82, here 82. In 1966, Pevsner published an article on “Impression of Hungarian Building,” in The New Hungarian Quarterly but avoided to make any mention of the Bauhaus-style residential buildings in the city or any reference to the modernist buildings in the New Leopold quarter (ibid., 79). Discussion on Pevsner’s German-Jewish identification in Stephen Games, Pevsner: The Early Life: Germany and Art (Publication place: Continuum Books, 2010).

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73 See Lenka Kudělková, “Felix Haas,” http://biography.hiu.cas.cz/Personal/index.php/ HAAS_Felix_9.1.1925-9.5.1993 (accessed July 1, 2020). 74 I refer here to Ines Koeltzsch’s enlightening reference to the publication of the Zionist intellectual Felix Weltsch (autumn 1933) describing Prague as a “point of intersection of many cultures” [Schnittpunkt vieler Kulturen] located at the “borders between East and West, […] North and South.” Koeltzsch further notes that Weltsch identified Prague as “‘a real city of the centre,” in which “German and Czech and Jewish culture” stood in close contact. Koeltzsch refers to Weltsch’s Jewish perspective as a living “encounter of intellects” [Zusammenstoß der Geister] and quotes the author: “The obvious differences increase awareness, sharpen the critical faculties, refine empathy” (Ines Koeltzsch, “Utopia as Everyday Practice Jewish Intellectuals and Cultural Translation in Prague before and after 1933,” in Catastrophe and Utopia. Jewish Intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s and the 1940s, eds. Ferenc Laczó and Joachim von Puttkamer [Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2018], 15–44, here 29. Source: Felix Weltsch, “Der Geist des čechoslovakischen Judentums,” B’nai B’rith 12, no. 10 [1933]: 397–9, here 399). According to Koeltzsch, Weltsch’s cultural philosophy fitted to the approach of his readers, members of Czech B’nai B’rith, who played “an important role in cultural politics and supported numerous literary and scientific projects that mediated between Czech and German, Jewish and non-Jewish culture.” Koeltzsch, “Utopia as Everyday Practice.” 75 Christine Holste, “Jüdische Architektur und Identität – einige Bemerkungen zur neueren Diskussion,” in Europäische-jüdische Studien Beiträge, in Das Kulturerbe deutschsprachiger Juden, ed. Elke-Vera Kotowski, Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum (Potsdam, Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2015), 222–34, here 228. Holste refers to Julius Posener, “Jüdische Architekten in Berlin,” in Leistung und Schicksal. 300 Jahre Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin. Exh. Cat. Berlin Museum. Berlin 1971, 64–7. She further points out that his central publication on the modernization of Berlin includes many references to the role of Jewish clients in this process; Julius Posener, Berlin auf dem Wege zu einer neuen Architektur. Das Zeitalter Wilhelms II. 1890–1918, (Munich, 1979, 2nd print 1995). For an enlightening discussion on Julius Posener’s articles on modern architecture in Palestine in the late 1930s, see Ines Sonder, “Julius Posener und das Neue Bauen in Palästina,” in Vermittlungswege der Moderne—Neues Bauen in Palästina (1923–1948)/The Transfer of Modernity—Architectural Modernism Palestine (1923–1948), eds. Jörg Stabenow and Ronny Schüler (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2019), 53–68. 76 Holste, “Jüdische Architektur und Identität,” 231–2. Posener, “Jüdische Architekten in Berlin,” 66 (translated from German): “The time of Wilhelm II is also the time of the great Jewish builders; And of course it is not the case that Jews built for Jews and Goyim for Goyim: Jewish patrons have awarded contracts to all important architects of the time. Think of Rathenau, who, by appointing Peter Behrens as design consultant for AEG, has secured a place for himself in the history of modern architecture […] Among the clients of Muthesius’s country houses are many Jewish names: Freudenberg, Bloch, Hirschowitz, Tuteur, Kuczinsky, to name but a few.” Quoted in Holste, “Jüdische Architektur und Identität,” 233–4, footnote 38. For further discussion on Rathnau’s contribution to Berlin modernism, see Elana Shapira, “Jewish Identity, Mass Consumption and Modern Design,” in Longing, Belonging, and the Making of Jewish Consumer Culture, eds. Nils Roemer and Gideon Reuveni (Boston: Brill Publishing House, 2010), 61–90.

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77 Holste, “Jüdische Architektur und Identität,” 229–30. Holste refers to the bibliography in Julius Posener, Was Architektur sein kann. Neuere Aufsätze. (Basel, Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser, 1995), 233–49. 78 Sprecher’s biography is almost unknown and his identification as owner of the firm Sprecher’s S. Söhne, Markus & Jonas Sprecher, Lemberg trading with iron is based on different media reports in Austrian newspapers (see firm registration, Wiener Zeitung, March 19, 1900). Regarding the collaboration with Kassler (also Kasler) see Bohdan Cherkes and Andrii Shtendera, “Ferdinand Kassler as one of the most significant figures in architecture in Lviv in the period between two world wars,” in Perspectives of science and education. Proceedings of the 4th International youth conference. SLOVO\WORD, New York, USA, 2018, 306–10. Kassler was born in 1883 in Podguże (now part of Krakow) and studied at Lviv Polytechnic in the years 1902–1907. In 1908–1911 he was one of the leading architects in the architectural and construction firm of the Jewish entrepreneur Michal Ulyam (1879–1938). Kassler later opened his own architecture office at 4 Hlynianska Street (now Dontsova Street). He designed houses in the style of rational secession, sometimes using forms of neoclassicism. He later switched to functionalism. Kassler was a member of the board of the circle of supporters of Jewish Art in Lviv. He died in the Holocaust. Source: https://peoplepill.com/people/ferdynand-kassler/ 79 A series of photos of the building, within the neighboring Historicist buildings and its interiors (including modernist interior of Sprecher’s apartment), see Sofia Legin, “Another Lviv ‘skyscraper’ by Sprecher” (https://photo-lviv.in.ua/sche-odyn-lvivskyjhmarochos-shprehera/) (accessed August 24, 2020). Many thanks to Żanna Komar from the Research Institute of European Heritage, International Cultural Centre in Krakow for this reference. The text compares the modernist skyscraper built for Sprecher with the old historicist skyscraper finished a decade earlier and offers a detailed description of the 30-meter-tall building including the varied materials of artificial granite and marble, ceramic tiles, and alabaster. 80 Andrzej Szczerski, “Lviv and the Map of Modernist East-Central Europe,” January 2018, https://blokmagazine.com/lviv-and-the-map-of-modernist-east-centraleurope/ (accessed July 5, 2020). 81 Bohdan Cherkes, “Ferdynand Kasler’s Architecture of Harmonious Modernism,” Housing Environment 28, no. 28, December 1, 2019: 41–5. 82 For further discussion, see Romanian-British scholar Alexandru Bar, “The Transformation of Tristan Tzara’s and Marcel Janco’s National Identity,” in Judaica Petropolitana/Научно-теоретический журнал 10 (2018): 134–53. Bar refers to processes of developing Jewish identification or as he suggests “shifting identities” in which Jewishness is a critical aspect but not an exclusive defining factor of this process (ibid., 144). Bar discusses in his essay Janco and Tzara’s editorial cooperation of the publication Simbolul (The Symbol), the first modernist Romanian journal published in 1912. 83 Mary Gluck, The Invisible Budapest, 13. 84 Ibid. 85 Prokop, Zum jüdischen Erbe in der Wiener Architektur, 2016. See further Ursula Prokop, Jacques and Jacqueline Groag, Architect and Designer: Two Hidden Figures of the Viennese Modern Movement (Los Angeles: DoppelHouse Press, 2019). 86 Wiesner and Loos were among four editors of the Brno journal Wohnungskultur. Monatsschrift für Industrielle Kunst in 1924–1925.

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87 For further discussion, see Iris Meder, “Women Designers and Architects in Early Twentieth Century Vienna,” in Women’s Creativity since the Modern Movement (1918–2018). Toward a New Perception and Reception, eds. Helena Seražin, Caterina Franchini and Emilia Garda (Ljubljana: ZRC Publishing House, 2018), 50–7, here 53. Article accessible online file:///C:/Users/mir/Desktop/Women%20and%20 Architecture_momowo_torin_2018-compressed-copy.pdf. The late Iris Meder contributed largely to the research on Central European Jewish architects. 88 This title refers to Richard Neutra’s book Survival through Design (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954). 89 Neutra, Survival through Design, 224. 90 Ella Briggs has recently been the subject of several graduate theses, entries in historical surveys of women architects in Germany and Austria, and a film reconsidering her collaboration with national economist Otto Neurath in Britain. The recent exhibition “Red Vienna 1919–1934” (Wien Museum, 2019) repositioned her work within the historiography of Red Vienna. Possibly with the help of her brother Maurice (Moritz) Baumfeld’s (1868–1913) network as a journalist and theater director in Vienna and New York, Briggs launched her career in the United States yet returned to work in Vienna in the 1920s. 91 Victoria Newhouse, “Margot Wittkower: Design Education and Practice, Berlin: London, 1919–1939,” Journal of Design History 3, no. 2/3 (1990): 83–101.

Part One

Designing Their Homes in Central Europe

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1

The “Bauhaus Shtetl”: Opposing Conservatism in New Leopold Town in Budapest Rudolf Klein

New Leopold Town is probably the largest and most compact twentieth-century Jewish quarter in Europe. A “town-within-a-town,” it was designed, constructed, and initially inhabited mainly by liberal, middle-class Jews. Their values and way of life are reflected in the modernist housing blocks built around large courtyard gardens and lined up along the streets with little shops and restaurants, all in stark contrast to the conservative, “neo-Baroque Hungary.”1 This chapter addresses the modernist New Leopold Town in Budapest, its architecture, and social milieu. Budapest citizens associate Újlipótváros with Jews and interwar modernism. In this thinking, Jewish equals an educated middle-class, not too rich, but well situated and learned. Today, Jews are in the minority here, while in the 1930s they were a majority, save caretakers and other service personnel as well as some middle-class gentiles who concurred with the spirit of the neighborhood. Even today relations between Jews and gentiles in this quarter are more open-minded given the shared liberal, moderate leftist values, and because the local gentiles have first hand experience with Jews, undistorted by antisemitic stereotypes. The majority of Hungary’s prominent Jewish intellectuals have chosen to live in this neighborhood (Figure 1.1). Some 150 plaques of famous (mainly Jewish) intellectuals, writers, actors, musicians, and so on, who lived here, flank entrance gates to houses. By far the highest density of prominent citizens among the neighborhoods in Budapest lived here. Internationally the most prominent was probably Annie Fischer (1914–1995),

Figure 1.1  View of New Leopold Town from Margit Island. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020

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the classical pianist who played under the baton of Otto Klemperer and whom Sviatoslav Richter considered to be the greatest pianist of the period. Her recording cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas is a point of reference for numerous subsequent interpretations. Another luminary, Ágnes Heller (1929–2019), a philosopher, and member of the “Budapest School” (founded by her teacher Georg Lukács), criticized Communist Party practices and the so-called real socialism. She was expelled from Hungary and became Hannah Arendt professor at the New School for Social Research in New York. After twenty-five years she retired, returned to Budapest, and publicly criticized Hungary’s political establishment until her tragic death.2 When asked why she left the American cultural capital, she replied roughly the following: “While in NYC I was a professor of philosophy and an old Jewess, here, in Újlipótváros, I am Ágnes Heller,” hinting at the shtetle character of New Leopold Town.3 In Újlipótváros, on the Danube embankment, lived a “history-making” politician, the gentile Gyula Horn. In June 1989, as Hungarian minister of foreign affairs together with his Austrian counterpart, Alois Mock, he demolished a section of the Iron Curtain between the two countries and let some 60,000 East German tourists out to Austria.4 On the main square, called St. Steven’s Park, lived an architect couple, the gentile József Fischer (1901–1995), prominent Hungarian modernist architect, MP and minister, and his wife, the Jewish-born Eszter Pécsi (1898–1975), the first woman engineer in Hungary, renowned as a structural engineer, who in the 1950s left for New York to work with the Hungarian Jewish émigré Marcel Breuer and with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Another architect duo, Béla Hofstätter (1891–1944) and Ferenc Domány (1899–1939), excelled in designing apartment blocks, most notably the large block Pozsonyi Street 38-40-42, to be analyzed later (Figure 1.2). Both architects were Jewish. Domány returned from Berlin to Budapest after the rise of Nazi rule there in 1933. Béla Hofstätter, a trendsetting architect, alone created sixteen apartment buildings in Újlipótváros, and together with Ferenc Domány, a further seven, which were famous for their lavish staircases (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.2  Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány, the apartment building of Alföldi Sugar Factory, Pozsonyi Street 38-40-42, 1935–1936, view from South-East. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020

The “Bauhaus Shtetl”

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Figure 1.3  Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány, the apartment building of Alföldi Sugar Factory, Pozsonyi Street 38-40-42, 1935–1936, Staircase in Nr. 38. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020

Historical Background: Reversing Jewish Emancipation and “Segregation by Choice” During emancipation many Jews were quick to leave behind the compulsory segregation of the Ghettos and Jewish quarters as obsolete, and as epitomes of the dark ages.5 Prosperous Jews of the Gründerzeit enthusiastically contributed to the construction of new boulevards, like the Ringstraße in Vienna, or Budapest’s Andrássy Avenue. However, in the Budapest of the 1920s and 1930s the opposite

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sociocultural phenomenon occurred: “segregation by choice.” How did this happen that Jews flocked to the new neighborhood to be together—neither for attending synagogues daily, nor for kosher meals—but for weathering the coming storm jointly? Budapest was a city that had retained a significant Jewish population since Roman times and in the 1930s harbored some 200,000 Jews out of 1 million inhabitants (20 percent). The Jewish communities (Orthodox, Neolog, and Status quo Ante) were socially layered as elsewhere and showed different urban-geographical preferences. Habitually, until the interwar period, the upper middle-class inhabited Budapest’s Champs-Élysées, Andrássy Avenue, and Old Leopold Town (Ó-Lipótváros). Some opted for the hilly villa districts of Buda. Traditional, Orthodox, and poor Jewish citizens remained in the historic Jewish Quarter in Erzsébetváros or Elisabeth-Town, or in the neighboring districts of Pest, farther from the Danube. It was the liberal, middle-class professional Jews who preferred Újlipótváros, or New Leopold Town,6 on the banks of the Danube, from about the mid-1920s.7 There were several reasons for middle-class Jews to flock to New Leopold Town: (1) modernity of the neighborhood in terms of urban planning, architecture; (2) proximity of the Danube riverside and Margit Island with its swimming pools, spas, and tennis grounds—lifestyle amenities secured through architecture and urban planning (Újlipótváros itself had and has several tennis and basketball grounds); (3) relatively empty terrain close to the historic center of Pest and the Western Railway Station that was attractive for both Jewish investors and tenants; (4) rise of state-instigated antisemitism after the First World War, which prompted Jews to stick together. While all these factors played a role, the most significant was the last, antisemitism, prompted by Hungary’s post–First World War stormy history. There was the so-called Red Terror, a short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic with an unfortunate, significant contribution from emancipated Jews,8 and then the “White Terror,” the reprisal by conservative forces. However, all of Europe was in turmoil. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles redrew Europe’s map. Continental European empires, Austria-Hungary, the German Reich, Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empires disappeared, and Hungary probably became the most spectacular loser: it had to relinquish two-thirds of its territory to neighboring states and lost one-third of ethnic Hungarians to the newly established states of the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom (later Yugoslavia), the Czechoslovak Republic, the Soviet Union, and the greatly enlarged Romanian Kingdom. The reasons for Hungary’s great loss were numerous,9 but for politicians it was easiest to blame the Jews, who became the scapegoats for Hungary’s truncation.10 Correspondingly, Jews felt safer distancing themselves from a potentially hostile population and kept together. This “voluntary segregation” was an outcome of a wider political project in post– First World War Hungary: the reversal of Jewish emancipation, more than a decade before the German Nazi terror and persecution against Jews. Jewish emancipation started in Hungary with the 1782 Edict of Tolerance, passed by the enlightened Austrian Emperor Joseph II. Hungarian gentry realized the economic potential of settling Jews on their estates and allowed them certain economic freedom. In the nineteenth century, Jews became a key element of the country’s national project in which Hungarians were in minority vis-à-vis official national minorities (Germans, Slovaks, Croats, Ukrainians, Serbs, Vends), who made up the actual majority. Declaring

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the Jews (5 percent of the general population) Hungarian could secure Magyar ethnic majority in the kingdom. In exchange for relinquishing their Yiddish and German and speaking mostly Hungarian instead, Jews were offered successive emancipation. It was a win-win situation. Jews fueled the modernization of the Hungarian economy and in exchange gained civil rights. However, after the truncation of the country in the aftermath of the First World War, national minorities became citizens of neighboring countries and Jews were no longer needed to reinforce Hungarianspeaking majority. Moreover, in the extreme conservative milieu of interwar Hungary, as former facilitators of modernity Jews became suspicious. In Habsburg times, they were officially called Hungarians of Israelite faith; now they were referred to again as “Jews,” a term that beyond confusion meant ethnicity and later also “race.” In 1920 the Hungarian government passed the law of numerus clausus that limited the number of Jewish students at Hungarian universities to 6 percent. “Jewish Laws” of 1938 and 1939 curtailed further economic and civilian freedoms. Today older Jews who spent all their lives in New Leopold Town reject the idea of segregation by choice. It is the Freudian denial (Leugnung) at work, as they still want to think they have always been an organic part of the Hungarian nation and that the Shoah was just a “historical accident.” However, researchers have found that voluntary segregation was an important aspect for their choice of location.11 Regardless of inhabitants’ Jewish identity, history made this neighborhood officially Jewish: in 1944 New Leopold Town became a “Ghetto de Luxe,” discussed later in this chapter.

Modernist Project—Cultural Context, Architects, Clients, Hidden Synagogues, Cultural Hotspots, Stylistic Overview Constructed mainly in the interwar period and housing some 40,000 people12 roughly in a territory like Jerusalem’s Old City,13 New Leopold Town also has a cardo and a decumanus. Where these two intersect is the central park, which resembles its counterpart in New York, surrounded by affluent housing blocks and restaurants, and containing sporting grounds in lush vegetation with a pond in its center.14 This park faces the Danube, synonymous with Mitteleuropa, a river that defines Budapest functionally and visually. For the Jews, the Danube was a trading route between the Balkans and South German lands and to Northern Europe. In Roman times the Danube was the Limes, the border between the Roman Empire and Barbarian lands, dotted with castrums, some of which had Jewish populations.15 Budapest sits on this border, Buda on the “Roman soil,” including Acquincum, the Roman predecessor of modern Budapest, and Pest on the Barbarian side.16 The Danube became the geographical-cultural spine of Central Europe and the Habsburg Empire in particular, also called in German die Donaumonarchie. A great number of secularized Jewish intellectuals came from this country during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Újlipótváros belongs to this world in terms of intellectual excellence and geographically, with its main square symbolically embracing the river: Szent István Park stepwise widens toward the riverside, as if a tributary flowing into the Danube. Inhabitants of the neighborhood during this period of antisemitism in

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Hungary and the reversal of Jewish emancipation were strongly attached to the concept of Mitteleuropa,17 the lost Donaumonarchie, the reference to the “Golden Age” and to an empire that had successfully accomplished enlightenment and Jewish emancipation. In this context, modernism—a language of form and philosophy—appeared as a “savior” for reestablishing liberalism, internationalism, equality among all people, and a belief in a better future. Internationalism, liberalism, and leftist sparkle show up in the architecture of Újlipótváros. It shows in its modernism, Sachlichkeit,18 in its minimalist decoration and refusal of unnecessary luxury, but also in its relative stylistic pluralism in the framework of International Style. Modernism, rooted in nineteenth-century social utopias and a philosophy of societal equality and care, corroborated with the neighborhood’s ideals. At the same time, Újlipótváros was an architectural rebellion against the conservative interwar “neo-Baroque society” and its tastes. The neighborhood developed into the largest ensemble of interwar modern buildings19 in the country and the largest “International Style” Jewish quarter in Europe. Still, stylistically it was not homogeneous. It tolerated diverse, “tamed avant-garde” expressions, a kind of “vernacularization” of high modernism. Architecturally similar, yet socially different identification occurred in the case of the so-called Tel Aviv Bauhaus.20 For some, Bauhaus is a style in the meaning of fashion, but it was much more than that.21 The Bauhaus emerged in the aftermath of the First World War, as part of a renewal of modern German and continental European culture, a sort of tabula rasa following the great material and spiritual destruction. It fostered many utopic ideas and pure form, to which upper middle-class Jews, like Michael and Sarah Stein in Garches and Fritz Tugendhat in Brno, readily subscribed. However, the Jewish professional middle-class of Újlipótváros disliked high modernism’s rigor and wanted to complement it with Heimlichkeit, or coziness and relaxation from formal orthodoxy. In other words, while Hungarian Jewish designers played an important role in the Bauhaus—László Moholy-Nagy helped put the school on the modernist track in 1923 after Johannes Itten’s fruitless expressionist endeavors, while Marcel Breuer developed tubular furniture, for example—they did not create much at home. The predominantly Jewish architects of the neighborhood wanted to be well liked and actually felt at ease with this libertine, slightly eclectic modernism.22 Due to numerous Hungarian teachers and students—Jewish and gentile alike—the Bauhaus’s indirect influence is evident, though more in terms of free application of its forms than in adoption of its radical ideology. For instance, in Újlipótváros the minimal staircases of the Bauhaus were never accepted: the tradition of the Donaumonarchie and its monumental entrances and lavish staircases, originating in the Baroque period, prevailed until Communist times. The conservative political and cultural milieu also contributed to taming radical modernism. Interestingly, architecture mattered for the politics in Hungary even before the First World War, that is, during the “Golden Era.” In 1902, the Hungarian parliament passed a ban on Hungarian art nouveau architecture for public buildings, as the minister for religion and education, Baron Gyula Wlassics, labeled it ugly.23 This style was also condemned by conservatives as being “Jewish.”24 In reaction, middle-class Jews vigorously supported this style and with various tactics succeeded in pushing it

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through even for significant public buildings.25 In the 1920s, neo-Baroque became the official style in the country, when Baroque-looking churches and public buildings were erected and were strongly opposed by the Jews as utterly conservative and as revivals of the Counter Reformation. Újlipótváros’s modernism represented resistance but was limited in scope. While façades and floor plans were modern, the furniture almost never was. Jews opted for the furniture style highlighted by architect Lajos Kozma, a “cultured Jew,”26 who excelled in catering to the tastes of the middle-class of mostly acculturated Jews and who delivered always the best quality. Probably the most suspicious facet of the Bauhaus in the eyes of conservatives was the refusal of anthropomorphism in historic architecture, that is, treating windows as eyes, doors/gate as mouth, chimney as backbone, and columns as human bodies, etc. Instead of anthropomorphism, radical modernism played with forms of abstract painting, turning them into three dimensions. In Újlipótváros, leaning toward the abstract or the figurative varied from block to block and even from house to house with many intermediate stages. Some buildings show the influence of the Bauhaus, others of the Russian avant-garde, some of Adolf Loos, and some others a playful art déco27 (Figure 1.4).

Figure 1.4  Frigyes Spiegel and Endre Kovács, apartment building in Pannónia Street 19, 1928–1929. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020

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As a general rule, in New Leopold Town modernism was tamed, softened, and rendered bürgerlich. Understated windows without framing stood side by side with art deco–style framing of façade openings, balconies, and entrances. Strong horizontals often juxtaposed with verticals became expressive elements of the façades, taking away the prominence of individual windows. In Újlipótváros, the Le Corbusian “fenêtre longeuer” was relatively rare on apartment buildings, but individual windows were often visually connected by expressive horizontal moldings, as in “Tel Aviv Bauhaus.”28 Elements of Central European architecture, like German expressionism—both on plastered façades and on façade brick buildings—showed up sporadically along modernism proper. Elements of Czech Cubism and Czechoslovak Rondo Cubism can be also found.29 Oriel windows became a leading motif in the street blocks around the central park. At several locations, modernism on the façades reverts to official, conservative neo-Baroque, while floor plans are modern. The neighborhood has no central church and no central synagogue either.30 A church was planned in the 1870s, but as the population became Jewish it was not built. The large synagogue in Hegedűs Gyula Street is tucked into the courtyard, away from the street view, and smaller synagogues, located on the ground floor of apartment buildings, are also invisible. What is visible? Restaurants; shops (some of them dating back to the 1930s); four cinemas;31 the Vígszínház (a comedy theater, playing numerous pieces of Jewish-born playwrights, like Ferenc Molnár [1878–1952], the author of The Paul Street Boys and Liliom; Ernő Szép [1884–1953], etc.); Kállai-Brandeisz School of Modern Dance

Figure 1.5  Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány, Dunapark Restaurant in the apartment building of Alföldi Sugar Factory, Pozsonyi Street 38-40-42, 1935–1936. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020

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(Mozgásművészeti Iskola), which followed the free dance of Isadora Duncan;32 two elementary schools; a music school; two multi-story garages, the larger with two basreliefs representing male and female workers fixing the tires of elegant cabrios while their well-dressed bourgeois clients appreciate their work. Small restaurants line Pozsonyi Street, the Cardo, and two major restaurants are located around the central park, the Lugano,33 and the Dunapark. They were popular places of social gathering, particularly the latter, located in the largest building of Újlipótváros, the luxurious apartment block of Alföldi Sugar Factory. This figures as a towering city hall in the central park, containing on the first two floors the Dunapark coffee shop and restaurant, still a fashionable meeting place of locals. On its narrow upper floor there is a gallery of patrons, mainly Jewish intellectuals (Figure 1.5). A stone-covered façade enhances the prominence of this house, visually but not intentionally relating it to the so-called Jerusalem Bauhaus, the elegant villas in the Rechavia neighborhood.

Jewish Identification with the “Shtetl in the Metropolis,” the Modern Utopian Settlement against Political Conservatism and Historicism in Architecture Who were the developers and original inhabitants of the New Leopold Town? The vast majority were well-off medical doctors, dentists, lawyers, journalists, book publishers, and entrepreneurs of all kinds, almost exclusively reformed Jews. Furthermore, businesses such as insurance companies (Turul Biztosító Társaság), banks, or industries (Alföldi Sugar Factory, for instance) were also located there. The insurance company Turul, named after a mythic Hungarian “national predator bird,” constructed the Phönix-Courtyard, the only Hof-like structure in the neighborhood (1928, architect Dávid Jónás [1871–1951]) with a large courtyard and eight staircases, and some 112 flats (2 per floor, today nearly 200) (Figure 1.6). New Leopold Town or Újlipótváros was and still is considered a “town within a town”; its inhabitants belong both to the shtetle and to the metropolis. It is a typical Jewish attitude to belong to a local community and also to the “outside world.” This was the motto also of moderate Jewish reform movements and a prerequisite to the success of emancipation.34 Today, New Leopold Town is often termed “the village” (a falu)35 due to its intimacy, where many people know each other. However, neither its size, nor its character complies with the notion of village. The inhabitants do not earn their income from agriculture, nor is their community closed to the outside world, as in a village. In Hungarian, village is “falu,” deriving from fal, meaning wall; that is, it refers to the closed character of a village that in certain historic periods was walled. Another common name is ÚjZséland, used mainly in Jewish circles, making a pun of New Zeeland, in Hungarian Új-Zéland, and Új-Lipótváros. Starting the name with “ZH” (Zséland), the Hungarian “ZS” refers to zsidó, Jew in Hungarian; thus, Új-Zséland means New Jewish Land, a sort of Altneuland (Old-New-Land), the title of Theodor Herzl’s utopian novel envisaging modern Israel.36 Some important aspects of Altneuland are realized in New Leopold

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Figure 1.6  Dávid Jónás, Phönix-Courtyard, 1928, Katona József Street 27. Photo: © Rudolf Klein, 2020

Town: Herzl called his liberal and egalitarian social model “Mutualism,” based on public ownership of the land—the large courtyards of the perimeter blocks in Újlipótváros— while at the same time encouraging private entrepreneurship;37 furthermore, the street sides of the blocks, with competing and complementing façades, express individualism and entrepreneurship in their stylistic pluralism. Besides progressive ideas, Herzl appreciated European cultural heritage, its theater, opera, and museums, and these are also part of the program of Újlipótváros. A more ethnically and politically neutral term, or rather nickname, is Lipócia or Új-Lipócia, also the name of its cultural journal, Lipócia. In both cases Lipót, or in German Leopold, highlights Hungary’s Habsburg roots and extends a covert hint to Mitteleuropa. The term shtetle, used in this chapter, suggests a Jewish connotation, but also an urban character, referring to Stadt (town or small city in German) and Städtlein

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(little town in German). The Yiddish shtetle refers to those predominantly Jewish settlements of Eastern Europe (1,000–20,000 inhabitants) from the twelfth century to the Holocaust. It is not just an urban-geographical notion, but a cultural one too, denoting a tightly knit community with presumed strong values and morals. Újlipótváros shows some similar qualities to shtetles, in both the social and architectural sense. It is actually a utopian remake of the shtetle along principles espoused in Herzl’s Altneuland. This “shtetle-like” thinking was not new in the gentile world of neither the 1920s nor the 1930s. The German idea of (Stadt)gemeinde was that of the community that creates, inhabits, and interacts with its built environment, in both the Siedlungs and Viennese Hofs. While the Siedlung was the open form, embedded in nature, the Hof was the more urban form, based often on perimeter blocks. Újlipótváros also featured perimeter blocks, with houses lined along edges of large plots, but it also harbored gardens in the center. Greenery divides gardens into smaller plots belonging to individual houses, in which inhabitants grow trees, bushes, and flowers to their liking. There are also benches and small playgrounds under the trees. The great success of Újlipótváros in terms of layout and urban morphology is the integration of some aspects of the German Siedlungs (the use of vegetation) and the Viennese Hofs (having closed units) into a traditional urban fabric. This includes traditional streets with little shops, cafés, which achieve a good balance of homogeneity and diversity, namely a recognizable character of a larger “community” with its public spaces, yet preserving the individuality of the houses. Equality, individualism, and belonging to micro communities—houses and courtyards/gardens—contribute also to the “shtetleness” of this neighborhood that has survived to our day. In terms of urban sociology, we can apply “urbanity” (Urbanität), defined by the German gentile psychoanalytic and urban critic, Alexander Mitscherlich, as an “intense interaction of the private and the collective spheres,”38 to Újlipótváros, acting physically in two ways: (1) through traditional open urban spaces, streets, and squares with shops, many cafés and restaurants, sporting facilities; (2) through the gardens of perimeter blocks in which private and semi-private spatial interaction takes place. Certainly, all these communications were based on a shtetle-like social coherence between developers, architects, and tenants.

“Ghetto de Luxe” and Its Aftermath On November 12, 1944, authorities started marking the so-called protected houses (védett házak) or starred houses (csillagos házak) in Újlipótváros with six-pointed stars, where 15,600 Jews, possessing documents of foreign countries (Schutz-Brief; roughly, protective certificate) had moved. Each family was allotted one room in a flat, terribly overcrowded. The neighborhood became the “international Ghetto” where Swedish, Swiss, Spanish, Portuguese, and Vatican coats of arms near the entrances signaled exterritorial jurisdiction. Unlike other Ghettos in Hungary, Újlipótváros was not walled off during Nazi occupation (March 1944 to February 1945). Jews were allowed to go out from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Actual protection in the “Ghetto de Luxe”39 was far from perfect, but the majority of its inhabitants escaped deportation. There was another, “budget Ghetto” in Pest,40 walled off from the streets in the Old Jewish Quarter around the great synagogues. Some 20,000 Budapest Jews fell victim to the atrocities of Arrow Cross Units,41 the hard-core Hungarian Nazis,42 who usually ordered the victims to the Danube embankment and shot them into the river.43 Soviet forces freed Budapest from Nazis on February 13, 1945, and some 200,000 Jews remained in the city at liberation. Their number began to dwindle slowly, with a steep fall in 1956, during the uprising against Soviet-Russian occupation, when the border toward Austria was opened and thousands of Hungarian gentiles and Jews fled the country. Communism banned almost all religious activity, swept unpleasant political questions under the carpet, and severely curtailed Jewish identity, which started to recover only after 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. The interest in Újlipótváros started to emerge after the fall of Communism, parallel with a “Jewish Renaissance.” Two books were published, one about everyday life,44 one on architecture45 and numerous investigations,46 and research papers on special questions started to reconstruct the past of the neighborhood.47 In other ex-Communist countries, after the liberation from Soviet-Russian occupation, Jewish revival followed. This partial resumption of Jewish traditions, often without substantial Jewish populations or active Judaism, was described by Ruth Gruber as “virtually Jewish.”48 For instance, in the once Jewish town of Kazimierz (today part of Krakow), gentile Poles, dressed in orthodox Jewish outfits, emulate the past in medieval synagogues and provide tourists with information. In Budapest this Renaissance was genuine with a substantial Jewish population living in the city.49 Provincial Hungarian Jewry never recovered after the Holocaust, as the vast majority of them were deported to concentration and death camps, and men conscripted to deadly forced labor units where many of them died. Jewish Renaissance was part of an overall spiritual revival after Communist oppression, shared by almost all Hungarian citizens, including the roughly 100,000 strong Jewish communities. This jubilation did not last long but represented one of the most creative and optimistic periods the country had seen so far, in which Jews tried to make up for the seven lost decades of dictatorships. They established the Spinoza Café, the Jewish theater, a Jewish Cultural Centre, the Bálint House, three Jewish schools, and a Jewish university. Further Jewish bookshops, cafés, and restaurants flourished, and intense research and publication activities have characterized the last three decades. Újlipótváros got back its flare and popularity. Some Israeli expats also live here. The tragic past is referred to by numerous monuments and memorial plaques; two for Raoul Wallenberg, Giorgio Perlasca, and the “Shoes Memorial” on the banks of the Danube, which commemorates the victims of the Arrow Cross (Nyilaskeresztes), the Hungarian Nazi troops who shot Jews into the Danube.50 Material and cultural aspects of Jewish tradition are presented in the “Pozsonyi Piknik,” a yearly two-day Jewish festival,51 formerly in Pozsonyi Street, which now on the Danube riverside showcases short theater performances, live klezmer music, a book fare with authors dedicating their books, and Jewish gastronomy.

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For Sukkoth the liberal-leftist Beith Orim Jewish Community, led by a lady rabbi, erects a Sukkah for locals and visitors in the “Central Park.” Láng Téka, the Jewish bookshop, stages events related to Jewish past and present. During the summer, through open windows one can listen to piano, violin, and cello players. During the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, members of the famous Budapest Festival Orchestra gave little chamber concerts in the wide, green courtyards, under the large trees, where blackbirds’ random singing accompanied melodies of Haydn and Mozart. This neighborhood features a peaceful co-existence of secular Jews and liberal gentiles, interrupted only from time to time by thunderous motorcyclists, clad in allblack, wearing shallow black helmets resembling Nazi militiamen, who remind the tolerant inhabitants that there are also other worlds today.

Conclusion New Leopold Town or Újlipótváros is a unique neighborhood in the context of Budapest, the former regions of the Donaumonarchie, and European urban culture in its planning, construction, architectural expression, Jewish history, and in its hundred years of intellectual and urban-architectural continuity. An interplay of diverse historical events all contributed to the creation and maintenance of the high culture and real estate value of the neighborhood: the relocation of industry from central areas of the city; the rising antisemitism of the interwar period; the emerging modern movement in architecture; the Nazi occupation and the humanitarian actions of foreign diplomats who rescued the neighborhood’s Jews during the Shoah; the Cold War and Communist dictatorship and its gradual softening; and later the liberation of East Central Europe from Soviet-Russian dominance. The neighborhood shows a strong social and architectural coherence and intimacy, hence my association with the shtetl. It stands for a hundred years of interaction between the spatial and the social, embodying the values and elements of liberal Jewish identity and its resilience against the storms of Central European history. Here the idea of Jewish cultural identification is far from the strict Halachic concept; it is rather a question of origin, traditions, education, a system of values measurable in the set of incremental differences between Jews and non-Jews in a Derridean sense of incrementality, which often echo the economic and cultural interaction between Jews and gentiles, from antiquity up to our day.

Notes 1

“Neo-Baroque” society as a term was coined by the leading tandem of Hungarian historians, Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfű. They argued that after the losses of the First World War Hungary escaped into its glorious past, most notably into the Baroque, which celebrated the victory over Turkish occupation and the triumph of Catholicism over Islam. Neo-Baroque exceeded art history, becoming an outlook and philosophy of extreme conservatism.

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Ágnes Heller died while swimming in Lake Balaton in Hungary. This anecdote is told by her Budapest publisher, Ágnes Fenyő. This action significantly contributed to German reunification and brought to an end the division of Europe. In the next year Horn signed a treaty about the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Hungary. 5 Still, conservative Jews remained loyal to the tightly nit urban fabric of their traditional quarters, dotted with small synagogues, shtiblach and mikvaot. 6 Historically, the New Leopold Town is the fifth Jewish quarter on the territory of what is today Budapest. In the ancient Roman times Jews lived in what is today the 3rd District, Óbuda. In the medieval period Jews were located in the Buda Castle District, first in the southern part, near the Fehérvári Gate, in the twelfth century, later near the Viennese Gate, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Their synagogue on the latter location was the largest medieval place of Jewish worship discovered in Central Europe so far. The early modern Jewish settlement was also in Óbuda, from which after 1840 Jews were allowed to settle in Erzsébetváros suburb, the Jewish Quarter with the grand synagogues. 7 Old Leopold Town was named after Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, 1640–1705 (born and died in Vienna), Habsburg ruler, King of Hungary. New Leopold Town is the continuation of Old Leopold Town to the north across of Szent István Boulevard into the 13th District. 8 Béla Kún, the bloodthirsty dictator was born Kohn (1886–1938); his Red Terror was often labeled “Jewish Terror”; many of his de facto ministers—officially “peoples’ commissars”—were Jewish, such as Jenő Varga (1879–1964), Jenő Landler (1875–1928), Béla Vágó (1881–1939), Béla Szántó (1881–1952), Jenő László (1878–1919), Ottó Korvin (1894–1919), Tibor Szamuely, although they have left Judaism and took Communism as a denomination. See Géza Komoróczy, Zsidók a Tanácsköztársaságban, in Szombat, 18. August 2012. 9 Such as the lost war, inappropriate handling of national minorities from the early nineteenth century onward, badly conducted negotiations in Paris, the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, a threat for European democracies, the changed power structure of European countries and alliances, etc. 10 This is in contrast to the reality: the majority of Jews felt loyal to the Hungarian culture within the multilingual and multicultural setting of Budapest. Moreover, Jews were better off in a larger and richer country that was multilingual and multicultural. They strongly supported the Hungarian gentry in its nation-building efforts during the nineteenth century. By 1900 the vast majority of Jews spoke Hungarian and in territories with dominant national minorities Jews became the exponents of Hungarian language and culture. See Rudolf Klein, “Building an Entente Cordiale on the Plains of Bácska: Szabadka/Subotica’s Urban History,” East Central Europe/ECE, vol. 33, 2006, part 1–2, 169–210. 11 Gyula Zeke points out that in the interwar period Jews were disappointed with the prospects of assimilation due to antisemitism and chose “spontaneous segregation” fostering the development of Újlipótváros. See Gyula Zeke, “A budapesti zsidóság lakóhelyi szegregációja a tőkés modernizáció korszakában (1867–1941) [Residential segregation of Budapest Jewry in the era of capitalist modernization],” in Hét évtized a hazai zsidóság életében [Seven decades in the life of Hungarian Jewry], ed. Lendvai L. Ferenc, Sohár Anikó, Horváth Pál (Budapest: MTA Filozófiai Intézet, 1990), 177–8, finding corroborates with the results of my research on synagogues in the interwar period. See Rudolf Klein, Synagogues in Hungary 1782–1918—Genealogy, Typology

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12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21 22

23 24 25

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and Architectural Significance (Budapest: Terc Publishers, 2017), 89–136 and 612–83. The synagogues’ urban role reinforces this thesis. While Jews of Old Leopold Town planned to erect a super-monumental synagogue around 1900, in Újlipótváros Jews concealed their synagogues. The Chevra Kadisha was incorporated into an apartment building with a prayer hall on the upper floors. Precisely 36,888 inhabitants in 2011. Its southern perimeter is Szent István Boulevard leading from Western Railway Station (Nyugati pu.) to Margit Bridge, eastern perimeter is Váci Road, northern perimeter Dráva Street, and on western side the Danube. Its territory is roughly 1 square kilometer, the Old City of Jerusalem is 0.9 square kilometer with 36,965 inhabitants as of 2007. Originally, Újlipótváros belonged to Ó-Lipótváros, that is, the 5th District, but in 1953 it was added to the 13th District. This area has been redesigned after 2000; the original, rectangular pond was replaced by two adjacent trapezoid ponds. Géza Komoróczy, A Zsidók Története Magyarországon [History of the Jews in Hungary] I–II, Kalligram, Bratislava, 2012, Vol. 1, 43–8. Medieval Pest and the central area of modern Pest were built over the Roman Contra-Acquincum, an outpost on the Barbarian side of the river. Jewish families in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were bilingual, spoke German and Hungarian, and just a handful communicated in French or English. Sachlichkeit in terms of the movement Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity. In the nineteenth century it was an industrial zone with mills, breweries, and slums that gradually turned urban. The first general plan for the neighborhood of 1872 foresaw a gridded street network, a central square around a church. In 1907, Pozsonyi Street, the cardo of the new settlement came into being, and gradually the whole territory was built up from the east, that is, from Váci Avenue, and south, that is, Szent István Boulevard. The neighborhood got its final shape in the 1930s. The term “Bauhaus” may be the most misapplied term of twentieth- and twentyfirst-century architectural history. Today, in common parlance, the Bauhaus is synonymous with modernism, which it is actually not, being just the avant-garde and not the whole modern movement, or modernism in its entirety, including ramifications into less strict stylistic alternatives, as art déco, modernist classicism, Italian Rationalism, etc. This view is echoed in the term International Style, coined by two Americans, Philip Johnson and Henry Russel-Hitchcock. See their book published parallel to the exhibition in MoMA, 1932: The International Style: Architecture since 1922. The list of architects is long, including among others Barát Béla & Novák Ede, Fried Miksa & Fenyves István, Hámor (Hamburger) István, Hofstätter Béla & Domány Ferenc, Jakobik Gyula, Löffler Sándor, Politzer Miksa, Somogyi György, Szőke Imre, Stark Marcell, Tauszig Béla & Róth Zsigmond, Vámos Imre, Gregersen Hugó. Here I wrote the name of their companies and not the usual transcription of Hungarians’ names into English. Wlassics staged a scandal for the premier of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle (1918) and did his best to sideline the “Jewish-friendly gentile composer,” who later, after the introduction of the Third Jewish Law, emigrated to the United States. See Rudolf Klein, Secession: Un goût juif?—Art Nouveau Buildings and the Jews in some Habsburg Lands, Jewish Studies at the CEU V, 2005–2007 (2009): 91–124. The city halls of Szabadka (today Subotica, Serbia) and Marosvásárhely (today Târgu Mureș, Romania).

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26 See Theodor Soros, Maskerado: Dancing around Death in Nazi Hungary (Canongate Books Ltd; first Hardcover edition, 2000). Soros chose Kozma as his comrade during his hiding in Nazi occupied Budapest, in 1944. For further detailed discussion, see Juliet Kinchin’s chapter “Lajos Kozma, ‘Judapest,’ and Central European Modernism” in this anthology. 27 Example for art déco buildings are Röntgen Street 5 (1931–1932), architect Tibor Kis; Radnóti Miklós Street 43 (1932) architect Antal Gyárfás. 28 Unlike in Tel Aviv, the verticals of staircases seldom show up on the façade, which would disrupt the continuity of the streets in Budapest. 29 It would require more research to establish the reasons, bearing in mind the hostility of Hungarians vis-à-vis the newly established pan-Slavonic state. 30 In the lack of significant Catholic population, the church seen on the 1873 master plan was not built. On the northern perimeter of the neighborhood a modernist Calvinist church was erected in the 1930s, but it did not serve Újlipótváros. 31 Lloyd, Ipoly, Szinbád, and Kossuth. The public of cinemas was varied, from the relatively poor to the solid middle-class, with ads of furs and expensive jewelry. 32 No one could be farther from the ideals of the political status quo of interwar Hungary than Duncan (atheist, Communist, Soviet citizen, openly bisexual, and exhibitionist) and closer to the hearts of Jewish intellectuals in Újlipótváros, due to her originality and flouting conservative traditions. 33 Lugano does not exist anymore. 34 There are other cases of interwar modernist neighborhoods, probably the most similar to Újlipótváros is Zagreb-istok (Zagreb-East), in the Croatian capital, with somewhat similar architectural output, but less-expressed and less-talked-about Jewish presence. See Aleksander Laslo, Jewish Zagreb—A Guide to Culture and History (Židovska općina: Zagreb), 2011. For contributions of Jewish architects to modern architecture in Zagreb, see Jasna Glajer’s detailed discussion in chapter 4 in this anthology. 35 The term “village” goes back to Ivan Bächer. See Péter György, “FaluLátó/Falu Pesten,” in Látó—Szépirodalmi Folyóirat, May 2015. In this paper György writes: “Secular Jewry during the past years unconsciously ‘created’ the virtual village, which by intricate communication techniques evolved into a cultural identity, using street happenings, sophisticated events, blogs and all kinds of self-reflection.” 36 Theodor Herzl, Altneuland, Hermann Seemann Nachfolger, Leipzig, 1902. 37 Shlomo Avineri. Rereading Herzl’s Old-New Land, Jewish Review of Books, Summer 2012. 38 Alexander Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte. Anstiftung zum Unfrieden (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1965). 39 The term “Ghetto de Luxe” is common parlance—no document formulated it as such—in order to differentiate it from the large, official Ghetto of the poor, which I termed as “Budget Ghetto” as they could not acquire Schutzbrief needed for the “luxurious Ghetto.” Over time, tiny, clandestine workshops in the neighborhood falsified real protective certificates, so by the end of the German occupation there were more documents than Jews. 40 Forty thousand Jews were transferred here from scattered “protected houses” all over the city into 4,513 flats of the “Large Ghetto,” where each Jew had a territory of 4 square meters. 41 See United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopaedia, Budapest, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/budapest

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42 German Nazis were “represented” in New Leopold Town at Szent István Park 16, an elegant apartment building, by Dieter Wiliceny, Eichmann’s deputy and his squad of twenty-one plainclothes officers, who managed deportations of the provincial Jewry into Auschwitz. 43 See A Holokauszt Magyarországon, (Budapesti Gettók, http://www. holokausztmagyarorszagon.hu/index.php?section=1&chapter=7_2_4&type=content 44 Bächer, Iván—Teknős, Miklós, Újlipócia, Ab Ovo Kiadói Kft., 2014. This popular book gives a brief history of the neighborhood and a survey of its people and life today. 45 Zoltán Bolla, Újlipótváros Építészete 1861–1945 (Budapest: Ariton Kft, 2019). This book is a profound catalog of 700 buildings with basic data, short description, and images, without elaborating the Jewish aspect. 46 In 2019, Gréta Süveges wrote an interesting Master’s Thesis about the neighborhood at the Central European University, Budapest/Vienna, 2019, supervised by Prof. Daniel Monterescu, titled Coded Clarity: Embodiments of Hidden Jewish Narratives through Spatial Community Formation in Budapest. 47 Rudolf Klein, “Budapest’s 13th District: The Modernist Jewish Quarter 1928/1944— An Urban Historical and Architectural Study,” in Studia Hebraica 9/10, The Goldstein Goren Center for Hebrew Studies (Bucharest, 2011), 40–60. This paper contains the urban history of the neighborhood, omitted in this chapter. 48 See Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish—Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2002). 49 Daniel Monterescu voices the same idea in another way, maintaining that the main pillars of new Budapest Jewish identities are moderately embedded into the Central/ Eastern-Eastern European context of Jewish revivals. See Monterescu, Daniel and Zorándy, Sára, Reviving Judapest: Improvising Community in Central Europe (2018). Quoted after Süveges, Coded Clarity, 54–9. 50 The latter was erected not on the place where it happened in Újlipótváros but close to the parliament building, in which earlier anti-Jewish legislations were established. The reason for this controversial shift of location is unknown. 51 Parallel to this festival there is a larger and longer Jewish festival in the Old Jewish Quarter.

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Shaping Modern Bratislava The Role of Architect Friedrich Weinwurm and His Jewish Clients in Designing the Slovak Capital Henrieta Moravčíková

“Every step taken to the further development and building of the city of Pozsony I follow with the greatest attention and every time gladly take the opportunity to express in a few words my humble opinion, in the pleasant hope to be helpful and useful for the city and the public. My leitmotif here is: selflessness, my purpose: reconciling art with hygiene.”1 This text was written by the young Jewish architect Friedrich Weinwurm (1885– 1942) in 1913 shortly after his graduation at the Dresden University of Technology. Although he worked in Budapest at that time, he was closely associated with Bratislava (Pozsony, Pressburg, or Prešporok were the historical names used for today’s Bratislava before 1919) because of his background and personal contacts. It was precisely these connections that led him to settle down in the city in 1918. However, Bratislava was also a big professional challenge for an architect of that time. The Viennese journalist Leopold W. Rochowanski (1888–1961), author of the famous Columbus in der Slowakei travelogue, described Bratislava in the 1930s as a city where “often entire streets and neighborhoods are demolished and new ones are built […] and where there is a new building in almost every street.”2 Czechoslovak architectural historiography after the Second World War attributed this radical transformation of the Bratislava city image to the work of Czech architects who arrived after 1918 and to the young generation of Slovak architects who established themselves there after the founding of Czechoslovak Republic.3 This interpretation was largely helped by the period rhetoric of Czech and Slovak architects, which was captured by professional periodicals such as the Slovenský staviteľ (Slovak Builder) and Architekt SIA.4 They used to mark Bratislava as a “terrain vague,” where they could realize their ideas about architecture and creation of the city. But the situation was much more complicated. Research conducted after 1990 began to uncover the stratified and structured scene, with exceptional personalities of architects and their clients and within specific communities and social groups. It revealed the work of the city’s natives, mostly Germans or Hungarians, but in particular the fundamental contribution of the Jewish

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community. The latest research in the history of the planning and building of Bratislava even uncovered that it was exactly these local entrepreneurs and their architects who initiated the city’s radical transformation, while the town-planning regulatory activities of the official city representatives often only reacted to their requirements.5

Friedrich Weinwurm, Architect of the “Unique Aesthetic” One of the most striking personalities whose fundamental contribution to the urban development of Bratislava was lately discovered was the architect Friedrich Weinwurm.6 Friedrich Weinwurm was born in Borský Mikuláš to the German-speaking Jewish family of the owner of the local brickworks, Nathan Weinwurm. He studied architecture at the Königliche Technische Hochschule zu Berlin (today’s Technical University of Berlin) and, from 1910, at the Königliche Sächsische Technische Hochschule in Dresden (today’s Dresden University of Technology), where he graduated in 1911. It was exactly his studies in Dresden and the work of Heinrich Tessenow (1876–1950), active there at that time, which decisively influenced Weinwurm’s views on architecture. Indeed, the entire oeuvre of Friedrich Weinwurm is a clear testament to how strongly he was influenced by Tessenow’s method of thinking architecturally: formally simple yet at the same time able to create effective spatial relationships, and with deep social concerns. Weinwurm started his career in Budapest in the architectural office of Emil Tőry and Móric Pogány.7 However, already in summer 1914 he was drafted for the military service. After being wounded in Austrian Galicia on the Russian front, Weinwurm’s active military service ended in the spring of 1915. At the same time, he was granted an unexpected chance to realize his artistic visions within the army itself. By October of the same year, he was assigned to the military construction directorate in Bratislava, charged (among other tasks) with preparing designs for war memorials. After the end of the war, when Bratislava became part of the newly established Czechoslovak Republic, Weinwurm decided to settle down in the city. At that time Jews formed more than 11 percent of Bratislava’s population and the core of the so-called urban population. Even though the Jewish population initially accepted the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic with mistrust, parliamentary democracy and laws guaranteeing religious freedom and ethnic equality eventually caused the Jews to be among the most loyal citizens of the new state.8 The Jewish community was also an important economic force and was one of the main drivers of construction in the city. With the support of this community of Jewish businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, architect Friedrich Weinwurm successfully established himself as a progressive leading architect. Through their commissions, he was given the opportunity to fundamentally determine the shape of the capital of Slovakia. In the relatively short period of twenty years, from 1919 to 1939, Weinwurm built over fifty buildings for Jewish clients in the city, from 1926 onward doing so together with his colleague Ignác Vécsei (1883–1943). Architect and architecture historian Petr Pelčák, referencing the architecture of Brno in the interwar years, has noted a “unique aesthetic” among that city’s Jewish architects, shaped by the influence of the “Viennese purism of Adolf Loos,” though recalling as well that “certain of its elements can also be found even in Bratislava.”9

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Yet it was not only the architects but most remarkably their Jewish clients who had the greatest share in the spread of this “unique aesthetic,” in Bratislava being among the first to assume the stance of the new architecture. Undoubtedly, this tendency was influenced by the Jewish intellectual elite’s openness to aesthetic innovations and the architecture’s social-reform ethos; another factor in the traditionally Germanspeaking Slovak Jewish realm was the influence of German cultural trends, where the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) was gaining popularity in the 1920s among urban intellectuals and entrepreneurs, as was Vienna’s strength as a traditional cultural model, where the chief proponents of this architecture were in fact the previously cited Adolf Loos (1870–1933) and Josef Frank (1885–1967). At the same time, as has been noted, other factors contributing to the adoption of the “unique esthetic” may have been the “economic advantages of an unornamented architecture,” or the “rational pragmatism linking Jewish architects and clients.”10 Could this architectural development, in fact, merely have been a chance interplay of common factors to form a background against which a small yet influential group of individuals had a significant impact?

Weinwurm and the City of Bratislava Weinwurm’s positive reception was not limited to the Jewish community. He was one of the first avant-garde representatives in Slovakia, “ranked among the most important architects in Czechoslovakia” and therefore respected by the wide professional community.11 Thanks to his natural authority, he became a member of nearly all professional panels. For example, among others, the Regulatory Commission of the City, whose importance for the construction of Bratislava was crucial at that time. Bratislava had no officially approved city regulatory plan in the interwar years, and the regulation of individual streets was addressed mostly ad hoc in the process of construction. As a result, there was enormous pressure on individual regulatory or construction committees, and their composition and professional awareness, as much as their ability to maintain balance between the public interest and the demands of individual builders, to a large extent shaped the contours of urban construction.12 In the recollections of members of the committee Weinwurm figures as the representative of “the avant-garde of the age,” who was nevertheless “open to every reasonably justifiable argument.”13 Obviously, it was Weinwurm who, thanks to his knowledge of local circumstances, of international trends, and convincing arguments, significantly influenced the commission’s attitude toward new forms of building. Weinwurm had a clear view of Bratislava’s modern construction. He declared it as early as 1913 in connection with the question of reconstructing the city’s firedestroyed section. It is more than characteristic that it was the Jewish quarter at the foot of the castle hill that was affected by catastrophic fire in June 1913 and that would have to be rebuilt according to the modern regulation designed by Budapest professor Antal Palóczi (1849–1927).14 This new regulation that would have required massive demolition and plot consolidation was largely discussed by the city representatives and the public. Some authors today even assume that the idea of rebuilding the old structure was driven by antisemitism and would have meant a new diaspora for the

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local Jews.15 Nevertheless we can assume that Weinwurm and Palóczi, who was also of Jewish origin, proposed modernization not as a product of antisemitism but rather as promoting an ideal of Jewish integration in a “city without ghettos.”16 For both of them “ghetto” was a symbol of poverty and ostracization and it was not seen as necessary for the historical continuity of the Jewish presence in the city. In his brief commentary Weinwurm touched upon the essential themes of the era’s architectural discussion, such as the relationship to the past, the engineering versus artistic conception of creation, or the reflection of the built environment. Weinwurm stated that “the fire could be compared to painful surgery that nonetheless leads to better health” and that “this new section of the city will only benefit in economic, hygienic as well as artistic dimensions.” 17 At the same time, following the theory of Camillo Sitte on the artistic principles of city planning, he noted that in evaluating future construction “we should not be bounded only by technical, hygienic and fire-protection standpoints,” but that it was necessary “just as strictly to judge the aesthetics,” “follow to a large extent the guidance of art,” and “put great emphasis on the new buildings continuing to match their surroundings.”18 Yet, so that none could be left in doubt as to what he had in mind by “matching their surroundings,” Weinwurm added that “like all profane buildings, even an apartment block has nothing in common with idealized decorative forms, and needs only such decoration as ensures from the material and the method of construction.”19 He added even a wider view on the city’s future image when stating: “One need not fear that Pozsony’s apartment blocks, without the abovementioned ornamentation, will become desolate and bare in treatment—no—because the ornament of the streets of Pozsony will be only the balconies decorated with flowers, the coordinated colors of building materials and the charms of lighting.”20 Even when the plan designed by Antal Palóczi had never been realized, Weinwurm was the one to obtain the opportunity to materialize this idea on the territory of Bratislava in the course of 1920s and 1930s. Family houses, apartment blocks, and commercial buildings built after his design and the designs of his followers gradually changed the character of the entire quarters of the city of Bratislava.

First Convinced Clients The very first of the architectural works also illustrated Weinwurm’s “Manifesto of Modern Building,” which he published in 1924 in Vienna’s bimonthly periodical Moderne Welt. Weinwurm was convinced that “our age has, again, the courage to use its own, laconic if you wish, but in any instance unique, language.”21 In this, the idea of a laconic, era-corresponding architectonic language emerged from the design and arrangement of interior spaces that would “match modern needs” and “be formed to the last detail contemporarily [zeitgemäss],” so that even “the whole could appear proportional to the era.”22 He focused primarily on the organization of residential functions, comparing the modern house to a machine whose exterior appearance is the “unalterable result of its internal layout.”23 Weinwurm formulated his avant-garde concept of the building arts as freed from decoration and reflecting function even more forcefully: “If my clients climbed up the façade and found in it an unusual pleasure,

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then I might decide to adorn the façade with decorative elements, yet if my clients and their families continue to spend time in the house’s interior, in the living areas, terraces, rooftop gardens, I believe it is necessary to create an exterior that matches the internal arrangement of spaces.”24 The clients, who found an unusual pleasure in Weinwurm’s designs, were Jewish entrepreneurs, landowners, physicians, or lawyers. They had the finances and the courage to invest in modern construction. They were mostly members of the upper and middle-classes who, like the architect, wanted to shape a new modern urban society of Bratislava. They preserved in different manners their Jewish identification and shared with Weinwurm the progressive modernist approach to architecture.25 Related to this modernization process was not only the architectural language but also the territorial framework of their development efforts. New investments were only minimally directed to the traditional Jewish neighborhoods but rather to the parts of the city that were in development. For example, only a few new buildings were erected in the area of the fire-damaged castle grounds. Weinwurm was typically commissioned by Jewish families for several projects. He would start with a private villa, continue with residential buildings, and finally also design an office building or department store. With the family of the founders of Bratislava’s Stein Brewery, Weinwurm enjoyed one of the longest and most fertile collaborations of his architectural career. Starting in 1926, he designed a family villa for the owner of the brewery Hugo Stein (1884–?) (Figure 2.1)

Figure 2.1  Friedrich Weinwurm, Hugo Stein Villa, Porubského 4, Bratislava, c. 1927. Source: Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst und Städtebau, 14, no. 2 (1928): 65

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and ten years later, in 1936, an apartment block for Adela and Alexander Stein, uncle of Hugo Stein. In succession, these individual buildings are highly revealing not only of the strong ties between client and architect, but also of how the aesthetic opinions of both developed over the years. While the villa from 1926 still retains some references to traditional historical forms, the later realization is a characteristic instance of the final creative phase of the architectural office, marked by a certain form of authorial unification or standardization, with deliberate repetition of specific motifs and design approaches. However, it was the earlier villa for Dr. Hugo Stein that author and journalist Elsa Grailich (1880–1969) used in her slim-volume Pressburger Interieurs to illustrate the truly modern residence. For her, the villa was a materialization of “a typology of modern residential culture […] a functional structure where every space corresponds in its location and dimensions to its use, where all that is inessential is discarded and much thought is devoted to the use of all modern achievements of domestic technology.”26

Building for the Orthodox Jewish Community An important and significant contribution to the city’s image was also the nonresidential buildings designed by Weinwurm and his later partner Ignác Vécsei in the second half of the 1920s, in particular the works ordered by the Orthodox Jewish community including Chevra Kadisha (Jewish burial society), which operated several charitable foundations. The first assignment was the design of a modern hospital, an idea that had emerged within the Bratislava Jewish community at the start of the decade. The construction of the new hospital facility became an important manifestation of the local Jewish community’s self-confidence but also of the unification and solidarity of the whole Czechoslovak society. The huge investment was shared by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Health, the Slovak parliament, the Bratislava municipality, several local Jewish institutions, and private persons (among others the Viennese branch of the Rothschild family) and even by the American Joint Distribution Committee.27 In 1923, a “Kuratorium des Jüdischen Spitals” (Curatorium for the Jewish Hospital) was founded toward this aim, with its chairman selected from among the most influential Jewish business figures, the general director of Kabelfabrik AG, Egon Bondy (1875–1934).28 Among other important public figures on the board, such as the director of the sugar mill in Diosek, Oskar Pfeffer, was also Friedrich Weinwurm. Jewish medical doctors played an important role in shaping the new hospital’s organizational structure and form. Jakob Oesterreicher (1891–1944), who had served as the old hospital’s director since 1919, was especially mentioned as “professional medical leadership” in the relevant declaration signed on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of the new hospital.29 The contacts that Weinwurm gained through his work for the Curatorium for the Jewish Hospital were critical to his career. Here he also met his design partner Ignác Vécsei, with whom he formed a partnership in 1926.30 Weinwurm presented his first design for the hospital in 1925. He conceived it as a building of two wings, with a logical single-corridor layout. Sited on a sloping hillside, the structure’s individual volumes were placed at varying heights, culminating in a

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stepped series of rooftop terraces for outdoor rehabilitation of patients. Matching the rationally arranged functional interior, conceived (in the words of contemporary reviewers) “in the spirit of the very latest knowledge in the field of medicine” were smooth façades devoid of any historicist elements or ornaments.31 The form of the hospital clearly prefigures the impressive Functionalist sanatoriums to appear in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. The innovative character of the building and its exposed position above the city caused the delay of the building permit, finally granted not by the city council but by the regional government (Figure 2.2). The completion of the hospital further strengthened the reputation that Weinwurm enjoyed within Jewish religious and commercial circles. Already during the hospital’s construction, he designed three more important buildings for the community, the new ceremonial hall in the Jewish cemetery (1927–1930), the boys’ orphanage (1928), and the sports center Maccabee (unrealized project, 1934) on the Danube river’s right bank. All of these buildings were received enthusiastically in the local Jewish press. On the occasion of the opening of the ceremonial hall, the Orthodox Jewish family newspaper Jüdisches Familienblatt (Bratislava) wrote, “The Architects Weinwurm and Vécsei have again created something beautiful, pleasant and practical.”32 At the same time the Jewish Orthodox organizations were aware that it had been the political circumstances after the split of the Hungarian Kingdom that transformed

Figure 2.2  Friedrich Weinwurm and Ignác Vécsei, Jewish hospital, Šulekova 16, Bratislava, c. 1932. Source: Forum 1932, 2, no. 2 (1932): 35

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Bratislava “from a provincial town to the capital city of Slovakia” and they were proud of the fact that “the Jewish community participated in this upswing to a great extent spiritually and materially.” They were firmly convinced that, among others, the construction activities of the Chevra Kadisha show sufficiently that “the Jewish Pressburg [was] about to begin a new flourishing period.”33

Social Engagement—Bridging the Ethnic Concerns Toward the end of the 1920s, Friedrich Weinwurm began to take greater interest in the task of architecture in relation to society. His main focus was to solve the housing question. He developed relations with the left-wing avant-garde and radicalized his rhetoric. In his programmatic declarations Weinwurm no longer spoke about the formal aspects of architecture or even functional organization but focused almost exclusively on the social ramifications of architecture. Unlike the majority of the representatives of the interwar avant-garde, Weinwurm could offer not only a fervent left-wing perspective on the necessity of a revolutionary change in the social conditions, but more importantly the extensive experience of a well-trained architectural practitioner. When, in the mid-1930s, the newly founded “Unitas” construction cooperative offered him the design of a group of residential buildings, he finally had a chance to realize his social vision on a significant scale. “Unitas,” the Stavebné družstvo pre výstavbu malých bytov, s.r.o. (Cooperative for the Construction of Small Apartments, LLC) was founded in April 1930 at the initiative of the secretary of the Bratislava Chamber of Commerce and Industry and financiallaw expert František Vaverka (1896–1949) and united social activists from all ethnic groups and social classes. Among the members of its board were several personalities of Bratislava’s public affairs, such as the head of the Slovak Agriculture Council, František Vodička, or the socialist and founding member of the Communist Party, Eugen Singer (1888–1940). From the very beginning, the construction of the residential complex “Unitas” (1930– 1931) enjoyed a reputation as a “massive experiment in sociology”34—not only because it was initiated by the socialist circles and aimed to test a model for cooperative apartment construction, but more because its design strove to test all of the latest ideas for modern housing. Weinwurm planned the complex as a row structure with semipublic spaces in between, a radical refusal of the traditional solid urban block. The form of free-standing rows Weinwurm regarded as the “only correct urban design for minimal flats” and fervently supported in his position on the city regulatory commission.35 The apartment blocks were designed with common laundry rooms and each flat was equipped with kitchen niche and own hygienic facility including toilet and bath (Figure 2.3). The success of “Unitas” encouraged the Slovak Social Democrats as well as Weinwurm himself to start on the realization of an even more complex and extensive residential complex, with the fitting title “Nová doba” (New Era). The original plan of constructing 162 flats eventually grew three times in size. The first blocks were planned as paired parallel rows, perpendicular to the main road. However, at the order of the construction office, an addition had to be planned along the street

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Figure 2.3  Friedrich Weinwurm  and Ignác Vécsei, Housing Complex Unitas, Šancová 21–63, Bratislava, 1931. Photo: Josef Hofer, Bratislava City Archives

line, to create a unified frontage. In 1935, shortly after the completion of the first buildings, the “Nová doba” cooperative decided to expand their complex with another apartment block. This commission allowed the architects, at last, to make use of their original idea of an open row structure. The pair of new blocks was situated so as to create, along with the earlier buildings, two parallel semi-enclosed structures separated from each other by areas of greenery intended as sports and recreation areas for the residents. The same urban conception was retained even in the realization of the third (and also the final) block of apartments dating from the early 1940s. In Central-European cultural-geographic context, these residential complexes represented the first comprehensive example of housing estates with small-scale and smallest apartments conceived in terms of functionalism, using construction innovations, modern row structure, and implemented through cooperative construction. Both housing estates were also groundbreaking in relation to the urban structure of Bratislava.

Shaping the Modern Capital Through this achievement, Weinwurm managed to influence the contemporary regional architectural scene to an extent never otherwise paralleled in Slovakia. His authorial interpretation of architectonic objectivity emerged in the interwar period

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as one of the major architectural trends, adopted and developed by a great many enthusiastic followers. Among the most important we should mention the Jewish architects Artúr Szalatnai-Slatinsky (1891–1962) and Desider Quastler (1889–1944), who created in Bratislava an imposing oeuvre.36 The majority of Weinwurm’s followers were much younger Jewish architects who worked in Bratislava in the interwar period. Several of them even practiced in his office before launching their own independent carriers, including Imrich Geyduschek (1898–1944), Ladislav Unger (1904–?), or Ladislav Foltyn (1906–2002).37 At the same time, the importance of the objectivity introduced by Friedrich Weinwurm attests to the vitality and significance of German cultural influences in Jewish community of Bratislava. Recalling not only the quantity of realized architectural works but equally their unmistakable authorial imprint, it is clear that Weinwurm succeeded in significantly contributing to a radical shift in the form of the city between the late 1920s and the early 1930s. “Today’s modern Bratislava neighborhoods can thank him in good part for their truly European appearance,” Weinwurm’s Czech contemporary Eugen Rosenberg (1907–1990) remarked about him in 1926.38 And it is undeniable that a large series of Weinwurm’s apartment blocks and villas even today formulate the architectural environment of Bratislava’s suburban hillside district of “Hausbergl.” Similar developments were also visible in the yet-undeveloped peripheral areas of the city, where new residential complexes could experiment with highly unusual urban forms, such as the row-plans of the “Unitas” complex or the series of half-opened blocks in “Nová doba.” At the same time, Weinwurm made his mark strongly felt also in the center of the city, where he was frequently the first to introduce the principles of modern construction: altering not only the parceling and the placement of the street-line, but even more so the height of construction, the formation of the floors, and the shape of the buildings’ vertical termination. The structures of two or three floors along the main urban routes and circular communications beyond the bounds of the historic core were replaced with buildings of six floors with flat roofs and ground-floor shops, giving these areas a truly urban flair (Figure 2.4). Weinwurm and his clients even succeeded to shape the “best site in Slovakia” in the immediate neighborhood of the city theater. Weinwurm’s Jewish clients—members of the Orthodox or Neolog congregations, with different political identifications conservative, liberal and communist, and of different professions— embraced the language of modernism to show their distinct position in the city but further to express their commitment to contribute to the city’s modernization. When the Viennese art historian Max Eisler (1881–1937) offered his characterization of the oeuvre of architect Ernst Wiesner (1890–1971) in interwar Brno, he termed this architecture “metropolitan.”39 A similar term could be applied to the Bratislava oeuvre of Friedrich Weinwurm. With only a slight exaggeration, we could even say that his architecture played a “metropolitan-forming” role in the creation of modern Bratislava. Much the same was suggested by the Czech architect Jiří Grossmann (1892– 1957), who described Bratislava in the 1920s as the city where “sooner than anywhere else in the Republic [Czechoslovakia], a unified modern architecture evolved there,” illustrating his contention with a series of photographs depicting the latest work by Friedrich Weinwurm.40

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Figure 2.4  Friedrich Weinwurm and Ignác Vécsei, Department Store Schön, Obchodná 4, Bratislava, 1935. Photo: Josef Hofer, Bratislava City Archives

In conclusion it is important to stress that even if nearly all of his clients were from the Jewish community, the architecture oeuvre created by Friedrich Weinwurm, unassuming in form yet boldly venturing into the great ideas of modernist discussion, was in its deepest essence removed from ethnic and any provincial concerns. It was exactly this ability to break free from local limitations that influenced the generation of Weinwurm’s contemporaries and formed an extraordinarily vital portion of the complex portrait of Bratislava’s architectural context.41

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Notes Fritz Weinwurm, “Zur Bebauung des abgebrannten Teiles in Pozsony,” Pressburger Presse 30, no. 6 (1913): 2. 2 This is how the contemporary critic summarized the atmosphere of interwar Bratislava. Wolfgang Leopold Rochowanski, Columbus in der Slowakei (Bratislava: Eosverlag, 1936), 39 and 91. 3 Martin Kusý, Architektúra na Slovensku 1918–1945 (Bratislava: Pallas, 1971), Ladislav Foltyn, Slowakische Architektur und die tschechische Avantgarde 1918–1939 (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1991). 4 Slovenský staviteľ (Slovak Builder) was published monthly in the period 1931–1942 by the Association of Builders for Slovakia in Bratislava. Architekt SIA (Architect SIA), monthly for architecture, town-planning, dwelling, and art was published 1927–1938 by the Society of Czechoslovak engineers in Prague. 5 Henrieta Moravčíková, Peter Szalay, Katarína Haberlandová, Laura Krišteková, and Monika Bočková, Bratislava (Un)planned City (Bratislava: Slovart, 2020). 6 Henrieta Moravčíková, Architect Friedrich Weinwurm (Bratislava: Slovart, 2014). 7 A further discussion on the gentile and Jewish architect team of Emil Töry and Móric Pogány and their design of the Hungarian pavilion at the Turin international exhibition in 1911 in Chapter 7 in this anthology. 8 Peter Salner, Mozaika židovskej Bratislavy (Bratislava: Albert Marenčin Vydavateľstvo PT, 2007), 47. 9 Petr Pelčák, “Brněnská architektura 1919–1939,” in Brno, architektura 1918–1939, ed. Renata Vrabelová (Brno: Centrum architektury, 2011), 13. 10 Matúš Dulla and Henrieta Moravčíková, Architektúra Slovenska v 20. Storočí (Bratislava: Slovart, 2002), 84. 11 Obytné domy stavebného družstva Nová doba, ed. Antonín Hořejš (Bratislava: Slovenská grafia, 1931), 6. 12 Moravčíková, Architect Friedrich Weinwurm, 113. 13 Václav Mencl, “Ako sme začínali,” Pamiatky a príroda [Monuments and Nature] 7, no. 3 (1976): 39. 14 Henrieta Moravčíková, Éva Lovra, and Laura Pastoreková, “Antal Palóczi and the Beginnings of Modern Urban Planning in the Kingdom of Hungary: The Example of Bratislava and Novi Sad (1867–1918),” Planning Perspectives 35, no. 2 (2020): 371–81. 15 Jozef Tancer, “Der schwarze Sabbat. Die Brandkatastrophe in Pressburg 1913 als Medienereignis,” Pressburger Akzente 2, no. 2 (2012): 41–9. 16 Éva Lovra, “The Forgotten Urbanist—Antal Palóczi,” Architektúra & Urbanizmus 53, no. 3–4 (2019): 212–23. 17 Weinwurm, “Zur Bebauung des abgebrannten Teiles in Pozsony,” 2. Author’s translation. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Fritz Weinwurm, “Zeitgemässe Baukunst,” Moderne Welt 5, no. 10 (1924): 19. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 For further discussion on Weinwurm and his important Jewish clients see Moravčíková, Architect Friedrich Weinwurm, 77–83. 1

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26 Elsa Grailich, Preßburger Interieurs (Bratislava: Buchhandlung Siegmund Steiner, 1929), 55. 27 Aron Grünhut, Katastrophenzeit des slowakischen Judentums: Aufstieg und Niedergang der Juden von Pressburg (Tel-Aviv: Selbstverlag A. Grünhut, 1972), 184. 28 Tano Bojankin, “KABEL, KUPFER, KUNST - Walter Bondy und sein familiäres Umfeld,” in Exh. Cat. Moderne auf der Flucht, Österreichische Künstlerinnen in Frankreich 1938–1045, ed. Andrea Winklbauer (Jewish Museum, Vienna, 2008), 31–50. 29 Alexander Robert Neurath, Bratislava, Pressburg, Pozsony: Jewish Secular Endeavors, 1867–1938 (Xlibris, Corp., 2010), 298–305. 30 Weinwurm’s personal life was interestingly also influenced by this work. His former wife Jozefa (1896–1944) married Dr. Oesterreicher in 1930. 31 “Das jüdische Spital in Bratislava,” Forum 2 (1932): 35–7. 32 “Die Umgestaltungsarbeiten im neuen Friedhof. Zur Eröffnung der neuen Zeremonienhalle in Bratislava,” Jüdisches Familienblatt 5, no. 16 (August 29, 1930): 235. 33 David Iritzer, Pressburg den Pressburgern! Jüdisches Familienblatt 4, no. 15 (July 26, 1929): 229–30. 34 Antonín Hořejš, “Unitas,” in Žijeme, Obrázkový magazín dnešní doby (Praha: Orgán Svazu čsl. Díla, 1931–1932), 232–4. 35 F. Weinwurm, “Kleinstwohnungsbauten ‘Unitas’ in Bratislava,” Forum 1, no. 1 (1931): 53. 36 Soňa Ščepánová, Desider Quastler: Profile of a Bratislava Architectʼ, Architektúra & urbanizmus 44, no. 1–2 (2010): 102–31. Maroš Borský, Artur Szalatnai-Slatinský. Príbeh bratislavského architekta, Master’s Thesis, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University, Bratislava, 1999. 37 For further discussion on Jewish architects in interwar Bratislava see Neurath, Bratislava, Pressburg, Pozsony: Jewish Secular Endeavors, 1867–1938. 38 Eugen Rosenberg, “Architekt Bedřich Weinwurm,” Salon 6 (1926), not paginated. 39 Max Eisler, “Die Arbeiten Ernst Wiesners,” Forum 2, no. 5–6 (1932): 129. The role of Max Eisler in the formation of Viennese home culture in the interwar period is discussed in Long’s chapter in this anthology. 40 Jiří Grossmann, “Nová Bratislava,” Architekt SIA 26, no. 10 (1927): 213. 41 Moravčíková, Architect Friedrich Weinwurm, 207.

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Adolf Sommerfeld—Co-Producing Modern Architecture and Urban Design in Berlin Celina Kress

You have a personal fate, and that is entirely in your hands.1

—Benn (1920: 14)

People who were born to act, to be busy, cannot look at and enliven everything for themselves early enough (…) They are heroes, and events are crowded around them,2 they produce “thick space.”3 —Novalis, cit. in Gutkind (1922: 4)

Formative Years: From Rural to Urban Space 1900–1909 Adolf Sommerfeld was raised in a region marked by extensive woods and abundant water. He was born in May 1886 in Kolmar situated on the river Netze (today Chodziez in Poland), in the province of Posen (Poznan). His father, Selig Sommerfeld (1840–1920), was a fabricator of cutting tools (Messerschmied). Together with his four siblings he helped his father at work. In a later interview he recalled that he worked with metal and fire, he used his hands, applying simple tools.4 The young boy calculated the weight, he heard the sounds, he perceived the scent of various materials, and he recognized their natural quality. He learned, how to work and how to improve the material, he was trained to be a craftsman. The young boy understood early on that handicraft skills were passed from generation to generation, and in doing so the tradition was kept alive. Craftsmen of the guild were proud to structure and control the education of the next generation, and they loved to be part of the work and travel experience (prescribing a mandatory four-year journey).5 Since the end of the nineteenth century, the accelerating industrialization jeopardized this venerable historic fundament. Around the turn of the century its existence was further economically threatened. Craftsmen, and the representatives of the guilds, discussed the dangerous dynamics and looked for remedies to rescue their profession and their economic existence. Not all the crafts seemed to be endangered equally. Selig Sommerfeld had trained his sons early with the aim to follow him into

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the cutler’s craft. However, Selig decided to break away from the family tradition and he paved the way for his sons to get into the building trade. He hoped that this field would be less effected by the new dynamics. As a matter of fact this decision, which was driven by fear and concern for the future, catapulted the son Adolf directly into the middle of the vibrant center of the paradigm shift and in 1900 Sommerfeld arrived in Berlin to be trained as a carpenter. So the fourteen year old found himself in the dynamically growing metropolis of Berlin and began his apprenticeship. He was then working exactly in that professional sector, which especially spurred the urban development: architecture, urban design, and the building trade were the heart, the switching point, and the motor of the urbanization process.6 Adolf Sommerfeld sought out all new opportunities and unknown challenges, and transformed them into a wealth of prosperous business ideas. His open-minded and fair character was the reason and the important basis for his rapid and steadily growing success. In all his projects of urban development and architecture he cooperated with people of different origin, of various levels of education, and of religious affiliation. He never joined any of the quickly evolving political or conceptual ideologies of the time. Sommerfeld started his apprenticeship in the Jewish home for trainees (Israelisches Lehrlingsheim) in Berlin-Pankow. This modern Jewish institute became Sommerfeld’s professional and social home during the following years. Many of the contacts and friends he made in this school remained lifelong companions. Erich Ernst Wilinski (1894–c.1960), for example, was the son of the institute’s director and studied law. Later on he became Sommerfeld’s business partner as a lawyer and CEO of the company.7 Before he began his own company, however, upon completing his apprenticeship, Sommerfeld started working at construction sites all over Greater Berlin (GroßBerlin). Quickly he gained the status of a foreman. And only one year later he was accepted as a student at the Baugewerkschule in Rixdorf/Neukölln (school for civil engineers).8 In 1907 Adolf Sommerfeld finished his studies successfully, which gave him the right to open his own company and to call himself an architect.

Wood, Wealth, and War 1910–1919 A close cooperation of private real estate companies and private building firms enabled Berlin’s rapid growth. Around 1900 landlords and peasants sold farmlands, forests, and meadows to the real estate firms (Terraingesellschaften). Those companies provided the urban design planning, which means they delegated an urban design project to an architectural office or they had an architect working in their company. Architects designed and drew the development plan that fixed the layout of streets and squares, the position of technical and social buildings (schools, hospitals, electric power stations, etc.), and, most importantly, they set the layout of the building parcels. The real estate companies realized the urban design projects following the development plan. They commissioned various building trades to create the urban infrastructure: streets, supply lines, disposal lines, electric lines, street lamps. The fully developed building sites were then sold to smaller building companies for a great profit. Within the Berlin circle-line they mostly were allowed to build four-story-high, densely

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populated tenement housing directly at the property line (Mietskasernen). At the urban periphery they erected smaller tenements, single-unit detached houses, villa colonies, and country homes.9 Perhaps it was the traumatic experience of the crisis and the collapse of his father’s workshop that drove the son Sommerfeld into an entrepreneurial offensive. After working as a foreman at building sites all over the Greater Berlin region in the morning, he worked as a trainee in a real estate company in the heart of the city in the afternoon. It was his aim to gain deeper knowledge of real estate trading in the Berlin urban development. The Allgemeine Häuserbau AG (AHAG) was situated near Potsdamer Platz and developed settlement lots in the Greater Berlin area, as did all successful firms in the real estate market at that time. In 1910, grounded in a comprehensive education and vast practical experience in the field, Adolf Sommerfeld founded his first construction company, Adolf Sommerfeld Bauausführungen.10 During the first years of his independent work Sommerfeld realized numerous tenement and commercial houses, a department store in Tempelhof, and an extension of the famous department store Wertheim in Leipziger Straße, as well as a synagogue in the town of Köpenick (Figures 3.1a and 3.1b). Most of his clients were Jewish. The variety and prominence of his commissions marked him as a good networker in the Berlin Jewish community and business circles. In 1912 Sommerfeld married Felicia Nothmann (1890–1938), the only daughter of the Jewish director of the real estate company AHAG, Leopold Nothmann (1848–?). A year later their first son was born.

Figure 3.1a  Adolf Sommerfeld, Synagogue in Berlin-Köpenick, Postcard, c. 1912. Source: Archiv der Museen Treptow-Köpenick, Berlin

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Figure 3.1b  Adolf Sommerfeld, Drawing for the construction of a new synagogue for the Jewish community in Köpenick, street and court (street view and court view), c. 1912. Source: Bauaktenarchiv des Bezirks Treptow-Köpenick. BA Treptow-Köpenick von Berlin. Bestand: Baupolizei Köpenick Freiheit 8; Signature: 1214, page 26

In the same year Adolf Sommerfeld moved his company’s office to Schellingstraße, into the Berlin economic center, near the AHAG headquarter in Berlin-Mitte. The relocation indicates that the cooperation between Sommerfeld’s building firm and the real estate companies grew closer step by step. This was an important strategic shift. The year 1913 also marks the peak of the Berlin economic real estate crisis, which directly passed into the building stagnation during the First World War. Exaggerated profit speculation led to an immensely high stock of land for future development, of already fully supplied building sites, and dwellings waiting for inhabitants.11 During the following years the real estate market was weak and finally came to an end during the war. On the other hand, construction work remained important during the war. The close cooperation between the Sommerfeld Bauausführungen, the AHAG, and the Terraingesellschaft am Neuen Botanischen Garten (Real Estate Society at the Botanical Garden) helped them to react flexible to cyclical fluctuation and current demands of the market. While the majority of the Berlin real estate companies went bankrupt during the First World War, the AHAG firms safely survived. At the beginning of the war the building industry focused on the industrial building sector. Adolf Sommerfeld started to develop innovative wide-spanning wood constructions for industrial hangars. He aimed at minimal costs of material, rational design concepts, efficient production, and smart transport solutions. He offered his

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innovative construction systems to the newly established aircraft industry. And he was successful. Promptly liberated from military service, he was free to build up a vast wooden construction industry. Since 1915 he had realized a great number of aircraft-, railway-, and warehouse-hangars. Sawmills and woodworking plants were established east of Berlin.12 During the war the Sommerfeld woodworking industry and his building firm had been extremely profitable. However, his father-in-law’s collaborative real estate companies had suffered from the market shortage—yet could and did remain optimistic. Their prime real estates in West Berlin living area offered a superb starting point for the expected upswing of the housing production after the war. As a matter of fact war refugees from the eastern parts of the former German Reich, returning soldiers, newly increasing numbers of married couples and young families triggered an enormous housing shortage.13 The general distress of the housing market required new efficient forms of production and innovative ways of distribution. Adolf Sommerfeld had already studied and solved many questions of how to make more efficient woodwork for construction before and during the war. Now he intended to transfer his profitable expertise and comprehensive experience in the field of industrial building into the housing sector.

Chronicles of a Modernist Dialogue: Adolf Sommerfeld and Walter Gropius Walter Gropius (1883–1969) was another important figure in the field who focused on questions of efficiency in architecture and urban development at the time. He had started his own office as an architect—similar to Adolf Sommerfeld—in 1910. That year Gropius had already written an influential text discussing rationalization, efficiency, and technical organization in the housing production: “Programm zur Gründung einer Hausbaugesellschaft auf künstlerisch einheitlicher Grundlage” (Program for Founding a House Building Company on a Coherent Artistic Basis).14 This booklet conceptually focused on the relationship between architect (craftsman, artist) and developer (pragmatist, economist). He mainly stressed the importance of a good cooperation of these important partners. Gropius was convinced that only the equal cooperation between entrepreneur and architect could guarantee high standards and the good quality of the products. He explained that only such an equal cooperation would recognize labor division as the central principle of industrial work. Ten years later, the First World War had caused great mental and material insecurity all over Europe, which triggered new political, social, and cultural developments. Apparently, the connections to the social and cultural traditions, and architectural styles of the prewar times were cut entirely. People were looking for new orientation. Theorists, practitioners, and cultural producers assembled in avant-garde circles, created new models of orientation and organization, and discussed new progressive ways of living and working. Artists and architects founded revolutionary coalitions and published manifestos.15 A prominent example was the Arbeitsrat für Kunst under the auspices of Walter Gropius und Bruno Taut (1880–1938). Their manifesto, published in 1919, starts:

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Their formulated wish to comprehensive renewal and reform referred to communal life as well as political and economic constellations. They used the comprehensive term “Baukunst” (art of building) as to address urban design, architecture, and building equally. However, given the general lack of capital and material resources, finding work for the people in all economic fields and in the building-sector took priority after the war. Representatives of the German building industry negotiated in France in order to receive commissions for a portion of the construction work needed to reconstruct cities destroyed in France and Belgium during the war. Probably in this context the entrepreneur Sommerfeld and the architect Gropius met for the first time during the summer of 1919. Gropius had just founded the Bauhaus in Weimar at the time. He had to find resources to run the experimental school properly and provide his students with food and practical work. Sommerfeld, on the other hand, had to look for new commissions for his vast industrial woodworking plants. The negotiations in France actually delivered minimal results for the German building industry. But the two actors in the field, Sommerfeld und Gropius, quickly realized that both of them had been grappling for more than ten years with the same questions in the field of spatial development and production enthusiastically. And both of them were convinced that these were the most decisive questions of the present and for the future. They quickly decided to cooperate hereafter: the architect (artist) and the entrepreneur (pragmatist, economist). Promptly, Sommerfeld commissioned Gropius to design and build his private house in Berlin.

Restart with Wood around 1920 The year 1910 had marked a peak of discussion in the field of architecture, urban design, as well as public and private housing provision. New concepts had been developed and discussed globally.17 Critique and ideas of reform in urban planning and development, urban politics and administration had been fiercely discussed. After the war a lot of these ideas were realized quickly in order to resolve the acute housing problem. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century the Prussian state had advised cities and municipalities to intensify their efforts to produce “small, healthy, and affordable dwellings for the poorer classes,” and with the same aim to support public housing enterprises and residential building cooperatives more actively.18 Adequate administrational structures and active agents were an important prerequisite to boost and accelerate efficient social housing production. Around 1910 the Greater Berlin area had been already economically and socially densely intertwined. However, its public administration had remained totally fragmented: Greater Berlin consisted of eight independent cities, most of them counting more than 100,000 inhabitants at the time, and nearly 100 rural municipalities and estate districts.19

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After the war this situation was not bearable any longer. On October 1, 1920, the “Greater Berlin Act” became effective and finally brought communal unification.20 This fact provided the whole area with a united administration system, a fact that facilitated the desperately needed housing production. Against this background, and because prices were extremely low at the time, Sommerfeld acquired the majority of shares of a variety of real estate firms in the preferred southwestern part of Berlin: The AHAG, the Terraingesellschaft am Neuen Botanischen Garten, as well as the Zehlendorf-West Terrain-Aktiengesellschaft. In addition, he bought a broader building site for private use west of the botanical gardens and directly opposite to the developing grounds of the real estate company. Gropius was already commissioned to design and build the private Sommerfeld House on this site. They decided to build a wooden villa. It was a confident statement regarding the possibilities of German economic revival. On one hand, all other resources were sacrificed to reparation fees Germany had to pay to its neighbors. Yet on the other hand, wood was the fundament of Sommerfeld’s newly acquired wealth, and the wooden villa could perform as a perfect business card and as a statement of cultural optimism. Gropius accompanied his practical work for the Sommerfeld House with a programmatic article, which was published in the journal Deutsche Bauzeitung: der Holzbau. Gropius praised wood as building material: Wood is available abundantly. Wood is independent of charcoal and industry. Wood is wonderfully shapable […]. Not by accident the younger artists cut their ideas in wood and love it. Instinctively they are up to date. Any material has its own beauty, its opportunity, and its time. Wood is the material of today.21

The Sommerfeld House was wooden blockhouse and a magnificent groundbreaking Bauhaus Gesamtkunstwerk. Yet it was not constructed as a classical blockhouse. This house was to be built rather in a “modern blockhouse technique” (neuzeitlichen Blockhaus-Bauweise) based on a new compound system of mixed materials that was developed by and patented for the firm Adolf Sommerfeld Bauausführungen.22 Gropius successfully integrated nearly all building trades and building arts in the interior fittings of the house: Bauhaus artist Josef Albers (1888–1976) worked out the colored glass window for the entrance hall. Radiator claddings and all the lamps were produced in the Bauhaus metal workshop. Bauhaus designer Dörte Helm (1898–1941) sewed a nicely ornamented curtain of the living room door. The Bauhaus weaving department delivered three carpets, Hinnerk Scheper (1897–1957) arrived with students of his painting class, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) designed armchairs, couches, and tables; most of the furniture was drawn in Gropius’ and Hannes Meyer’s office. Joost Schmidt (1893–1948), who had finished his studies at the Bauhaus, shaped the whole entrance hall and staircase with his wooden cuttings as Sommerfeld had decided to use the teak wooden cladding found in a warship that he owned. The upcycling idea led to the characteristic zigzag ornament in his hall. The experimental and cooperative building process of the Sommerfeld House gives impressive evidence for the idea of team work (Arbeitsgemeinschaft) in the professional building process, as Gropius had conceived it in his 1910 programmatic text.23 It also

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Figure 3.2  Sommerfeld House, the topping-out ceremony, 18.12.1920, view from the entrance side, Limonenstraße, Berlin. Architects: Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, 1920– 1921. Source: Courtesy of Paul Sommerfeld

showed that an equal cooperation of architect, artists, and craftsmen is possible— although, the two years collaboration in this project had also revealed quite a number of misunderstandings, difficulties, and frictions between those working on it.24 However, the real climax of team building (Gemeinschaftsbildung) was the festivity of the topping-out ceremony at the end of the year. Sommerfeld had invited a large number of people connected with the project, the firm, and the family to celebrate the event in the craftsmen’s traditional form (Richtfest) (Figure 3.2).

Shaping Berlin’s Urban Landscape in Times of Volatility 1920–1932 At the beginning of the 1920s, Adolf Sommerfeld concentrated his professional activity in the urban development of large housing settlements in the southwestern area of Berlin. The Terraingesellschaft am neuen Botanischen Garten possessed around 25 hectares construction area south of the botanical garden, adjacent to the BerlinPotsdam railroad line. The site was technically fully supplied and situated near the rail station. Parcels around the two urban squares were sold and built with upper standard four-story tenement houses before the war.

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After a ten years pause in development, Sommerfeld restarted marketing the urban asset. In spring 1922 his property firm sold an approximately 2.5-hectare lot to the Wohnstättengesellschaft mbH (Building Society of the Reichsbank). The housing society quickly started to build a three-story public housing project around two larger courtyards. It was a modest, larger housing complex delivering small but well-organized three-room apartments, though the contract had announced “luxurious housing.” This shows how sharply the war had changed the social and spatial reality. Even though the housing market remained weak during the early 1920s, Sommerfeld, who had sufficient economic resources at his disposal, could continue developing selected projects by himself. In 1924, he started to develop a larger terraced house project adjacent to the railroad line. He commissioned the well-known architect Otto Rudolf Salvisberg (1882–1940) and the popular architecture firm Mebes and Emmerich to design comfortable pleasant middle-class homes along Hortensienstraße.25 Furthermore, Salvisberg designed an impressive housing block at the front side of Begonienplatz and interpreted the turn-of-the-century tenement house in a new way26 (Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3  Tenement housing block, “Freimietenhaus” near the Botanical Garden in Berlin-Steglitz, architect: Otto Rudolf Salvisberg, 1925–1926. Source: AHAG Sommerfeld project folder. Courtesy of Paul Sommerfeld

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That same year, 1924, the German state started to collect a house investment tax (Hauszinssteuer). This instrument of redistribution marked the decisive turning point of the housing market and production in Germany during the interwar years. The tax was collected from owners and inhabitants of old buildings who benefitted from being freed from mortgages during the inflation. The tax was used entirely to support the production of new houses. It triggered new dynamics and an upswing of the housing production.27 These dynamics are also reflected in the development of the terrain near the botanical garden. During the following years the Terraingesellschaft am Botanischen Garten sold the whole settlement site cut in larger parcels to a number of public housing societies. These companies realized larger social housing blocks following the strict guidelines, which accompanied the economic subsidies of the house investment tax. The new financial instrument of this tax became even more efficient at the urban periphery. It was the most important driving factor behind the famous large-scale settlements of that time.

The Berlin Large-Scale Settlement “Onkel-Toms Hütte” In 1922/23, Adolf Sommerfeld and his group had acquired a larger settlement site in Berlin-Zehlendorf. Counting 200,000 square meters, it was nearly ten times as big as the one at the botanical garden. The area was well known for a weekend restaurant named “Onkel-Toms Hütte,” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin28) located in the urban forest Grunewald. Sommerfeld developed this area together with his Terraingesellschaft am Botanischen Garten. To develop the remote settlement site, Sommerfeld, at first, concentrated his efforts to the installation of a strong public transportation system. He planned to extend the underground line by three new stations, and finally this project became his urban planning masterpiece. The first phase of the development in Zehlendorf was hard work and did not pay back remarkably. The investor started immediately to advertise the expected settlement terrains, but the interest of potential buyers remained marginal. At the same time the AHAG realized two smaller settlement projects at the only street leading through the area. These projects represented totally different housing concepts. On one side of the street he built a small settlement of prefab wooden houses, and on the other side, he realized a standardized modern villa-type settlement that was designed by the young Austrian architect, Richard Neutra (1892–1970) working at the office of Erich Mendelsohn at the time.29 Yet only the general upswing of the housing market in 1924 increased the interest in the Zehlendorf settlement area. Two new city councilors of Berlin, the architect and Socialist Martin Wagner (1885–1957) and Socialist politician (and later post– Second World War mayor of West Berlin) Ernst Reuter (1889–1953), who since 1926 had been responsible for housing, traffic, and transport, became the important proponents of the project. Together with the private investor they created a large-scale urban development and settlement project. They made it a show piece of fruitful, private-public partnership. Both local politicians wanted to turn Berlin into a modern metropolis (Weltstadt). Developing satellite settlements in the periphery arouse their special attention. Both of them were convinced that these aims required an effective

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public transport system, mainly the extension of the subway system. The development of a large-scale settlement in Zehlendorf started in 1926 when Martin Wagner initiated the cooperation of the prominent housing society GEHAG (Gemeinnützige Heimstätten, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft) and the GAGFAH (Gemeinnützige Aktiengesellschaft für Angestelltenheimstätten) at this site. These societies contracted famous Berlin architects for the prominent large-scale settlement such as Bruno Taut, Otto Rudolf Salvisberg, and Hugo Häring, Heinrich Tessenow, Hans Poelzig, and Alexander Klein. Also the Prussian Prime Minister Otto Braun and city mayor Gustav Böß supported the project (Figure 3.4). However, the private investor Adolf Sommerfeld remained the central figure and most active promoter of the development. To realize the extension of the underground line rapidly, he offered the terrain for the line and built the extension with his own money. He knew that this was the lifeline of the

Figure 3.4  Large-scale settlement Zehlendorf “Onkel-Toms Hütte,” terrace houses, architect: Bruno Taut, 1926–1931. Photo: © Markus Hilbich, Berlin 2010

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project, and he was eager to build the underground station Onkel-Toms Hütte forming the heart of the whole project: This innovative underground station was intended to become a multifunctional, vibrant shopping mall, adjacent to the railroad tracks and crowned by a high-rise building, following the model of the Rockefeller Centre under construction in New York at the same time. The project of central economic hybrid remained an incomplete torso. However, the innovative shopping mall actually was realized against all odds, and it is a valid center of the neighborhood until today.

Crossing City Frontiers—New Suburb Kleinmachnow near Berlin Sommerfeld planned to extend the line even further, as in 1927 he had bought a 100,000 square meter settlement site in the suburb of Kleinmachnow near Berlin. There he planned to realize one-family houses that he wanted to produce industrially. In November 1927 Sommerfeld visited Gropius at the Bauhaus in Dessau. The latter had planned and currently realized an industrially organized and prefabricated settlement in Dessau-Törten. His visit to the construction site deeply impressed Sommerfeld. He quickly decided to lure the famous architect to Berlin offering Gropius a yearly salary of 20,000 RM, guaranteed for two years. Gropius left the Bauhaus the same year. In 1928 he produced a variety of interesting housing designs, which were planned to be prefabricated in Sommerfeld’s factory and later on to be erected at a private site in Zehlendorf or Kleinmachnow. Gropius traveled to the United States together with his wife and Sommerfeld’s second wife Reneé (1900– 1980)30 in order to study recent developments in the housing sector there. Later that year some photographs of the United States were presented in the GAGFAH and AHAG exhibition in Zehlendorf. The Hungarian Bauhaus master László MoholyNagy (1895–1946) designed the cutting-edge exhibition carefully. But in 1929 the worldwide economic crisis put an end to all projects and ideas of these years. Facing entirely changed economic and organizational conditions, Sommerfeld invented new solutions to pursue his business. With the help of local architects, he developed a new housing project for Kleinmachnow—serial, single-family houses, which offered a variety of special solutions, which could be individually adjusted. The houses looked very traditional in stark contrast to Gropius’ designs. An important factor was that the project was accompanied by a fully worked out finance model and a mortgage offered by the RfA (Reichsversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte; National insurance corporation). The project offer was extremely well received by the audience. During the course of 1932, the first 250 houses were sold, and Sommerfeld rapidly began the second construction phase.

Epilogue—Persecution and Return to Berlin 1933–1964 In April 1933 Sommerfeld was assaulted by Nazi SA criminals and fled from Germany. Switzerland was the first destination in his exile. The Nazis succeeded in stealing his firms and private properties; after two years of fierce negotiations the “Aryanization”

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was terminated.31 Although Sommerfeld had good contacts in Palestine he did not succeed in gaining a foothold there.32 His older son had been able to pursue his studies as an engineer in Switzerland, which he later finished in England. He worked there as a building engineer and was active in “military engineering” during the war. In Oakworth, Hadley, near Wellington, he started running his own factory. In 1938 Adolf Sommerfeld followed his son to England and changed his name to Andrew Sommerfield. After 1949 he visited Germany again regularly, in order to follow his restitution claims. In the early 1950s he was at least again the owner and main shareholder of his firms, though these firms were not in the best economic condition any more, and one of them, the AHAG had to declare bankruptcy. Nevertheless, Sommerfield pursued his goals even after the war. This meant that during German reconstruction he continued to aim at building rapidly, cheap, industrially prefabricated residential houses of good quality. He continued cooperating with innovative young architects. Since the end of the 1950s his firms mainly planned and realized standardized residential houses with public subsidies (Figure 3.5). Sommerfeld played a critical role in the Berlin network of modernist urban planners, politicians, and architects. Many of Sommerfeld’s relatives and colleagues were victims in the Holocaust, also gentile colleagues, who objected the Nazi rule were targeted, and a few modernists, including Walter Gropius, eventually felt forced to

Figure 3.5  Andrew Sommerfield and family relatives in the hall of the Sommerfeld house designed by Walter Gropius, 1920–1922 (destroyed). Collage by Andrew Sommerfield, c. 1961. Source: AHAG Sommerfeld project folder. Courtesy of Paul Sommerfeld

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emigrate. Sommerfeld escaped Germany after an attempt on his life and persecution. After the Holocaust and the Second World War, he decided to return to West Germany, reclaimed his construction firm, and, despite the failure of his several property restitution claims, continued his visionary project of offering healthy and affordable modern homes in Berlin.

Notes 1

“Sie haben ein Schicksal, und das ruht ganz in Ihrer Hand.” Quote from German expressionist poet Gottfried Benn, Das moderne Ich (Berlin: Erich Reiss, 1920). 2 German Romantic poet Novalis: “Menschen, die zum Handeln geboren sind, zur Geschäftigkeit, können nicht früh genug alles selbst betrachten und beleben, […] Sie sind Helden, und um sie her drängen sich die Begebenheiten,” cited in Erwin Gutkind, Vom städtebaulichen Problem der Einheitsgemeinde Berlin (Berlin: Engelmann, 1922), 4. German Jewish architect Erwin Anton Gutkind (1886–1968) is the author of a monumental international research project published in the series International History of City Development (8 vols.), New York/London, 1964–1968 (see reference to publication in the Introduction). 3 The last subclause is added by the author, as this reference to thick space has been the subject of recent research, first introduced in D. Brantz, S. Disco, and G. WagnerKyora, Thick Space: Approaches to Metropolitanism (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2012). 4 Adolf Sommerfeld, interview: Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 5.6.1927: 259, Beiblatt. 5 Ibid. 6 Biographical information about Adolf Sommerfeld presented in this chapter is taken from my book Adolf Sommerfeld | Andrew Sommerfield. Bauen für Berlin 1910–1970 (Berlin: Lukas, 2011). 7 Erich Ernst Wilinski studied law and economics. He received his doctoral degree 1918 by publication: Die unerlaubte Titelführung (Greifswald: Panzig, 1918). 8 Rixdorf was later renamed Neuköln; the school was a precursor of today’s Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin. 9 Johann Friedrich Geist and Klaus Kürvers, Das Berliner Mietshaus, vol. 2, 1862–1945 (München: Prestel, 1984), 142–69. 10 The firm was located in Rixdorf, a city in the south eastern neighborhood of Berlin, already counting more than 200,000 inhabitants at the time. Rixdorf was the local center of the building industry. Not far away the wood industry gathered around Kottbusser Tor. 11 Christoph Bernhardt, Bauplatz Groß-Berlin. Wohnungsmärkte, Terraingewerbe und Kommunalpolitik im Städtewachstum der Hochindustrialisierung (1871–1918) (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1998), 145–60. 12 Kress (2011), 50–3. 13 Albert Gut, Der Wohnungsbau in Deutschland nach dem Weltkriege (München: Bruckmann, 1928). 14 Walter Gropius, “Programm zur Gründung einer allgemeinen Hausbaugesellschaft auf künstlerisch einheitlicher Grundlage” cit. in H. M. Wingler, Das Bauhaus 1919–1933 (Weimar, Dessau, Berlin: Bramsche, 1962). 15 Barbara Miller Lane, Architektur und Politik in Deutschland 1918–1945 (Braunschweig: Vieweg & Teubner, 1986), 51.

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16 “Kunst und Volk müssen eine Einheit bilden. Die Kunst soll nicht mehr Genuss weniger, sondern Glück und Leben der Masse sein. Zusammenschluss der Künste unter den Flügeln einer großen Baukunst ist das Ziel” (quoted in: Eberhard Steneberg, Arbeitsrat für Kunst, Berlin 1918–1921 (Düsseldorf: Winterscheidt, 1987), 6–7). My translation. 17 Celina Kress, “The German Traditions of Städtebau and Stadtlandschaft and Their Diffusion through Global Exchange,” in The Routledge Handbook on Planning History, ed. C. Hein (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), 173–91. 18 Hans Jörg Duvigneau, “Die Bedeutung der Berliner Großsiedlungen für die Wohnungsversorgung—damals und heute” in Vier Berliner Siedlungen der Weimarer Republik, ed. Norbert Huse (Berlin: Argon, 1987), 13–20 here 15. 19 Herbert Schwenk, “Es hing am seidenen Faden. Berlin wird Groß-Berlin,” Edition Luisenstadst, Berlinische Monatsschrift, 6/2000, 4. 20 Ibid. 21 Walter Gropius, “Neues Bauen,” Der Holzbau 2 (1920): 5. 22 Kress (2011), 96. 23 See discussion above, reference Gropius (1910). 24 E.g. see Kress (2011), 103. 25 Paul Mebes (1872–1938) edited the influential book: Um 1800 (München: Bruckmann, 1908). He had run his architectural firm together with his brother-inlaw Paul Emmerich (1876–1958) since 1911. 26 Celina Kress, “Neue Akteure beim Bau von Groß-Berlin. Adolf Sommerfeld und sein Netzwerk,” in Neues Bauen im Berliner Südwesten. Groß-Berlin und die Folgen für Steglitz und Zehlendorf, ed. B. Hausmann and Bezirksamt Steglitz-Zehlendorf von Berlin (Berlin: Gebr. Man), 29–48. 27 Celina Kress, “Gemeinnütziger Wohnungsbau bis 1933,” in Wohnungsfrage und Stadtentwicklung. 100 Jahre Groß-Berlin, ed. H. Bodenschatz and K. Brake (Berlin: Lukas, 2017), 64–79. 28 The restaurant’s name refers to the book of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Boston: Jewett, 1852), which had become famous in Germany, too. 29 Harriet Roth, Richard Neutra: The Story of the Berlin Houses 1920–1924 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2019). 30 German Jewish author Reneé Brand married Adolf Sommerfeld in 1922. She published later an impressive book on her exile experience: Niemandsland (Zürich: Europa-Verlag, 1940). 31 Celina Kress, “Frühe ‘Arisierung’ in der Bauindustrie: Adolf Sommerfeld und seine Firmengruppe,” in “Arisierung” in Berlin, ed. C. Biggeleben, B. Schreiber, and K. J. L. Steiner (Berlin: Metropol, 2007), 151–81. 32 In the early 1920s Adolf Sommerfeld had bought a larger piece of land for a settlement, which he started to plan together with the architect Erich Mendelsohn, see Gilbert Herbert and Liliane Richter, Through a Clouded Glass, Mendelsohn, Wijdeveld and the Jewish Connection (Tübingen: Wasmuth, 2008), chapter 4: “Two Architects in the Holy Land, 1923”; Gilbert Herbert and Silvina Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel and the Crossroads of Empire: Architecture and Planning in Haifa during the British Mandate (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1993).

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Entangled Histories: The Contribution of Jewish Architects to Modernism in Croatia Jasna Galjer

All that one forgets of one’s life was condemned by an inner instinct to be forgotten long ago. Only that which wills to preserve itself has the right to be preserved for others. —Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European (1942)1 This statement addresses the entangled role of Jewish identity in designing modernism in Croatia, a topic that has been long neglected in the historiography. Its specific forms of “complexity and contradiction” are discussed within a historical, cultural, and aesthetic context and analyzed as the basis upon which ideas and concepts of modernism and cultural identity were affirmed. The contribution of Jewish-community members to the narrative of the cultural history of present-day Croatia should be viewed in light of a dialectic of universalism and of cultural identity, and of the integrity of significant architectural achievements. The lost and destroyed inheritance of the majority of protagonists, as well as the lack of documents that resulted from emigration, makes research all the more difficult. Yet the biggest issue is the destruction of what we would call “evidence”: the works themselves and their erasure from collective memory.2

Notes on Historiography Although most Jews had become acculturated to the extent that they were anxious to hide their Jewish identity, the main reason behind the erasure of the Jewish contribution to the processes of modernizing society in Croatia is embedded in the twentieth century’s specific political situation. From the end of the 1930s and particularly after the proclamation of racial laws and the Independent State of Croatia—a satellite of Nazi Germany—in April 1941, Jewish identity was removed from all spheres of public activities. During the Shoah, a total of 32,000 Jews were murdered (including 20,000 of 25,000 Croatian Jews or 80 percent of the country’s prewar Jewish population). Only 5,000 Croatian Jews survived the war. They were confronted with disqualifications made by political and ideological opponents and by class enemies. They also had to face the distrustful perception of Jews as members of the bourgeoisie, many of whom

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had strong international connections, especially in Western countries. Most Yugoslav Jews, around 8,500, had emigrated to Israel or the United States mainly between 1948 and 1952, while those who stayed avoided declaring themselves as Jews publicly. Thus, the process of erasure from cultural tradition continued.3 The presence of Jews on the territory of present-day Croatia intensified in the second half of the nineteenth century, when urban migrations were regulated by a legal status and the right to possess property. In a setting that was inadequately economically developed, Jews’ progress in the wood, food, textile, chemicalpharmaceutical, and alcoholic drink industries was especially significant. From the beginning of the twentieth century, they were prominent in the Association of Industrialists of Croatia and Slavonia, which gathered the majority of industries. In this way, the “dynasties” of large-scale industrialists, such as Stern, Weiss, Alexander, Hirschler, Prister, Breslauer, and Deutsch Maceljski, were founded. Numerous architectural studios, mainly in Zagreb and Osijek, were linked to the construction industry (Hönigsberg, Deutsch, Ehrlich, Axman, Müller).4 In the altered urban social structure, a new elite assumed the role of investor in residential–business buildings, family homes, and summer cottages, which affirmed this elite’s social status. New clients were usually acquired by recommendation from existing clients, which was the common way in which these things were managed in the Jewish community and in the upper and middle-classes of the recently defunct Habsburg Monarchy. Viennese critic of the avant-garde Hermann Bahr defined the modernist signals of numerous artistic tendencies as rockets. He argued that the social foundations of these “-isms” are to be found in the modern metropolis5 and, like Georg Simmel,6 he points out the structural unity of urban and modern culture for the first time. Architectural historian Ákos Moravánsky was the first to point out the multitude of relationships that made the region of Central Europe dynamic but also redefined the previously unidirectional relationship between the metropolises and the provincial areas.7 The new cartography of Central Europe explores the numerous influences, similarities, and differences between those cities where urban culture and everyday life experienced the most powerful upheaval, yet it also includes Brno, Krakow, Zagreb, and Ljubljana, where modernization was equally dynamic. Further analysis will build on this and explore the multiculturalism of the Central European cultural space, which found expression in an exhibition and a publication that were both entitled Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890–1937.8

Shaping the Modern City Taking an idea of history as the relationship between past and present, dependent on the conception of reality as a point of departure, it can be affirmed that narratives are that which remains. In the case of Jewish identity the historiography still formulates an “alternative” discourse. The method of dichotomization—generational conflicts, gaps, political ruptures—tends to divert attention away from continuities and from the complex interrelations between the various lines of networking in architectural culture. The beginnings of architectural modernism in urban centers in Croatia are closely linked

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to plans to expand the area of the city and render it more metropolitan in character. Leo Hönigsberg (1861–1911) and Julio Deutsch (1859–1922) played a central role in this transformation. Both studied at the Vienna Technische Hochschule (today’s Vienna University of Technology) at the masterclass of Heinrich von Ferstel. After several years of work in Vienna and throughout Europe, they founded a joint architectural studio. They were the first architects in Croatia to take part in exhibitions and publish their work in professional journals and photo albums, and they affirmed the “Sacred Spring” program in promoting architecture as artistic practice. Palaces, villas, public and office buildings, industrial edifices and religious architecture built by their studio (1889–1922) lend a characteristic accent of high historicism and early modernism that shape the image of the modern city. Thanks to numerous young architects who gathered around the studio as collaborators, it played a key role in affirming the new aesthetic outlook of art nouveau modernism—as opposed to historicism—that was not late in coming to Zagreb, Požega, Bjelovar, Slavonski Brod, and Križevci. The architects who brought new modernist tendencies to Zagreb at the turn of the century were mostly of Jewish origin, educated in European centers: in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Karlsruhe, and Prague. Joint design studios and construction companies such as Hönigsberg & Deutsch, Benedik & Baranyai, Kovačić & Ehrlich, Kalda & Štefan, Pollak & Bornstein, later followed by Haberle & Bauer, Kauzlarić & Gomboš—in which one of the members was Jewish—became common practice up until the end of the 1930s. In these studios, one member generally took on legal and construction-related and organizational tasks, while the other was concerned with design work. Through their activities, including the building for Jewish clients and projects they initiated in both the private and public sphere, they played a very important role and constituted an interconnected social and institutional network. At the same time, they invested great efforts in internationalizing the local architectural and artistic scenes. A characteristic example is the residential corner house on Zagreb’s main square, which the well-known pharmacist Eugen Viktor Feller requested. Its feature was a giant bottle with an advertisement for the Elsa-fluid elixir, which enjoyed global commercial success.9 The house was one of the visual signs of the square up until 1927 when the new owner, banker, and industrialist Otto Stern decided to modernize it in line with a Peter Behrens’ project. It can be assumed that Otto’s brother, Ivo Stern, played a key role in choosing an architect. Ivo Stern was a lawyer and the founder and director of the Zagreb radio station, a promoter of photography and film who maintained links with avant-garde artists and architects. The Stern Building was adapted in 1928 by Ignjat Fischer (1871–1948), who was then at the peak of his professional career; his clients largely belonged to the Jewish social and entrepreneurial elite.

New Modernist Tendencies Eugen Viktor Feller was the investor in one of the most representative examples of modern Wohnkultur. Designed by his brother, the architect Matthias Feller (1880?– 1960), and built in 1909–1911, thanks to the Villa Feller project and the fact that it was published in the renowned journal Innen-Dekoration,10 a number of international

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clients commissioned interior designs from its author; these included the Thurn & Taxis family; the German Emperor Wilhelm II, Duke of Braunschweig; and the Yugoslav Court in Belgrade. However, the villa and the author still remain outside of the national historiographical narrative of modern architecture and the culture of domesticity.11 Matthias Feller designed the villa and all the furnishings bearing in mind the different ways of life of the numerous family members. Located in an elite residential neighborhood, close to the city center, Villa Feller is surrounded by a landscaped park with rare and exotic trees and plants, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a bowling green, terraces, canopies, fountains, and promenades. The ensemble consists of the main house with twenty-eight rooms, seven bathrooms, and two waiting rooms, a small house in the garden and a garage for two cars. The central space of the ground floor is taken up by the two-storied hall with a balcony, and the symbolic and social “core” of the house is linked to the entrance by a vestibule. It is decorated with three monumental watercolor murals that are part of the paneling, and two smaller wooden-relief carvings by the Austrian artist Fritz Hegenbart.12 All the furnishings were designed by the architect exclusively for this interior, from the furniture to the vases and lighting (Figure 4.1). After studying architecture in Vienna and Prague, Ignjat Fischer was the first to introduce art nouveau to Zagreb, first in a joint studio with Anton Hruby and then from 1899 in his own studio, later becoming one of the most important architects of the interwar period. The corner residence for the dentist Eugen Rado (1897) and

Figure 4.1  Mathias Feller, Villa Feller, Jurjevska Street 31-31a, Zagreb, 1909/11. Photograph of the interior: hall and gallery. Paintings and reliefs: Fritz Hegenbart. Furnishings: M. Ballin, Munich. Source: Innen-Dekoration (Darmstadt, 1914)

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the Joković Sanatorium (1908–1909) represents key examples of proto-functionalist architecture. Like Fischer, Rudolf Lubynski (also Lubinski, 1873–1935) came to Zagreb after studying abroad with Josef Durm in Karslruhe. He worked in his own studio, which grew into the biggest architectural studio during the 1920s. Lubynski followed a path from late art nouveau architecture to functionalist construction, and his masterpiece was the Royal and University Library (1901–1913), which is an excellent example of Gesamtkunstwerk. His later work includes the Sephardic Synagogue in Sarajevo (1925–1930) and the first commercial “skyscraper” in Zagreb. It had refined art déco references, was functionalist in character, and was designed for Shell Corporation and commissioned by the brothers Artur and Milan Marić (Mayer) (1931–1932), renowned members of the Jewish community, art collectors, patrons, and industrialists. Slavko Benedik (1880–1954) made a significant contribution to modernism, alongside Aladar Baranyai (1879–1936) and their wide spectrum of innovations that represent the peak of art nouveau. The fact that they completed 200 projects speaks volumes about the Benedik & Baranyai (1905–1933) studio’s performance. Of these, sixty family and residential houses were constructed by applying a new typology of housing, based on building regulations that specified an “open” construction style.13 The majority of clients and new villa owners were bankers, wholesalers, industrialists, and lawyers. Many were connected via business and family links, and the majority belonged to the Jewish community.14 The villas were surrounded by parks and city gardens decorated with sculptures. They offered an excellent standard of housing not far from the city center, modelled on contemporary cottage settlements. The greatest scope of their opus is Villa Ilić (1918–1920), a luxurious palazzo with references to the Josef Hoffmann’s Stoclet Palace in Brussels (1905–1911) and completed for Mirko and Matilda Ilić. It has a spatial structure designed to add volume, from the entrance porch to the spacious hall with a gallery and “private” spaces on the first floor. The outdoor space is formed like a monumental sculpture surrounded by a park with a pergola, fountains, a swimming pool, and tennis courts. Through the consistent total design of luxurious, but very functional interior fittings, this is a work that expresses a deep attachment to the ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk in the culture of housing.15 Hugo Ehrlich (1879–1936) was another architect who favored the “clean-shaven” modernist style without ornamentation.16 He came from a wealthy family of builders, which included the property developer Herman Ehrlich, and the environment in which he grew up was one of the focal points of the Zagreb business and cultural elite’s social life. This made it possible for him to continue his solo career after studying with Carl König at the Vienna Technische Hochschule, also collaborating with Friedrich Ohmann and Humbert Walcher.17 After the end of a collaboration between the client Theodor Beer and Adolf Loos in 1908, he was entrusted to finish work on the Villa Karma on Lake Geneva and worked on its completion up until 1912. In the meantime, in 1909 Ehrlich returned to Zagreb where he worked with Viktor Kovačić in a joint architectural studio (1910–1915) and then independently after the end of the First World War. Ehrlich’s links to the social elite resulted in paradigmatic accomplishments: Villa Deutsch (1920) and Villa Schwarz (1922) illustrate tendencies in architectural typology, as well as oscillations in clients’ tastes during the 1920s, moving between certain hybrid couplings of neoclassical and modernist features. In his later work,

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he brought many young architects together in his studio and played a key role in bringing about their cooperation. Hugo Ehrlich was one of the few Jews who became a prominent member of the academic community in the local milieu. In addition, he was one of the few architects who established himself outside of the local framework: he was invited to participate in the founding congress of CIAM in La Sarraz in 1928, and in 1932 he published a monograph in the edition Neues Bauen und Wohnen.18 Architectural modernity in urban culture on the territory of present-day Croatia culminated in the 1920s and 1930s, when new business–residential neighborhoods were created and new parameters of functionality and luxury were established in housing. A characteristic example of these architectural–urbanist standards is the buildings and streets on N Square in Zagreb (now the Square of the Victims of Fascism). These were built for clients in circles of the civic, business, and economic elite, designed and completed by Rudolf Lubynski, Ignjat Fischer, Lav Kalda, and Benedik & Baranyai. The representativeness of the architectural vocabulary was defined by the Stock Exchange and Slavenska Banka buildings. The Zagreb Assembly’s exhibition complex [now the Zagreb Fair/Zagrebački velesajam] ensured the dynamism present in economic life. A comparative analysis of production, investors/ clients, with data on contemporary architectural literature suggests an urban culture with a dominantly Jewish identity that resulted from a degree of continuity in modernization processes. It is indicative that the national historiography has not yet dealt with this aspect, and even recent contributions have incorrectly linked it to aspirations of the nouveau riche, who in the new monarchy strove for the social status of the aristocracy in Austro-Hungary.19 Collecting antiques and art was an integral part of the aestheticization of everyday life. The Ullrich family’s showroom played a key role in profiling the art market.20 Largely through sales, the exhibitions indirectly influenced artistic tastes, promoting contemporary artists and the relations of actors that can be reconstructed at least fragmentarily through artists’ collaborations with clients, patrons, and architects. A characteristic example is the relation between the collector Robert Deutsch Maceljski21 and the artist Milivoj Uzelac. His art compositions were a kind of trademark of residential interiors completed for this client. The popularity of such aspects of collaboration between clients and artists contributed to their publication in periodicals,22 as well as the founding of the association Djelo, based on the Deutscher Werkbund23 (Figure 4.2). In the 1920s, Zagreb was a highly developed commercial center that drew immigrants from Romania and Poland, as well as from Western and Central Europe and Russia. Marie-Luise Morgenroth (1904–1994) was among them, who, after marrying the neuropsychiatrist and psychoanalyst Stjepan Betlheim (1898–1970), maintained ties with friends from Weimar who studied at Bauhaus. At the start of the 1930s, the flat was equipped with the most contemporary furniture ordered from the Thonet factory catalogs. This included Marcel Breuer’s armchairs, among other items. The cosmopolitan social climate also pertained to Tilla Durieux (real name: Ottilia Godefoy), a star of the Berlin theater’s “Golden Twenties.” Her Zagreb flat was a wellliked social hub, and her art collection was exceptionally interesting as a memento of the atmosphere of her former Berlin flats, as well as of cultural and artistic life in Berlin before 1933.24 The Russian Irina Kunjina was among the many immigrants. She was a

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Figure 4.2  Robert Deutsch Maceljski’s apartment at N Square, n. 2 (today Trg žrtava fašizma / the Square of the Victims of Fascism, Zagreb) with paintings by Milivoj Uzelac— Allegory of Work (left) and Allegory of Beauty (right), 1925. Source: Illustrated magazine Svijet [World] (Zagreb, 1927)

writer and publicist whose flat was also a favorite place where “leftist” intellectuals and artists gathered in the 1930s and was one of the centers of salon culture.

The Avant-Garde of Neues Bauen Modern architecture, as part of contemporary urban culture, reached its peak in the functional constructions of the 1930s. A comparative analysis of the production and the topography of investors (or of those who commissioned construction), along with facts noted in architectural publications of the time, is sufficient to provide an outline of the contributions made by specific protagonists—specifically those of Jewish heritage—to the process of societal modernization. Out of the relatively few architectural publications of the 1930s, Our Architecture (1933) by Bogdan Rajakovac lists Hugo Ehrlich, Stjepan Gomboš, Slavko Löwy, Zdenko Strižić, and Ernest Weissmann among the twenty-eight most important architects in Croatia. Furthermore, a highly significant retrospective exhibition titled A Half-Century of Croatian Art 1888–1938 was organized in part to express Croatian identity within the broader Kingdom of Yugoslavia; it hosted forty-six architects, mostly from Zagreb.

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They included Alfred Albini, Ignjat Fischer, Pavao Deutsch, Edo Schön, Zlatko Neumann, Stjepan Gomboš, Hinko Pšerhof, Ernest Weissmann, and (posthumously) Hugo Ehrlich. The exhibition was accompanied by an anthology written by Vladimir Potočnjak, titled Architecture in Croatia 1888–1938, published in 1939 in the journal Građevinski vjesnik (Construction News). A total of sixty-eight authors of noteworthy architectural achievements were featured in the anthology, including Leo Hönigsberg and Julio Deutsch, Ignjat Fischer, Hugo Ehrlich, Slavko Benedik, Pavao Deutsch, Zlatko Neumann, Alfred Albini, Stjepan Gomboš, Zdenko Strižić, Ernest Weissmann, Slavko Löwy, and Hinko Bauer. Yet a collection of articles titled “Croatian Zagreb” published in 1940 included “Zagreb of the Future” by Bogdan Rajakovac, but in Zagreb’s architectural and urban development, it only noted Ehrlich, Neumann, Albini, Weissmann, Löwy, Gomboš, and Strižić among its thirty-five leading protagonists. The most important protagonists of the functionalist avant-garde were Zlatko Neumann (1900–1969) and Ernest Weissmann (1903–1985). Neumann was a student of the above-mentioned Loos and later worked in his studio in Vienna and Paris. Zagreb’s architecture is indebted to him in many ways. These range from his first international recognition at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1926 and articles published in architectural periodicals,25 to projects including a new concept of spatial organization (Raumplan of the Villa S in Paris, 1926), terraced housing projects (1927), and more than seventy interiors that became prototypes for modern apartment and programmatic articles. He advocated for the consistent application of radical-purist design through architecture. He was also among the first to critically question the principles behind “International Style.” He was one of the few Jewish architects who successfully continued working as an architect in Croatia after 1945.26 Having completed his studies at the Technical Faculty of the University of Zagreb, and thanks to his networking, initiated by Neumann, Weissmann began to work for Loos and later went on to work with Le Corbusier for a period of several years. He ranked very highly among 225 contestants from various countries who competed for the construction of the Jewish Hospital in Zagreb in 1930. His outstanding design for a pavilion compound for the Zagreb hospital was published by Alberto Sartoris in his seminal synthesis of modern architecture27 and in the magazines L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui28 and Cahiers d’Art.29 In the same year his project won first prize among seventy-nine projects from several European countries competing to construct a Foundation and Clinical hospital at Šalata. A prolific and versatile architect with a keen interest in architecture, theoretical issues, and lively debates on the most progressive ideas in the field, Weissmann was active in CIAM from the very beginning, although he would regulate his national delegate mandate only when the Zagreb Work Group was founded in 1932 and proclaimed itself the associate working group of CIAM for Yugoslavia. Therefore, it is not too implausible to assume that many CIAM members knew about the demanding Zagreb competition, which created an opportunity to promote international modernist principles. Given the intensity of Weissmann’s actions within socially engaged architecture, it is paradoxical that his only independently realized projects were two villas in 1937: Villa Kraus and Villa Podvinec, in which he amalgamated the experiences of his teachers Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier in a program-defining solution of the new architecture. Both villas

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were created in line with their client’s needs for the most contemporary standards in quality living, as well as in line with the principles of economic efficiency and the functionality of the new building.30 He belonged to the city’s civic culture, to the same social circles as the client, and to the Jewish community—all of which undoubtedly influenced the relationship between the client and the architect.31 The avant-garde of Neues Bauen also includes Zdenko Strižić (Steiner) (1902– 1990), who after studying in Dresden and Berlin with Hans Poelzig returned to Zagreb in 1933. He devoted particular attention to the housing typology and promoted the Siedlungen model in the row housing of the First Croatian Savings Bank at Trešnjevka (1934–1935), thus opening the field of socially engaged architecture up to contemporary issues relating to “Red Vienna.” He deserves the most credit for the transfer of architectural ideas concerned with a socially engaged role for modern architecture, in which, apart from his design activities, he was also exceptionally active through writing critical texts. After he left Yugoslavia in 1956,

Figure 4.3  Slavko Löwy, office and residential building Radovan, Masarykova Street 22, Zagreb, 1933/34. Photo Josip Donegani. © Ranko Horetzky Archive

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he continued to advance his international career and was equally successful as a university professor, practiced architect (Australia, Germany), and the author of an architectural study. The political circumstances that once conditioned Strižić’s departure from Yugoslavia are no longer present, but his opus remains for the large part outside of the interests of national historiography. The case of Strižić’s peer, Slavko Löwy (1904–1996), after studying in Vienna, Zagreb, and Dresden, was significantly different.32 However, as with research into the authored works of other architects, his Jewish identity remained outside of the realm of historiographical interest.33 Löwy is the author of a series of residential buildings of refined proportions (Schlenger House, 1932–1933) as well as the first Zagreb skyscraper: the Radovan Building (1933), whose overall appearance seamlessly incorporated a neon advertising space specially shaped for this purpose (Figure 4.3). From the 1930s onward, housing became a testing ground for experimentation, as particularly expressed in the activities of the artistic group Zemlja (the Earth) and the Zagreb Work Group. Thus, real-existing architecture and town planning for real people were conceptualized through programmatic statements and exhibitions that focused on socially engaged architecture.

Lessons in Modern Living: New Culture of Domesticity The fourth decade of the twentieth century faced the burden of the economic crisis and political anxiety. Construction projects were no longer owned by city municipalities, but by private investors who primarily viewed architecture as a source of profit. Attention shifted to smaller residential buildings and family homes rather than large urban housing projects. The banking crisis had a positive impact on housing construction in Zagreb, because investing in housing compensated for a loss of trust in the banking system. Those who constructed residential buildings in the city center and the surrounding area were mostly independent professionals (architects, lawyers, physicians, industrials, craftsmen, and tradesmen). They were from the social stratum responsible for the construction of Novak Street (among others), and most investors were of Jewish origin. The construction of Novak Street (1931–1940) began after paradigmatic settlements in Europe such as Weissenhof and Werkbundsiedlung had already been completed; hence its concept and the logic it follows are based on the Zagreb tradition, while the pace of construction was determined by customer demand. Vladimir Šlapeta attributed it to Novak’s “central European spirit.”34 Nineteen villas were built, largely villas for renting with multiple flats (Stadtville) in whose construction fifteen architects participated. Great attention was paid to the site’s steep configuration with the distinctive vocabulary of new builds: terraced volumes, flat roofs, flexible, and rational floor plans in which the influences of Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, Erich Mendelsohn, Josef Frank, the Luckhardt brothers, and other protagonists of the “International Style” were recognizable. Also recognizable was the aspiration for a contemporary shaping of “place,” in dialogue with the specificities of the environment, above all the views of the city, and the cultural habits and needs of the clients.

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Most of the clients lived in villas, and the majority were Jewish, having arrived in Zagreb from Germany or Hungary. Luxurious houses were built on vacant green slopes; however, unlike the villas built a decade earlier, these were no longer family villas with historicist decorations but multi-apartment villas with clean lines and planes. Among the most distinctive examples of international style was Villa Spitzer (1931/2) designed by the studio Kauzlarić & Gomboš. It is characterized by harmonious cubic-volume proportions and is well integrated. Special attention has been paid to a synthesis of the exterior and interior space, in the total design and details—such as roof terraces with a winter garden (Figure 4.4). The interior furnishings are by Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand from the Thonet production. They show a commitment to the l’esprit nouveau aesthetic, which Kauzlarić and Gomboš applied to a range of later projects (Villa Pick, the special interior of Irina Kunjina and Božidar Aleksander’s flat, Villa Hirschler-Schwarz, Villa Ladany).35 The “case” of Villa Spitzer is symptomatic: after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH—Nezavisna Država Hrvatska),36 it was expropriated. Following this, a high-ranking German officer resided in it, and after 1945 it became the club headquarters for the secret police, and afterward the flat with a terrace on the top floor was handed over to the son of the President of Yugoslavia (Josip Broz Tito) for his use. Although it has been regularly represented in the historiography of modern Croatian architecture as an anthological achievement, today it has been devastated to the level of being unrecognizable due to subsequent interventions.

Figure 4.4  Stjepan Gomboš, Mladen Kauzlarić, Villa Spitzer, Novak Street 15, Zagreb, 1931/32. © Ranko Horetzky Archive

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Absent Presence From a historically detached perspective, it is obvious that due to the systematic deletion of traces of Jewish identity in the processes of modernizing society, it is very difficult to reconstruct its contribution to culture in Croatian historiography. Lost or inaccessible archival documents, destroyed family legacies, the circumstances in which art collections that later entered the holdings of large state museums were seized— these are just some of the open questions that lack the political will to resolve them. This chapter therefore seeks to shed light on the formative role and specific content of Jewish identity in transfers of the interwar period’s architectural culture on the territory of present-day Croatia with a focus on Zagreb as a “model example of its time.” This role becomes proportionally more significant as a result of networking, both in terms of collaborative practices between architects, construction-business owners, and the artists they collaborated with on interior furnishings, and between investors, who for the most part belonged to the same cultural and intellectual circles. The character and energy of these activities are perhaps best defined by the architect Zdenko Strižić: “We have no special task constrained by the concept of nationhood. We are simply collaborating in the construction of our time.”37

Acknowledgment For copyediting and help with translating parts of the text, I wish to thank Andrew Hodges.

Notes 1

2

3 4

“Alles, was man aus seinem eigenen Leben vergißt, war eigentlich von einem inneren Instinkt längst schon verurteilt gewesen, vergessen zu werden. Nur was ich selber bewahren will, hat ein Anrecht, für andere bewahrt zu werden” (Stefan Zweig, Vorwort, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers [The World of Yesterday. Memories of a European] [Frankfurt: Fischer, 1955], 12. Author’s translation.) The highest quality contributions to date on researching the role of Jews in the history of Croatia are the following studies: Ognjen Kraus, ed., Dva stoljeća povijesti i kulture Židova u Zagrebu i Hrvatskoj (Two centuries of Jewish history and culture in Zagreb and Croatia) (Zagreb: Židovska općina, 1998); Melita Švob, Židovi u Hrvatskoj. Židovske zajednice, knjiga I. i knjiga II. (Jews in Croatia. Jewish Communities, vol. 1 and vol. 2). 2nd edition (Zagreb: Židovska općina, Istraživački i dokumentacijski centar “Cendo,” K. D. Miroslav Šalom Freiberger, 2004); Ivo Goldstein, Židovi u Zagrebu 1918.-1941 (The Jews in Zagreb 1918–1941) (Zagreb: Novi liber, 2004). Naida Michal Brandl, “Židovska topografija Zagreba kojeg više nema” (Topography of Zagreb that is no more), Historijski zbornik 69, no. 1 (2016): 91–103. Mira Kolar Dimitrijević, “Židovi u gospodarstvu sjeverne Hrvatske od 1873 do 1941 godine”(Jews in North Croatian Economy from 1873 to 1941), in Dva stoljeća

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5 6 7

8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15

16

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povijesti i kulture Židova u Zagrebu i Hrvatskoj (Two centuries of Jewish history and culture in Zagreb and Croatia), ed. Ognjen Kraus (Zagreb: Židovska općina, 1998), 127, 129, 130–6. Hermann Bahr, Inventur (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1912). Georg Simmel, “Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben,” in Die Großstadt. Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Städteausstellung. Jahrbuch der Gehe-Stiftung Band 9 (Dresden: Th. Petermann, 1903), 185–206. Ákos Moravánsky, Die Architektur der Donaumonarchie (Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1988); Ákos Moravánsky, Competing Visions: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture 1867–1918 (Cambridge, MA, London: The MIT Press, 1998). Eve Blau and Monika Platzer, eds., Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890–1937 (München, London, New York: Prestel, 1999). The product was exported all over Europe as well as to Egypt, Japan, and China, while in the United States it was very popular at the time of Prohibition due to its high alcohol content. The company won numerous medals at international exhibitions in Paris, London, and Berlin. Feller himself received about 65,000 thankyou letters from all over the world. He was also a well-known patron of the arts and sponsored numerous students and humanitarian societies. Matthias Feller, “Das Landhaus E. V. Feller in Agram,” Innen-Dekoration, no. 9 (1914): 367–98. The main reason is that the author is a “foreign” architect. Mathias Feller studied under Alfred Grenander, one of the protagonists of the Berlin architectural scene at the turn of the century. His professional beginnings were noted by architecture and interior design magazines in 1907, while by 1908 he had already become a member of the Deutscher Werkbund. On the occasion of the opening of the Kaufhaus des Westens department store in Berlin in 1907, Berliner Architekturwelt notes that the complete interior design of the store was entrusted to the architect Franz Habich and his associates Feller and Kramer. Feller was an architect who practiced in Munich but completed several projects in Zagreb, too. In her biographies of Jewish architects working in Germany before and after 1933, Myra Warhaftig notes that his membership of the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste was revoked due to his Volljude status. Myra Warhaftig, Deutsche jüdische Architekten vor und nach 1933—Das Lexikon: 500 Biographien (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2005). The drawings and photographs of these murals were exhibited at the International Exhibition of Art in Rome in 1911, where Hegenbart won a gold medal. Mirko Ilić was a timber wholesaler and the owner of a real-estate agency. He was deported with his wife to Jasenovac, where they were murdered. Slavko Benedik was of Jewish origin, and his wife Jelka was the sister of Gustav, Robert and Vlatko Deutsch Maceljski, for whose members they designed dozens of residential-rental buildings and family villas. The villa was bought off its first owner in 1932 by Gustav Deutsch Maceljski, and an interesting detail in the purchase agreement was the new owner’s obligation to consult the architect Baranyai about all possible modifications, which speaks to the value of the ambience. After the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, the villa was seized from its owners and later completely devastated. Kraus attacked Historicist and Secessionist styles by ridiculing Vienna’s second district (Leopoldstadt) dwellers, who complained that the heavy buses would cause

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their houses to shake and consequently endanger the decorative fixtures on their buildings. By identifying these fixtures and ornaments as “beards” that should be shaved, Kraus may have promoted Loos’s plain façade, modernist architecture as a positive representation befitting modern Jews. Karl Kraus, “Der Löwenkopf oder Die Gefahren der Technik,” Die Fackel (October 13, 1914): 7. Discussed in Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna (Boston: Brandeis University Press, 2016), 213. 17 Žarko Domljan, Hugo Ehrlich (Zagreb: Društvo povjesničara umjetnosti Hrvatske, 1979). Herman Ehrlich moved to Zagreb in 1874 from Našice. He married the daughter of the Zagreb rabbi Marija Eisner and created one of the strongest construction companies in Croatia. In the style of “romantic historicism,” he designed his own village on Josipovac (1891). On the ground floor there was a restaurant, a favorite excursion spot frequented by citizens of Zagreb. In the 1920s, the villa was completely renovated according to Benedik & Baranyai’s architectural project. The original historicist composition of the building was maintained with classical art déco features added. The investor Artur Marić (Mayer) was an industrialist, lawyer, doctor of philosophy, philanthropist, diplomat, patron, and art collector. Apart from paintings of old artisans, miniatures, Oriental rugs, furniture and porcelain, and porcelain and silver collections, there were works by contemporary artists. The hybrid style of the luxurious interior can thus be interpreted as an expression of Marić’s personal taste and the exhibition space. Marić was linked to the Alexander family by marriage, a second extremely powerful Jewish family in Zagreb during that period. 18 O., Hugo Ehrlich (Wien/Berlin: G. E. Konrad, 1932). 19 Marina Bagarić, “Zagrebačka buržoazija u novoj monarhiji: oponašanje stambenih modela,” (Zagrebian Burgeoisie in the New Monarchy: The Imitation of Residential Models) in Likovne umjetnosti, arhitektura i povijesni identitet, Zbornik Dana Cvita Fiskovića VII, ed. Ana Marinković and Ana Munk (Zagreb: Sveučilište u Zagrebu— Filozofski fakultet. Odsjek za povijest umjetnosti. FF press, 2018), 181–95. 20 Žarka Vujić, Salon Ullrich o stotoj obljetnici (The Ullrich Salon on Its Centennial) (Zagreb: Art Magazin Kontura, 2010). 21 Darija Alujević, “Jewish-Owned Art Collections in Zagreb: The Destiny of the Robert Deutsch Maceljski Collection,” Studi di Memofonte, no. 22 (2019): 50–63. Robert Deutsch Maceljski placed his collection in 1941 under the protection of the Croatian Museum, and together with his wife Hilda converted to Catholicism. Yet despite this, in 1943 both were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. 22 The interior of Robert Deutsch Maceljski’s flat, with the decorative compositions Allegory for Work and Allegory for Culture, by Milivoj Uzelac, was published in the illustrated magazine Svijet [World] (Zagreb, 1927). 23 Jasna Galjer, “Art Déco in the Applied Arts and Design,” in Art Deco and Art in Croatia between the Two Wars, ed. Miroslav Gašparović and Anđelka Galić (Zagreb: Museum of Arts and Crafts, 2011), 23–59. 24 The initial part of the collection was created by the art dealer and collector Paul Cassirer, the first husband of Tilla Durieux. The portrait was painted by O. Kokoschka, F. Stuck & A. Renoir, and the bust was made by E. Barlach. 25 Zlatko Neumann, “Das Kleinhaus” (The Small House) Der Sturm 18, no. 1–2 (1927): 1–4. 26 During the period of his confinement in various concentration camps from 1941 to 1945, he wrote the theoretical study “Where Is Architecture Going?” For information

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31

32 33

34 35

36 37

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on the unpublished manuscript, see Aleksander Laslo, “Adolf Loos and [the] Croatian Architecture,” Arhitektov Bilten, no. 107/8 (1991): 52–80. Alberto Sartoris, Gli Elementi dell’architettura funzionale: sintesi panoramica dell’architettura moderna (The Elements of Functional Architecture: Panoramic Synthesis of Modern Architecture) (Milano: Hoepli, 1932), 175. Ljubomir Ilitch, “L’architecture en Yougoslavie,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 3, no. 6 (1933): 41–55. Christian Zervos, “Jeunes architectes. A propos de leur exposition à la Galerie des Cahiers d’Art,” Cahiers d’Art 10, no. 1–4 (1935): 75–94. Srećko Podvinec (Felix Podvinetz) was a renowned ear, nose, and throat doctor, employed at the Zagreb Clinic and a professor at the Medical Faculty in Zagreb. He was married to the opera singer Marija. Gustav Kraus was a dentist and his wife Julija KrausLederer was a doctor of medicine. Source: Židovski biografski leksikon, draft version. https://zbl.lzmk.hr/?p=1600 and https://zbl.lzmk.hr/?p=872 (accessed May 11, 2020). Gustav Kraus was Otti Berger’s uncle. She was a textile designer who studied at Bauhaus (1927–1930) and led a textile workshop (1931–1932), later running her own studio in Berlin. (1932–1936). Despite her successful professional career, as the exhibition of her works attested to, she was murdered in Auschwitz. Her exhibition included her works with Alvar Aalto’s furniture, organized by S. Giedion in Zurich in 1934 and László Moholy-Nagy’s invitation to join the New Bauhaus School in Chicago. Gustav & Julija Kraus, as with most of their family, did not survive the Shoah. Darja Radović-Mahečić, Slavko Löwy: Sustvaratelj hrvatske moderne arhitekture tridesetih godina (Slavko Löwy: Contributor to Modern Croatian Architecture of the Nineteen-Thirties) (Zagreb: Horetzky, 1999). A characteristic example is the monograph by Tamara Bjažić Klarin, Ernest Weissmann: Socially Engaged Architecture, 1926–1939 (Zagreb: HAZU, 2015), where his works are arbitrarily divided into two parts and in need of a more comprehensive view, as the entire period of Weissmann’s international career after 1939 is missing. Vladimir Šlapeta, “Novakova ulica i problem Stadtville u srednjoeuropskom prostoru” (Novak Street and the problem of Stadtville in Central European Architecture), Čovjek i prostor, no. 403 (1986): 27–8. The architects Mladen Kauzlarić (1896–1971) and Stjepan Gomboš (1895–1975) were also property developers. Gomboš was the Jewish partner in this partners’ studio. They split before the war. Gomboš was held at a camp at the Treviso province during the Second World War. He was active in National Liberation Front of Yugoslavia in Bari. After the war he returned to Yugoslavia and became a technical director of the Institute for Architecture and Engineering. Gomboš designed some of the most important industrial plants during the 1950s. He taught at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb. A puppet state of Nazi Germany (1941–1945). Zdenko Strižić’s explanation of a competition project for a Jewish hospital in Zagreb, 1930.

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An International Style Synagogue in Brno: Otto Eisler’s Agudas Achim Synagogue (1936) Zuzana Güllendi-Cimprichová

Czech architect Otto Eisler’s (1893–1968) Agudas Achim Synagogue at Skořepka 247/13, (Trnitá) (formerly Leopoldshof) in Brno (1936) occupies a unique position in the context of Czechoslovakian and European synagogue architecture (Figure 5.1). It is the only synagogue in Brno that survived the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent destruction of the partly damaged synagogues in the city in the communist period. In his design, Eisler referred to existing synagogues, such as German architect Fritz Landauer’s (1883–1968) Plauen synagogue (1930), which chose

Figure 5.1  Otto Eisler, Agudas Achim Synagogue, Skořepka 247/13, Brno; Photo c. 1936. Source: Brno City Museum

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the formal language of the Neues Bauen (New Building) as a suitable means to express the liberal character of the Jewish community there. Yet Eisler applied a purist formal language in the construction of this synagogue for the orthodox community. At the time he designed it, Eisler was a recognized architect and celebrated as a representative of the “International Style.” His striking purist façade design, matched with traditional spatial conception of a Jewish house of prayer, successfully “disguised” the identity of the building as seen from the outside by relating it further, through the large barred window, to industrial buildings. At the same time, his concept as a whole expressed the wish of this orthodox community to preserve their religious character within the city. Eisler’s innovative architecture against the backdrop of the looming rise of nationalistic trends in Czechoslovakia presents a novel model for houses of prayer. This chapter examines the story and design of Agudas Achim Synagogue in relation to the history of the Jewish community and the development of Jewish topography (topographical networks of Jewish institutions and businesses) in Brno and positions it in relation to contemporary well-known synagogues built in Czechoslovakia and Germany.

Religious and Architectural-Historical Contexts The granting of equal rights to Moravian Jews in 1848 and the successive waves of migration that brought Galician Jews to Brno starting in the mid-nineteenth century were accompanied by an ideological differentiation of the Brno religious communities.1 This was characterized by a tension between orthodox tradition and secularization and was also revealed in the liturgical and typological design of the individual synagogues and houses of prayer. During the nineteenth century Brno had the largest Jewish population in Moravia. In 1852, the Israelite Religious Society of Brünn (Brünner Israelitischer Cultusverein) was constituted, which laid the foundation for the Jewish religious life in the city.2 A year later the Great Synagogue (1853–1855) on the corner of the streets Spálená and Přízova was erected in the Historicist Rundbogenstil with Oriental elements such as onion-shaped spires and horizontal stripes on the façade following the design of Austrian architects Johann Romano and August Schwendenwein.3 It was financed by a small group of Jewish families. Yet it expressed the ambitious hopes of the growing community and was dedicated by the Viennese rabbi Isaak Noah Mannheimer (1793– 1865) in 1855. Mannheimer had introduced in Wiener Stadttempel (Vienna city synagogue) (1827) the “Vienna Rite,” which included a male choir, rules of decorum, and moving the bimah to the front of the ark—it became a model throughout the Habsburg Empire.4 In the choice of Rundbogenstil for Brno’s Great Synagogue, the acculturated Jews further expressed their self-image as European Jews.5 Four years later the Jews in Brno were granted the request of the stature of Cultusgemeinde (Religious Community).6 The reform-oriented Baruch Placzek (1833–1922) served as the rabbi of the community from 1860 to 1922.7 In the second half of the nineteenth century, there was migration of Eastern European Jews to and trans-migration through Moravia. The Eastern European Jews who settled in Brno founded the house of prayer known as the Polish Shul

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(Polish School Synagogue) (1883) at 22/297, Křenova Street, which followed a strict liturgical rite.8 The growing Jewish community in Brno required the construction of a second, large synagogue, the New Synagogue (1906) at 8, Ponávka by AustroHungarian architect, born in Moravia, Max Fleischer (1841–1905).9 The façade had Neo-Romanesque, modest decorative elements, while the interior was reminiscent of Christian churches.10 Almost twenty-five years later, a group of refugees from Galicia and Bukovina who settled in Brno after the First World War would plan to construct their new independent house of prayer in the area of the old Polish Shul. After the outbreak of the First World War a further wave of 16,000 Jewish refugees from Galicia and Bukovina passed through Brno, while they were encouraged to return, many remained in Czechoslovakia.11 In Brno they were supported by the Zentrale der Fürsorge für die Flüchtlinge aus Galizien und der Bukowina (Center for the Care of Refugees from Galicia and Bukovina), whose chairman was the Jewish philanthropist Jonas Löw-Beer (1845–1924).12 After the First World War a group of moderate orthodox Jews, who were part of this community of refugees, founded several associations aimed to establish orthodox institutions; one of them was the orthodox association Agudas Achim [United Brothers], founded in 1929.13 The organization’s chairmen were David Horowitz and David Unger, who oversaw activities, which eventually led to the construction of the eponymous synagogue. The Agudas Achim was pursuing this aim together with the associations Agudas Israel, Polish Shul, Machsike Hadas, and other Addasz Jerein, which financially supported its construction. In the appeal for donations, the board declared that it represented the interests of 300 Jews who previously had to hold their religious services in the inadequate structural and hygienic conditions of the existing orthodox synagogue, the Polish Shul. Otto Eisler was commissioned to construct the new synagogue.14

Jewish Topography in Brno and the Agudas Achim Synagogue The choice of the building in the neighborhood of Křenova in Brno was not a coincidence. Rather, it was the result of centuries of socio-urban development of the Jewish community of Brno. After their expulsion of the Jews from the city in 1454, Jews were not allowed to settle in Brno until 1848. Yet they could attend the market upon payment of a special Leibmaut (body tax) and spend the night in the New World Inn, located in the suburb of Křenova (Kröna).15 Jewish life flourished in Křenová suburb between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.16 In addition to the Great Synagogue and the Polish Shul synagogue, we encounter the ritual bath (located at 7, Dorných Street), the New World Inn (Křenova Street), the orphanage (46, Křenova Street), and the retirement home (27, Mlynská Street). Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jewish institutions have moved closer to the city center. In the early twentieth century a second Jewish center developed around Koliště Street. Since 1904, the seat of the community was located in the house 45, Koliště Street.17 The above-mentioned New Synagogue (1906) was built in the courtyard of this community center. A few years later, during the First World War, the public kitchen for Jewish refugees from Galicia and Bukovina was established nearby by Jonas Löw-Beer in the house of 2, Ponávka Street.18 The kitchen was supervised by

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his wife, Lina, and the costs were supported by a fund financed by wealthy members of community.19 In October 1924, the kitchen was converted into a popular kitchen used for the religious community of Brno.20 Wealthy and bourgeois Jews settled at the center of Brno, yet it is likely be that the orthodox Jewish population preferred Křenova Street and its surroundings and so continued living there. In the areas of Dornych, Křenová, Mlýnská, Cejl an Bratislavská, the Jews from Galicia and Bukovina found a historically developed infrastructure of factories and stores (one of which was owned by David Unger),21 in which the Agudas Achim Synagogue could be integrated.

A Modern Synagogue for Former Refugees and New Residents of Brno: The Architect, the Building, and Its Design Otto Eisler was born in 1893 to a farming family in the Moravian town of Bystřice nad Pernštejnem. After studying at the German Technical University in Brno (Deutsche Technische Hochschule Brünn), he worked in the studio of Walter Gropius (1883– 1969) in Berlin, where he became acquainted with New Objectivity/Neue Sachlichkeit. Eisler was further considerably influenced by the Austro-Hungarian, Moravian-born architect Adolf Loos (1870–1933). In 1930, Otto Eisler founded his own architectural studio and began a close cooperation with the construction company run by his brothers Arthur (1887–1944) and Moritz (1888–1972). Until the outbreak of the Second World War, with more than 1000 employees, their construction company was one of the largest and most successful in Brno. Most of the city’s Jewish architects preferred to carry out their commissions in cooperation with the Eisler firm due to their good connections. The Villa Tugendhat, designed by the German gentile and renowned architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is a canonical modernist building constructed by the Eisler firm. Until he joined the company, Eisler had designed mainly detached houses, which attracted the attention of international experts; the two built in Brno were exhibited as part of the first exhibition on modern architecture, The International Style: Architecture since 1922 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1932.22 The decision to award the contract to design the Agudas Achim Synagogue to Otto Eisler was motivated by practical reasons, in addition to the architect’s Jewish background. His economically efficient design impressed the financially weak community. Brno was famous for its modernist architecture, and most likely the flat roof, which cost more than a pitched roof, was according to the architect’s conviction. His involvement in his brother Arthur Eisler’s construction company played a further role. The construction began in 1935,23 and on August 25, 1936, the synagogue was opened to the public. It remained in practice until 1941. The rectangular structure and the sober treatment of the façade are evidence of Eisler’s purist orientation. The interior and the design of the liturgical space testify to his knowledge of religious practice and his respect for the liturgical demands of orthodox Jews. Eisler most likely further agreed with Viennese critic Max Eisler, who claimed that an Oriental design would not be conducive to the essence of the praying experience.24 For this reason, he adopted the modest aesthetics of the old Polish Shul, which was

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known to him. Eisler designed a synagogue in a simple architectural language. Thus, he created an architectural replica by paraphrasing the Polish Shul, the former house of prayer of the Jews from Galicia and Bukovina, in a modern formal language. The synagogue is constructed of reinforced concrete in combination with brickwork. The flat roof is reinforced concrete structure. The main volume of the edifice contains the prayer hall, joined by a side projection. The ground plan of the building is neatly integrated into the street line, but due to its two-story structure, the synagogue is lower compared to the heights of the neighboring buildings. The street façade shows a purist style, emphasizing the restrained overall expression of the building.25 The most striking design and compositional element of the façade is a rectangular window consisting of thirty panes, which dominate the smoothly plastered rectangular volume. The side projection is accentuated by a window band and a two-winged entrance door. The two floors–high prayer hall (18.5m × 15m) can be reached through an anteroom. Men occupy the ground floor with 184 seats, women the gallery with 102 seats26 (Figure 5.2). The gallery modulates space in horizontal and vertical directions. In vertical terms it divides the space into a lower 2/3 and upper 1/3 part, in horizontal terms its U-shaped plan of the gallery helps focusing to the ark.27 The reinforced concrete gallery is supported by two Le Corbusian columns. The women’s gallery can be reached via a concrete staircase with two flights of stairs and is supported by two reinforced concrete columns painted white located in the main prayer room. The vestibule gives access to a courtyard in which the Sukkot festival is celebrated under a wooden arbor. To the left of the gallery is the winter prayer room.

Figure 5.2 Otto Eisler, Agudas Achim Synagogue: Women’s gallery, Skořepka 247/13, Brno. © FOTO STUDIO H, Ludmila Hájková, Ústí nad Labem

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Observing the design of the main hall of worship reveals an elegant contrast to the purist design of the exterior. Here Eisler oriented himself to the traditional liturgical space, which was the basic requirement of the Orthodox community. In the eastern niche is the Torah shrine, which is covered today by a heavy white velvet curtain (Figure 5.3). The gray polished marble with distinctive linear veins can remind us of the ark designed by the Slovakian Jewish architect Artur Szalatnai-Slatinsky’s (1891– 1962) Heydukova Street Synagogue (1923–1926), the only remaining synagogue in Bratislava.28 Above the ark there are the tablets of the law with the Ten Commandments. There are inscriptions in Czech and Hebrew and between them the Star of David on the eastern wall. In Czech Psalm 111:3: “From sun’s rising in the east to its setting in the west—may the name of the Lord be praised” and above it a Hebrew Psalm 16:8: “I keep seeing the Lord before me.” For the central position of the bimah, Eisler followed the Orthodox liturgical tradition and to emphasize its central role, he covered the base with gray polished marble.

Figure 5.3  Otto Eisler, Agudas Achim Synagogue: Interior main hall, Skořepka 247/13, Brno; Photo c. 1936. Source: Brno City Museum

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The central demand of the community of Agudas Achim was the construction of a functional synagogue that would satisfy the requirements of a liturgically traditional synagogue room. Eisler fulfilled this demand by designing the exterior as a functional shell with the primary purpose of protecting the prayer hall. He demonstrated the coherent allocation of functions by applying a modern formal language while at the same time considering the traditional liturgical disposition of space. The utilitarian value of the building was underlined by the simplified artistic expression of the façade. Eisler achieved an aesthetic “upgrading” of the functional elements. The large window becomes the central visual reference in the façade both compositionally and artistically. It can remind us of windows of industrial buildings and hospitals and contributes here to the camouflage character of the façade.29 Only Eisler added a subtle protruding plaster thin as a “picture frame,” thus transforming the window into a modernist decorative element. The prayer hall receives further light through the large window. For the façade of the side projection, behind which were located the anteroom and the administrative rooms, he chose a narrow ribbon window. Eisler also pursued this functional, symbolic, and aesthetic triad in the prayer hall. The white columns primarily assume a supporting function, but at the same time become essential aesthetic spatial elements and a spatial and symbolic link between the central prayer room and the women’s gallery. The walls, the large window, and the ark are elegantly framed with a painted delicate, golden decorative pattern. He further emphasized the central ritual significance of the Torah shrine and the bimah by framing them with marble. As suggested above Eisler matched in his creative concept of the Agudas Achim Synagogue artistic and liturgical considerations. The rectangular structure and the sober treatment of the façade evidence Eisler’s purist orientation. Eisler shows in the design concept his own personal creative approach to different directions in German rationalism. As mentioned above during his work in the Gropius’s studio, he had become acquainted with New Objectivity, as well as finding inspiration in the work of Adolf Loos. Like Loos, Eisler was not a strict functionalist; Eisler successfully matched complimentary designs of purist modernist façades with elegant interior public setting, achieved through the usage of marble as decorative element and simply designed wooden benches. Loos applied this practice in his private and commercial designs in Vienna, Pilsen, and Prague, and Eisler implemented a similar design strategy in this synagogue.30 Eisler’s design approach was influenced by the lecture series “For a New Architecture,” which was organized by the Club of Architects in Brno and the editorial staff of the magazine Bytova kultura (Household Culture) in winter 1924/25. Among the lecturers were Walter Gropius, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, Amédée Ozenfant, and Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud (1890–1963). Oud lecture on the De Stijl movement may have further served as possible inspiration for Eisler’s synagogue design.31 The creative use of modern forms and the innovative artistic attitude of the architect make the Agudas Achim Synagogue a novel design of modern synagogue style. Yet how can we position his modernist synagogue in the context of Czech and Central European architecture of synagogues in the interwar period? How did Eisler rework different models into a radical concept represented in the Agudas Achim Synagogue?

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The Agudas Achim Synagogue in the Context of Czechoslovakian and German Synagogue Building Eisler appreciated the lack of ornamentation on the façade, as it corresponded also to the design principles of the Neues Bauen. Although conceptually similar examples can be found in the context of European and especially German synagogue building of the interwar period, Eisler’s synagogue in Czechoslovakia remains a unique phenomenon. The formal singularity relates to the consistent implementation of the purist formal language. When a competition for the New Synagogue at 220/11, J. M. Hurbana Street in Žilina (today’s Slovakia) was announced in 1928, discussions over synagogue constructions were at their height. The rejection of Orientalizing elements became one of the basic criteria of modern Jewish sacred architecture. Nevertheless, in the competition, the Council of the Jewish Neologist community demanded the construction of a temple with a cupola.32 Comparing “neolog Judaism” with Judaism under German cultural influence cannot be taken for granted. Behrens following the neolog tradition placed the bimah and the Torah shrine in the eastern end of the prayer hall. Among the internationally renowned architects invited to take part in the competition were Peter Behrens (1868–1940), Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956), and Lipót Baumhorn (1860–1932). Each understood the building task differently. While Baumhorn adhered to the Orientalizing tradition, Hoffmann delivered a radically modern concept of a monumental tent. The winning design by Peter Behrens was realized between 1929 and 1931 (Figure 5.4). Behrens made use of the dynamic form of the irregular building plot, on which he erected two volumes: one is the great prayer hall and the other

Figure 5.4  Peter Behrens, New Synagogue [Neolog Synagogue], J. M. Hurbana 220/11, Žilina, 1931. Exterior during the 1930s. Source: Nová Synagóga Žilina

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perpendicular to it is the winter synagogue. Behrens emphasized this representative purpose by means of a wide-open staircase at the main entrance, which at the same time served to compensate optically for the irregularity of the terrain. Another element Behrens used to correct the unevenness of the ground was the copper-covered cupola. Contrary to the competition regulations, it does not dominate the design of the building. It was a shallow copula rising from a flat concrete ceiling. At the same time, it acts as a transition element into the interior of the prayer hall. The columns placed in the corners become room-structuring elements. Inside, Behrens used material semantics (applying different materials) to highlight the religious and liturgical value of the individual areas. He emphasized the representative function of the entrance with the help of two marble-lined niches framing wall fountains in the vestibule. The patterns on the terrazzo floor lead toward the women’s gallery and laterally into the prayer hall. The design highlight is the east-facing Torah shrine, the central importance of which Behrens emphasized with marble cladding. The entire room is capped by a cupola, which is adorned with Star of David set in gold.33 At about the same time, the German-speaking Jewish Czech architect Leopold Ehrmann (1886–1951) rebuilt the Smichov Synagogue at 32, Stroupežnického Street for the Jewish community in Prague (1931) (Figure 5.5). The existing building was a Neo-Romanesque structure built in 1863, which was connected to a corner plot.

Figure 5.5  Leopold Ehrmann, Smíchov Synagogue, Stroupežnického 290, Smíchov Prague, 1931. © FOTO STUDIO H, Ludmila Hájková, Ústí nad Labem

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An  additional building was planned for this plot and was to fill it spatially while blending in harmoniously with the older adjacent building. Ehrmann made use of modern expression but avoided an excessively creative contrast to the old building. This is particularly clear in the exterior of the building. The smooth, unornamented corner façades are structured by two lines of windows. While the lower line consists of elongated rectangular windows, the upper line takes up the motif of the round arches characteristic of the original synagogue. The façade is crowned by an Orientalizing attic. Plastering of gray lime cement joins the old and new buildings optically. Above the newly built main entrance in the west, a Hebrew biblical quote from Zecharia4:6—“‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,’ says the LORD almighty”—refers to the function of the building. Inside, the new extension housed a continuation of the women’s gallery, while retaining the traditional ground plan layout of the existing synagogue.34 Even though they are stylistically different, both examples reflect the prevailing direction of modern Czechoslovakian synagogue building. What these architects had in common with Otto Eisler was their desire for a maximum of pure formal expression while at the same time retaining the traditional spatial disposition. Unlike Otto Eisler, however, they did not completely abandon the Orientalizing tradition. With Behrens, this was not a stylistic decision but was rather linked to the strict demands of the competition brief. In terms of style, Leopold Ehrmann was able to design more freely; the closing attic is a stylistic reminiscence of the Moorish style of painting found in the east vault. Otto Eisler enjoyed complete artistic freedom with his synagogue commission and thus placed the Agudas Achim Synagogue in the context of a new Jewish synagogue building tradition, the pioneer of which was the above-mentioned German Jewish architect, Fritz Landauer. During the construction of the synagogue for the liberal Jewish community in Halderstraße in Augsburg (1913–1917), Landauer had already dealt with the question of a modern type of synagogue, by achieving a synthesis of the traditional language of synagogue architecture with modern building techniques. The high point of his endeavors was the synagogue at the corner Engelstraße/Senefelderstraße in Plauen (1928–1930; destroyed), which was praised by critics as a contemporary answer to the problem of the synagogue formal character.35 On a corner plot, Landauer designed a simple elongated block, which is relieved on the entrance side by four supporting columns. He expressed the functions of the individual areas of the building through the usage material semantics and the arrangement of the windows. The ground floor, with its community hall and administrative rooms, was constructed in violet-brown bricks. Behind the gray plastered façades of the two upper floors are the cult room in the east and the administrative rooms in the west. A multi-part longitudinal window on the north wall lights the cult room, while small window slits in the end façade refer to the gallery arrangement.36 Eisler’s design may have further been inspired by earlier modern-functional synagogues in Czechoslovakia such as the cubic synagogue (1930–1931) in Karel Krohn street in the Bohemian town Velvary designed by František A. Libra (1891– 1958), and the reform synagogue in the Moravian-Silesian town Český Těšín (1933) designed by Rosthal.37 Eisler’s reworking different models into a modernist radical concept of the Agudas Achim Synagogue may have carried an experimental character, yet in light of the threats that it would face in the years to come, it skillfully secured the

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survival of this synagogue. It is a “minimalist” architecture; all extraneous ornaments were stripped from the structure, which led to a blurring of interior and exterior space. There is an exposure of the buildings’ construction, and a further emphasis of modern industrial materials: concrete and glass. The central message of the book that accompanied the exhibition The International Style 1932 by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson was that by using the new technologies and taking into account the social and economic aspects of modern humanity, a supra-regional style was created: This new style is neither international in the sense that the achievements of one country are exactly the same as those of another, nor is it rigid in the sense that the works of different leaders could not be clearly distinguished. The International Style gradually became more clearly recognizable and determinable as different innovators around the world carried out similar experiments.38

Eisler saw in the recourse to “International Style” the possibility of an individual artistic expression and at the same time an integration model of the former refugees from Galicia and Bukovina and new residents in Brno, in the functionalist urban landscape of the city. At the same time, by treating the interior and exterior differently, he transmitted a message that is still relevant: that modern architecture can be applied to benefit the communities of different religious orientations, on the condition that the liturgical needs of each community are respected.

The Fate of the Architect and the Second Life of the Agudas Achim Synagogue Otto Eisler was very engaged and artistically active personality. Among his contacts in Vienna was the architect Adolf Loos. His favorite writer was Loos’s friend and supporter, the author and cultural critic Karl Kraus (1874–1936).39 After 1933, a group of exiled German Jewish intellectuals and artists settled in Brno. Eisler and his brothers were part of this new intellectual group of refugees. The artist Th. Th. Heine (1867– 1948) stayed for few months at Otto Eisler’s house. Later Heine received a garden house from the Eisler brothers to live in. In 1939, Otto Eisler and his brothers were arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned for six weeks in Špilberk Castle (Spielberg Fortress) in Brno. Philip Johnson, who visited the architect by coincidence in Brno after his imprisonment, described his broken condition yet could not grasp the gap between his expectation for an inspiring discussion on modernism among colleagues and the precarious position of Eisler as a persecuted Jew at this point.40 Eisler later escaped to Norway. He obtained visa with the support of Th. Th. Heine. After the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany, he was arrested and deported to several concentration camps. He survived Auschwitz and returned to Brno. His brother Arthur died in the Holocaust.41 After the communist party coup in 1948, the Eisler’s construction company was nationalized. Otto Eisler began to work as an external employee of the Brno Botanical Garden. He died in 1968.

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Like its architect, the Agudas Achim Synagogue survived the horrendous events. During the war years, the severely damaged synagogue was used as a storehouse. On September 6, 1945, the synagogue was re-consecrated.42 In 1953, it was reopened as a functioning synagogue, and it has been used continuously since then by the Jewish community in Brno for religious services. Since March 1993, it has been listed as a national cultural monument of the Czech Republic.43 Between 2014 and 2016 the synagogue was restored to its original condition.44 A new parochet was designed by the American artist Marc Podwall (born 1945), and as part of the dedication ceremony in January 2016, the new Torah scroll was inaugurated.45 Despite Holocaust and communist-era history, the Agudas Achim Synagogue lives its fully fledged, unique second life. Till today, it is the only operating synagogue in Moravia and Silesia with its own rabbi. The majority of the members are Moravian Jews.46 Today, Eisler’s International Style synagogue plays a critical role in this active community, which preserves the presence of Jewish tradition and culture in the historical development of Brno.

Acknowledgments Many thanks to architect Jaroslav Klenovský, architectural historian Rudolf Klein, historian Michael L. Miller, and Elana Shapira for their critical contributions to this chapter.

Notes 1

2

The first wave of Polish Jewish refugees arrived in Moravia after the Chmielnicky Massacres in middle of the seventeenth century. Michael Laurence Miller, Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2011), 24. The refugees that arrived during the First World War came from Galicia and Bukovina. It should be noted that there is very little research dedicated to the Eastern European Jews in Brno. The historical information in this chapter is based on following sources: Moritz Brunner, “Geschichte der Juden in Brünn,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Hugo Gold (Brno: Jüdischer Buch- und Kunstverlag, 1929); Hugo Gold, Gedenkbuch der Untergegangenen Judengemeinden Mährens (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1974); David Grossmann, Obraz brněnské židovské komunity v její spolkové činnosti (náboženství, sionismus, asimilace) [The image of Jewish community in Brno in the context of its association activities (religion, Zionism, assimilation)], Master’s Thesis Masaryk University Brno, 2002; Jaroslav Klenovský, Brno židovské: historie a památky židovského osídlení města Brna. Jewish Brno: History and Monuments of the Jewish Settlement in Brno (Praha: Grada Publishing a.s., 2016). The refugees fled from the Russian army’s advance into Galicia and Bukovina and its anti-Jewish measure. These measures included mass deportation of the Jewish population early 1915, and local expulsions in about 189 Jewish communities in the period from 1914 to 1916 (Semion Goldin, “Antisemitism and Pogroms in the

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Military (Russian Empire),” in International Encyclopedia of the First World War 1914–1918, online, last updated October 2014, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918online.net/article/antisemitism_and_pogromsin_the_military_russian_empire (accessed August 30, 2020). See further Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 324–5. 3 The first use of the Rundbogenstil that developed in Germany in the nineteenth century for synagogues was by gentile Heinrich Hübsch and Jewish Albrecht Rosengarten in the Kassel Synagogue in Germany (1839). The Great Synagogue in Brno was burnt down shortly after Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in mid-March 1939. Klenovský, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno, 48. 4 Marsha L. Rozenblit, “The Struggle over Religious Reform in Nineteenth-Century Vienna,” Association of Jewish Studies Review 14, no. 2 (1989): 170–222. See also Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 82. 5 The architecture of the new synagogues in the nineteenth century reflected a critical process of defining Jewish self-representation. The German-Jewish architect Albert Rosengarten, who staunchly opposed to the choice of Moorish (Oriental) style as anachronistic and false, explained his choice of Neo-Romanesque style as model of integration in his article “Die neue Synagogue in Cassel,” Allgemeine Bauzeitung 5 (1840): 205–6. 6 Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 325. 7 Michael L. Miller, “Brno,” in The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Brno (accessed July 29, 2020). 8 Klenovský, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno, 51. 9 The New Synagogue suffered severe bomb damage in 1944 and its restoration by the diminished Jewish community of Brno was not possible. It was not placed under preservation protection and in the following years it was used as a furniture store. Some architectural studies proposed to use the synagogue for cultural purposes, but no investor was found. End of 1985, early 1986, it was destroyed. Some worthy architectural ornaments were transferred to the depository of Brno City Museum. Among these items were the Decalogue, the forged lattice work of almemar, two donor’s tablets from the vestibule and the front of the door. A memorial plaque is a reminder of the former existence of the New Synagogue. Ibid., 55. 10 For photos and discussion on the New Synagogue, see ibid., 53–5. For discussion on Fleischer’s distinct approach to synagogue design and his stylistic debate regarding synagogue design with the Viennese architect Wilhelm Stiassny, see Ursula Prokop, On the Jewish Legacy in Viennese Architecture. The Contribution of Jewish Architects to Building in Vienna 1868–1938, 23–9 (open access: file:///C:/Users/mir/ Downloads/612510.pdf [accessed August 10, 2020]). 11 Miller, “Brno,” in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. 12 Brunner, “Geschichte der Juden in Brünn,” in Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. Hugo Gold, 170. 13 In 1930, the whole Jewish community counted 10, 202. Miller, “Brno.” 14 Grossmann, Obraz brněnské židovské komunity v její spolkové činnosti (náboženství, sionismus, asimilace), 26. 15 Miller, Brno, 2010 (accessed July 29, 2020). 16 Klenovský, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno, 13. 17 It remained in this location until the Nazi authorities evicted the building in 1939. Many thanks to Jaroslav Klenovský for this information (Jaroslav Klenovsky’s email to Elana Shapira on August 29, 2020).

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18 The description originates in the map of Brno showing institutes in Klenovsky’s book Brno židovské / Jewish Brno. 19 The historian Hugo Gold described in detail the generous support of the Brno Jews of the refugees in the city; see Gold, Gedenkbuch der Untergegangenen Judengemeinden Mährens, 33–4. 20 Brunner, Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 170. Three further Jewish institutes were located at the other side of the city from Koliště Street, the Jewish grammar school moved to the house 43, Hybešova Street (former Silniční Street), the Maccabee sports club was opened at, 105, Rybáršká street, and the old people´s home Štefánikova 54, Královo Pole. See further the map in Klenovsky, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno. 21 Business ad placed by David Unger, Kleine Anzeigen, Oesterreichische Morgenzeitung und Handelsblatt, October 25, 1918, 6. For further discussion, see Klenovský, Brno židovské, 22. 22 Henry-Russel Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, Der Internationale Stil 1932 (Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn Verlag 1985), 109–11. 23 The plans from March 1934 were signed by the architect’s brother, Arthur Eisler, whose construction company was responsible for the project. Klenovský, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno, 56. 24 Max Eisler, “Der Wettbewerb um eine Wiener Synagoge,” Österreichichs Bau- und Werkkunst, vol. 2, 1925/26, 1–7, here 4: “Dagegen hat sich im letzten Menschenalter in Deutschland ein romantischer Typ, bei uns ein fragwürdiger Orientalismus breitgemacht, der sich ganz unverhohlen aufs ‘Maurische’ beruft—der eine wuchtig, fast bedrückend, der andere farbhell und heiter, beide aber prachtliebend bis zum Ostentativen und schon deshalb dem Wesen der gesammelten Andacht wiedersprechend, das hier seine Stätte hat.” 25 The detailed description of construction and layout of this synagogue is presented in Klenovský, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno, 56–7. 26 It should be noted that in this synagogue for this liberal orthodox community there was no Mechitza (partition separating the women’s section from the men’s). I thank Klenovský for this information (Jaroslav Klenovský’s email to author on August 27, 2020). 27 See Klenovský, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno, 56–7. 28 Artur Szalatnai-Slatinsky specialized in spa buildings and country houses for doctors in the 1930s. He survived the Holocaust in Bratislava. Many thanks to Rudolf Klein for this reference. 29 A classical reference to a similar industrial large window is that the façade is the one at the front of Peter Behrens Turbine Factory in Berlin (1909) for the Jewish industrialist Emil Rathenau. 30 It is possible that Eisler was aware of Loos’s design ideology of fashioning undecorated façades to guard the “anonymity” of city residents and in order to secure his mostly acculturated Jewish clients’ integration into the city (for further discussion on Loos and his Jewish clients, see Elana Shapira, “Tailored Authorship: Adolf Loos and the Ethos of Men’s Fashion,” in Leben mit Loos, ed. Rainald Franz and Inge Podbrecky (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), 53–72. Yet Eisler took the idea of the “mask” façade one step further and literally camouflaged the function of the house by referring to the formal design of industrial buildings. 31 In his study of Eisler’s Brno work, the Czech art historian Jiří Kroupa assumes that the window was originally framed in blue and red, which visually set it apart from

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33

34 35 36 37

38 39 40

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the white façade. If this assumption were confirmed, the façade concept would come closer to the De Stijl movement in style, see Jiři Kroupa, “Otto Eisler - od racionálního purismu k Internacionálnímu stylu / Otto Eisler - from rational purism to the International style”, in Otto Eisler 1893–1968, ed. Petr Pelčák, Ivan Wahla, and Jindřich Škrabal (Brno: Obecní dům Brno, 1998), 8–24, here 17. Regarding the origins and cultural identifications of the Neologist community, see Mari Rethelyi, “Hungarian Nationalism and the Origins of Neolog Judaism,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 18, no. 2 (2014): 67–82. Max Eisler, “Die Synagoge in Sillein,” Menorah 9, no. 11–12: 1931, 526–7. Otto Eisler was aware of the Viennese art historian Max Eisler’s vast publications and perhaps even met him, since Max Eisler published an essay on Otto Eisler’s house for two bachelors, Max Eisler, “Ein Wohnhaus für Zwei Junggesellen von Otto Eisler, Brünn,” Moderne Bauformen: Monatshefte für Architektur und Raumkunst (1932): 261–3. Max Eisler praises the simplicity and clarity of the construction of the house and notes that the house was built for the architect and his brother. For a discussion about the critical role of Max Eisler in shaping “Viennese living culture” in the interwar period, see Chapter 8 in this anthology. N.N., “Sakralbauten von Leopold Ehrmann,” Forum IV (1934): 296. Photo of Landauer’s modern synagogue is reproduced Deutsche Bauzeitung, 1931, vol. 65, 124. Sabine Klotz, Fritz Landauer (1883–1968): Leben und Werk eines jüdischen Architekten (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2001), 137. Many thanks to architect and expert on the preservation of Jewish heritage in the Czech Republic Jaroslav Klenovský for pointing these examples. All documents concerning the reform synagogue in Český Těšín were destroyed by the Nazi authorities in 1939. The architect is identified as Rosthal, yet there are no further details about him (Jaroslav Klenovsky’s emails to Elana Shapira on August 29 and on August 30, 2020). Hitchcock and Johnson, Der Internationale Stil 1932, 27. Petr Pelčák, Memories of Otto Eisler, in Otto Eisler 1893–1968, 71. As the following account shows, Johnson could not recognize Eisler’s critical and threatened condition during the Holocaust: “They stopped overnight in Brno, where Philip decided to pay an impromptu visit to Otto Eisler, who lived there. Eisler was one of the architects Philip had invited to participate in his ‘Modern Architecture’ exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1932. Calling on him now seemed a gesture of courtesy mixed with pleasant nostalgia. What Philip failed to consider, as he later remembered it, was that Eisler was a Jew and homosexual, and this was 1939. Eisler answered his phone call in a perceptibly faltering voice. ‘May I see you?’ asked Philip. ‘What do you want to see me for?’ replied Eisler. ‘Well, you remember, we put you in the book [The International Style], and I wondered how you are and how things are going.’ ‘They are not going well. But I’ll see you.’ Greeting Philip at his home, Eisler could keep his head up only at distorted, evidently painful angle. ‘Obviously, you don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been in the hands of the Gestapo, and they let me out just the other day. I don’t know how long I can talk to you.’ It was the kind of occurrence for which Philip in the ebullition of his mission was quite unprepared. It shook him. He wrote for help to Oud, who was powerless to do anything.” Franz Schulze, Johnson Philip: Life and Work (Chicago, 1996), 136–7.

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41 Arthur Eisler was transported from Brno to Terezín/Ghetto Thereisenstadt on March 2, 1942, and from Terezín to Auschwitz on October 28, 1944, where he was murdered. https://www.holocaust.cz/en/database-of-victims/victim/81973-artureisler/ (accessed July 27, 2020). 42 Klenovský, Brno židovské / Jewish Brno, 58. 43 N. N., Synagoga Agudas Achim, https://pamatkovykatalog.cz/synagoga-agudasachim-16012937 (accessed July 7, 2020). 44 The roof was renewed, and the walls were dehumidified. New benches were installed, and new chandeliers were hung up in the interior. In the women’s gallery the wooden floor was renewed. Kateřina Foltánková and Hana Floriánová, “Oprava jedinečné funkcionalistické synagogy? Odborníci ji vymalovali namodro” [Restorating of a unique functionalist synagogue? Experts painted it Blue], Brněnský denník, March 2, 2015, https://brnensky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/oprava-zidovskesynagogy-v-ulici-skorepka-odbornici-ji-vymalovali-namodro-201503.html (accessed July 7, 2020); Jan Tomandl, “Synagoga v Brně je v polovině obnovy, dnes tam vítali novou oponu” [The synagogue in Brno is in the middle of a restoration, today they welcomed a new curtain there], Archiweb, March 15, 2015, https://www. archiweb.cz/n/home/synagoga-v-brne-je-v-polovine-obnovy-dnes-tam-vitalinovou-oponu (accessed July 7, 2020). 45 Czech Republic: Renovated Brno Synagogue Reopens and Gets New Torah, https:// jewish-heritage-europe.eu/2016/01/21/czech-republic-renovated-brno-synagoguereopens-gets-a-new-torah/ (accessed July 7, 2020). The renovation was in part funded with the grant from European Economic Area and Norway. 46 Many thanks to Jaroslav Klenovský for this reference.

6

Identity and Gender as Obstacles? A Comparison of Two Biographies of Jewish Architects from Krakow Kamila Twardowska

In the period between the two world wars, Krakow was one of the most vibrant architectural centers in Poland. Among the other large cities of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939), Krakow distinguished itself with conservative, Polish-nationalist intellectual culture formed in the Austro-Hungarian times. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Jewish architects and master builders accounted for approximately one-third of all representatives of these professions working in Krakow. Their percentage was higher than the general percentage of the entire Jewish population in the city.1 The aim of this chapter is to look closely at the biographies and creative outputs of two Jewish architects, Fryderyk Tadanier (1892–1960)2 and Diana Reiter (1902–1943),3 and to offer through their example an insight into the social, economic, and artistic framework for the activity of Jewish architects in the city, which was regarded by the majority of its inhabitants as the spiritual capital of Poland. The choice of these two designers was influenced by the fact that their biographical stories are both typical of and disparate from the local architectural milieu and on many levels even antithetical. Both Tadanier and Reiter were not from Krakow but from the Eastern provinces of Poland, presently constituting the western part of Ukraine. They both graduated Polytechnic School in Lviv. Yet they share little else biographically: gender, social class, the degree of professional success, and finally, and also relevant to our discussion here, their approach to Jewish identity set them apart. Biographical research, including analysis of two distinctly different micro-histories, allows us the possibility of outlining a general overview, which further illustrates strategies of constructing and denying the Jewish identity as reflected in their careers in interwar Krakow.

Socioeconomic Background Krakow, the former capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was, until the seventeenth century, the seat of the Polish kings. For this reason, it continues to feature prominently on the cultural map of Poland. In 1795, following the partitions of the

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Commonwealth, the city was incorporated into the territory of Austria. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Krakow possessed, for Austro-Hungarian authorities, a predominantly military value as one of the strategic fortresses of the empire. The status of autonomy enjoyed by Crown Land Galicia, which, at that time, allowed independent and efficient self-government of Krakow to facilitate slow, but consistent and successive modernization of the city. Simultaneously, the autonomy and the peripheral position of Krakow made it possible for Polish culture to flourish there.4 Jews had been present in Krakow already since the eleventh century. In the fourteenth century, they were expelled from the city and settled down in the neighboring town of Kazimierz. It was not until 1867 that the Jewish residents were allowed to settle in other parts of the city, outside of Kazimierz. This event marked the beginnings of the move of wealthy Jewish families toward the central districts of Krakow, which changed their position in the city’s structure. In the last decades of the nineteenth century—a time of crucial importance for the further development of the city—the significance of Jewish elite and bourgeoisie for its political, cultural, and economic life was rapidly increasing.5 In the Second Polish Republic, enthusiastic integration processes of Krakow’s Jews through acculturation, by adopting distinctly Polish cultural identification, or securing job opportunities through conversion, which was still visible at the beginning of the century, were losing its momentum. Poles, especially after Chief of State Józef Piłsudski’s death in 1935, when antisemitic tendencies were on the rise, were rather reluctant about integrating the Jewish minority. In 1937, a number of the so-called Aryan laws prohibiting Jews from membership in Polish professional organizations were passed.6 At that time, despite antisemitic sentiment, many Jews were still present in academic, political, and economic structures. Among the few architects of Jewish origin, who had access to significant, prestigious public orders in Krakow, were Fryderyk Tadanier, Edward Kreisler (1903–1946), and Maksymilian Burstin (1886–1932). In the 1930s, following and in parallel to the rise of national and antisemitic sentiments among the Polish Christian majority, Jewish national and religious identifications were strengthened. The popularity of Bund, the Jewish social democratic party, and Zionism was growing. Jewish self-help associations began to play an even greater role. As an outcome of these developments, the 1930s in Krakow saw an emergence of a buoyant milieu of architects well educated and self-aware of their Jewish identification, who obtained commissions from well-to-do Jewish clients. They would mostly build residential architecture characterized by a certain degree of pragmatic restraint and the rejection of historicism, yet it is not possible to speak of an emergence of a “Jewish style” in the architecture of Krakow.7

Fryderyk Tadanier: From a Shtetl to the Socialist Ideal City Fryderyk Tadanier (Figure 6.1) was born in 1892 in Kamionka Buska (KamiankaBuzka), a provincial shtetl located some tens of kilometers from Lviv, to Abraham Tadanier, a laborer at local sawmill, and his wife Pepi. They were a poor, religious Hasidic family. The name of Tadanier derives from a nearby village of Tadanie, and

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Figure 6.1  Fryderyk Tadanier (the man in the bright coat) at the construction site, 1932. Source: Krakow Museum, MHK-1793/III/88

as such it is a typical Jewish habitational name (such as Krakauer). Fryderyk’s brother was named Wilhelm and his sister, Cecylia. The choice of German names (with Latin derivation) for the boys might be seen as a wish to secure a better future for them (possibly meaning they would be identified with Germanness, not Polishness). They further encouraged their children to study in the years to follow. Having left Kamionka to start education at high school in Lviv, at that time a vibrant multicultural metropolis, Tadanier seems to have undergone a rapid process of acculturation and constructed his own Polish identity. The last documented trace of his active interest

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in Jewish culture, as a student age twenty-one, is his description of the history and architectural tissue of sixteenth-century Lviv’s Golden Rose Synagogue, written in 1913.8 This text may have been initiated by his professor at Polytechnic School, an architect and conservator of monuments, Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz (1883–1948). The language reporting on the history of the synagogue, the conflicts involved regarding ownership over the place between Jews and Catholics, and furthermore Tadanier’s appreciation of its beauty as part of the cultural heritage suggest that he was aware of the contribution of Jewish culture to Polish identity. At that moment young Tadanier regarded one of the oldest synagogues in the city mostly as a piece of art and as part of common heritage (“our,” as he wrote)—the heritage of the nations that live in the area deprived of its statehood. During the First World War, similar to the majority of architects at that time, Tadanier became involved in rebuilding the areas of Galicia destroyed by warfare during the Great War. In the 1920s, architects designed edifices featuring elements inspired by the provincial Baroque architecture of Poland, for example the Municipal Office in Janów in Lviv District, a small town inhabited predominantly by the Ukrainian population. The way Tadanier shaped his Polish national identity through architecture, also in relation to the conflict with Ukraine, could be interpreted in this case as a colonialist expression against the Ukrainians. As mentioned above, Tadanier devoted almost ten years after the end of the war mostly to reconstruction and working in studios run by other architects. In 1927 he left Krakow’s Jewish religious community, and several months later he launched his own architectural design studio. This suggests that the architect may have recognized that any official identification of him as a Jew would become an obstacle in his career. At the same time he established a long-term cooperation with the Ministry of Post and Telegraphs, which resulted in remodeling the Main Post Office building in Krakow and erecting post offices in Rabka, Będzin, and Krynica. The beginning of the 1930s marked the establishment of cooperation with another public investors: Krakow Poviat Office and the Community Service Bank of the Province of Krakow. At that time Tadanier designed his most important buildings, which are worthy of further exploration. The most controversial of Tadanier’s architectural works was the Apartment Building of the Pension Fund of the Community Service Bank (1932–1936), designed in cooperation with the gentile Stefan Strojek (1893–1960) (Figure 6.2). This sevenstory, luxurious house is known as Krakow’s first skyscraper in the historical city center. Because of the height and modern, simple form with characteristic rounded corners and horizontal stripes of windows, it caused a public scandal. The modernist architectural language was commonly regarded as inappropriate for the old town. Another argument against the building of the skyscraper was that in this place, according to the legend, the house of medieval king’s mistress was once located.9 This may serve as a testimony to the conservative approach of the majority of the population in Krakow, who were focused on preserving monuments and historical narratives. At the time of construction, the building was illegally heightened by two stories. The high, modern form provided more apartments for the richest Kracovians and was used by its financial investor to manifest progressiveness, success, resilience, and operability, which was more important than compliance with the law.

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Figure 6.2  Fryderyk Tadanier and Stefan Strojek, the Apartment Building of the Pension Fund of the Community Service Bank, Szczepański Square 5, Krakow, Photo: © J. Matla, 2015

Tadanier fitted his architectural language mostly according to the building assignment. The edifice of the Poviat Office (1935–1936), a further cooperation with Strojek, is a building with sharp, “Expressionist” corner, and protuberant Ionic pilasters, corresponding with other public edifices built around of Krakow’s “Ring” called Aleje Trzech Wieszczów (the second ring road, which was built on the site of the Austrian circumferential railway). The Holiday House for underprivileged children in Radziszów, a village near Krakow (1935–1937) (Figure 6.3), also commissioned by the Poviat Office, was designed by the architect like a modern castle located on a slope, with mandatory elements of the modern sanatorium: terraces and flat roof, but

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Figure 6.3  Fryderyk Tadanier, the Holiday House for underprivileged children, Podlesie Street 157, Radziszów, photographer unknown, 1938. Source: National Digital Archives (Warsaw), 3/1/0/10/2911b/1

balanced by “medieval,” picturesque arches. In case of the community center (1935– 1938), designed together with Michał Zakrzewski,10 located at the Praca (“Work”) housing estate, inhabited by the working-class population (among them war veterans were favored), commissioned by the local government and the Association of Workers’ Estates, Tadanier used modern solutions. The building consists of the architects’ answer to the ideas of a socially involved avant-garde and contains all five elements of modern architecture as formulated by Le Corbusier. The change of architectural language seen in Tadanier’s works associated with absorption of the latest trends in Central Europe was not a unique development around 1930; he represented an approach typical for Polish architects of his generation. The first decade of Polish independence (1918–1928) was the time of return to traditional, provincial architecture. The vernacular turn, represented in Tadanier’s ouvre by the Post Office in Rabka and the Municipal Office in Janów, was identifiable, after the First World War, throughout the whole of Europe. The extent of the devastation caused by the First World War brought a renewal of the so-called National Romanticism and resulted in an intensified quest for modern forms based on regional models. This officially promoted architecture was supposed to be an expression of the “Polish spirit,” an instrument for building a common visual identity in the process of integrating newly established country.11 Around 1930, there was a shift in official attitude to modern architecture. Modernism became a proper expression of modernization of the state

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and the associated mission of constructing modern society.12 In the case of Tadanier, who received traditional academic education and in the thirties demonstrated his mature credo, modernism remained not a strategy, but a chosen style—kind of another “costume”—not rooted in the past, but in the vision of the future. Tadanier’s buildings discussed above show that he was fluent in fusing traditional and modern elements, depending on investor’s needs and the idea standing behind the design. That was a common mindset among this generation of Polish architects, who gradually and slowly changed their means of expression in their designs. Returning to Tadanier’s biography, it is worth noting that just before the outbreak of the Second World War, even the openly antisemitic press did not consider him a Jewish architect. In 1938, he married a Catholic Polish woman and converted to Christianity. His Jewish origin became, again, a matter of importance after the outbreak of the war. At this time Tadanier was one of almost seventy thousand Jews living in Krakow. Thanks to the foreign sound of his surname, he initially claimed to be French, but later, faced with forced expulsion from Krakow, stayed in hiding aided by his former nonJewish clients. His greatest protector was Stanisław Syska, the co-owner of the famous porcelain factory in Ćmielów. The Red Army entered Krakow on January 17, 1945. Almost immediately Fryderyk Tadanier returned to the city. He was one of the 10 percent of the Jewish population of Krakow to have survived the war, yet he lost his entire family on the Jewish side in the Holocaust. He was one of the few architects of Jewish origin who survived. The majority of them perished in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka.13 After the war the architectural scene of Krakow changed radically. Most of the numerous Jewish investors and architects died or were forced to emigrate during and after the Nazi occupation of Poland. Also many gentile architects died (as Polish soldiers or as civilians), some of them emigrated, preferred not to return from the exile, or were harassed by the new communist rule. The vacant jobs were quickly filled. New generations of architects—following the propaganda to be the builders of the new, better, socialist Poland—took over the new assignments, and the first faculty of architecture was established in the city. Its graduates mainly worked in the constructing housing estates of Nowa Huta—an ideal, socialist city of workers founded some ten kilometers from the center of Krakow. In architectural journals in the first postwar years the construction of Nowa Huta was seen as the main stimulus of renewal after the war.14 At the beginning of a new, communist era and in the wake of the nationalization of private companies in 1948, Tadanier gave up on his private architectural office and, given his extensive experience, succeeded to obtain high technical and administrative positions. He was, among others, a designer of prefabricated housing needed in the construction of Nowa Huta and, subsequently, he served as the deputy to the chief architect of the city, Tadeusz Ptaszycki (1908–1980). The secret service documents on Tadanier from the Stalinist times read: “Not engaged politically or socially. We do not know his views. Morally without reservations”; another note on the records, in turn, reads: “Loyally predisposed towards the current reality.”15 However, he never joined the Communist party. Tadanier passed away in 1960. In his only autobiographical note, dating from 1958, he wrote: “I fully dedicated myself to my professional work.” The

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architect managed to effectively erase traces of his Jewish identification, and in all the documents generated after 1945 the non-Jewish, invented names of Adolf and Paulina feature as his parents’ names. Unfortunately, there are no existing diaries or private letters, which could help better understand Fryderyk Tadanier. It seems, however, that the architect was simply a pragmatic person, and that religious and worldview questions did not occupy an important place in his life. That being said, it cannot be ruled out that the erasure of his Jewish roots was caused by the antisemitic behaviors and stereotypes perpetuated by the society. Such reinforcement of these ideas is capable of triggering a denial mechanism in any ambitious and educated person; “cutting off the roots,” which his parents may have made possible for him by investing in his education, facilitated his social advancement and made his successful career easier to achieve.

Diana Reiter: The Feminist Pioneer Due to the circumstantial nature of the sources, we know even less about Diana Reiter. Similarly, as with many other Jewish biographies, Diana Reiter’s is a kind of “retrieved biography,” woven of traces (Figure 6.4). Still, in comparison to four other women architects professionally active in Krakow in the interwar period, the amount of biographical information on her is relatively large. Reiter’s architectural output is

Figure 6.4 Diana Reiter photo on the  application for the identification card. Collection of the National Archives in Krakow

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rather modest; she designed a significant number of buildings in collaboration with other architects, and the majority of her work was remodeling. She also completed some restoration works on historic buildings. There are only a few known individual designs signed by her. The key perhaps to understanding Reiter’s story is the pioneering character of her professional career—she was the very first female architect in Krakow, the one who broke the mold. Diana Reiter was ten years Tadanier’s junior. Born in 1902 in Drohobych, a town known for its oil deposits, she was the daughter to a wealthy family of Abraham and Zofia (née) Heinberg. Her father was a lawyer and the town’s mayor for many years, and her mother was a co-owner of one of the local refineries. Diana had three older sisters. Their bourgeois, open-minded upbringing, and the financial stability of their parents’ jobs gave the Reiter sisters freedom to decide their futures without strict adherence to typical social schemes. One of them, Bronisława, following in her father’s footsteps, graduated in Law at the Jagiellonian University. Upon opening her own law firm in Lviv, the press hailed her to be “the first woman attorney-at-law in Poland.”16 Also Diana’s choice of a university course in architecture attested to her progressive attitude, challenging social conventions regarding gender roles. The first woman to complete a higher education course in architecture in Poland was Jadwiga Dobrzyńska, a graduate of the Warsaw University of Technology in 1922. In Lviv, the technical university, second only to the Warsaw school in rank and significance, during the period of 1918–1929, women made up 4 percent of all students. In the faculty of architecture, 15 women obtained engineering diplomas, compared to more than 205 men (the percentage of female graduates was quite high, totaling 7 percent).17 It is worth noting that Krakow’s Association of Architects allowed women to be members only in 1929.18 The reason for this could be simply that there were no female architects in the city before this date. Having graduated from the Lviv Polytechnic School in 1927, Diana Reiter immediately moved to Krakow and started to work, becoming the first woman architect operating there. In the years to follow, she was joined by three more women architects: two were Jewish, Irena Bertig (1905–1943) and Rela Schmeidler (1905–1988); the first gentile woman architect Wanda Buraczewska (1897–1970) began to work in Krakow in 1933. Diana Reiter’s attitude was all the more progressive in that, unlike the majority of Polish female architects of the era who often worked with a male architect, usually their husbands, she worked as an independent professional. At twenty-six years old, Reiter found employment at the Construction Office in the Public Works Department of the Provincial Office, which could be regarded as a testament to her great talent and resourcefulness.19 However, she lost her job during the first wave of dismissals due to the economic recession following the Great Crisis in 1931. It is possible to assume that she was fired also because she was a woman. The country’s conservative perspective saw men as the sole source of family livelihood. Working as part of the office team she did not sign most designs individually. Most likely majority of the works created at the Construction Office at that time she worked there were produced together with her colleagues Zdzisław Kowalski and Adam Moscheni (1894–1975). The design for the monumental edifice of the Jagiellonian Library evincing Expressionist and Egyptian inspirations (1929) stands out among them. It appears that she also took part in designing the unrealized building of the Jagiellonian University Department

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of Comparative Anatomy and Zoology (1929). Another unrealized project of hers was the remodeling the gynecologic clinic into the Jagiellonian University Institute of Embryology, Biology, and Histology (1930).20 It is assumed that she may have designed the last one independently.21 The designed building had a simple, modern form, with clearly highlighted horizontal stripes of windows and a rounded avant-corps on the main axis. It was topped by the mast. At the same time, she designed a further unrealized project for new wing of Jagiellonian University School of Nurses and Hygienists. The external form was quite conservative, corresponding to the old part of the building.22 In 1930, she was further involved in restoration projects in the royal castle in Niepołomice.23 Following the loss of her job, Reiter was probably employed in private studios. Despite her full professional qualifications as architect and master builder she never established her own firm—the likely reason for this is that it is most apparent that in a city of fierce, professional competition, a Jewish architect could do well only if he was a man.24 For an independent woman architect of Jewish origin, having her own studio would have been much more difficult. Nevertheless, Reiter realized several individual commissions. In 1932 she designed a small house at Czeladnicza Street 3, and, two years later, a modest, one-story villa at W. Beliny-Prażmowskiego Street 28.25 Both are currently significantly altered. At the same time Reiter made new designs for Wacław Borkowski’s guesthouse in Zakopane, a resort in the Tatra Mountains. Unfortunately, the first design, made by Franciszek Kotoński (1887–1939), is not known, so we cannot compare the two designs. It is also possible that Reiter was only signing Kotoński’s work to help him deal with official requirements.26 The building, characterized by the traditional form, was decorated with rustication and topped with a high, sloping roof. The small group of Reiter’s designs is not coherent, there are among them modern and monumental buildings, as well as traditional and very low-budget ones. It is possible that Reiter’s economic situation made it difficult for her to pick her commissions. The artistic quality of designs such as Jagiellonian Library and Department of Comparative Anatomy shows that, while working in the Public Works Department, she was a member of a small, talented team of architects. We can see her potential to work independently in just one building: the Elsner family’s residential building of 1939. Even though one floor was added to the building, the original shape can still be seen. It could be described as typical for Krakow, traditional on the functional level, a tenement house with a modern external form containing luxurious apartments for rent27 (Figure 6.5). Many streamlined elements could be found there: rounded avant-corps corners, horizontal divisions, the round “bull’s eye”-shaped base of the mast. The modernist character of Elsner Residential Building testifies to Reiter’s education. Lviv during this period was one of Poland’s leading centers of modernity, together with Gdynia and Katowice. Yet it is of relevance that Reiter herself was a modern and progressive person. In comparison with Tadanier, Reiter’s intellectual formation, although she was as noted above only ten years younger, belonged to a new era in architectural design. Diana Reiter was most likely confronted with antisemitism in her professional life already during her studies in Lviv. In the interwar period, the student community in Lviv was under the overwhelming influence of the nationalist camp. The climax materialized in a series of violent riots and protests in 1929, which inaugurated a long series of fascist events at the university and the Polytechnic School in the

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Figure 6.5  Diana Reiter, Elsner Residential-Building, Pawlikowskiego Street 16, Krakow; Photo: © Kamila Twardowska, 2020

next decade.28 The fact that she left Lviv in 1929, deciding to live in a much calmer and tolerant Krakow, may not have been accidental. Since 1930 Diana Reiter was a member of the Polish Association of Architects. In 1938 she was expelled from the association as a result of attempts at “eliminating Jewish influences from the life of the architects’ community” initiated by young graduates of the Warsaw University of Technology.29 It is worth emphasizing that the antisemitism within the professional circle of architects did not in any way affect Fryderyk Tadanier. In contrast to Tadanier, Diana Reiter actively engaged in the life of the Jewish part of Krakow’s architectural community. In 1930 she was a cofounder of Związek Inżynierów Żydów w Krakowie (Krakow’s Association of Jewish Engineers), where she served

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as a member of the board and the secretary.30 The organization was established following an increase in antisemitic sentiment and growing unemployment among Jewish engineers, who were not employed by state-owned institutions. It engaged in self-help activities, providing assistance in finding employment, acting as a publishing outlet, and organizing exhibitions. It also operated a library and supported vocational education among the Jewish population. Reiter also sat on the board of Wszechstronny Blok Żydów Polskich (Comprehensive Block of Polish Jews), an organization established to join forces to help Polish Jews receive official jobs in the Polish state based on equality.31 After the outbreak of the Second World War, she found employment with gentile Kazimierz Kulczyński (?–1953). In 1940, he employed five architects, two of whom were of Jewish origin, in his studio located next door to the Gestapo headquarters. The following year, Reiter and her mother were confined in the Krakow ghetto located in the southern part of the city. On March 13, 1943, the final liquidation of the ghetto populated by thirty thousand Jews was carried out, two thousand of its inhabitants were murdered on-site; the majority were sent to death camps, whereas the remaining survivors were sent to the labor camp in Płaszów, located in the southern part of the city. Reiter was among the last group. In the concentration camp KL Plaszow, she was incorporated into the team who were building the barracks. It is not known whether she died in winter or in spring; it is certain, however, that following an accusation of a mistake which resulted in the collapse of a barrack wall, she was first flogged and then shot.32 The world learned about Diana Reiter thanks to one short scene showing her execution in the movie Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg. This also framed the moment of her death to function independently, as if in separation from the forty-one years that preceded it. Despite that, the architect became an icon of Krakow’s emancipation. Diana Reiter was most certainly a model modern woman. She chose a “men’s” profession, which provided a lever for her emancipation; she pursued this line of work in a conservative, traditionalist city. Investigating her biography, one may be certain that she strongly identified herself as a progressive Jewish woman. It cannot be a coincidence that three out of four women architects operating in Krakow before the Second World War were Jewish33—by choosing a male profession she aimed to expand her possibilities of public expression both as a Jew and as a woman.

Conclusion Tadanier’s and Reiter’s individual stories obviously do not exhaust all the PolishJewish social patterns and cultural identities present in the architectural milieu in the interwar period, and, to a large extent, like every biography, consist of a series of coincidences. Nonetheless, a few schemes emerge from their stories. First, in the social and political conditions of the time, renunciation of one’s Jewish identity and “assimilation” made one’s career easier, especially if the architect wanted to design for public investors. Second, being a Jew and a woman concomitantly resulted with twofold complications: a Jewish architect, who openly identified with his/her religion,

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had a limited circle of clients and a female architect (especially a single one) often was not trusted by male investors. It needs to be stressed that none of the women architects working in Krakow before 1939 had fruitful careers and Diana Reiter was the most successful one. The status of women in architecture and design changed only after the Second World War, with Communism securing gender equality. The changes that have taken place in the last few decades are significant, but the architectural profession is still, almost one hundred years after Reiter’s graduation, commonly considered a male profession, and we should continue to ask the question posed by Despina Stratigakos: Where are the women architects?34 Unfortunately, Reiter’s creative output is too small to spur further research on the subject of architecture and gender in Krakow in the interwar period—Reiter had little chance to show her creative potential. In accordance with that, proper evaluation of her artistic talent is difficult. Yet regarding the circumstances she was operating in, the fact that she was able to make a living from architectural work could be regarded as proof of her highly skilled and professional abilities. Jews of Krakow, including of course Jewish architects, endowed their city with huge value through their work. Their contribution to the development of the “Spiritual Capital of the Poles” is invaluable. It is clear when we look at Krakow’s city plan and see one of the most important paradoxes of Krakow: the city commonly considered a treasure trove of national memorabilia and the mainstay of tradition was, in more than 90 percent of its urban fabric, built in the twentieth century. The success of modernization and development around 1900 and later, after 1910, when the municipal government decided to extend the city borders, was closely bonded with the involvement of Jewish inhabitants. Today’s Krakow owes its contemporary metropolitan character, to a large extent, to its past Jewish minority. The figure of the Jew in the history of Krakow has nevertheless remained the figure of “the Other”—a hermetic one, often necessary, but ultimately never accepted. Tadanier’s and Reiter’s biographies are, simply, the biographies of Polish Jews—of people who, oscillating between two poles of their identity: Polishness and Jewishness had to find their own place. Each experience provided foundations for the individual to find their own way of identifying with being more Polish or more Jewish. It is beyond any doubt that the most difficult path for the residents of Krakow with Jewish roots was to harmonize these identities and position themselves as equals. It could be said that Tadanier’s choice was more pragmatic, Reiter’s more romantic, but they both, even though they followed a different path, along with designing and erecting buildings, were building their own homeland. A simple and perhaps the most apt answer to the question where the path of choice led has been provided in the poem entitled “We, the Polish Jews,” written by Julian Tuwim—one of the most prominent figures of Polish literature of the twentieth century: Immediately I hear the question, “Where does that WE come from?” The question is justified to a certain extent. Jews, whom I have always assured that I am a Pole, ask it of me; and now Poles, for the majority of whom I am and will remain a Jew, will ask it of me. Here is my answer for all of them. I am a Pole because I like it that way.35

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Notes 1

Studies dedicated to the issue of the role of Jewish architects in the development of modern architecture and urban planning are common in global art history; see Fredric Bedoire, The Jewish Contribution to Modern Architecture (Jersey City: KTAV Publishing House, 2003). In the art-historical literature on Krakow this theme occurred for the first time in 1997 in the publication by Jacek Purchla: “Urbanistyka, architektura i budownictwo” [“Urban planning, architecture and construction,”] in Dzieje Krakowa. Kraków w latach 1919–1939 [History of Krakow. Krakow in 1919–1939], vol. 4, ed. Janina Bieniarzówna and Jan Marian Małecki (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1997), 189. Pioneer studies on Jewish architectural milieu in Krakow in the interwar period were conducted by Barbara Zbroja (see Barbara Zbroja, Miasto umarłych: architektura publiczna Żydowskiej Gminy Wyznaniowej w Krakowie w latach 1868–1939 [City of the dead: public architecture of the Jewish Religious Community in Krakow in the years 1868–1939] (Kraków: Wydawnictwo WAM, 2005); Oni również budowali to miasto. Środowisko architektów i budowniczych pochodzenia żydowskiego w międzywojennym Krakowie [They also built this city. Architects and Builders of Jewish origin in Interwar Krakow] (PhD diss., Pedagogical University in Krakow, 2013). 2 Biographical studies on Fryderyk Tadanier were conducted by the author of this article; see Kamila Twardowska, Fryderyk Tadanier (Kraków: Instytut Architektury, 2016). 3 The author of the first in-depth research on the work and life of Diana Reiter is Barbara Zbroja. Zbroja’s detailed research was conducted for a few years; the author of this article relies mainly on material garnered by Zbroja research presented in the publication: “Diana Reiterówna—ślady” (Diana Reiterowna—Traces), in Architektki, ed. Ewa Mańkowska-Grin (Kraków: EMG, 2016), 9–36. 4 On the issue of the cultural identity of Krakow at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries see Larry Wolff, “Dynastic Conservatism and Poetic Violence in Fin-de-Siècle Cracow. The Habsburg Matrix of Polish Modernism,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 735–64; Nathaniel Wood, “The ‘Polish Mecca’, the ‘Little Vienna on the Vistula’ or ‘Big-City Cracow’? Imagining Cracow before the Great War,” Urban History 40, no. 2 (2013): 226–46. On the modernization of Krakow see Kazimierz Sowa, “The Development of Cracow in the 19th Century against the Background of the Historic Role of the City,” The Polish Sociological Bulletin, no. 73/74 (1986): 113–24; Jacek Purchla, Jak powstał nowoczesny Kraków [How the modern Krakow was created], 2nd edition (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1990); Hanna Kozińska-Witt, Krakau in Warschaus langem Schatten. Konkurrenzkämpfe in der polnischen Städtelandschaft 1900–1939 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008). 5 See Jews in Kraków, ed. Michał Galas, Antony Polonsky (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011); Łukasz Sroka, Żydzi w Krakowie. Studium o elicie miasta 1850–1918 (Jews in Krakow. Study of the elite of the city 1850–1918) (Kraków: Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny, 2008). 6 See Jerzy Tomaszewski, Żydzi w II Rzeczypospolitej (Jews in the Second Polish Republic) (Warszawa: Neriton, 2016). 7 Allegations encountered in older research, which state that Jews showed more inclination toward progressive, avant-garde forms and had a special interest in Bauhaus, seem to be an over-interpretation (see Purchla, Urbanistyka, architektura i budownictwo, 179). Among examples to show that Jewish architects designed

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not only modernist buildings, but also in historical style, we could look to the monumental Funeral Hall at the Jewish Cemetery, built in an Oriental style, according to the design by Adolf Siódmak in 1926–1932. 8 Fryderyk Tadanier, “O bożnicy Złotej Róży” (On the Golden Rose synagogue), Rocznik Architektoniczny Uczniow prof. Adolfa Szyszko-Bohusza w Szkole Politechnicznej Lwowskiej (Student Architecture Yearbook of Prof. Adolf SzyszkoBohusz at the Lviv Polytechnic School) 1 (1913–1914): 3–6. 9 Antoni Wasilewski, “Sylwetki Krakowian” (Silhouettes of Cracovians) in Kopiec wspomnień (Mound of memories), ed. Stanisław Broniewski (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1959): 416–17. 10 Michał Zakrzewski’s biographical dates are unknown. 11 Małgorzata Omilanowska, “O polskości architektury. Poszukiwania stylu narodowego w polskiej architekturze końca XIX i początku XX wieku” (On Polishness of architecture. The search for a national style in Polish architecture, the late 19th and early 20th century) in Małgorzata Omilanowska, Kreacja, konstrukcja, rekonstrukcja (Creation, Construction, Reconstruction) (Warszawa: IS PAN, 2016): 58–9. See also Barbara Miller-Lane, National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 12 On modernism as the language of new, modern identities in Central Europe see Andrzej Szczerski, Modernizacje. Sztuka i architektura w nowych państwach Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej 1918–1939 [Modernizations. Art and architecture in the new countries of Central and Eastern Europe 1918–1939] (Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki 2010). 13 Zbroja, Miasto umarłych, 144. 14 Władysław Bryzek, “Krakowskie środowisko architektoniczne” (Krakow’s architectural milieu), Architektura, no. 3 (1953): 75–6. 15 The quote after the employee documentation from the archive of Miastoprojekt (state design office in Krakow). 16 Zbroja, Diana Reiterówna, 12–13. 17 Data according to Album Inżynierów i Techników w Polsce. Politechnika Lwowska [Album of Engineers and Technicians in Poland. Lviv Polytechnic] (Towarzystwo Bratniej Pomocy Stud. Polit. Lwowskiej: Lwów, 1932): 20. 18 Fryderyk Tadanier, Architekci w Krakowie 1877–1958 (Architects in Krakow 1877– 1958) (Krakow: msc. from the collection of SARP [Association of Polish Architects], 1958): 18. 19 Zbroja, Diana Reiterówna, 14. 20 Ibid., 19. 21 Ibid., 9–20. 22 Ibid., 21. 23 Ibid., 22. 24 Among leading Jewish architects, who were very successful in Krakow due to their collaboration with industrialists and other Jewish private investors, should be mentioned: Alfred Düntuch (1903–1967?), Stefan Landsberger (1901–after 1950), Saul Wexner (1890–1947), or Henryk Jakubowicz (1893–1943). 25 Zbroja, Diana Reiterówna, 23. 26 Franciszek Kotoński, one of the most influential architects of Zakopane in the interwar period, born on in 1887 in Kęty and shot on December 27, 1939, in Sucha Dolina Wielka in Zakopane (see Zbigniew Moździeż, “Franciszek Kotoński— zakopiański architekt i budowniczy” (Franciszek Kotoński—the architect and masterbuilder in Zakopane), Rocznik Podhalański 8 (2002): 233–64.

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27 ANK [National Archives in Krakow], ABM, ul. Pawlikowskiego 16, f. 671a. 28 See, e.g., Antony Polonsky, “A Failed Pogrom: The Demonstrations in Lwów, June 1929,” in The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars, ed. Yizrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Reinharz, and Chone Shmeruk (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1989), 109–25. 29 Dariusz Konstantynów, “Żydzi i architektura (z perspektywy polskiego nacjonalizmu lat trzydziestych XX wieku)” (Jews and the architecture [from the perspective of Polish nationalism of the 1930s]), Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 4 (2009): 411–25. 30 Zbroja, Diana Reiterówna, 27–8. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 31–5. 33 Irena Bertig died in Auschwitz in 1943. Rela Schmeidler survived the war and died in 1988. After 1945 she probably abandoned the profession of architect, as well as her Jewish identity. Schmeidler changed her name to a typical Polish one: Maria Wolska. 34 Despina Stratigakos, Where Are the Women Architects? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 35 Tuwim wrote the essay in 1944. It was originally published in London-based monthly Nowa Polska (New Poland) in translation by Madeline G. Levine. Here, quotation from: Against Anti-Semitism. An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Polish Writings, ed. Adam Michnik, Agnieszka Marczyk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 63.

Part Two

Outsiders/Insiders— Cultural Authorship and Strategies of Inclusion

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7

Lajos Kozma, “Judapest,” and Central European Modernism Juliet Kinchin

Budapest had a successful and affluent Jewish community in the early twentieth century, which was more culturally integrated than in many other central European cities, prompting the gibe of “Judapest” from Karl Lueger, Vienna’s antisemitic mayor. Jewish entrepreneurs helped finance the monumental urban renewal projects that transformed Budapest into a central European metropolis, and this distinctive facet of Hungarian intellectual and cultural life connected many prominent figures in the fields of architecture, engineering, design, and the crafts, together with a strong industrial and domestic client base, and a related network of publishers, printers, photographers, gallerists, and critics. Lajos Kozma (1884–1948) was a central figure in this milieu, who moved easily between architecture, graphics, furniture, and interior design, and was actively involved in the further dissemination of his thinking through teaching and publication.1 As a Budapester and a Jew he identified with, and was defined by, the metropolitan culture he helped create, although the descriptors “Hungarian” and “Jewish” are nebulous. The former could be taken to embrace, or exclude, those of mixed parentage who perhaps spoke different languages at home, school, and work; who emigrated and changed their citizenship; who were born and trained in a part of Hungary that became a part of somewhere else in the reconfiguration of national boundaries. Likewise, “Jewishness” was, and continues to be, the subject of much popular, often politically charged, discussion. Some of Kozma’s contemporaries converted in and out of Judaism on grounds of self-preservation as well as belief. Others married out, or actively disavowed, their Jewish heritage. In recent years, however, there have been attempts to better understand historical shifts in the meaning and place of Jewish culture in Hungarian public life. Of particular relevance to Kozma— who wished to be seen at times as Jewish and unseen at others—is Mary Gluck’s scholarship about this insider-outsider dialectic.2 Research is also underway into the Jewish networks—of clients, craftsmen, photographers, publishers, and critics—in which Kozma was embedded.3 His long and prolific career in Hungary spanned two world wars, participation in the short-lived Bolshevik Republic of Councils in 1919, and the redrawing of national boundaries in 1920 following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the

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course of this tumultuous period his work morphed seamlessly, through continuous experimentation, from a style inflected by the international Arts and Crafts Movement, through a variant of “folk baroque” in the 1920s that bore his name, to a spate of modernist architecture and interiors in the 1930s. What constraints and opportunities shaped such stylistic transformations and the functioning of the Jewish collaborative networks in which he was embedded? How did he and his colleagues negotiate the profound political, cultural, and ideological shifts taking place within, and beyond, Hungary, and could new insights into these negotiations shed light on larger configurations of European modernism? During his lifetime Kozma achieved international visibility—his writings and design work were published as far afield as Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, Tokyo, Scandinavia, Argentina, and Spain—but nowadays his reputation is relatively localized in Hungary. By comparison, a number of Hungarian émigrés of Jewish heritage— among them László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer, Eva Zeisel, and Ernö Goldfinger— have assumed uncontested positions within an established canon of twentieth-century design. Taken as iconic exemplars of a free-flowing internationalism, these figures now anchor historical accounts both of the German Bauhaus and of postwar modernism in America and Britain. As such they have been seamlessly absorbed into histories of the more dominant cultures with which they became associated, often with little reference to their country of origin or the extended Jewish networks through which they, at least in part, continued to operate. Although the practice and intent of Kozma and these émigré architects and designers varied and developed over time in relation to the different situations and countries in which they found themselves, all were shaped by the Hungarian culture and intellectual ideas with which they engaged before their careers diverged. As a result, continuities between the tendencies they represent have been obscured or downplayed by the construction of histories of design from a predominantly western European or North American perspective. Arguably this bias in canon-formation has failed to represent the full diversity of Central European design movements, marginalizing as a deviation or detour the folk-modern and neoBaroque tendencies in which Kozma excelled.

The Fiatolok (Young Ones) and Béla Lajta As a student at the Királyi József Műegyetem (Budapest Technical University), Kozma gravitated toward a group of architect-designers known as the Fiatolok (Young Ones) who shared a belief in the ideal of a modern national style based on the village architecture and folk arts of Transylvania. This region to the east of Hungary was seen as the cultural heartland of the nation, and the church in the town of Körösfő assumed particular significance for the group. As the critic Elemér Csakó observed in 1908, its distinctive form was as “engraved upon their spirits,” as Mount Fujiyama was for Japanese artists.4 That year Kozma featured the church in an ornamental cover design for A Ház (The House), a magazine published for three years that served as the principal mouthpiece of the Fiatolok’s theories and designs (Figure 7.1). Kozma’s powerful graphic stylizations, like that of the architecture and interiors featured inside A Ház, presented a mythologized view of Hungarian identity, through an east-west

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Figure 7.1  Lajos Kozma, Cover of A HÁZ magazine, October 1908. Source: Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest. Photo: © by Ágnes Soltész-Haranghy

blend of influences that synthesized ethnographic observation with universalizing references to symbolist and classical art. In the same issue, tribute was paid to the architect Ödön Lechner (1845–1914), one of the first to campaign for establishing a modern yet home-grown national architecture in the 1880s and 1890s, drawing upon the ethnographic researches of the painter and drawing instructor József Huszka into the origins of Hungarian folk ornament. Huszka’s publications traced an evolutionary narrative back to ancient Persian, Indian, and Semitic cultures that served to emphasize the place of Jewish culture as integral to the extension of this ornamental language into the modern world.5 In this respect Huszka echoed the official policy of “magyarization” under the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy that encouraged the linguistic and social assimilation of Hungary’s multiethnic population. Despite Hungary’s relatively privileged position within the

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Habsburg Empire, however, fear of cultural domination by their powerful partner also fueled a groundswell of anti-Austrian sentiment. The widespread identification of Jewish designers with the repeated calls for a national style in design was reflected in the fact that the majority of them dropped Germanic-sounding names (Fuchs in Kozma’s case) in favor of more Hungarian alternatives.6 Béla Lajta (1873–1920), the architect most revered by the Fiatolok, changed his name from Leitesdorfer in 1907. His work was in the main commissioned by members of the Jewish bourgeoisie, including his family, and Jewish charity organizations. Many of the Fiatolok worked at some point in his office— Kozma (from 1910 to 1913), the editor of A Ház, Béla Málnai (1878–1941), József Vágó (1877–1947), and Géza Maróti (1875–1941). Within this circle, Lajta was felt to be deepening the researches of Huszka and Lechner, blending Jewish elements into a new hybrid style that was applicable to works for both Jewish and gentile clients, and to the design of a broad range of religious and secular building types. The Budapest villa he designed for gentile Dezső Malonyai (1866–1916) in 1905–1906, for example, was featured in the first issue of A Ház. Malonyai, like Lajta and Kozma, was an avid collector of folk arts and had initiated a nationwide ethnographic survey published as A Magyar Nép Művészete (The Art of the Hungarian People) between 1907 and 1922. In 1914 the Jewish critic Pál Nádai (1881–1945), an influential supporter of Lajta, wrote in praise of the architect’s synthesis of structural, lucid form, and ornamental decoration (much of it by Kozma) in the design of the Vocational Secondary School of Trade in Vas utca, Budapest: “HERE [with Béla Lajta] once and for all, the differences that have ranked architecture, interior design and ornamental art into distinct disciplines have come to an end.”7 Nádai went on to relate the essence of Lajta’s style to the revolution in Jewish cemetery art that the architect had effected: “If today the ethnic force of modern Hungarian architecture should be represented to the outside world, we would have to begin with these accomplished, filtered, marvelously Hungarian [grave]stones.” (Interestingly in his subsequent analysis of the same building through the lens of his teleological analysis of modernism, Nikolaus Pevsner discounted the ornament as a regressive hangover from the nineteenth century, a distraction from the development of a “pure” tectonic modernity.8) Lajta designed a series of Jewish cemetery buildings and tombstones in Budapest, one of the most famous being the family vault of Sándor Schmidl in the Neolog Rákoskeresztúr cemetery, on which he collaborated with Lechner in 1904. Its tent-like form simultaneously evoked the ohelim in which it was traditional to bury outstanding members of the Jewish community, and the rug-covered yurts of Hungary’s distant Hunnish past—the nomadic settlers who came from the east. Similar tented forms were deployed in Lajta’s competition entry for the tomb of Lajos Kossuth, political figurehead of Hungary’s nineteenthcentury independence movement, and for “Attila’s Tent-Palace,” the pavilion representing Hungary at the Turin 1911 international exhibition, created by gentile and Jewish architect team Emil Tőry (1863–1928) and Móric Pogány (1873–1942)9 (Figure 7.2). For Lajta and his followers there was no perceived contradiction between their patriotism and religious or ethnic identities. Kozma’s personal commitment to the ideal of Hungarian nationhood was underlined by his active service as an artillery officer throughout the First World War and his subsequent involvement with the art directorate of Béla Kun’s short-lived Bolshevik government of March to August 1919.

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Figure 7.2  Emil Tőry and Móric Pogány, Hungarian Pavilion at the Turin International exhibition, 1911. Source: The Studio (London, 1911)

Looking Back to Advance—Kozma and the Neo-Baroque Commenting on the disillusionment of the political left that followed the collapse of Kun’s Republic of Councils, and the fracturing of Greater Hungary under the terms of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the philosopher and sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) wrote to a friend, “The Hungarian jug was shattered, scattered into a hundred pieces.”10 Altogether Hungary ceded about 70 percent of its territory and 60 percent of its population. Like many other Jewish radical intellectuals and artists who regrouped in Berlin and Moscow, or found their way to the Weimar Bauhaus, Mannheim fled the brutal reprisals of the “White Terror” in 1920 and ensuing denunciation of experimental or leftist tendencies.11 Kozma remained in Hungary, but on account of his involvement in the “proletarian dictatorship” (organizing street decorations for the massed May Day celebrations and accepting an appointment to teach architecture at the Technical University), was put under intermittent police surveillance and banned from the Association of Hungarian Engineers and Architects in November 1919.12 Admiral Miklós Horthy’s regime (1920–1944) now ushered in a narrowly chauvinist, and increasingly antisemitic, cultural climate, guided by a neoChristian ideal. The prewar style of the Fiatolok that so many Jewish designers had helped to forge became associated with their ethnicity in a negative way. From being

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one of many minorities in a multiethnic empire, Jews were increasingly marginalized, starting with the passage of the Numerus Clausus Law of 1920, which restricted the enrollment of Jewish students in universities to 5 percent, the proportion of Jews represented in the population of the state. “I strove to advance, but if the path was difficult, I was not ashamed to look back,” wrote Kozma in 1922. Kozma had not lost his fascination with folk culture and Hungarian mythology, but increasingly he looked to historical precedent to express Hungarian national identity. As early as 1911 Kozma had been designing furniture that referred not only to folk arts but also to the materials, construction, and styling associated with Hungarian and English cabinet-making traditions of the eighteenth century. By the early to mid1920s, Kozma successfully developed this tendency into a full-blown “folk baroque” manner that became synonymous with his name, and through his teaching he inspired a generation of students and colleagues to work in a similar vein. Kozma’s modern version of Baroque was more in tune with the political climate than his earlier National Romantic mode, on account of the style’s historical associations with the Catholic church and bourgeois culture. He also viewed the experimental and dynamic forms of the Baroque as potentially progressive and liberating, writing of the Baroque in 1922 that “rather than animation, restlessness and what is finished, it is preparation, the growth of life, fever, driving force which finds delight as much in flashes of lightening as the burgeoning growth of fleshy tendrils, in short, the dynamic power of portrayal which is fundamentally related to Baroque ornament.”13 The theoretical evolution in Kozma’s work from National Romanticism to neo-Baroque was informed by his understanding of how German art historians Alois Riegl (1858–1905) and Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) sought to explain stylistic change. In developing broad conceptual tools to present the visual culture of all eras, these scholars deliberately looked at what were then unfashionable periods, such as the Baroque, and challenged the kind of morally inflected perceptions of style associated with the British art critic, John Ruskin. The latter, whose writings exerted a huge influence upon the ethos of the Fiatolok and the international Arts and Crafts Movement, had abhorred the Catholic Baroque as socially and aesthetically degenerate. Kozma’s gradual shift away from British to Central European intellectual traditions had a political dimension. The First World War brought Austro-Hungarian forces into direct and bloody combat with the Allied Powers of Britain and France—countries that had provided so much artistic inspiration to Kozma and his associates before the war. Much of Kozma’s time during the conflict was spent on active service in Transylvania, the region that had been central to the development of a Hungarian style pre–First World War. Equally the fate of the area provides a key to an understanding of the interwar period. Under the punitive terms of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, this whole region was ceded to Romania. So in the years that followed, designers faced an added layer of complication in trying to evoke a genuinely “Magyar” identity. This was particularly problematic for those like József Vágó who had not only invested so heavily in ethnographic studies of Transylvania but also had family connections there. (He emigrated to Switzerland.) The transition was perhaps slightly less painful for Kozma in that he had grown up in Somogy, another region of Hungary famed for its colorful folk traditions, but one that remained within the contracted borders of Hungary.

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The dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire meant that Hungarian producers no longer had straightforward access to a large and secure domestic market, and in the early 1920s materials were in short supply. Ever resourceful, one of Kozma’s strategies was to design brightly painted small cabinets and frames in paper.14 Kozma was better placed than some in being able to build off a client base that he had begun to develop through the Budapesti Műhely (Budapest Workshop) established in 1913.15 Like its counterparts in Vienna and Prague, this company aimed to create an intimate contact between the client, the designer, and the craftsman and there was clearly still a small but sufficiently affluent bourgeois clientele able to support such an enterprise. To give the neo-Baroque more explicit national connotations, many Hungarian commentators played up the association of the original style with the freedom fighter and national hero Rákóczi (1676–1735), a Transylvanian prince. In 1920 Kozma joined with literary historian György Király to produce “Three Tiny Books” of fables, stories, and anecdotes from Renaissance and Baroque Hungary. Kozma designed the headlines, vignettes, initials, and illustrations, and in collaboration with the Jewish publisher, Imre Kner (1890–1944), developed a new type font and stock of printing ornaments that could also be used in future publications.16 Kner, whose neo-Baroque villa in Győr Kozma also designed, observed that his friend was looking for “the big style” that would reflect all cultural tendencies in an epoch.17 The style was, however, unquestionably oriented toward Austria and Germany. It had taken root in the northern and western parts of Hungary during the early phase of Habsburg domination in the early eighteenth century. From that time there had been a steady buildup of resentment in Hungary against Austrian cultural hegemony, an outlook that fueled the development of Hungary’s National Romantic style. Once Hungary was no longer harnessed to the Austrian empire, however, separationist politics were no longer an issue. In other words, the Austrian and also the Germanic associations of the Baroque ceased to be problematic following Trianon. Austria had been cut down to size, and German investment proved crucial to the Hungarian economy in the 1920s and 1930s. Kozma had long enjoyed a close relationship with several German publishers, including Alexander Koch in Darmstadt, who since 1914 had included his work regularly in the magazine Innen-Dekoration. It is in such German publications that we find more details about the commission of the “dreamlike and yet unassumingly matter-of-fact” bedroom suite for a lady18 (Figure 7.3). The scheme demonstrates how Kozma intended such individual items to work within a larger architectural or interior conception (perhaps more neo-Rococo than neo-Baroque in this instance). Deemed “as unified as a rococo salon” according to designer and critic Ernő Kállai, the suite was an exercise in the orchestration of varied shapes, scales, colors and textures, which together exuded an impression of restfulness. Observers noted the playfully contrasted elements of excess and restraint, of imposingly dramatic and diminutive features, of white walls and bursts of concentrated decorative detail or strong color. The bedroom suite also exhibited the air of intimate sensuality combined with airy practicality.19 There were two Kozmas, noted Kállai, “one inclining to preciousness and extravagance, a bourgeois aesthete of the modern metropolis, and another, who takes pure pleasure in a playful, popular naivete full

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Figure 7.3  Lajos Kozma, View of a bedroom suite for a lady, Budapest. Source: Innen-Dekoration (Darmstadt, 1924)

of crackling color.”20 The plasticity of the ornament and its nuanced application to so many different forms and materials required great academic discipline and attention to detail. “You do not stop to think about whether it is a constructional element or a piece of ornament,” wrote Pál Nádai. “Each detail clings to the body of the furniture, merges with the definition of its forms, and with its function in the room.”21 Kozma clearly reveled in the theatrical nature of the commission (he had produced various set designs) and its links with the world of female fashion. The notion of “dressing up” and of woman’s fashion as a form of spectacle or playful masquerade was captured in the form of the dramatic alcove with its red curtains. While this stage encouraged a voyeuristic gaze from the spectator, that “look” was bounced back at the spectator via the mirrors, of which there was a pair standing guard to either side of the alcove as well as the dominant full-length one in the inner

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sanctum. This play on spectator and performer, illusion and reality, inner and outer was heightened by the abundance of reflective surfaces and themes in the fantastical plaster decoration. Above the recess, for example, an exotic nude reclined dreamily beneath a palm tree. The idea of the alcove as a shrine to the revelation of female beauty was also suggested by another plasterwork detail of a miniature cabinet with doors opened to reveal the figure of an Indian goddess. In graphic design projects undertaken during his military service on the Transylvanian front during the First World War, Kozma had given free rein to this repertoire of Baroque ornamentation in the construction of an alternative, fantastical reality. A sequence of illustrations for the children’s book Zsuzsa Bergengóciában (Susie in Fairyland) led his daughter Zsuzsa into a reassuringly gentle and colorful dreamworld.22 The text was written by his friend Frigyes Karinthy, a popular author and confirmed pacifist who had just lost his wife to the Spanish flu pandemic.23 In 1917 Kozma also produced neo-Baroque designs for Hét Mese, seven tales drawn from Hungarian as well as Hindu and Chinese myths and legends (Figure 7.4). His

Figure 7.4  Lajos Kozma, Book cover designed in 1917 for Hét mese (Seven Tales) by Béla Balázs (Gyoma: Kner Izidor, 1918)

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collaborators were Imre Kner and Béla Balázs, the author, film critic, and aesthete. The three men’s initials were entwined at the end of the book, and their Jewish identities referenced in the secularized evocation of a seven-branched menorah on the cover. Cast adrift from their settled prewar lives, like the Israelites during their desert wanderings, there was perhaps a sense of holding up this ancient symbol as a beacon of universal enlightenment and knowledge and of a belief in the immortality of the soul.24 As with his earlier work in a National Romantic style, Kozma showed himself capable of skillfully blending Jewish elements into a new and hybrid version of the Baroque.

Toward an Hungarian Modernism Horthy’s authoritarian grip on power in the late 1920s was undiminished and as the arguments around national style became increasingly racial and conservative, so Kozma’s richly ornamental neo-Baroque mutated into a form of simplified, antidogmatic modernism. This transition was encapsulated in designs for two synagogues. In 1924 Kozma entered an international competition announced by the Neolog Community of Kassa (now Košice, Slovakia) for a new synagogue with adjoining school facilities. The elegant neo-Baroque structure (currently used as a concert hall) was consecrated in 1927. Its imposing dome and neo-Classical portico made reference to the historical “Hungarian” culture of the region (Upper Hungary) that became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia created following the Treaty of Trianon.25 During a debate about the Kassa synagogue in 1929 published in the modernist architectural magazine Tér és Forma (Space and Form), Kozma described the political climate in which he had been working. Many of those modern architects who had already practiced stylish modern architecture back in the days of peace [i.e. before the First World War] returned to traditional taste in the rather depressing atmosphere of the national revival following the Commune [Béla Kun’s government in 1919]. […] Several years had to pass before they were in a position to rejoin the flow of great Western architectural innovations.26

His own shift toward a more obviously modernist style was evident in his unrealized 1928 plans for a second synagogue, this time for the Orthodox community in Pest: gone was the dome— instead a flat roof, asymmetric façade, and grid-based plan. So what had changed for Kozma to embrace the abstract forms of modernism in 1928? Following an amnesty for Kun adherents announced in 1926, Budapest’s small progressive circles were boosted by the return to Hungary of avant-gardist designers, among them Farkas Molnár, Sándor Bortnyik, and Lajos Kassák. Kozma immediately reapplied for membership of the Association of Hungarian Engineers and Architects in which he succeeded at the third attempt in 1928.27 That year Bortnyik set up a new private school (Műhely) that was modeled on the interdisciplinary design principles of the German Bauhaus.28 Many Jewish students were attracted to the Műhely as an alternative to the National School of Decorative Arts (Országos

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Magyar Királyi Iparművészeti Iskola, OMKII). Art schools were exempt from the 1920 numerus clausus legislation restricting the percentage of Jews entering higher education, but even so, publicly funded institutions like OMKII were required to register the religion and ethnicity of their students, and tacitly gave preference to non-Jewish students. Architectural training in the Budapest Technical University had also become conservative and anti-Jewish. In a 2012 interview the influential Hungarian-French architect Yona Friedman (1923–2020) spoke of how his short spell in Kozma’s office at the end of the 1930s offered a very different experience: [Kozma] was considered bad because he was evidently an enemy of the regime. Kozma was in a way very interesting because he was doing architecture differently from the mainstream. In the technical university you got a mainstream, practically 19th-century training. But through Kozma I discovered that the Bauhaus existed! So, about my education in Hungary, I think that I was actually lucky: as I couldn’t go down the main road, by necessity I got into a situation in which I was more informed than the main road allowed.29

By and large modernist architecture and design were regarded as an alien, foreign implant, but as the Hungarian economy began to recover in the late 1920s, there was a growing demand for forward- and outward-looking design in the commercial and leisure sectors, and among a niche group of Budapest’s upper-middle-classes. Jewish gallerist Henrik Tamás (1879–1960) opened a small commercial space in 1928 to address this audience, exhibiting modern paintings alongside decorative arts, posters, and architecture.30 Many of the artists featured were associated with the Műhely, and in 1932 Bauhaus members gentiles Farkas Molnár and József Fischer organized an exhibition there of experimental architectural work. Kozma, Molnár, and Fischer were among the eighteen architects involved in the creation of a small experimental housing scheme in Napraforgó utca, Budapest (1929–1931), and in 1932 Kozma, Molnár, and Kner became founding members of the Magyar Műhely Szövetség (Hungarian Werkbund), an organization that set out to bring together designers, architects, and manufacturers focused on producing affordable, modern design. By this time Kozma was designing tubular steel chairs and folding tables for Thonet, a company with worldwide distribution, which were strongly modernist in concept and styling. Through a now firmly established network of like-minded friends, co-workers, and students spanning the business and artistic worlds, a steady flow of clients approached Kozma, and he was well placed to mediate the demands and desires of the growing market for modern design—for books and advertising materials, exhibitions and fairs, shops and cinemas, villas and semi-detached houses, furniture and interiors. Kozma undertook no municipal or governmental commissions, but between 1930 and 1945 built some thirty-five houses, more on average than many of his contemporaries. It is difficult to quantify the impact of anti-Jewish bias in the informal patterns of patronage and influence that generated these commissions, but it is clear that most of Kozma’s clients at this stage in his career were self-selecting and of Jewish extraction.31 One such client was the couple Lili and Győző (Victor) Márkus whose apartment he renovated in 1936 (Figure 7.5). It was a collaborative project in the sense that Kozma

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Figure 7.5  Living room in the Budapest apartment of Lili and Győző (Victor) Márkus, renovated by Lajos Kozma in 1936. Photograph by Zoltán Seidner

deployed steel-frame window and door frames manufactured by the family firm of Márkus Lajos, as well as Lili’s architectural and decorative ceramics. In this sense the commission spanned the spheres of modern craft, industrial production, and architecture, and the couple could recognize themselves in Kozma’s integrated design. As well as the apartment, Kozma designed modernist advertising materials for Márkus Lajos (the company was involved in the construction of various buildings and commercial premises designed by Kozma), and in 1939 both designed and wrote an introduction to a catalog of Lili’s ceramics, which he described as “‘living in light’ no matter whether it is many-colored or a single hue, no matter whether it is smooth or of variegated surface, and playfully scratched, deeply carved or modelled.”32 On the one hand he admired her superb technical grasp of the medium, her architectonic sense of form and rhythmic proportions, and on the other, the way her ceramics inhabited the world “of dreamland and of religious legend.” Such ceramics, often inspired by folk techniques and sources, provided accents of color and texture in several Kozma interiors, ranged on specially designed shelves or room dividers as part of the overall scheme. Some of the furniture in the Márkus apartment was designed by Zsuzsa Kozma who joined her father’s office in the late 1930s and specialized in the furniture side of things. The drinks trolley (1938– 1939), which could be wheeled around, was full of ingeniously designed folding and cantilevered compartments. The controlled geometry of its compact and functional form did not detract from the open plan of the interior. A second example of the trolley,

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now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, appeared in a 1938 commission for a Budapest timber merchant, Jenő Schreiber.33 Kozma’s modernist credentials were mediated through regular publication in progressive architectural journals that presented his work alongside that of his European contemporaries, whether in Spain (Vivendas), Germany (Innen-Dekoration), or his native Hungary where Tér és Forma was launched in 1928. Crossing genres and media Kozma had pushed the boundaries of first National Romanticism, then the neoBaroque, and finally modernism. He had a lifelong fascination with print techniques and typography that mutated in conjunction with his architecture, and understood the need for consistency between the presentation of his ideas in two- and threedimensional forms. In the 1930s his skilled integration of modern sans-serif type and photography, and restricted palette of black, white, and orange, was very much in the spirit of the international New Typography as defined by Jan Tschichold’s Die neue Typographie published in 1928. He certainly understood the power of advertising and photography in conveying his design philosophy and helping clients understand the relevance of new ideas to their daily lives.34 In this respect Kozma was well served by Zoltán Seidner (1896–1960), one of the Hungarian photographers in the forefront of the international Neue Sachlichkeit in the 1930s. The subtlety of Kozma’s manipulation of interior space was brought out by Seidner’s expertly judged lighting and camera angles. Having worked for Színházi Élet (Theater Life) in the 1920s, Seidner also shared Kozma’s interest in the theater arts and the idea of “staging” everyday life.

Wartime In an unpublished manuscript now held in the Hungarian Museum of Architecture, Kozma emphasized the need to design in ways that, over time, would allow for “flexibility, changeability and usability.” He explained, “If we do not want our descendants to curse us, then we must endeavor to build houses in which the possibilities of another type of lifestyle are feasible; where walls, the dividing ones at least, are easily movable, and where the huge, if possible continuous windows, are usable in many different ways, in all types of weather and lighting conditions.”35 It is doubtful that even he could have foreseen just how dramatically lifestyles would change. Successive anti-Jewish laws in 1938 and 1939 began to severely curtail his practice and eventually he was stripped of his membership of the Association of Architects and Engineers. Commissions were increasingly hard to come by. In effect he lay low and withdrew to his house in the village of Nógrádverőce to work on a book about his architectural principles and achievements, which was largely compiled from illustrations and texts published in various Hungarian and foreign journals over the previous decade. He undertook all the editing and designed the typographic layout. Written in German, the book was published in Zurich under the title Das neue Haus (The New House).36 Perhaps this project was conceived as part of an escape route out of Hungary. Other survival strategies were more practical. As the situation worsened, his typographic skills and wide connections within the printing trades proved invaluable to the supply of false papers to the Jewish community that he undertook with his friend Tivadar Soros.

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(Their families were on social terms and had weekend houses on Lupa Island on the Danube—Kozma’s weekend house is featured on the book cover of this anthology.) Kozma’s young protégée Yona Friedman, also a skilled draughtsman, was recruited by a Zionist group to forge signatures until he was denounced by someone from the Budapest Technical University and taken into custody by the Gestapo in 1944.37 Under the circumstances, designing a safe, small, but comfortable living environment presented a further challenge. In coming up with functional solutions Kozma was able to draw upon his meticulous planning skills and eye for detail, and most importantly, an ability to improvise. In the buildup to the Nazi occupation of Hungary in March 1944 he teamed up with Soros to kit out a hiding place for themselves and Soros’s two sons, Paul and George, in an apartment block on Eskü tér (now March 15th Square). Soros was the building manager, real estate being one of the areas to which he and several other Jewish lawyers turned when no longer able to practice the law.38 Kozma applied his interior design skills to the introduction of adequate ventilation, plumbing, and electricity, while also making sure that no sign of life could be seen from the outside. Soros later described the details that stayed etched in his memory: For added safety a buzzer was installed, with a push-button in the building manager’s office. Signals could be of varying length, depending on the nature of the danger. In an emergency we could run down to the air-raid shelter in a matter of seconds, where by pressing a button we could close a huge iron door behind us or, crossing the full length of the shelter, walk through another door into a different street. The entrance to the courtyard was locked, which would give us time for these maneuvers. To use military terms, you could say the arrangements seemed to be both strategically and tactically satisfactory … [and] showed that we had both been avid readers of Jules Verne in our youth.39

There was also time to equip the space with an abundant supply of reading material, including Sigmund Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, and a selection of their favorite Verne novels. Through architectural study Kozma was able to transport himself mentally to another world. Gyula Kaesz described how, even with bombs falling around him, his friend “puffed on a cigar and without fear read and wrote about the methods of designing space in baroque and medieval architecture.”40 Kozma survived long enough to be professionally rehabilitated after the war, before his death in November 1948. He was appointed director of the Magyar Iparművészeti Főiskola (Hungarian School of Applied Arts) in 1946, and the following year regained his professorship at the Budapest Technical University. Zsuzsa Kozma had left Budapest shortly before he died, as one of a number of Hungarian designers to head for Australia.41 She anglicized her name to Susan Orlay and set up a successful practice in Sydney that became one of the bastions of modern design in Australia. Shortly after his death, tributes to Kozma appeared in a commemorative issue of Új Építészet (New Architecture, 1949, No. 2–3), a magazine of which he had been an editor.42 The articles dealt separately with his achievements as architect, graphic artist, and interior designer. This compartmentalized treatment was continued in the

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1975 monograph by Judith Kóos, and the most recent, and major, study of his work (accompanying an exhibition at the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts) was restricted to his 1930s architecture.43 What gets lost along the way is a sense of the continuity between the various phases of his career and between his work in varied media and genres. Kozma’s belief in a fundamental affinity between writing or typography and architecture when it came to expressing the spirit of the age was the subject of a book he wrote in 1941.44 As his colleague Major Máté observed in 1949, “Lajos Kozma lived in a transitional age, at a time of changing societies and ideologies.”45 Given the rapidity and fundamental nature of change in central European life in this period, it should come as no surprise that Kozma expressed himself with complexity and apparent contradiction. Back in 1920, such tensions were already apparent to his friend Pál Nádai: “Poet and artist, romantic and materialist, revolutionary and conservative, but remaining a true individual in response to many influences—such a man is Lajos Kozma.”46 Consideration of an individual such as Kozma in his totality can open up discussion of the plurality of modernisms, revealing nuances that enrich and complicate our sense of the modern rather than being taken to signify vacillation or lack of principles. It also brings into focus elements that might connect him to hidden or marginalized aspects of the work of other Hungarian Jewish designers and architects who emigrated. Comparisons between Kozma and such émigrés point to the limitations of constructing monolithic, national histories, and to the critical void created by the lack of a common frame of reference that could demonstrate hidden continuities. This dispersal of objects and people, and the intangible webs that connect them present a fascinating field of future research.

Notes 1

2 3

4 5 6 7 8

This chapter builds on research for an earlier article “Modernity and Tradition in Hungarian Furniture 1900–1938: Three Generations” published in Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 24 (2002): 64–93, and from my work relating to two of Kozma’s colleagues, Lili Márkus and Géza Maróti. Mary Gluck, The Invisible Jewish Budapest: Metropolitan Culture at the Fin-de-Siècle (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2016). Éva Horányi, ed., Kozma Lajos modern épületei (Modern Buildings by Kozma Lajos, Budapest: Terc, 2006). This major publication contains much new research but is limited to discussion of his 1930s architecture. See also Juliet Kinchin, In the Eye of the Storm: Lili Márkus and Stories of Hungarian Craft, Design and Architecture 1930–1960 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 2008). Elemér Csakó, A Ház 1 (1908): 120. Magyar Díszítő Styl (Budapest, 1885); Teremtsünk Igazán Magyar Műipart (Sepsiszentgyörgy, 1890); Székely Ház (Budapest, 1895). Kozma did however still sign himself “Ludwig” rather than “Lajos” in the context of German and Austrian publications (and “Lewis” in English, or “Louis” in French). Pál Nádai, “Egy modern városépítőről, Lajta Béla művészete” (The art of Béla Lajta, a modern urban architect), Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian decorative arts), 1914, 122–5. Trans Adele Eisenstein. Nikolaus Pevsner, “Impressions of Hungarian Building,” The New Hungarian Quarterly VII, no. 21 (1966): 46–51.

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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29

Designing Transformation An anonymous review of the Hungarian pavilion in the magazine Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian Decorative Arts), 1911, 254, noted that “the contour of the tents of the conquering Magyar nomadic people that could have been purely the starting point” for this architectural form. “Letter from Heidelberg I,” in Mannheim Károly Levelezése 1911–1946, ed. Éva Gabor (Budapest: Argumentum, MTA Lukács Archivum, 1996), 233, trans. Judit Szapor. Kozma, Malnai, Vágó, Pogány, and Maróti were among the Jewish architects who participated. Kun himself and György Lukács, the Marxist philosopher and aesthetician who headed the Art Directorate, were also of Jewish descent. Magyar Mérnök- és Épitész-Egylet Közleményei LIV, 2–4 (January 15, 1920), 19. Cited by András Ferkai in Horanyi 2006, 13. Lajos Kozma, “Individuality and Tradition,” in Almanach az 1922. évre (Gyoma: Kner Izidor, 1921), 68–79. Géza Lengyel, “Neue Arbeiten der “Budapester Werkstätte,” Innen-Dekoration XXXII (1921): 43. Kozma left the company in 1919, which was maintained as a cooperative until 1929 by his partner, Dezső Arnót. György Haiman, “Imre Kner and the Revival of Hungarian Printing,” Design Issues 7, no. 2 (Spring, 1991): 43–53. Emerich Kner, “Introduction,” in Das Signetbuch, ed. Ludwig Kozma (Gyoma: Kner, 1925), XIV. Jenő Mohácsi, “Das Schlafgemach einer Dame,” Innen-Dekoration (January 1924): 4–8. They were also highly praised in the Austrian journal Sport im Bild, in 1924, 291, 293. Mohácsi, “Das Schlafgemach einer Dame,” 4–8. Ernst (Ernő) Kállai, Möbel und Raumkunst von Ludwig Kozma (Leipzig and Vienna: Friedrich Ernst Hübsch Verlag, 1926), 13. Pál Nádai, “Landhäuser und Räume in Ungarn,” Innen-Dekoration XXXVIII (May 1927): 181. First published in Hungary in 1921, the book appeared in German in 1924, and a further limited edition was produced by Imre Kner for friends and family. Karinthy’s parents were originally Jewish but converted to Lutheranism shortly before he was born in 1887. For a wide-ranging discussion of the menorah’s cultural significance see Steven Fine, The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016). Maroš Borsky, Synagogue Architecture in Slovakia. Towards Creating a Memorial Landscape of Lost Community, PhD diss., Heidelberg University, 2005. http:// archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5839/2/Borsky_Maros_Synagogue_ Architecture_in_Slovakia_text_for_www.pdf. Kozma reported in Virgil Bierbauer, “A kassai templom—Kozma Lajos műve (The synagogue of Kassa—a work of Lajos Kozma),” Tér és Forma 2 1929; cited in Kinga Frojimovics, Géza Komoróczy, Viktoria Pusztai, Andrea Strbik Jewish Budapest: Monuments, Rites, History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 289. Discussed in Éva Horányi ed., Modern Buildings by Kozma Lajos (Budapest: Terc, 2006). See Katalin Bakos, Bortnyik Sándor és a “Műhely” (Budapest: L’Harmattan Kiadó, 2018). The Műhely was often referred to as the “Hungarian Bauhaus.” Manuel Orazi, “A Conversation with Yona Friedman,” Log, no. 26 (Fall 2012), published by Anyone Corporation, 62.

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30 Janus Pannonius Múzeum, Tamás Henrik Emlékezései és Műgyüteménye (Henrik Tamás, his memoir and art collection. Pécs: MTA Művészettörténeti Kutatóintézet, 2004). 31 Other Jewish clients included Dr. Áron Gellért (43 Orsó St, 1932); Albert Gerber and Sandor Kalman, lottery ticket sellers (two-apartment house, Kavics Street, 1932–33); dentist son and wife of Istvan Klinger (Hermann Ottó Street, 1933–34); Lajos Magyar, industrial leather goods manufacturer (Berkenye St, 1936); Jenő Schreiber, timber merchant (Pasaréti Street, 1938). Information from Horányi ed., Modern Buildings by Kozma Lajos. 32 Lewis (Lajos) Kozma, The Pottery Work of Lilly Márkus (Budapest, 1939), no page number. 33 Inventory number W21.1997. The Schreibers’ niece was the editor of Művészet (Art) magazine and married to Pál Szegi, the art critic of a major Hungarian newspaper, Pesti Hirlap—probably the source of the introduction to the Kozmas. 34 Photographs of the Márkus apartment, for example, appeared in Hungarian, British, Italian, and Swiss publications: Lajos Kozma, “Egy lakás átépítése” (Reconstruction of an apartment), Tér és Forma (Space and form) (October 1936): 293–9; Lajos Kozma, “Egy lakás átépítése,” A Bútor (Furniture), no. 9 (1936): 133–40; Charles Rosner, “Lewis Kozma of Budapest,” The Studio 117 (1939): 212–14; Roberto Aloi, L’arredamento modern (Modern furniture) (Milan: Hoepli, 1939), 529, 542, 633, 785; Ludwig Kozma, Das Neue Haus: Ideen und Versuche zur Gestaltung des Familienhauses, mit Zeichnungen und Fotografien eigener Arbeiten (The new house: Ideas for and attempts at laying out the family house, with drawings and photographs of the author’s own work) (Zurich: Girsberger Verlag, 1941). 35 Lajos Kozma, “A ház és lakás, mint életszenárium (The house and home as a setting for life),” unpublished manuscript, Hungarian Museum of Architecture, Kozma Estate. 36 Kozma, Das neue Haus. 37 Orazi, “A Conversation with Yona Friedman.” published by Anyone Corporation, 63. 38 See Tivadar Soros, Maskerado: Dancing around Death in Nazi Hungary, ed. and trans. Humphrey Tonkin (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2000), 51. 39 Ibid. 40 Uj Epitészet 2–3 (1949): 44. Kaesz was a pupil and working partner of Kozma who bequeathed papers, perhaps given to him for safe-keeping in the Second World War, to the Hungarian Museum of Architecture. 41 Other Hungarian designers who emigrated to Australia included Ervin Graf, György Kóródy, George Surtees, Imre and Gyula Sos, Tobir Rayner. For a full discussion see Rebecca Hawcroft, ed. The Other Moderns. Sydney’s Forgotten European Design Legacy (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2018), and related exhibition The Moderns, held at the Museum of Sydney, June–November 2017. Zsuzsa’s sister Erzsébet also moved to Australia. 42 The magazine started in 1946. Kozma had also been president of the related Új Épitészet Köre (New Architecture Circle). 43 Judith Koós, Kozma Lajos munkássága. Grafika, iparművészet, építészet (Lajos Kozma’s creative achievements: graphic art, applied art, architecture) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1975), and Horányi, ed., Kozma Lajos modern épületei. 44 Lajos Kozma, Az Írás Stílusváltzásai az Építészet Megvilágításában (Changes in the style of writing in architecture of the enlightenment Budapest, Hungária Nyomda, 1941). I am grateful to Professor Oliver Botar for drawing this publication to my attention. 45 Major Máté, “Kozma Lajos, az építész,” Új Építészet (New Architecture) 4 (1949): 45. 46 Pál Nádai, Az Iparművészet Magyarországon (Budapest: Biró Miklós, 1920), 58.

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Refuge and Respite: Oskar Wlach, Max Eisler, and the Culture of the Modern Jewish Interior Christopher Long

In mid-June 1925, Josef Frank (1885–1967), Oskar Wlach (1881–1963), and Walter Sobotka (1888–1972) opened Haus & Garten, their interior furnishings store, at Bösendorferstraße 5 in central Vienna (Figure 8.1).1 They must have been planning the move for some time. Even before the shop unlocked its doors to the public, the men had assembled a display of furniture and objects for the Austrian pavilion at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which had commenced that April.2 Sobotka—for reasons that are unclear—remained in

Figure 8.1 Haus & Garten Store, Bösendorferstraße 5, 1010 Vienna. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv

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the business only briefly; he withdrew from the partnership a few months after the close of the Paris exposition, in January 1926.3 But Frank and Wlach would continue to operate the shop and their associated interior design service until the time of the “Anschluss,” the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, in 1938, when they were forced to transfer ownership to Julius Kalmár and his brother Josef.4 It has long been believed that Frank was the guiding spirit of the business. Most Haus & Garten designs—at least those for individual pieces—have been credited to him. And it was Frank who eloquently described the firm’s intentions in a series of texts from the later 1920s and 1930s. What Frank wrote was part explication, part call to arms. The basis of the Haus & Garten idea, he described, was a rejection of the “Garnitur”—of suites of matching furnishings arranged in perfectly tuned harmonies. It was, in other words, a repudiation of the whole Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, ideal, which had dominated Austrian modernism since the turn of the century. Frank did not say so directly, but his principal target was Josef Hoffmann (1870– 1956). “A modern living space,” he wrote, with Hoffmann’s Wiener Werkstätte interiors in mind, “is not a work of art, it is neither conspicuous nor effective, nor exciting.” Rather, “it is comfortable, without one being able to say why, and the less reason that one can provide, the better it is.”5 To this, Frank appended his cri de guerre: “In the modern dwelling, disorder reigns, which is to say that there are no furnishings that are intended for particular places and that would destroy the harmony of the room if they were moved. One should place each piece of furniture […] where one needs it at a particular moment.”6 Older “representational pieces,” Frank insisted, should be replaced with light, easily portable tables and chairs “that assert no [architectonic] influence of any sort.” Each piece should be “independent of the others” nor should they “conceal anything.” They should “constitute a grouping only insofar as they are placed in relation to each other.” Our concern is no longer with “installations” (Einrichtungen), but “only individual furnishings” (Einzel-Möbel).7 Frank’s aim was for nothing less than a full liberation. He called for any placement of furnishings, as long as it obeyed some functional logic, and allowed for any pattern or color, since visual harmonies were no longer the goal. Accordingly, Frank and Wlach’s Haus & Garten program was to bring together—and make available for sale— the elements of a novel way of living. They promised interiors and objects that were comfortable, varied, and relaxed. Everything here taken together was modern in its way. Yet a significant feature of the Haus & Garten program is that the designs Frank and Wlach offered for sale were new but not too new. Embedded in nearly all the pieces and ensembles are elements of past design. The pieces represent a reconceived historicism, one that appropriated sundry features of older traditions (especially the English eighteenth century, Biedermeier, ancient Greek, and American Shaker), but which had been recast and repurposed. They also display one other innovative feature. Both individually and in their groupings, they evince a meticulous attentiveness to surface, to their haptic qualities. Every surface is smooth, rounded, or softened.

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What Frank and Wlach presented, thus, was a mitigated modernism. This “easy” modern aesthetic emerged as the guiding principle of what became known as the Wiener Wohnkultur (literally, the Viennese living culture). In one sense, it was a call to arms in the fight for a specific vision of a better modernity; in another, it was a form of retrenchment.

The Rise of the Wiener Wohnkultur This novel approach to the modern interior had its anchorage in the period just before the war. Its first makers were Adolf Loos (1870–1933), Oskar Strnad (1879–1935), and Wlach, who formed a loosely organized front against the finely pitched harmonies of Jugendstil ensembles. Loos took the lead, attacking Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte with an almost gleeful stridency, while offering his clients his own aesthetic of classically derived pieces and repurposed replicas. (He was especially fond of English Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Regency models.) It was Strnad and Wlach, though, who formulated a distinctive—and, in its own way, more radical—design ethos. The decisive moment came in the period around 1908 to 1910. The two men, both recent graduates of the Vienna Technische Hochschule, where they had studied with Carl König (1841–1915) and Max Fabiani (1865–1962), began building a joint practice based on single-family houses and domestic interiors.8 One of their main beliefs—taken over in part from Loos— involved the adoption of older objects: “preferred types” that had stood the test of time. To this, they added an unrestrained eclecticism, a willingness to scan the past for objects and possibilities. They then “modernized” the models they had selected, largely, though not exclusively, through simplification. The resulting amalgam, historically multifarious but “tuned down,” became the foundation of the new Wohnkultur. Several other young architects, all freshly graduated from the Vienna Technische Hochschule, including Hugo Gorge (1883–1934), Viktor Lurje (1883–1944), and Frank, began developing and promoting related strategies of appropriation.9 What they shared—aside from the rejection of the Jugendstil and the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal—were basic assumptions about the need to forge a new way for living in the modern age. They also had in common a kinship: all came from middle- or uppermiddle-class Jewish backgrounds. That most of those, aside from Loos, involved in shaping the Wiener Wohnkultur were Jewish has not been lost on scholars. Nor has it been lost on anyone who has cared to examine the era closely that the great majority of these designers’ clients belonged to the city’s Jewish Mittelstand. Yet the full meanings of the new Wohnkultur for the city’s Jewish middle-class have remained just out of view in recent scholarship. It was not so at the time. Close observers—critics and art historians—as well as the makers themselves—architects, designers, and manufacturers—were aware of the inherent qualities of the new Viennese design and why it was expressly suited to the city’s Jewish middle-class.

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Oskar Wlach In addressing the meanings of the Wiener Wohnkultur for the city’s Jewish middle-class, I want to focus on Oskar Wlach (Figure 8.2). My interest in Wlach rests in some measure on the part he played in the story of this second wave of Viennese modernism, one that extended for some three decades. Wlach was actively engaged in the first stirrings of the new Wohnkultur around 1908, and he was still active at its end, one of its few early adherents still working in the city in 1938. But more than that, Wlach has never received his due. He has always been accorded the status of junior partner, first to Strnad, then to Frank, and rarely, if ever, cast as an important designer in his own right. His biography on the Vienna Architekturzentrum website perfectly expresses this: “Oskar Wlach, who belongs among the foremost protagonists of the second wave of Viennese modernism, has remained, to some degree unjustly, in the shadow of his partner Josef Frank.”10 I hope here to begin to right that wrong. Wlach’s personal tale is only sketchily recorded in the literature of Viennese modernism.11 He was born in 1881, the eldest of three sons of watch dealer Albert Wlach.12 After completing Mittelschule, he entered the architecture faculty of the Technische Hochschule. He eventually graduated with a doctorate, writing his dissertation on the “colored incrustations” of the Florentine “proto-Renaissance.” While researching the work, he undertook a prolonged visit to Italy in the fall of 1905,

Figure 8.2  Oskar Wlach, c. 1950. Collection of the author

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making stops in Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Bologna, Ravenna, and Vicenza.13 From 1906 through 1907, he studied with Friedrich Ohmann (1858–1927) at the Academy of Fine Arts. It was at this time that he commenced his collaboration with Strnad. Together, they began designing interiors and houses. Their commissions also included a small apartment house at Stuckgasse 14, in Vienna’s seventh district. Later, they would build two villas, one of them a remarkable house on the Paul-Ehrlich-Gasse for the author Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934).14 Absent in this standard account are two important facts about Wlach, both of which paint a rather different picture of him than the received one. One is perhaps obvious enough, though it is rarely, if ever, remarked upon. Wlach had an intellectual bent. If he lacked the relentless cerebral drive of Strnad or Frank, he was an architect who thought about the broad meanings of contemporary and past design in a way that set him apart from most practitioners. That he had gone to the trouble of writing a dissertation—a very uncommon step in those days—is one indication of this. Wlach also published occasionally—and not only accounts about his own work, as architects are given to do.15 One of the most telling of these texts was an extended obituary he wrote for the Berlin architect Alfred Messel (1853–1909). Wlach penned the piece in 1909. In the early years of the century, Messel had inspired deep admiration in the younger German-speaking modernists. His spare and muscular Wertheim department store on Leipziger Platz in Berlin was the source of much veneration for those seeking alternatives to the Stil-Architektur of the previous age. Wlach writes of “Messel als Erzieher,” Messel as educator, and refers to him as a wellspring of new ideas for building. He lauds Messel’s reserve, his “puritanical austerity,” his efforts to “cleanse” the face of Berlin, his tearing away of the old false façadism.16 It is a smart reading, expressed with a conspicuous lucidity. It is also revelatory in different way. Messel was Jewish. He was one of the very few prominent German-speaking Jewish architects of his generation. (Among the others was König, Wlach’s adored mentor.) It was a fact not lost on Wlach: he wrote the piece to honor a figure he admired and a man who was, like himself, a success story of Jewish acculturation. In later historical accounts, Wlach is consistently seen as a representative of Jewish integration in architectural circles. Still, and to my earlier point concerning the overlooked aspects of Wlach and his character, though he came from the same acculturated Jewish middle-class milieu as Frank and Strnad, he remained more closely bound to his Jewish heritage. So, for example, one finds a mention of him as one of the donors to the Verein für fromme und wohltätige Werke (Association for Pious and Charitable Works), which was connected with the City Temple on the Seitenstettengasse.17 Wlach was also a member of the Jewish service organization B’nai Brith. He joined a few months after the opening of Haus & Garten.18 That Wlach was especially clear-eyed about the situation of modern architecture when he wrote the Messel obituary tells us something else. At least, it hints at it strongly. He was thinking about how to proceed, how a future modernism should be formulated. By this time, he had begun working with Strnad. One of their first projects was a joint entry for the War Ministry Building competition. Together, they were also laying

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the foundations for the new Wohnkultur, and Wlach had a central role in constructing its theoretical underpinnings and its formal expression. Here, though, the evidence is difficult to muster—and more nebulous. The best testimony comes from two sources. The first is in Max Eisler’s 1936 book, Oskar Strnad. Eisler, who was an art historian and cultural critic, wrote the work shortly after Strnad’s death. Over the course of his career, Eisler frequently published reviews or commentaries on Viennese design, especially concerning the works of Strnad, Wlach, and Frank. But, in this instance, he was especially forthcoming about the genesis of the new design approach. The telling moment in the book comes when he is discussing the formation of the Wiener Wohnkultur before the war. He is careful to write in the plural: They [he is referring to Strnad, Wlach, and Frank, who joined the partnership in 1913] sought […] their own path to tradition […]. They found it not in the monumental, but in the realm of the simple tasks of everyday life, in living spaces, at the outset with the many evident connections with the last living phases of the bourgeois domestic sphere, in old Vienna. Through the work of this partnership a new, important […] Wiener Wohnkultur came to life.19

If one reads this and the following passages in the book, describing the collaboration of the three architects closely, it is clear that Eisler saw Wlach as an equal contributor in the formation of the new design culture. We also have Wlach’s own words. In 1922, he published a piece in the journal Innen-Dekoration he titled “Einheit und Lebendigkeit” (Unity and Liveliness). It is very nearly a manifesto of the Wiener Wohnkultur, setting out its defining principles. Wlach, by this time, had left the partnership with Strnad and Frank. He was mostly working independently, occasionally collaborating with Frank. He had spent the later war years in the army. First assigned to active duty in May 1916, he served in Albania, where he contracted malaria; then, after a long convalescence, he was transferred to Galicia.20 When his illness recurred, he was removed from the front and reassigned to a detachment of Austrian architects (headed by the Viennese-born designer Paul T. Frankl, who would later make his career in the United States) in Constantinople.21 When the war ended, he was interred in Romania, and he only returned to Vienna in the spring of 1919.22 In keeping with the views he, Strnad, and Frank had developed before the war concerning the need for formal variety rather than matched suites of furnishings, Wlach argues in his essay that a better unity in interiors could be achieved with consistency in “that which cannot be moved”—in other words, the walls, floors, and ceilings. He writes in an assertive first person, “I believe,” “I hold that,” etc., stating his views and explaining his design choices. The piece is illustrated with more than a dozen pages of images of his own designs, most, if not all, dating from the period immediately after the war.23 The interiors and individual pieces display what assuredly were his personal design mannerisms. What also stands out is the high degree to which his design choices anticipate the special language he and Frank developed for Haus & Garten. In the

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bedroom of the Wallner House, which likely dates from around 1921, for instance, are very many of their later ideas: simple furnishings based on Biedermeier pieces (the chair and table in the foreground); American Shaker (the bedframe), or Renaissance models (the cabinet on stand); his use of Oriental carpets and floral cretonnes (the wall hanging and upholstery for the easy chair); and his casual mingling of different elements and historical eras—all composed freely and without any attempt to foster any form of conventional unity (Figure 8.3). Nearly every element of the design direction that he and Frank would later refine in their interiors of the later 1920s and 1930s is on display. Wlach must have had a significant hand in their making.

Figure 8.3 Oskar Wlach, Bedroom of the Wallner House, c. 1921. Source: Innen-Dekoration (Darmstadt, 1922), 75. Photograph from author’s collection

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Today, most, if not all, of the individual Haus & Garten designs are attributed to Frank. Wlach, however, made his own contributions to them, at times perhaps only in spirit, but at times likely as co- or even sole designer. At times, it seems, he even took the lead, especially in arranging the furnishings in the completed Haus & Garten interiors.

The Culture of the Modern Jewish Interior Missing in Wlach’s 1922 essay is a statement of the guiding notion that would come to define the later Wiener Wohnkultur: a desire to formulate a way of living that was adapted to the Viennese bourgeois reality of the interwar years. Frank, however, describes it perfectly in many of his writings. The modern era, he explains, had brought new challenges, new stresses into people’s lives, particularly into their working lives. Unlike the office or factory, which were becoming statements of a new latter-day functionality, the home, Frank argues, should be a refuge from the outside world, a place to relax and live freely, unfettered by the need to earn a living or fulfill a public role. Everything in the home, he asserts, should be designed to offer comfort, both physically and psychologically. “We have a great deal of time and very little rest.”24 The mission of Haus & Garten was precisely to reintroduce a feeling of quiet and ease into the domestic sphere. What Frank doesn’t say, what he could not easily say in a time of greatly heightened sensitivities, is that his and Wlach’s intention to forge places of refuge and respite was especially directed at the city’s Jewish bourgeoisie. It was not that their client base lacked gentiles entirely—they did have non-Jewish customers—but overwhelmingly those who engaged them to furnish their spaces were middle-class Jews. The reason why this was the case, though, is mostly ignored in later accounts. To an extent, it was the result simply of Jewish clients preferring to patronize a Jewish-owned business. Many of Haus & Garten’s clients were relatives or friends of the two owners. Even more, though, the specific design language that Frank and Wlach had created reflected the sensibilities and needs of their clientele. This was particularly true of the symbolic features of their designs. What stands out about the Haus & Garten aesthetic is the extent to which it was ahistorical. The pieces make reference to past models, but almost always in a manner that is nonspecific. And the full ensembles similarly cannot be described with a single stylistic label—neoBiedermeier or neo-Renaissance, for example. Shaping a language that was at most vaguely historical (and thus only in some hazy way fixed in the past) worked well for Jewish customers, who sought cultural attachment without being reminded directly of their own unhappy history. The specific historical mélange that Frank and Wlach made offered a means for their clients to feel rooted without an explicit connection to former times. It was a means for fostering a feeling of heritage in a broader European culture, without evoking any direct associations with Jewish persecution. The Wiener Wohnkultur also functioned for Jewish patrons in a second way: it was bright and colorful, imbued with a sense of joyousness and well-being. The spaces were light and bright. They were modern, but they placed few requirements

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on their users. Because nothing had to be matched, any piece could be moved or replaced freely. Moreover, the effort that Frank and Wlach made to ensure that their pieces were physically comfortable allowed their clients to sit or lounge readily, and while away the hours freed from outside worries. These two features, the perception of ease—in other words, the presentation of psychological comfort— and a physical release in the form of bodily comfort, made their apartments and houses places of solace. Wlach and Frank’s reasons for reimagining the bourgeois interior in this way were a response to the conditions of the time. They were all too well aware that the city’s Jewish populace was coming under mounting pressure in the later 1920s and early 1930s. They knew it from their own experiences; they hardly could have overlooked it. Both men also perceived distinctly that the situation in Austria was eroding and that the future loomed less than rosy.25 Yet they remained quiet about their effort to use design to provide succor against the rising tide of right-wing extremism. For Frank, whose connections to Vienna’s liberal Judentum were tenuous, it was perhaps a natural stance. Wlach, by background and conviction more intimately bound to his Jewish roots, had a less equivocal attitude. Yet he, too, remained silent.

Max Eisler and the Meanings of a Jewish Wohnkultur It was instead their friend Max Eisler (1881–1937) who would give clarion voice to the issue (Figure 8.4). Eisler was not the only cultural commentator of the time to point to the special nature of the Wiener Wohnkultur and its role in providing a haven from the pressures of modern life. But he was especially open in his statements about how it related to the situation of the Viennese Jewish middle-class. He described, as no other did, the specific forms and meanings of a Jewish Wohnkultur. Born in Boskowitz (now Boskovice, Czech Republic), which then had one of the largest Jewish communities in Moravia, Eisler studied history and art history in Vienna. During his studies, he came under the influence of Josef Strzygowski (1862–1941), who was exceptionally interested in promoting the influences of Near Eastern art on European medieval forms. He began teaching as a Privatdozent at the University of Vienna in 1915. After the war, he became known for his publications on Dutch art, the works of Gustav Klimt, and, especially, Jewish artists and architects. From the mid-1920s on, as we have seen, he also wrote at length about Strnad, Wlach, and Frank.26 Eisler first took up the matter of Jewish art and its meanings in 1910 in a lecture on the Dutch painter Jozef Israëls (1824–1911).27 The talk betrays a studied conservatism and aestheticism that Eisler never fully cast off. Art, he argues, must express emotionality (Herzenssache), give evidence of technical skill (Wohllaut), and be possessed of beauty.28 Israëls’s art, he thought, was Jewish less for its subject matter than its inherent creativity—the quality that Eisler connected above all with the “Jewish spirit.” Eisler had little patience for those Jewish artists that exploited Jewish subject matter but whose works lacked his vision of authenticity. In a scathing review of the paintings

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Figure 8.4  Max Eisler, c. 1932. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv

of Abel Pann (1883–1963), the Vitebsk-born artist who had taken up residence in Jerusalem in 1913 and who was immensely popular among middle-brow Jewish art collectors in Vienna, Eisler equated Pann’s work with a technically proficient but empty kitsch, contending that it only impeded the work of future, better artists. (“Es würde das Echtere, das Edlere verhindern.”29) He instead lauded what he determined to be a more genuine manifestation of Jewish modernity: an art bound to communitarian values, which was both purpose-made and innovative.30 Eisler found this genuineness in the works of Strnad, Wlach, and Frank, and, sometimes, in the designs from those in their larger circle, such as Gorge and Sobotka. He wrote about this at length in sundry Viennese Jewish publications, including Menorah and Das Zelt. He discerned the expression of social good and aesthetic ambition in their design for synagogues and houses, but, above all, he located it in their domestic interiors. In an essay on Frank and Wlach’s Haus & Garten installations for the capacious villa industrialist Otto Krasny (1888–1942)

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and his wife Agathe (1888–1954) had built on the Hohe Warte (Fürfanggasse 5), Eisler describes what he believes were its specific qualities: “The furniture receded modestly, the room became free […]. This new airy and transparent clarity became fused with a dynamic existence […]. The inhabitants’ bodies were restored to their whole and pure states. It is easy to understand this made them feel well and refreshed”31 (Figure 8.5). In pointing to the restorative features of Frank and Wlach’s design, Eisler sought to underscore what he thought was one of the salient aspects of their design: its capacity for fostering a sense of freedom and ease. He also detected a further attribute: it was the work of Jewish architects made for Jewish clients. “Now a new modern form of living space has developed,” he wrote, not least from a group of Jewish architects, that is not a striving for beauty, but that simply seeks to be good. It has its foothold in this milieu and the strictly logical thinking of the new urban dweller […]. It is not an effort to serve the visitor but the inhabitant […]. It seeks to renew the old idea of the dwelling space: to present a spatial likeness for people, a reflection of their actual lives, as a refuge from the tedious haste of the workday, as a place for inner contemplation and self-reflection. It is not a quest for the extraordinary, but the everyday, not for the beautiful but merely the good living space. Aside from the circle of Oskar Strnad, the leaders of this effort are Josef Frank, Hugo Gorge, and Oskar Wlach.32

Figure 8.5  Josef Frank and Oskar Wlach, Living room of the Krasny House, Fürfanggasse 5, 1190 Vienna, 1930. Photo: Julius Scherb. © MAK—Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna

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Eisler freely admitted that this effort was still the work only of a minority of Jewish architects and craftspeople. He placed the blame for the slow appearance of a new, specifically Jewish modernism in architecture and design on conservative museum curators and an equally conservative public.33 Yet he remained optimistic that a new and better time, and an even better design ideal, was in the offing. His optimism, as we can see all too well now, was sadly misplaced. He was not there to witness the terrible end: he died in 1937, not long after returning from an extended trip to Palestine.

Conclusion Wlach continued to operate Haus & Garten until the time of the “Anschluss” in 1938. He did so mostly on his own because Frank had taken up permanent residence in Stockholm after the imposition of the Austrian Ständestaat (the conservative Catholic right-wing regime), in 1934. Prior to 1938, though, Frank traveled back to Vienna from time to time, and the two men completed several substantial commissions, including the Bunzl villa on Chimanistraße, in 1936. But sales of furnishings at Haus & Garten had fallen off sharply by then, as the shop came to rely almost exclusively on sales to a handful of Jewish clients. Wlach stayed on until it was no longer possible. He and his wife Klari (Klara, née Krausz) (1896–1989) finally escaped, first to London, then to the United States, arriving at Ellis Island aboard the luxury liner Normandie on May 1, 1939.34 He was able to obtain an architectural license in March of the next year, and he found a small number of commissions—mostly for interiors—in and around New York. In the early 1950s, he tried unsuccessfully to regain ownership of Haus & Garten. His efforts to establish a related firm in the United States similarly failed. He spent his remaining years, until his retirement in 1958, working for Hopeman Brothers, Inc., a design firm that specialized in ship interiors. He died in 1963, at the age of eighty-two.35 Even if they had not intended it from the outset, Wlach and Frank’s vision of a design idiom of refuge and respite came to have a doubled-edged meaning. In their first definition, it was about the escape from the rigors of the modern workaday world. To recede into the warmly embracing spaces of their Haus & Garten aesthetic was a means to find solace and peace, removed from the travails of modern life. Their rooms represented a haven of domesticity, of G’müt—unalloyed comfort and psychological ease, as Frank had it.36 The meanings of such escape were transformed as the political and cultural situation for Jews deteriorated. When antisemitism grew more lethal, the release Frank and Wlach offered became bound up with the flight from a toxic reality. But the safety and liberation they offered was deceptive. Their interiors would provide refuge and respite, but only for a time and in a way that was all too tragically illusory.

Notes 1 “Firmenprotokollierungen,” Wiener Zeitung (Amtsblatt) (August 19, 1925): 514. For a general history of Haus & Garten, its products, and its impact, see Martina Wallner, Haus & Garten—Frank & Wlach: Ein Beitrag zur österreichischen Wohnkultur

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(Vienna: Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz, 2008): esp. 10–39, and Marlene Ott-Wodni, Josef Frank 1885–1967: Raumgestaltung und Möbeldesign (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015): esp. 51–86. See also Christopher Long, “The Other Modern Dwelling: Josef Frank and Haus & Garten,” University of Minnesota, Center for Austrian Studies, 1999. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/90611. 2 See, e.g., Hans Ankwiez-Kleehoven, “Österreich auf der Internationalen Kunstgewerbeausstellung Paris 1925, Teil V.: Die Interieurs an der Esplande des Invalides,” Wiener Zeitung (September 12, 1925): 1. 3 Walter Sobotka (1888–1972) was closely befriended with Frank and Wlach. Like them, he had studied with Carl König and Max Fabiani at the Vienna Technische Hochschule. He came from a well-to-do family (his father was a partner in Hauser & Sobokta, one of the leading manufacturers of malt in Central Europe). It is possible that he helped to underwrite the opening of the Haus & Garten firm. He does not appear to have had much, if any, role in the design process, although further research may alter this view. He and Frank remained close for many years, even after both men had sought exile. They were reunited in New York during the Second World War, and they corresponded from time to time. http://www.architektenlexikon.at/ de/612.htm, and correspondence between Walter Sobotka and Josef Frank, Walter Sobotka Papers, Avery Library, Columbia University, New York. 4 Like many Jewish businessmen at the time of the German Nazi annexation of Austria, Frank and Wlach were effectively forced to sell their holdings. Later, in 1953, Josef Kalmár’s daughter, Lea Calice, took over the firm, working with AnnaLülja Praun, who assumed the creative directorship. The Kalmárs sold the store in 1958, and it passed through various hands, continuing to operate until 1980, when it was finally closed for good. Marlene Ott, “Josef Frank und das EinrichtungsUnternehmen Haus und Garten,” in Wohnen zwischen den Kriegen: Wiener Möbel 1914–1941, ed. Eva B. Ottillinger (Vienna: Böhlau, 2009), 121–3. 5 Josef Frank, “Rum och inredning,” Form 30 (1934): 217–25; translated into German under the title “Raum und Einrichtung,” in Johannes Spalt and Hermann Czech, Josef Frank 1885–1967; Exh. Cat. (Vienna: Hochschule für angewandte Kunst, 1981), 97. On Frank and his concept of “living,” see, e.g., Stefan Neubig, Das Wohnen als Ziel des architektonischen Entwerfens (Dresden: Shaker Verlag, 2009), 112–58. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 For further discussion on Carl König and his Jewish students, see Christopher Long, “The Königschule and Its Legacies,” in Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism, ed. Elana Shapira (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018), 129–42. 9 See, e.g., Maria Welzig, Josef Frank 1885–1967: Das architektonische Werk (Vienna: Böhlau, 1998): 31–7. 10 “Oskar Wlach, der zu den maßgeblichen Protagonisten der ‘zweiten Wiener Moderne’ der Zwischenkriegszeit gehört, steht ein wenig zu Unrecht im Schatten seines Partners Josef Frank.” http://www.architektenlexikon.at/de/695.htm. 11 One of the most complete versions can be found in Ursula Prokop, Zum jüdischen Erbe in der Wiener Architketur: Der Beitrag jüdischer ArchitektInnen am Wiener Baugeschehen 1868–1938 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2016): 126–9. 12 Lehmann’s Allgemeiner Wohnungsanzeiger nebst Handels- und Gewerbe-Adreßbuch für die k. u. k. Reichs- Haupt- und Residenzstadt und Umgebung (Vienna, 1890–1900). On Wlach’s life and career, see the excellent brief biography in Matthias Boeckl, ed.,

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22 23 24

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Designing Transformation Visionäre und Vertriebene: Österreichische Spuren in der modernen amerikanischen Architektur (Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1995), 348. Oskar Wlach, “Die farbige Inkrustation der Florentiner Protorenaissance: Eine Studie über die Verwendung der Farbe in der Außenarchitektur,” PhD diss., Technische Hochschule Wien, 1906. Boeckl, ed., Visionäre und Vertriebene, 348. Boeckl, ed., Visionäre und Vertriebene, 348. See, e.g., Wlach’s early essay on Frank and his work. Oskar Wlach, “Zu den Arbeiten von Josef Frank,” Das Interieur 13 (1912): 41–5. Oskar Wlach, “Messel,” Der Architket XV (1909): 33. “Dem Vereine für fromme und wohltätige Werke, Wien I. Seitenstettengasse…,” Neue Freie Presse (January 15, 1914): 8. Wlach officially joined B’nai Brith on October 21, 1925. Also among the group’s members was his later client Otto Krasny, who joined on January 3, 1922. Without the full client list of Haus & Garten, which has been lost, it would be impossible to say how many of the firm’s clients were members, but certainly many were, and Wlach’s associations with this group and other Jewish charitable organizations no doubt played a part in developing their customer base. It is also worth noting that in 1926 Sigmund Freud held a famous lecture before the Vienna B’nai Brith chapter, in which he referred to his (secular) Jewish identification, echoing a sensibility that no doubt many others related to. Tobias Walch (born Wlach), Wlach’s nephew, told me separately in an interview in 2001 that his uncle had also been active in B’nai Brith, that he often participated in, or contributed to, Jewish charitable efforts, and that this was quite important to him. Tobis Walch, telephone interview by author, Boulder, Colorado, March 23, 1999. Walch also generously supplied me with a few documents he had concerning his uncle’s career, as well as the photograph of him reproduced in this essay, one of the few extant. Max Eisler, Oskar Strnad (Vienna: Gerlach und Wiedling, 1936), 9. On Strnad’s early collaboration with Wlach and Frank, see also Iris Meder and Evi Fuchs, Oskar Strnad 1879–1935; Exh. Cat. (Salzburg: Pustet, 2007), esp. 9–31. Boeckl, ed., Visionäre und Vertriebene, 348. While in Turkey, Wlach and Frankl undertook a number of projects, including a plan to rebuild the Stambul and Galata quarters of Constantinople that had been destroyed by fire. He also designed a central slaughterhouse for the city and a new urban plan for Smyrna. See Frankl’s account of the two men’s shared time in Constantinople, in Christopher Long and Aurora McClain, eds., Paul T. Frankl– Autobiobraphy (Los Angeles: DoppelHouse Press, 2013): 52–7. “Oskar Wlach, Bewerbung für die Aufnahme in die Liste der Sachverständigen für Architektur und Hochbaufach,” June 18, 1924, and “Professional Career of Dr. Oskar Wlach, April 1958.” Copies in possession of the author. Oskar Wlach, “Einheit und Lebendigkeit,” Innen-Dekoration 33 (January–February 1922): 59–76. Frank expresses these thought repeatedly in his writings of the 1920s and beyond. His most powerful reading of the situation comes perhaps in his book, Architektur als Symbol, written in 1930. See, e.g., the chapter “Unrast” (“Restlessness” or “Disquiet”), in Josef Frank, Architektur als Symbol: Elemente deutschen neuen Bauens (Vienna: Verlag Anton Schroll & Co., 1931): 149–50. Wlach, however, remained less pessimistic than Frank, at least for a time. On the day of the “Anschluss,” in March 1938, he wrote to his brother Armin: “Ich glaube, daß für die allernächste Zeit keine allzu harten Maßregeln kommen dürften, das

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27 28 29 30 31

32

33 34

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hängt aber auch von dem Verhalten der äußeren Umgebung ab—aber auch darüber soll man sich den Kopf nicht zerbrechen.” Oskar Wlach to Armin Wlach, March 12, 1938, Wiener Bibliothek, quoted in Boeckl, ed., Visionäre und Vertriebene, 348. On Eisler’s early life and career, see Evelyn Adunka, Max Eisler: Wiener Kunsthistoriker und Publizist zwischen orthodoxer Lebenspraxis, sozialem Engagement und wissenschaftlicher Exzellenz (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2018): 7–40. Eisler’s academic career was effectively cut short because of discrimination he faced from more conservative members of the art history faculty and the university administration. He functioned instead as a cultural critic and observer, rather than as a pure academic. Eisler subsequently published the talk as a short book. See Max Eisler, Von jüdischer Kunst (Josef Israels): Ein Vortrag (Cologne and Leipzig: Jüdischer Verlag, 1910). Cf. Adunka, Max Eisler, 43–4. “It would only hinder [the appearance] of the more authentic and the noble.” Max Eisler, “Der Fall Abel Pann,” Menorah 1 (1926): 32. One of the most direct expressions of his ideas can be found in Max Eisler, “Kunst und Gemeinde,” Menorah 1 (1928): 118–24. “[D]as Möbel trat bescheiden zurück, der Raum wurde frei […] Mit ihrer neuen luftigen und durchsichtigen Klarheit verband sich ein neues bewegliches Wesen […] Die Körper der Bewohner kamen nun wieder zu ihrem ganzen, reinen Recht. Begreiflich, daß sie sich dabei wohl fühlten und ihr Geist erfrischt.” Max Eisler, “Von der neuen Baukunst,” Menorah 1 (1931): 37. “Nun hat sich bei uns, nicht zuletzt durch eine Gruppe jüdischer Architekten, eine moderne Form der Wohnung entwickelt, die nicht schön, sondern nur gut sein will. Sie fußt in dem Milieu und in der streng logischen Denkungsweise des neuen Großstädters […] Sie will den alten Sinn der Wohnung wieder erneuern: als des Menschen räumliches Ebenbild, als Spiegelung seines wirklichen Lebens, als eine Zuflucht aus der mühsamen Hast des Werktages, als seine Stätte der inneren Sammlung und Selbstbesinnung. Sie will nicht das Außerordentliche, sondern nur die gute Wohnung. Im Kreise Oskar Strnads wollen das außer dem Führer auch Josef Frank, Hugo Gorge und Oskar Wlach.” Max Eisler, “Die schöne Wohnung,” Das Zelt: Eine jüdische illustrierte Monatsschrift 1, no. 3 (1924): 106, 108. See Max Eisler, “Aus dem Kunstleben: Bauen und Wohnen,” Menorah 2 (1931): 125–33. “New York, Passenger and Crew Lists, List of Alien Passengers, S. S. Normandie, sailing from Southampton, 26 April 1939,” and “Oskar Wlach, Declaration of Intention, U.S. Federal Immigration Records, District Court of the Southern District of New York, No. 441502,” September 5, 1939. Wlach and his wife Klari lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for a time; later, they moved to an apartment at 1125 Grand Concourse, in the Bronx. New York City Directories, 1946–1963. “Oskar Wlach” [obituary], New York Times, August 20, 1963, 32. Boeckl, ed., Visionäre und Vertriebene, 348. Josef Frank, “Der Gschnas fürs G’müt und der Gschnas als Problem,” in Bau und Wohnung: die Bauten der Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart errichtet 1927. eds. Peter Behrens and Deutscher Werkbund. Exh. Cat, (Stuttgart: Dr. Fr. Wedekind & Co., 1927), 48–57.

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The Art and Design of Anna Lesznai: Adaptation and Transformation Rebecca Houze

The career of Hungarian writer, artist, and designer Anna Lesznai (1885–1966) was shaped by her close friendships with artists and intellectuals in the turbulent period spanning the two world wars, as well as by her political exile and her experience of otherness as an immigrant, a woman, and a Jew. This chapter examines how Lesznai’s work changed in relationship to the shifting social, professional, and national contexts in which she lived. It suggests that her engagement with traditional folk art, especially with embroidered textiles from her native Hungary, provided not only a source of inspiration for her own imaginative art and design, but also a model for stitching together a meaningful identity in response to the many forms of exclusion that she faced. Lesznai’s appropriation of traditional Hungarian folk art was distinct from that of her peers, who were occupied with similar activities in the early twentieth century. It was influenced by her unique perspective as a Jewish woman of independent means supported by Jewish avant-garde networks in Budapest and Vienna, and later, in the United States. Anna Lesznai, born Amália Moscovitz, was a third-generation Hungarian Jew, whose grandparents were ennobled in the nineteenth century for achievements in medicine and industry (Figure 9.1). She benefited from the wealth and cultural advantages provided by her father, who hosted a salon of young intellectuals, and by her mother, whose DeutschHatvany family included art collectors and members of the Hungarian avant-garde.1 Lesznai spent winters in Budapest and summers in the village of Körtvélyes (Hrušov, Slovakia) in a manor house with a beautiful garden that would become an important motif in her poetry, painting, illustrated fairy tales, embroidery design, personal diaries, and autobiographical novel. She adopted her new name, Anna Lesznai, from the name of the village Leszna (Lesné, Slovakia), which neighbored her family home in Körtvélyes. Many modern Hungarian artists appropriated the names of Hungarian villages as symbols of their patriotism, national identity, and authenticity, a gesture that took on even greater significance for Hungarian Jews who chose to identify with Magyar cultural heritage. Given that her personal, professional, and creative life was so rich it is notable that scholarship about Anna Lesznai was sparse until recently. This fact raises questions about how the lives of women artists, especially Jewish women artists, have been remembered by later generations. Art and literary historian Petra Török’s exhaustive

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Figure 9.1  Anna Lesznai Portrait, c. 1910. Photograph by Aladár Székely. Source: Petőfi Literary Museum, Collection of Fine Arts, Budapest. F 5576

study of Lesznai’s papers at the Petőfi Literary Museum in Budapest in the early twenty-first century, together with several exhibitions and conferences, opened the door to new examinations of Lesznai’s work from different points of view, including her relationship to feminist social circles in Hungary before the war, her associations with artists’ groups in Vienna and Czechoslovakia in the 1920s, and her professional artistic, political, and intellectual connections in Budapest in the 1930s.2 Anna Lesznai’s social and cultural exclusion is a recurring theme in these studies that explore her political exile in the 1920s, her uneasy identity as a “new woman,” and her subsequent exclusion as a Jew from conservative antisemitic factions and from Hungary altogether in 1939.3 Lesznai’s multiple marriages and motherhood also contributed to her experience of exclusion, as did her marginalization as an émigré artist in Vienna and the United States. Fiona Stewart examined Lesznai’s artistic expressions through the lens of “homecoming,” a trope that sheds light on the experience of longing and otherness that characterized much of her work.4

Before the First World War: A Folk Art of Her Own Anna Lesznai’s life story emerges in incongruous fragments. Certain motifs are repeated in biographical accounts that paint a picture of her as a wealthy and generous hostess, a supportive confidante, a “little sister,” or an “aunt.” To many

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she was an intimate but peripheral female friend. At age seventeen she was briefly married to an acquaintance from the radical salon in Budapest hosted by the Russian Jewish intellectual Cecile Polányi (1862–1939) in which she was then active.5 Her first husband was the father of her son Károly (Kari) Garay (1903– 1945) who remained in Europe during the Second World War.6 As a young woman Lesznai studied painting in Budapest and Paris. Her poetry was published in the Hungarian avant-garde journal Nyugat (West), and she was close to the group of social scientists connected to Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century), the journal started by Oszkár Jászi (1875–1957), a friend of Lesznai’s brother, and a frequent guest at her family home. In 1913 Oszkár Jászi and Anna Lesznai married. Shortly thereafter they had three sons, Ferenc (1914), who died as a baby, György (1915– 1992), and András (1917–1998). In the years before the First World War Lesznai also frequented the Vasárnapi Kör (Sunday Circle) meetings with the Marxist philosopher György Lukács (1885–1971) at the apartment of film critic Béla Balázs (1884–1949).7 The years before Lesznai’s marriage to Oszkár Jászi were professionally successful. In 1911 she exhibited a selection of her modern embroidery designs at a show organized by the avant-garde artists’ group A Nyolcat (The Eight). Her internationally acclaimed embroidered cushions and other decorative items were sold in Paris in the exclusive Galerie de la Rue Royale, in Berlin at the department store Wertheim, and in Vienna by the store of the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshops), which had just opened its fashion division that year.8 Embroidered textiles reminiscent of folk traditions were popular in Central Europe at that time, often appearing in fashion magazines for apparel and for home decorating as cushion covers, table-runners, and draperies. In Hungary many artists appropriated traditional folk art in their modern designs, including those connected to the arts and crafts colony in Gödöllő and to the Budapesti Műhely, a workshop established in 1913 by Hungarian architect Lajos Kozma (1884–1948) in the spirit of the Wiener Werkstätte.9 Each of these projects explored ways to beautify the domestic environment by bringing folk-inspired designs into the home. In the years before the First World War modern artists, architects, and designers engaged with decades of Hungarian ethnographic and art historical research that had been undertaken to build a strong sense of national identity rooted in the motifs of traditional material culture, especially that found in the rural villages of more isolated parts of the monarchy.10 While artists were occupied with reimagining traditional folk art in new forms, the Hungarian government, wealthy philanthropists, and other private benevolent organizations sought to preserve the traditions they believed were at risk of extinction as a result of industrialization.11 The organizations spanned an ideological range, from progressive efforts to improve the economy in impoverished regions to more conservative goals to celebrate embroidery as a signifier of authentic and appropriate Hungarian femininity. Between the two world wars, for example, the counterrevolutionary National Organization of Hungarian Women (Magyar Asszonyok Nemzeti Szövetsége, or MANSZ), founded by Hungarian poet Emma Ritóok (1868– 1945) and antisemitic writer Cécile Tormay (1875–1937), encouraged the production of traditional embroidery.12

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In her 1913 article, “Háziipar és népművészet” (Home Industry and Folk Art), Lesznai distinguished between what she perceived as true folk art and cottage industry production intended for commercial sale, warning that careless efforts by outsiders to spur the production of folk art could have a detrimental effect on rural communities.13 Images of embroidered cushion covers and handbags, designed by Anna Lesznai, and “sewn by peasant woman,” were published in 1914 in a review of Hungarian decorative art by Amelia Levetus (1853–1938), the British-Austrian Jewish writer whose columns in the journal The Studio brought traditional and contemporary Austrian and Hungarian textile arts, produced by women, to the attention of an international audience in the early twentieth century (Figure 9.2).14 According to Levetus, Lesznai wanted to help preserve the village women’s traditional needlework skills, while also creating a new market for contemporary folk-inspired embroideries that could

Figure 9.2  “Embroidered cushions designed by Anna Lesznai, sewn by peasant women,” in The Studio Year Book of Decorative Art. 1914. London: The Studio, Ltd. (1914), 233. Ady cushion II, lower left. Photograph from author’s collection

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provide a small income for the needleworkers. The cultural complexities of Lesznai’s introduction of Magyar embroidery patterns to a multicultural, yet largely Slovak population, however, should be further interrogated. Recounting her experiences before the First World War, Lesznai described her work with peasant women in Hatvan, where her mother’s family owned land, and in other villages of Upper Hungary that, she explained, “did not have a living folk art tradition of their own.”15 She introduced to the women there her patterns for handbags and cushion covers, which they executed according to her instructions. Lesznai’s colorful embroidery designs with bold floral motifs were inspired by the work of migrant Matyó women who spent summers in Körtvélyes, having traveled from Mezőkövesd, further to the south.16 Matyó embroidery is recognizable for its bold red, blue, and green floral motifs. Today UNESCO protects the Matyó embroidery produced in the former Zemplén County (Zemplín region, Slovakia) as an example of intangible world cultural heritage.17 The thick embroidery used to adorn the borders of sleeves, aprons, and ribbons of both men’s and women’s clothing was popularized at exhibitions in the late nineteenth century. It is possible that Lesznai knew the work of Matyó artist Bori Kisjankó (Gaspar Mártonné Barbara Molnar) (1876–1954) whose embroidered textiles and pattern designs became an iconic symbol of living folk art at that time.18 As Fiona Stewart has noted, what most motivated Lesznai was the artistic process of folk embroidery, especially its free experimentation with color—a process that paralleled that of painters with whom she had studied in Paris and which was of interest to members of the modern artist group A Nyolcat, who had invited Lesznai to exhibit some of her designs at their first show in 1911. Many of Lesznai’s sketches for embroidery patterns to be executed by village women were even labeled with the numbers of specific colors of embroidery thread that she wanted them to use. By working with women in the villages of Upper Hungary on the tactile, manual craft of embroidery, Lesznai inserted herself physically and socially into a practice that was, like her own adopted name, integrally connected to the Hungarian landscape. Although she may have used some contemporary manufactured materials in her projects, the spirit of Lesznai’s designs emulated a tradition of embellishing homespun linen cloth with locally produced wool or cotton threads, which had once been dyed with the colors of native plants. Despite the paternalistic overtones of Lesznai’s workshop, her connection to Hungarian folk art was personal and poignant. “I understood the peasant because I, too, was oppressed at the side of my husband,” she wrote, in the voice of her alter ego, Liso, in her autobiographical novel.19 It is tempting to interpret this statement from the point of view of Lesznai’s own marriages, first to Károly Garay Sr., with whom she shared a youthful romance that resulted in the birth of her first child; next to the prominent social scientist Oszkár Jászi, who, though supportive of Lesznai as an artist and intellectual, certainly overshadowed her in their social circles; and to Tibor Gergely (1900–1978), a man fifteen years younger than she, with whom she had her longestlasting and most equitable partnership. Lesznai and Jászi both benefited from their mutual access to social networks in Budapest, but their relationship also forced Lesznai into political exile while taking on the greater burden of raising their two children. Both Gergely and Lesznai exhibited their work widely in Vienna and Budapest, though

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Gergely’s successful career as a children’s book illustrator, after the couple immigrated to New York in 1939, is better documented than is Lesznai’s teaching in the United States. Perhaps the differences in age and experience between Gergely and Lesznai, together with her independent wealth, and the fact that they did not have any children together, put Lesznai on a more equal footing with her third partner, who nevertheless, as a man, had more professional opportunities than she. Although she was concerned with the plight of peasant women, and empathized with them, Lesznai clearly romanticized the feudal structure that she enjoyed as a wealthy landowner (Figure 9.3). But her project was unlike that of nationalist and antisemitic women’s groups in Hungary, such as MANSZ, which supported the revival of traditional Hungarian textile practices as a form of Magyar patriotism. Lesznai’s appropriation of Magyar and Slovak cultural heritage did not stem from a calling to strengthen and

Figure 9.3  Anna Lesznai painting outdoors, Körtvélyes, 1920s. Photographer unknown. Source: Petőfi Literary Museum, Collection of Fine Arts, Budapest. F.2009.149.1

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uphold the Hungarian nation, but rather from an individual desire to be connected to an inspiring creative tradition, with which she felt a personal kinship and sense of solidarity as a woman, and which was rooted in a place that she considered to be her home. But Lesznai’s particular identity as a Jewish woman made those connections tenuous. As historian Judith Szapor has noted, Lesznai’s one-time friend and fellow member of the Sunday Circle, the poet Emma Ritóok, was simultaneously charmed by Lesznai’s love of Hungarian village traditions and apprehensive of her ability to mask her Jewish identity by acculturating herself and her own artistic practice to that of the Hungarian peasantry.20 Lesznai wrote about being Jewish with insight and sensitivity. Responding to a special issue of Huszadik Század, which asked contemporary artists, writers, editors, and business leaders to respond to “The Jewish Question in Hungary,” Lesznai described her childhood. She remembered learning from her mother that her family was Jewish and wanting to play with the children of Jewish business owners in the villages, who shunned her, refusing even to share a meal with her. She experienced a kind of placelessness, knowing that as a member of the nobility she was not a part of their world, but that neither would she ever be fully recognized as Hungarian in the way that her Christian friends were. The Jew, she wrote, always “feels Jewish,” even when he is completely alone.21 The acculturated Jew, she explained, is forced to deny his own heritage. Lesznai sought the cultural heritage she was longing for in her Hungarian pseudonym—a geographical place, in the products of Hungarian peasant women with a rich heritage of their own, and in the images of rural villagers at the marketplace, which she painted between the wars.

Exile and Artistic Networks in Vienna, 1919–1931 Lesznai’s marriage to Oszkár Jászi ushered in a turbulent period in her life and career. In 1919 at the recommendation of György Lukács she was charged with developing an arts curriculum for elementary schools in the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (Republic of Councils) led by the Hungarian Jewish communist revolutionary Béla Kun (1886–1938). That same year Lesznai and Jászi divorced. Both had fled separately—Jászi to Vienna, and Lesznai with the children to her family home in Körtvélyes. Jászi had served as Minister of Nationalities for the liberal democratic government in Hungary led by Mihály Károlyi, which preceded the 1918 October Revolution. Objecting to the repressive aspects of Kun’s more radical administration Jászi immigrated to Vienna. When Kun’s administration collapsed Lesznai fled the counter-Revolutionary regime led by Miklós Horthy, fearing retribution not only for her part in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but also for her connection to Jászi. She then lived with her children and her third husband, Tibor Gergely, for more than a decade between Vienna and Körtvélyes, which had been annexed to Czechoslovakia after the First World War. During her exile, Anna Lesznai exhibited paintings, embroidery, and book illustrations with progressive artists’ organizations, many of which were supported by networks of Jewish patrons and critics in Vienna. She also collaborated with Tibor Gergely on stage and costume designs for the Yiddish Freie jüdische Volksbühne

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(Free Jewish People’s Theater) and her work was regularly and widely reviewed in the Viennese press.22 Critics remarked on her talent for decoration, use of color, naiveté, and the fairy tale ethos of her compositions, which were influenced by the Slovakian and Hungarian folk traditions of her native Körtvélyes, while also praising her as a Hungarian poet and an intellectual from Budapest. Lesznai herself connected the Orientalist scheme of her collaborative designs with Gergely to a Jewish religious tradition, characterized by ritual, rhythm, and myth.23 In 1925 Anna Lesznai exhibited work with members of the Hagenbund at the Neue Galerie in Vienna’s first district.24 The modern artists’ organization Hagenbund had formed in 1899, two years after the organization of the Vienna Secession, and took its name from the proprietor of an inn frequented by the artists. The following year, Lesznai mounted a widely attended exhibition of watercolors, drawings, and embroidery designs at a venue known as the BUKUM, an acronym for “Buch, Kunst, Musikalien,” which presented lectures by progressive thinkers and contemporary art exhibitions. Among her work on display was the painting Bauerntanz, which a critic for Die Stunde compared to a “Bach fugue,” inspired by folk life in Zemplén County with a strong Oriental influence.25 Another critic writing for the Arbeiter Zeitung likewise praised Lesznai’s use of color, rhythm, and decoration.26 The Hungarian journalist and graphic designer Lili Berényi (1902–1989), a frequent contributor to Die Bühne, urged her readers not to miss the exhibition with its many delightful animal illustrations, several of which were reproduced in the magazine.27 Lesznai’s “kaleidoscope” of Slovakian village life, like that depicted in the village church festival, Kirmes, hovered somewhere between dream and reality, the editors of Die Bühne wrote, like an Oriental fairy tale.28 The influential Viennese Jewish art historian and journalist Dr. Else Hofmann (1893–1960), editor of Österreichische Kunst, introduced Lesznai’s exhibition at the BUKUM, and the Hungarian Jewish filmmaker and critic Béla Balázs, Lesznai’s friend from the Sunday Circle in Budapest, presented a lecture in conjunction with it, entitled, “The Worldview in the Picture” (Das Weltbild im Bild), which connected Lesznai’s approach to painting with contemporary theories of film that had emerged recently.29 Balázs was then developing his concept of cinematic time, which was influenced in part by Anna Lesznai’s understanding of the fairy tale.30 The two collaborated that same year on an illustrated volume of Balász’s articles, which he produced as feuilleton editor for the Viennese paper, Der Tag.31 Shortly thereafter Lesznai contributed a selection of watercolors and textile designs to the first exhibition of Wiener Frauenkunst, a new organization devoted to supporting women artists and designers. It was held at the Austrian Museum of Applied Art (Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie) and featured the work of Czech and Austrian women painters, printmakers, and applied artists.32 Lesznai’s paintings of village scenes between the two world wars incorporate many individuals wearing diverse traditional costume. They are arranged in dynamic compositions—dancing, playing music, or praying amid vernacular architecture, farm animals, harvested grain, and religious symbols, producing an image of the traditional village as imbued with lively, colorful rhythms of everyday activity and ancient ritual.

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The critics who praised her work spanned the political spectrum. Wiener Frauenkunst attracted the attention of liberal and modernist critics such as Richard Harlfinger (1873–1948), husband of the organization’s president, Fanny HarlfingerZakucka (1873–1954), and feminist writer Else Ehrlich (dates unconfirmed), as well as the Galician Jewish journalist Hermann Menkes (1863–1931), and art historian Wolfgang Born (1893–1949), a German Jew, who later immigrated to the United States to escape Nazi persecution.33 The conservative Austrian nationalist writer Karl Maria Grimme (1897–1983), however, also highlighted Lesznai’s work as representing a new direction in painting with roots in folk traditions, in which something ancient, mysterious, and Oriental lingered in the countryside of the former monarchy.34 Even though she and her friends were exiled from Hungary in the 1920s Lesznai continued to enjoy a productive career as a painter with exhibitions in Vienna and in Czechoslovakia. She was supported by a network of progressive artist groups, galleries, and critics, many of them members of the Jewish intelligentsia. Despite her professional successes, however, it is notable that Lesznai remarked, in a diary entry from 1923, that she felt out of place in Austria, where she was a foreigner, both Hungarian and Jewish, in a foreign country, an experience that was exacerbated by the contradictions of her financial wealth and privilege as a member of the ruling class and her oppression as a woman. “I feel the extra-territoriality of my life,” she wrote, “with incredible vehemence.”35 But Lesznai’s feeling of alienation may also have allowed her the opportunity to consciously and creatively position herself as an outsider with a unique approach to modern art and design.

Homecoming and Professional Activity in Budapest, 1931–1939 In 1931 Anna Lesznai returned to Budapest with Tibor Gergely and her younger son, András. The couple was invited to teach at the Atélier, a craft workshop led by the Hungarian Jewish painter Dezső Orbán (Desiderius Orban) (1884–1986), one of the original members of A Nyolcat, the group of avant-garde painters with whom Lesznai had first shown some of her embroidery designs in Budapest in 1911.36 Orbán established his school in Budapest to provide evening classes for the public to learn architecture, sculpture, decorative, and graphic arts from master artists and craftspeople. The Atélier operated until 1939 when Orbán emigrated from Hungary with his wife and son to escape Nazi persecution, establishing a new studio in his adopted homeland, Australia.37 Although it was Lesznai’s decorative book illustration and embroidery design that had first attracted the interest of the avant-garde before the First World War, she was equally well recognized as a painter by the 1930s, exhibiting her work regularly in Hungary and abroad. She and Gergely both participated in the modern artists’ society KUT (Kepzőművészek új társaság) (New Society of Artists) with whom they exhibited work at the Nemzeti Szálon (National Salon) in Budapest. She was also represented in the first national exhibition of fine arts held at the Műcsarnok (Art Hall), and at the Ernst Múzeum and Támas Gallery.38 Like the galleries and groups to

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which Lesznai was connected in Vienna, the Ernst Múzeum and Támas Gallery were started by Jews, supported Jewish artists, and maintained close ties to Jewish patrons and collectors. Shortly after returning to Budapest Anna Lesznai participated in a large group show curated by art dealer Lajos Ernst (1872–1937) and writer Béla Lázar (1869–1950) at the Ernst Múzeum. Artist Robert Berény (1887–1953) praised her images, comparing them to the work of sixteenth-century Flemish painter Pieter Breughel the Elder, who similarly depicted daily village life in busy, colorful scenes that shed light on the lived experience of the peasantry.39 Art collector Henrik Tamás (1879–1960) established his gallery in 1927 to support modernist painters, sculptors, graphic, and decorative artists. He exhibited Lesznai’s work there in 1934 and 1935 in exhibitions of modern Hungarian graphics and watercolors, and in 1938 he featured the work of students from Orbán’s Atélier.40 Lesznai thus remained connected to the members of the avantgarde circles in Hungary, which had supported her before the First World War, while also building on the reputation that she had gained among prominent curators and critics in Vienna. In 1935 Lesznai’s work was also exhibited in New York at the Brooklyn Museum, in a show organized by Elma Pratt (1888–1977), director of the International School of Art. An enthusiast of international folk art, Pratt organized workshops around the

Figure 9.4  Anna Lesznai, Nagymihályi vásár (Fair in Nagymihály), 1930s. Tempera on paper. 49.5 x 62 cm. Source: Szépművészeti Múzeum/Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, 2020

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world in which artists could learn from master artisans of different cultural traditions. Pratt, who was particularly enamored of decorative folk embroidery and architecture in Central Europe, made several trips to Hungary, including to Mezőkövesd in the 1920s and 1930s.41 In May of 1938, the year before she immigrated permanently to the United States, Lesznai again exhibited paintings and embroideries at the Ernst Múzeum. The Hungarian Jewish writer András Komor (1898–1944) presented a lecture celebrating the Jewish elements in her work. He pointed to the figure of the “Polish Jew” clad in a long, black caftan, so often visible in the background of Lesznai’s village scenes.42 Such figures appear, for example, in Lesznai’s painting Nagymihályi vásár (Fair in Nagymihály) (Michalovce, Slovakia), which dates from the 1930s (Figure 9.4). The town, with its large Orthodox Jewish population, is depicted as a dynamic, colorful, multicultural center of activity. Young women in bright, full skirts and men in cloaks and broad-brimmed hats mingle with others in a variety of traditional Hungarian and Slovakian costume. In the year before Lesznai emigrated from Hungary to America, Komor embraced and celebrated the Jewish motifs in her paintings as a reflection of what he perceived as the Hungarian Jewish experience and creative spirit.

A Teacher of Hungarian Folk Art in America, 1939–1966 In an interview for the Smithsonian National Archives the American art historian Stanton Loomis Catlin (1915–1997) remembered several summers that he spent at Anna Lesznai’s estate in Hrušov in the 1930s. He described the lively salon of Central European Jewish poets, writers, and artists hosted by “Mali Nene” (Aunt Máli) and learning to paint from her “young lover” Tibor Gergely. Catlin came to know Lesznai and Gergely through his friendship with Lesznai’s younger son, Andrew Jászi, Catlin’s college dormitory mate at Oberlin College. Gergely and Lesznai were able to immigrate to the United States in 1939 to escape Nazi persecution, Catlin remembered, thanks to the affidavits that his own family had provided for the refugees.43 Upon her arrival in the United States Lesznai gave lectures for six weeks in Sandusky, Ohio at one of the International Schools of Art, presumably at the invitation of Pratt, with whom Lesznai shared her admiration of folk art.44 In her engaging presentations there of Slovakian embroidery, Lesznai reportedly described with nostalgia and regret the industrialization of the rural villages around her beloved Körtvélyes. The invitation to teach in Sandusky gave Lesznai the opportunity to spend weekends with her former husband, Oszkár Jászi and his community of Hungarian refugees, at nearby Oberlin.45 Jászi had joined the faculty at Oberlin College as a professor of political science in 1925 and furthered his reputation as a radical sociologist with the publication of several books, including The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, a study of the emergence of nationalism in Austria-Hungary before the First World War.46 In 1939 that same year Lesznai also exhibited paintings and embroidery designs at Wellesley College, a progressive women’s liberal art college near Boston, and taught courses at the Boston Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), which offered numerous outreach programs for newly arrived immigrants from different parts of the world.47

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Oszkár Jászi traveled to Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1939 to visit his son Andrew (András), who had recently graduated from Oberlin and would shortly thereafter begin his graduate studies at Harvard. Lesznai’s international reputation as a writer, painter, and decorative artist was such by 1939 that it provided her with many professional opportunities that she could arrange to her personal advantage, taking time to see her loved ones as she eased into the difficult transition of immigration. Although she was active in Ohio and Boston, Lesznai and Gergely settled in New York, initially living in a rooming house with residents of diverse ethnic backgrounds in lower Manhattan, though shortly afterwards they joined other Central European expatriates on the Upper West Side.48 Gergely pursued a successful career as an illustrator of children’s books and exhibited his drawings and watercolors regularly at such venues as the 460 Park Avenue Galleries, Wakefield Gallery, and A-D Gallery.49 His illustrations for Margaret Wise Brown’s Wheel on the Chimney, a story about two storks that build their nest on the roof of a farmhouse, features Gergely’s depictions of village architecture that he knew so well from Lesznai’s family home in Körtvélyes, and which figure regularly in Lesznai’s paintings from the 1920s and 1930s.50 In New York the couple was connected to an energetic community of modern artists and European émigrés.51 In 1942 Lesznai presented a lecture on Indian Baskets at the Wellesley College Art Museum.52 The baskets, from Wellesley’s own collection, were displayed to exhibit different techniques for weaving, which could be applied to contemporary materials. Lesznai had been invited to speak because of her expertise with “peasant crafts in Europe,” a topic that she had lectured on three years earlier at Pratt’s International School of Art in Sandusky, and which continued to occupy her throughout her later career. Her interest in Indigenous American crafts paralleled her love of traditional Hungarian folk embroidery, which she similarly viewed as imbued with significant design principles. Pratt and Lesznai may have found themselves to be kindred spirits. When the Second World War made travel to Central Europe impossible, Pratt extended her program to Egypt and Mexico. Lesznai likewise developed an interest in Native North American Art and in textiles from Mexico and Peru after moving to America, searching perhaps, for tangible expressions of creativity, rooted in place, similar to those from the home that she had lost.

Conclusion At first glance it is difficult to see visual similarities between Lesznai’s embroidery designs and book illustration from before the First World War and her paintings of the 1920s and 1930s. The work that she produced during these two periods of her life resulted from dramatically different social circumstances. The earlier embroidery designs and fairy tale images were characterized by flat floral patterns in bright colors, similar to the bold motifs of Matyó embroidery, arranged in a single plane. The paintings from the 1920s, by contrast, depict sharply angled landscapes, interiors, and village scenes that present an unsettling sense of space. The figures wearing traditional folk costume are stylized, forming rhythmic patterns with their dress and gestures— something that her contemporaries noticed and admired. By the 1930s, however, some of her village scenes are depicted from a more distant point of view. Perhaps this

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change in perspective was metaphorical, indicative of Lesznai’s increasing geographical distance and physical separation from her home in Körtvélyes and from Hungarian society in the years before she left for America. Lesznai was influenced by multiple forms of marginalization in the 1920s and 1930s—as a woman artist, a wife, a mother, a divorcée, a socialist activist, a Jewish intellectual, and an immigrant refugee. Her art and design were shaped by her multiple experiences of inclusion in and exclusion from various artistic, social, and political realms. She used her social networks and personal financial wealth to establish a place for herself as a professional artist, and had an exceptional ability to adapt to and transform within her changing environments. In particular Lesznai discovered in the medium of traditional folk embroidery an artistic language in which she could synthesize the complex and contradictory elements of her personal identity with powerful expressions of modern design.

Notes 1 2

3

4 5 6 7

8

Fiona Stewart, “‘In the Beginning Was the Garden’: Anna Lesznai and Hungarian Modernism, 1906–1919” (PhD diss., York University, 2011), 2–3. Judit Szilágyi, “‘Idődíszítés’—Lesznai Anna Meséi (‘The Adornment of Time’—Anna Lesznai’s Fairytales),” in Idódíszítés: mések és rajok, ed. Judit Szilágyi (Budapest: Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, 2007), 147–55; special issue of Enigma 51–52 (2007), ed. Petra Török and Judit Szilágyi; Anna Lesznai, Sorsával tetováltan önmaga. Válogatás Lesznai Anna neplójegyzeteiből (Tattoed with Her Fate: Excerpts from Anna Lesznai’s Diary), ed. Petra Török (Budapest: Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum and Hatvany Lajos Múzeum, 2010). Judith Szapor, “‘Good Hungarian Women’ vs. ‘Radicals, Feminists, and Jewish Intellectuals’: Rosika Schwimmer and the Hungarian Women’s Debating Club in 1918–1919,” Women’s History Review 28, no. 6 (2019); Julia Secklehner, “Period Boundaries of Art in Central Europe and How to Transgress Them: The Work of Anna Lesznai ca. 1910–1930,” forthcoming 2021as part of a project supported by the European Research Council (ERC); Markója Csilla, “A Fejvesztett pillantás: Lesznai Annától Komor Andráses és tovább” (The Lost Look: From Anna Lesznai to András Komor and Beyond), Enigma 20, no. 72 (2013): 71–118. Stewart, “In the Beginning Was the Garden,” 34–113. Ibid., 5; Judith Szapor, “From Budapest to New York: The Odyssey of the Polanyis,” Hungarian Studies Review 30, no. 1–2 (2003): 29–60. Károly (Kari) Garay was killed by German soldiers in Hrušov toward the end of the Second World War. György Litván, A Twentieth-Century Prophet: Oscar Jászi 1875–1957 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006), 88–9. In 1918 Lukács published a lengthy review of one of Lesznai’s volumes of poetry in the Pester Lloyd. György Lukács, “Lesznai Anna uj versei,” in Összes művei: Ifjúkori művek (Collected Works: Juvenile Works) (1902–1918), ed. Árpád Tímár (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1977), 759–65. Petra Török, “Egy virágokat és gyümölcsöket szóró misztikus vulkán” (A Mystical Volcano Erupting with Flowers and Fruits), Spányolnátha 7, no. 2 (Summer 2010), http://www.spanyolnatha.hu/archivum/2010-nyar/32/lesznai-anna-125/torokpetra/2494/; Stewart, “In the Beginning Was the Garden,” 175. The logbooks from

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November 1911 in the Wiener Werkstätte Archive at the Museum für angewandte Kunst in Vienna show eight entries for “embroidered linen” at various price points commissioned from Mrs. Anna Lesznai. Many thanks are due to Angela Libal for sharing this information with me. 9 Katalin Gellér, Mária G. Merva, and Cecília Őriné Nagy, eds., A Gödöllő művésztelep 1901–1920/The Artists’ Colony of Gödöllő (Gödöllő: Gödöllő Városi Múzeum, 2003); Juliet Kinchin, “Modernity and Tradition in Hungarian Furniture, 1900–1938: Three Generations,” The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 24 (2002): 64–93. For an extensive discussion on Kozma, see Chapter 7 in this anthology. 10 Zoltan Fejős, Huszka József, a rajzoló gyűjtő/József Huszka: Collector and Sketch Artist (Budapest: Néprajzi Múzeum, 2006); Rebecca Houze, Textiles, Fashion, and Design Reform in Austria-Hungary Before the First World War: Principles of Dress (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). 11 Houze, Textiles, Fashion, and Design Reform, 88. 12 Szapor, “Good Hungarian Women”; Krisztina Kelbert, “‘Társadalmi anyaság’ és a Magyar Asszonyok Nemzeti Szövetsége karitatív-szociális tevélenysége a két világháború közötti Szombatheleyen” (“Social Motherhood and the Charitable-Social Activity of the National Association of Hungarian Women in between the Two World Wars”), Savaria: A vas megyei múzeumok érgesitóje 35 (2012): 347–69. 13 Anna Lesznai, “Háziipar és népművészet,” Magyar iparművészet 16, no. 9 (1913): 369–86. 14 A. S. Levetus, “Hungarian Architecture and Decoration,” in The Studio Year Book of Decorative Art. 1914 (London: The Studio, Ltd., 1914), 217–18, illustrations, 219–44. See also A. S. Levetus, “Die Stickereien der Frau Anna Lesznai in Budapest,” Textile Kunst und Industrie 7, no. 8 (1914): 325–39. 15 Török, “Virágokat,” quoted in Stewart, “In the Beginning Was the Garden,” 176–7. See also Anna Lesznai, “Beszélgetés Lesznai Annával” (Interview with Anna Lesznai), in Vezér Erzsébet: Megőrzött öreg hangok. Válogatott interjúk (Erzsébet Vezér: Preserved Old Voices. Collected Interviews), ed. István Eörsi and István Maróti (Budapest: Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, 2004). 16 Stewart, “In the Beginning Was the Garden,” 115, 135. 17 “Folk Art of the Matyó, Embroidery of a Traditional Community” (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2012), https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/folk-art-of-thematyo-embroidery-of-a-traditional-community-00633 (accessed July 1, 2020). 18 Stewart, “In the Beginning Was the Garden,” 137. 19 Quoted in Stewart, “In the Beginning Was the Garden,” 304. See also Anna Lesznai, Kezdetben volt a kert (In the Beginning Was the Garden) (2 vols. Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1966). 20 Judith Szapor, “Disputed Past: The Friendship and Competing Memories of Anna Lesznai and Emma Ritoók,” AHEA: E-Journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association 5 (2012), http://ahea.net/e-journal/volume–5–2012. 21 Anna Lesznai, [Response], Huszadik Szádad 18, no. 7–8 (1917): 104–9. 22 “Die Gildene Pawe,” Wiener Morgenzeitung, no. 2060 (December 3, 1924): 6; “Die Gildene Pawe,” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, no. 335 (December 6, 1924): 11. 23 Anna Lesznai, “Die Melodie der Dekorationen,” Die Bühne 2, no. 13 (February 5, 1925): 23. 24 A. M., “Kunstausstellungen,” Arbeiter Zeitung 37, no. 168 (June 20, 1925): 9. 25 o., “Aquarelle der Anna Lesznai,” Die Stunde (January 9, 1926): 8. 26 A. M., “Ausstellung Anna Lesznai,” Arbeiter Zeitung 39, no. 9 (January 9, 1926): 8–9.

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27 Lili Berényi, “Das Kind. Eine Ausstellung, die Man sehen muß,” Die Bühne 3, no. 62 (January 14, 1926): 61. In 1929 Berényi married the Hungarian Jewish journalist Hugo Veigelsberg (pseud. Ignotus) (1869–1949). Ignotus founded the Hungarian literary journal Nyugat, which published Lesznai’s poetry together with that of her good friend, the Hungarian poet Endre Ady (1877–1919) before the First World War. Lesznai illustrated the title pages of two volumes of Ady’s poetry with floral motifs, which she later embroidered for him as a cushion cover. Lesznai produced multiple versions of the Ady párna (Ady cushion). See Figure 9.2. 28 “Bilderausstellung Anna Lesznai,” Die Bühne 2, no. 60 (December 31, 1925): 16. 29 “Sozialdemokratische Kunststelle,” Arbeiter Zeitung 39, no. 16 (January 16, 1926): 9; “Ein Vortrag Béla Balázs,” Der Tag, no. 1118 (January 6, 1926): 10. 30 Erica Carter, “The New Woman and the Ekphrastic Poetics of Béla Balázs,” Screen 55, no. 3 (Autumn 2014): 404–12. See also Anna Lesznai, “Babonás észrevételek a mese és a tragédia lélektanához” (Superstitious Observations on the Psychology of the Fairytale and the Tragedy), Nyugat 11, no. 13 (1918). 31 Béla Balázs, Der Phantasie-Reiseführer, das ist ein Baedeker der Seele für Sommerfrischler (Berlin: P. Zsolnay, 1925). 32 Julie M. Johnson, The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900 (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2012); Megan Brandow-Faller, The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020). 33 Richard Harlfinger, “Die Ausstellung ‘Wiener Frauenkunst’,” Die Österreicherin 1, no. 2 (February 1, 1928): 4–5; Else Ehrlich, “Wiener Frauenkunst,” Die moderne Frau 2, no. 5–6 (March 15, 1928): 1–3; Hermann Menkes, “Wiener Frauenkunst. Ausstellung im Oesterreichischen Museum,” Neues Wiener Journal, no. 12,244 (December 25, 1927): 16; Wolfgang Born, “Weibliche Kunstwelt,” Österreichische Kunst 1, no. 8 (June 1930): 13–17. 34 Karl Maria Grimme, “Wiener Frauenkunst,” Moderne Welt 9, no. 15 (January 1928): 12–13. 35 Quoted in Petra Török, “‘Ich Spüre die Exterritorialität meines Lebens’: Anna Lesznai und Tibor Gergely in Wien und im Hagenbund,” in 6 Ungarn im Hagenbund/A Hagenbund magyarjai: Kövesházi Kalmár Elza, Simay Imre, Lesznai Anna, Gergely Tibor, Mayer-Marton György, Ferenczy Béni, ed. Éva Bajkay (Vienna: Balassi Institute—Collegium Hungaricum Wien, 2015). 36 Csilla, “A Fejvesztett pillantás.” 37 Desiderius Orban interviewed by Denise Hickey, sound recording, Denise Hickey collection, 1971, National Library of Australia. 38 Csilla, “A Fejvesztett pillantás,” 93–4. 39 Ibid., 92. 40 Gábor Ébli, “Modernség és tehetség. A Tamás Galéria (1928–1944) története” (Modernity and Talent: History of the Tamás Gallery (1928–1944)), Art Magazin 1, no. 1 (2003): 4–9; “Tamas Henrik (No. 160610),” in Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, https://secure.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=5951654 (accessed June 22, 2020). 41 Nicole Ruth Cardassilaris, “Bringing Cultures Together: Elma Pratt, Her International School of Art, and Her Collection of International Folk Art at the Miami University Art Museum,” (Master’s Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2007). Pratt was influenced by the Viennese artist and pedagogue Franz Cižek, whose student Emmy ZweybruckProchaska became one of the master teachers in Pratt’s program.

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42 Csilla, “A Fejvesztett pillantás,” 102. 43 Stanton Loomis Catlin and Francis O’Connor, Oral History Interview with Stanton L. Catlin, July 1–September 14, 1989, https://www.aaa.si.edu/download_pdf_ transcript/ajax?record_id=edanmdm-AAADCD_oh_215546. Cited in Julia Secklehner, “Artwork of the Month, November 2019: Slovak Lourdes by Anna Lesznai (1924),” CRAACE. Continuity/Rupture: Art and Architecture in Central Europe 1918– 1939 (November 30, 2019), https://craace.com/2019/11/30/artwork-of-the-monthnovember-2019-slovak-lourdes-by-anna-lesznai–1924/ (accessed November 30, 2019). 44 “Madame Anna Lesznai Speaks at Art School Monday Evening,” Sandusky Register (July 11, 1939): 5. 45 Litván, A Twentieth-Century Prophet. 46 Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929). 47 “Anna J. Lesznai, 1939 November 28–December 18, Box: 12, Folder: 31. Museum Records, 10S,” Wellesley College Archives, https://archives.wellesley.edu/ repositories/2/archival_objects/36066 (accessed May 15, 2020); “Exhibitions June 1937–June 1942,” Wellesley College Bulletin: The Art Museum 2, no. 4 (November 1942): 15; “Mme. Lesznai to Advise Students in Voluntary Sketching Class Work,” Wellesley News (November 16, 1939). See also Raymond Mohl, “Cultural Pluralism in Immigrant Education: The International Institutes of Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco, 1920–1940,” Journal of American Ethnic History 1, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 35–58. 48 “Anna Lesznai,” US Census Record, 1940, http://www.archives.com/1940-census/ anna-lesznai-ny-62559074 (accessed August 18, 2020); Szapor, “From Budapest to New York,” 38. 49 Edward Alden Jewell, “Local Shows,” New York Times (May 17, 1942): x5; Edward Alden Jewell, “A Far-Flung Panorama at Yuletide: Afterthoughts on National Art Week—A Melange of Christmas Exhibitions—Marin and Some Younger WaterColorists,” New York Times (December 22, 1940): 107; “The Week’s Opening,” New York Times (March 25, 1946): 28. 50 Margaret Wise Brown and Tibor Gergely, Wheel on the Chimney (New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1954). 51 Edward Alden Jewell, “Art by Hungarians in Red Cross Show: More Than Forty Painters Are Represented in Display at Peikin Galleries,” New York Times (March 2, 1944): 21. 52 Adele Barre Robinson, “News Reports: Exhibition of Indian Baskets,” College Art Journal 1, no. 2 (January 1942): 37–8.

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The Art of Survival: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Children’s Art at the Theresienstadt Ghetto Megan Brandow-Faller

On the early morning of October 6, 1944, a train of 1,550 prisoners left the Nazi concentration camp and ghetto at Theresienstadt for Auschwitz. Of this transport only 112 would survive their deportation to death camps in the east. One of these prisoners was Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898–1944), an artist, designer, and pedagogue trained in Secessionist Vienna and at the Weimar Bauhaus. Bauhaus director Walter Gropius praised her as one of his most outstanding pupils, for her design versatility and “extraordinary artistic talents.”1 In what became her last, but most important, teaching assignment, Dicker brought philosophies of modernist art education to Theresienstadt children. She offered art classes to the girls of Children’s Home L410 to inspire hope and humanity under the most inhumane conditions, resulting in strikingly avant-garde works. Resourcefully, Friedl provided the materials herself—from packages, luggage, and materials pilfered from the camp’s technical division, like the recycled Czechlanguage forms used in an untitled 1943 collage by Helena Mandlová (21.5.1930– 18.12.1943*) (Figure 10.1).2 In July 1943, Friedl staged a major exhibition of children’s art in the cellar of one of the children’s homes. This was an act that recalled the most important exhibition of modern art and design in Secessionist Vienna, the 1908 Kunstschau, where members of the Klimt Group showcased their serious commitment to art for, and by, children. The Kunstschau’s first gallery showcased torn paper collages by pupils of educator and supporter of the Secession Franz Cižek (1865–1946), widely regarded as the “discover” of untutored children’s art, while another gallery displayed female art students’ innovation in artistic toymaking.3 The 1908 Kunstschau likewise marked the occasion where artist Gustav Klimt showcased his most iconic portraits of Jewish women: cultured patronesses who expressed their intellectual ambitions through solidarity with the Secessionist Künstlerschaft ideal while reclaiming aspects of their Jewish identity.4 Friedl had hoped for a swift end to the war so that she might publish her experiences in art therapy with children in a major academic study and left behind two manuscripts detailing her philosophies. Tragically, this was not to be. On October 9, 1944, Friedl was sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, along with thirty of her students. Shortly before

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Figure 10.1  Helena Mandlová, Untitled collage, 1943. Source: Jewish Museum Prague

her deportation, Friedl packed the children’s artworks in two suitcases and hid them in the attic of the Children’s Home. After liberation, the suitcases were delivered to Prague’s Jewish community by survivor Willy Groag (1914–2001), nephew of Viennese architect and designer Jacques Groag. These artworks—over 4,300 drawings by 622 children—are the only surviving records of the many Theresienstadt children who did not survive the Holocaust and form the single largest body of child art from any of the camps.5 Of the 12,000 children passing through Theresienstadt, around 10 percent, only 1,500 survived. One of the most haunting aspects of Theresienstadt remains the relationship of the past to the present. Friedl’s native Vienna has a troublesome Nazi past, in spite of efforts to paint Austria as the first victim of National Socialism. This pervasive Opfermythos “effaced both the enthusiastic participation of Austrians in the Nazi regime and the superficiality of post-war denazification” efforts.6 As historian Steven Beller has argued, a sanitized version of high culture and art was used to paper over this turbulent Nazi past; a politically motivated tourist industry retooled “Austria” as a peace-loving land of mountains, music, art, and Sachertorte. Hollywood films like The Sound of Music, narrating “‘plucky little Austria’s’ struggle against the German Nazis,” sealed Austria’s positive image in the West, as tourists flocked to museums and institutions like the Vienna Philharmonic’s celebrated Neujahrskonzerte: one of many cultural institutions with hidden German National-Socialist (NSDAP) roots.7 Part and parcel of the “Klimtomania” fueling sales in museum bookshops even today, the heroes of Viennese modernism seemed far removed from the war or the horrors of the “Final Solution.”

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But the world of Klimt’s Vienna was bound up in the artistic life of Theresienstadt, just as Theresienstadt remains hauntingly bound up in Klimt’s Vienna. A growing corpus of literature (first appearing in the 1980s and gaining ground in the 1990s/2000s) has stressed the particularly Jewish nature of Viennese modernism, stressing Jews’ vital contributions in literature, philosophy, art, architecture, and design.8 As patrons, Jews played critical roles as cultural co-producers from the Ringstrasse into the modernist eras, not only using patronage as a form of acculturation but expressing Jewish identities through coded references to their past narratives.9 In architecture and design, it was largely Jewish architects who defined the interwar Wiener Wohnkultur movement (a style of interior design turning on comfort, flexibility and selective acculturation of tradition[s] in contradistinction to the coldness of German industrial design) and associated “Second Viennese Modernism.”10 Recent monographs and exhibitions have highlighted how Jewish women like Dicker-Brandeis played unusually active roles in the visual arts and design, comprising around one-third of women artists active in Klimt’s Vienna.11 Excavating intellectual influences in Secessionist Vienna and the Weimar Bauhaus through the lens of her pedagogical and design work for children—one facet of a rich, multidisciplinary career—the essay to follow uncovers Dicker-Brandeis’s intrepid teaching in the children’s homes of Theresienstadt, where art became a means of humanistic, if not physical, survival for its youngest inhabitants. That art could thrive and even flourish under the most inhumane conditions testifies to DickerBrandeis’s heroism in preserving the cultural heritage of Central European Jewry and Secessionist Vienna.

Children’s Artworks Left Behind in the Theresienstadt Ghetto The artworks left behind by Friedl’s students are an invaluable tool for understanding the paradoxes of Theresienstadt and its rich cultural life including lectures, concerts, cabaret, and opera. Fueling Theresienstadt’s remarkable productivity was prisoners’ fascination with its bizarre, surreal qualities; how immediate fears for survival and feelings of demoralization and powerlessness fluctuated with periods of relative normalcy and optimism provided by its vibrant cultural scene.12 Among the many performances for which Theresienstadt became famous were those by the children’s choir, best known for its role in Czech composer Hans Krása’s (1899–1944) opera Brundibár. The opera’s plotline dealt with the triumph of a child-protagonist over an “evil” organ-grinder—a character viewed as a stand-in for Hitler—and so cheered audiences that it played fifty-nine times.13 Opening on the site of a former garrison, conditions at Theresienstadt were unique, allowing prisoners to stay alive longer than in other camps. While death from disease and malnutrition was common, suicide rates were relatively low.14 A total of 155,000 Jews would pass through Theresienstadt; of these, 35,000 died in the ghetto itself and 87,000 were transferred to death camps. Theresienstadt’s actual functions varied over time. It was initially a holding camp for Czech Jews and a source of labor. But increasingly leading SS officials envisioned it as a temporary ghetto

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for older Jews, particularly the so-called Prominents (celebrities) from Germany, Austria, and Western Europe: prisoners with distinguished civil service, war records, artists, intellectuals, and academics. Above all, the myth of Theresienstadt, the Paradeisghetto, was part of an elaborate hoax, a model show camp to deceive the outside world to the true purposes and conditions of NSDAP Jewish “resettlement.” Nazi leadership touted Theresienstadt as Hitler’s “Gift to the Jews” and used its great number of professional artists, musicians, and intellectuals as evidence of a civilized, even humane life. This myth would achieve quasi-official status with the famous spring 1944 beautification campaign in which buildings were whitewashed, streets were cleaned, flowers were planted, and cultural activities were staged.15 This was followed by a visit by the International Red Cross (on June 23, 1944) in which conditions were reported as favorable. After the visit, the SS took advantage of the beautification to commission a propaganda film entitled Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer Gives a City to the Jews) directed by famous cabaret and film star, German actor Kurt Gerron (1897–1944), best known for his roles in The Blue Angel and The Threepenny Opera. Every scene was meticulously staged and cast with prisoners literally coerced into smiling—including scenes of the children’s opera Brundibár and performances of Verdi’s Requiem—as disease and malnutrition were tucked out of sight.16 In reality the camp was hardly a “paradise” but the gateway to Auschwitz: most of the film’s actors, including the children, director, and choir, were deported in the same October 1944 transports as Friedl. The camp’s rich artistic life was at the center of Nazi efforts to deceive the outside world.17 But art was of intrinsic value to its inmates: as means of coping, survival, or spiritual resistance.18 Providing a release from the vulnerability, melancholy, and pervasive demoralization prisoners faced, the process of making provided inmates with “a temporary illusion of normality while they were engrossed in their work.”19 Much of the ghetto’s official art was generated for the Technical Department, the work division to which Dicker-Brandeis—as a professional artist—was assigned. Headed by the Prague graphic designer and cartoonist known as Fritta (Fritz Taussig/Bedřich Fritta 1906–1944), the Technical Department prepared illustrated bureaucratic reports, maps, drawings for NSDAP organizational, and propaganda purposes.20 The Technical Department produced propaganda images that represented the camp to the outside world, and, like Dutch artist and cartoonist Joseph Spier’s (1900– 1978) Bilder aus Theresienstadt, depicted the official NSDAP version of this “model camp” as orderly, productive, and cheery. But the very same artists pilfered materials to work covertly: executing drawings of camp conditions in distorted expressionistic styles completely contradicting those in the bureaucratic reports.21 Compare Fritta’s nightmarish rendering of conditions in the camp’s Kaffeehaus (1943–44/n.i.) with the Kaffeehaus image from Spier’s 1944 album (n.i). Spier’s watercolor presents us with a convivial scene: white-jacket waiters serve coffee in what looks to be a typical, Central European coffeehouse—an institution so critical to Jewish intellectual life—complete with murals and salon music. In Fritta’s drawing (executed in an expressively distorted angularity) there is no coffee, no waiters, only emaciated, haggard inmates barred from viewing the street outside.

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The children’s art produced at Theresienstadt is unique in several regards. First, Friedl’s classes were informal and operated outside the economy of the camp’s “official” images. The classes were initially tolerated, then accepted, and encouraged by the “Council of Jewish Elders” and SS officers. Although teaching was officially forbidden, classes offered by teachers, artists, and academics were technically classified as “cultural free time activities” and hence unofficially permitted.22 The classes took place on the third floor of L410, one of four children’s homes established by the Youth Division in summer 1942 to provide children with better rations, housing and some degree of normalcy and education within the ghetto. Children were housed by year of birth in different rooms (Heime) and art instruction was offered most regularly to the Girls of Room 28 (“Friedl’s Girls,” mostly aged between eleven and twelve), who took as their symbol a flag, or Maagal, circle in Hebrew, emblazoned with two hands in a tight grip.23 Second, in a culture that “insisted on identifying its victims by numbers rather than names,” Friedl’s classes fostered children’s identities as individuals.24 Friedl’s girls created designs for monograms and were always instructed to sign works with their full names, which were meticulously dated and archived by Friedl’s assistants.25 Finally and most importantly, the adult artists of Theresienstadt tended to be committed to a documentary realism in both their “official” and “unofficial” work, and, in the latter category, were highly conscious of the politicized, protest nature of their work.26 But Friedl’s child artists were not limited by the constraints of realism or political agendas and freely mixed reality and fantasy, time and space before and after the ghetto.

Art and Life in Secessionist Vienna and the Weimar Bauhaus These psychologically expressive pictures owe much to the spiritual atmosphere of the early Bauhaus and Secessionist Vienna, where Dicker-Brandeis was trained. Like many women artists in Klimt’s Vienna, Friedl (Figure 10.2) hailed from a Jewish background, born as the only child of Karolina Fanta and Simon Dicker, a clerk in a stationery shop, on July 30, 1898. While women were barred from official membership in the Secession until after the Second World War, Jewish women comprised a disproportionately high number (between ¼ and ⅓) of members in Vienna’s “women’s only” artist leagues. Their presence was particularly strong in the interwar Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932), where they came to define a new genre of expressionist ceramics informed by the “primitive” aesthetics of folk art and children’s drawings.27 But Friedl’s background was atypical in that she was not from well-to-do Jewry, like ceramicists Vally Wieselthier (1895–1945) or Susi Singer (1891–1955), but the lower middle-class.28 Losing her mother when she was four, Friedl was raised by her father Simon, given lack of money to hire a governess or tutor, quite literally in the paper shop where he worked.29 Her fondest childhood memory was the smell of paper, paints, glue—the same supplies that became a matter of survival at Theresienstadt. With her father’s backing, Friedl studied photography at Vienna’s Graphische Lehrund Versuchsanstalt and transferred to the Kunstgewerbeschule, where she studied with Secessionist professors like Franz Cižek, the same individual responsible for the exhibition of child art inspiring her own. In 1916, she enrolled in a private art school run

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Figure 10.2 Friedl Dicker, early 1920s, photograph. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ©  United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Provenance: Michele Vishny

by Johannes Itten (1888–1967), whom she, along with fifteen others including lifelong friends/colleagues Margit Téry-(Buschmann) (1892–1977) and Anny Wottitz-(Moller) (1900–1945), followed when he was appointed to the Weimar Bauhaus in 1919. At the same time, Friedl embarked on a longtime troubled relationship, both personal and professional, with fellow student, the architect and designer Franz Singer (1896– 1954), a leading figure in what art historian Hans Hildebrandt dubbed the Bauhaus’s “intellectual Jewish group Singer-Adler.”30 This group of largely Jewish students was noted for their leftist politics and quasi-religious devotion to Itten’s philosophies. As she revealed in a letter (c. 1920) to Wottitz, Dicker was fully aware that “much was being talked about […] in relation to us [Jews]” but summoned her friend to rise to the task and band together to achieve their goals.31 While rifts with the school’s director led to the exodus of much of this faction, Singer and Dicker were among those who remained the longest (until 1923). Meanwhile, the pair became artistic directors (1920–1924) of Viennese Jewish Berthold Viertel’s (1885–1953) theater group, “Die Truppe,” designing experimental costumes and sets informed by their time in Oskar

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Schlemmer’s theater workshop, and collaborated with German Berthold Brecht in the 1930s. Praised by the Bauhaus Masters’ Council as one of their “most gifted students,” Dicker was the first pupil to be entrusted with instructing beginners in Itten’s Vorkurs (Preliminary Course).32 Yet Dicker’s success should not disguise the Bauhaus’s uneven gender policies. In spite of modernist educators’ utopian, democratic rhetoric, a pervasive culture of institutional sexism distinguished the school’s official and unofficial policies. Female pupils faced higher tuition fees, differential admissions policies, and a de-facto (yet sometimes permeable) exclusion from the “masculine” fields of architecture and metalwork. Such policies related to fears that the school’s alleged overrepresentation of women would taint the architecture school with notions of female dilettantism and handcraft.33 Female Bauhäusler were thus funneled directly into the weaving workshop, with pottery, bookbinding and toymaking as alternate “women’s work” options. In 1923, Singer and Dicker cofounded the Workshops for Visual Arts in Berlin, specializing in interior and set design, book-binding and textiles, while Dicker opened independent textile workshops in Vienna with Wottitz-Moller (1923) and Martha Döberl (1925). From 1926 to 1931, Singer and Dicker continued their partnership in the Viennabased “Atelier Singer-Dicker,” designing furniture, residential and business interiors and architectural projects, while participating in the 1927 Kunstschau and 1929 “Wiener Raumkünstler” exhibitions. Aside from three fully realized architectural projects (none of which are extant), most commissions were found in interior design projects—renovations and adaptions of existing interiors to meet the postwar economic downturn—for a largely Jewish, upper-middle-class patronage anchored in their own professional-personal networks (including Bauhaus colleagues like Téry-Buschmann and Wottitz-Moller).34 Yet unraveling the precise nature of the Singer-Dicker collaboration, particularly the extent of Dicker’s involvement in individual projects, is problematic. Singer rarely gave his partner full credit for her work in contemporary publications and the atelier’s stationery and stamp only bore Singer’s name.35 The conventional assumption that Singer assumed responsible for architecture and furniture while Dicker concentrated on textiles—as gendered as it may be—might have reflected Dicker’s concentration on textiles in her studies, a “feminine” field she was slotted into. Like other architects associated with the “Second Viennese Modernism,” for example, Oskar Strnad, Josef Frank, or Liane Zimbler (all three were Jewish), the Atelier favored adaptable, multipurpose rooms (the so-called Kombizimmer) combining the needs of working, sleeping, eating, and entertaining into space-efficient zones; lightweight, spacesaving, or multiuse furniture that could be easily moved, folded, or collapsed when not in use; and a general stress on a functionalism that would meet the daily needs of human inhabitants. Yet in comparison to colleagues like Strnad or Frank, who favored an evolutionary aesthetic and selective appropriation of traditional furniture forms ala Adolf Loos, Dicker and Singer’s preference for more sachlich, industrial forms (like stackable tubular steel chairs, nesting tables, and desks) positioned them on the most radical, progressive fringes of Vienna’s interwar design scene, aimed at challenging and refining traditional Viennese Gemütlichkeit (coziness) and, at least in theory, furthering socio-democratic goals of accessible design. The Atelier’s furniture designs were often characterized by severe geometrical and cubic forms emphasizing their construction while

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accommodating multiple uses in a space-efficient manner. Their 1927/28 garconnière for Dr. Hans Heller (Wallnergasse 8, Vienna 1st district) featured a divan simultaneously serving the purpose of bed/sofa (covered with woven jute fibers forming a colorful checkered pattern); a desk folding out to a dining table; and a three-piece, cubic-form seating group (treated with the same textile covering as the divan) consisting of a cubicform armchair into which another chair and stool could be nested to form a solid block. That Heller later remembered this interior as an ultra-modern juxtaposition of steel, glass, and colorful textiles only reinforces the studio’s reputation for avant-garde design.36 One of the Atelier’s best-known commissions was found in the Montessori Kindergarten (1930–1932) in the Goethehof Housing Complex (Vienna 22nd district, one of the largest such Volkspalast), which became the model kindergarten of “Red Vienna” and was widely reproduced in the press. Working closely with kindergarten director Hedy Schwarz to give material expression to Montessori’s ideas of self-activity and furnishings adapted to children’s needs, the kindergarten reflected their trademark for adaptable, multi-functional furniture and was executed in a palette of red, white, and blue.37 The cloakroom likewise functioned as a space for midday napping, whereby children could remove pallets from storage shelves on the side of the room and could also accommodate a large round folding table. In the activity room (Figure 10.3, where sleeping pallets are visible on the side), all furniture could be moved and stored by children themselves when not needed, such as the Atelier’s stackable wooden chairs (Figure 10. 4) whose simple slats emphasized constructive principles.38 Much like Alma Buscher’s Kinderspielschrank (1923), large blocks could function as toy blocks, stools, or chairs, and all furniture allowed children to perform simple daily tasks themselves, in line with Montessori theory.

Figure 10.3 Atelier-Singer-Dicker, Städtischer Kindergarten Goethehof, Schüttaustrasse 1–39, 1220 Vienna, Interior (Activity Room), 1930–1932. Source: Bauhaus Archive Berlin

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Figure 10.4 Atelier-Singer-Dicker, Stackable Chairs for the Städtischer Kindergarten Goethehof, Schüttaustrasse 1–39, 1220 Vienna, 1932. Source: Bauhaus Archive Berlin

The 1930s brought major changes in Friedl’s life and work. She began to concentrate her energy on working with children and agitating for the Communist party, executing a series of anti-capitalist collages.39 Meanwhile, in 1931 the Viennese City Government hired Friedl to instruct kindergarten teachers in teaching children art. In 1934, she was arrested and imprisoned for her communist activities, which she depicted in a series of paintings entitled Interrogation. After her release, she moved to Prague, working as an interior designer and teaching art to children of political émigrés, and married her maternal cousin Pavel Brandeis (1905–1971) in 1936. In the wake of anti-Jewish legislation, Pavel and Friedl sought refuge in a small town northeast of Prague, Hronov, as their circle became progressively smaller. Heroically, although her former lover Singer obtained Friedl a visa for Palestine, Friedl refused to leave her husband behind and saw it as her mission to help children psychologically survive the war.40 In preparation for her deportation, Friedl began packing and amassing art supplies (what she loved herself so much as a child) with frenetic energy as part of her 50-kg luggage. Pavel and Friedl were reunited in the camp on December 17, 1942, where, given her “privileged” position working as an artist, they lived together in a small room under the stairwell of the inner courtyard of the children’s home L410. At Theresienstadt, Friedl’s

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work with children has often been interpreted as a form of surrogate motherhood as her childlessness remained a “lifelong trauma” despite her interest in teaching children.41 Indeed Dicker’s complicated affair with Singer had continued throughout their professional collaboration and after Singer’s 1921 marriage to soprano Emmy Hein. Yet as Singer demanded that their liaison never produce a child, Dicker was forced to undergo multiple abortions for children she desperately wanted, what may have led to Dicker’s suffering a miscarriage after marrying Brandeis. Friedl channeled her torment into a 1921 futurist sculpture (Anna Selbdritt, 1921, now lost, made of nickel, iron, and brass) on the theme of the Virgin Mary’s birth to the childless couple Joachim and Anne, a work praised by Hildebrandt as one of the strongest pieces of contemporary women’s art.42 Yet despite Dicker’s continued pain, followers believed that her childlessness only enriched her heroic mission. As Dicker’s assistant, art therapist Edith Kramer (1916–2014) remembered, “it worked to the benefit for the children of Theresienstadt that she herself did not have a child. Otherwise she would have found a way to save herself.”43

Dicker-Brandeis’s Teaching at Theresienstadt: Art as Spiritual Survival Friedl’s teaching practices at Theresienstadt are routinely connected to her studies at the Weimar Bauhaus (1919–1923). There, she studied with famed masters like Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Schlemmer, and Itten and gained a broadbased design education. She designed the typography for Itten’s Bauhaus almanac, Utopia (1921), and invitations for the celebrated Bauhaus parties. Above all, it is the methods and intellectual-spiritual foundations of Itten’s celebrated Vorkurs—a sixmonth course in form, color, and composition required of all new students—that are presumed to have influenced her practice.44 Itten, a former kindergarten teacher, was a charismatic, guru-like figure; an advocate of vegetarianism, eastern mysticism, and used experimental breathing exercises to release students’ creative inhibitions. To paraphrase Itten, the course aimed “to free the student’s creative powers by disencumbering him of that prior learning[.]”45 Ultimately, the most innovative aspect of Itten’s pedagogy was applying reformist methods of early childhood education to the education of professional adult designers.46 The result was a less hierarchical teacher-student relationship focused less on technical skill or imparting knowledge than the spontaneous and unmediated revelation of the inner self. Uncontestably, Itten’s methods and spiritual philosophies influenced Friedl’s teaching. Yet this Bauhaus-centric interpretation obscures earlier and equally important intellectual influences in Secessionist Vienna. Before leaving for Weimar, Friedl had studied with above-mentioned Franz Cižek, a leading member of the Vienna Secession credited with the avant-garde’s “discovery” of children’s art. In his famous Jugendkunstkursen, Cižek shunned conventional methods of instruction privileging skill and technical accuracy. Seeking to unlock the inborn creative drives residing in every child, the pedagogue encouraged pupils to release inner experiences through free choice of handcraft media. In Cižek’s classroom, children

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were left to teach themselves, supposedly uninfluenced by the teacher. The course’s aim was patently nonvocational—to broadly nourish children’s creativity without a specific professional trajectory—and was popular among patrons of the Secession. In July 1943, on the first anniversary of the children’s homes founding, Friedl presented a lecture, “Children’s Drawings” (now preserved in manuscript form at Prague’s Jewish Museum) to fellow Theresienstadt educators. Under the most adverse conditions, Friedl brought Cižek’s modernist philosophies of “unlearning” to the ghetto. Like Cižek, Friedl explained that the main purpose of her drawing classes was not to educate professional artists or teach children to draw “correctly,” as an adult might expect, which spoiled children’s expressive power. As she explained, “the expression of an all-powerful freedom” was her guiding maxim.47 The task of the classes was “to free and broaden children’s sources of energy and creativity and independence, to awaken the imagination, and to strengthen the children’s powers of observation and appreciation of reality.”48 Another idea from Cižek was that the educator should attempt to influence the child as little as possible, pushing them neither in the direction of childlike simplicity nor toward any serious “ism.”49 Such ideas were not mere theory but, according to survivors, actually put into practice. Friedl’s assistant recalled that “the goal of these lessons was spontaneous expression, which was supposed to lead to the freeing of the spirit” and what mattered was “the feeling of freedom she conveyed to the students—her own inner feeling of freedom, not the technical skills.”50 Friedl was a charismatic teacher who carried a strong creative presence, a sort of light and liberating power, or electrical energy, into the room. Surviving students remember her as a small, soft-spoken woman whose energy and inner light were infectious. As one student, Edna Amit (1925–2010), recalled, “Friedl herself was the medicine. To this day, the mystery of her sense of freedom remains incomprehensible to me. It flowed from her to us like an electric current. Her soft voice induced some sort of special state.”51 Other survivors like Raja Zadnikova (born 1929) remembered that although they were sick and starved, they delighted in the lessons, as Friedl told them: “Do not think about anything—just draw. You are happy now.”52 The lessons used a variety of techniques to foster children’s expressivity. From Itten, Friedl adapted rhythmic breathing exercises to promote pupils’ mental readiness and also his Rhythmic Analysis of Old Masters used in the Introductory Course. Through books and reproductions, Friedl showed children old master paintings and had them copy the paintings in a variety of media—collage, watercolor, charcoal. This exercise did not entail copying in a mechanical sense but grasping a work’s internal rhythm and composition. Similar to how Cižek used music in the classroom, Friedl sometimes tapped out rhythms for students to express visually and prompted them with themes or words. Students were most free in the spontaneous drawing sessions, in which pupils were supposed to draw without thinking. Friedl’s girls explored memories, longings, and dreams from normal life, now a distant and bizarre fairy tale. Helga Kinsky-Pollak (1930–2020), a survivor from Room 28, remembered making a collage with a horse during one such session. “We drew from the window […] the sky, mountains, nature […]. That is probably especially important for prisoners: to see the world on the other side.”53 Another survivor, Esther Birnstein née Šwarzbartová (1926–2010), recalled that Friedl taught her to model clay, encouraging her to model whatever she wanted

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without fear.54 The teenaged Esther immediately modeled a family gathered around a dead body, distressed that so many elderly people were dying alone at Theresienstadt. Of all of her methods, paper collage produced the most formally innovative, expressive work. Friedl was inspired by Cižek’s popular pedagogical manual PapierSchneide-und Klebearbeiten (1914), which underwent multiple editions and English translation. Cižek’s manual prized vernacular traditions of paper cutting as models of simplicity, authenticity and adherence to the laws of the material. To ensure that work corresponded to a spontaneous inner necessity, Friedl instructed her students to cut their designs directly into the paper and forego preliminary drawing. Alternatively, paper could be torn to produce a more agitated contour. Sonja Spitzova’s (17.2.1931–6.10.1944*)55 paper collage (Figure 10.5) made use of the same red paper and found materials (unused Czech military forms) as Figure 10.1. It has been variously identified as the National Theater in Prague, with a conductor wielding a baton, or perhaps the stage set of the prison camp itself (where cabaret and opera flourished), as the conductor figure collapses into a club-wielding prison guard. Sonja, who did not survive, was described by her peers as a girl of firm principles; she resolutely decided not to learn German because, in her assessment, it would be a dead language after the war and therefore studied Latin.

Figure 10.5  Sonja Spitzová, Untitled Collage, 1943. Source: Jewish Museum Prague

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In her “Children’s Art” lecture, Friedl suggested the remarkably therapeutic effects of her practice. One unnamed student had formerly lived in an orphanage where she received very severe treatment. Initially the pupil drew houses with doors and windows clenched tight, lines depressively bent, suggesting her lack of stable relationships. After some time in the children’s home, with dedicated caretakers, the same girl began drawing stable domestic settings, with entirely imagined tables, lamps, and pictures.56 Traditionally, the National Socialist attack against modern art is presented as a virulent, wholesale rejection of avant-garde movements and institutions like the Bauhaus, which permanently closed in spring 1933. But the relationship between modernism and National Socialism was a much more complicated phenomenon. Many Bauhaus artists, including former director Walter Gropius, joined the Reich Chamber of Culture and had works endorsed.57 In Vienna, leading artists like Josef Hoffmann presided over the Nazification of the Secession, Austrian Werkbund, and art academies, as he and other collaborating artists profited from the forced banishment of Frank circle, “almost exclusively Socialist and Jewish.”58 As such, many of Dicker’s colleagues were forbidden to work, forced to emigrate, or, like Dicker herself, deported.

History and Historiography from Secessionist Vienna to the Theresienstadt Ghetto The lessons of Austria’s fascist past are more relevant today than ever: the seemingly “safe” apolitical version of Viennese modernism still promoted in museum exhibitions today must come to terms with its troublesome Nazi past and the erasure of Secessionist Vienna’s specifically Jewish heritage. The children’s artwork produced in Theresienstadt remains beautiful and heartbreaking, a testament to their teacher and her contributions to Theresienstadt’s vibrant cultural life despite the horrendous conditions. In its cabaret, music and art, the ghetto remained a lifeline to Central European Jewry’s rich artistic and cultural heritage, and, in Dicker-Brandeis’s case, the legacies of the Weimar Bauhaus and Secessionist Vienna. The “Klimtomania” touted by the Austrian tourist industry today needs to make amends with how the very narrative of “Vienna 1900”—so crucial to postwar identity politics—was born in the Nazi period itself. The largest-ever Klimt retrospective took place in 1943, during the darkest days of Nazi rule, and was officially sponsored by Austrian Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach. Despite his close ties to cultured Viennese Jewry, Klimt escaped classification as “degenerate” precisely because his work was perceived as too minor and decorative, and was selectively repositioned as an “Aryan,” Germanic hero.59 It was at this moment that cultured Jewish salonnière Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) became an (Aryan) Woman in Gold. Continued promotion of artists like Klimt must therefore no longer obscure disturbing connections between Secessionist Vienna and the National Socialist past and the elision of artists/designers like Dicker-Brandeis and the Jewish patrons supporting them. In a late 1930s letter to a friend [M.V.], DickerBrandeis ruminated on the increasing persecution Jews faced, wondering, “[w]hy has everything come to nothing?”60 While the ramifications of this statement cannot

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be undone, it is our duty today—as scholars, curators, and activists—to recover the design milieu and cultural heritage to which Dicker-Brandeis contributed.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

11

12

13

Walter Gropius, Empfehlungsbrief (1931), quoted in Elena Makarova, Friedl DickerBrandeis: Ein Leben für Kunst und Lehre (Wien: Brandstätter, 2000), 21. *Helena Mandlová’s deportation date to Auschwitz. https://www.holocaust.cz/ en/database-of-victims/victim/108162-helena-m-ndlova/ (accessed November 15, 2020). Rolf Laven, Franz Čižek und die Wiener Jugendkunst (Vienna: Schlebrügge Editor, 2006) and Franz Čižek: Pionier der Kunsterziehung (Vienna: Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985). Elana Shapira, “Imagining the Jew: A Clash of Civilizations,” in Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900, ed. Gemma Blackshaw (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 160–2. Elizabeth Otto, “Passages with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis: From the Bauhaus through Theresienstadt,” in Passagen des Exils / Passages of Exile, ed. Burcu Dogramaci and Elizabeth Otto (Munich: Text + Kritik, 2017), 249, fn. 57. Matthew Finch, “Official History, Private Memories: ‘Vienna 1900’ as Lieu de Mémoire,” Central Europe 2, no. 2 (2004): 117. Steven Beller, A Concise History of Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 266. Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Alison Rose, Jewish Women in Fin-de-siècle Vienna (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008); Abigail Gillman, Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, and Schnitzler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). Elana Shapira, Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture and Design in fin-desiècle Vienna (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016). Ursula Prokop, Zum jüdischen Erbe in der Wiener Architektur: Der Beitrag jüdischer ArchitektInnen am Wiener Baugeschehen 1868–1938 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016). For an enlightening discussion on the Wiener Wohnkultur movement, see Chapter 8 in this anthology. Sabine Fellner and Andrea Winklbauer, eds. Die bessere Hälfte: Jüdische Künstlerinnen bis 1938; Exh. Cat. Jewish Museum Vienna (Vienna: Metroverlag, 2016); Julie Johnson, The Memory Factory: The Forgotten Women Artists of Vienna 1900 (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2012). Marjorie Lamberti, “Making Art in the Terezin Concentration Camp,” New England Review 17, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 104–7. On Theresienstadt’s artistic and cultural life, see further H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941–1945: The Face of a Coerced Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Adler notes that “if one saw the camp as a temporary arrangement, one saw its social circles and social life as an improvisation.” (Ibid., 265). My essay here suggests that Dicker’s art lessons granted her students a sense of orientation within a grown-up threatened and improvised social world. Nicholas Stargardt, “Children’s Art of the Holocaust,” Past & Present 161, no. 161 (November 1998): 206–7.

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14 Lamberti, “Making Art in the Terezin,” 110. 15 Johanna Branson, “Seeing Through ‘Paradise’: Art and Propaganda in Terezin,” in Seeing Through Paradise: Artists and the Terezin Concentration Camp (Boston: Massachusetts College of Art, 1991), 42. 16 Ibid., 44. 17 Lisa Peschel, “The Cultural Life of the Terezín Ghetto in 1960s Survivor Testimony: Theater, Trauma and Resilience,” in Performing (for) Survival: Theater, Crisis, Extremity, ed. Patrick Duggan and Lisa Peschel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 59–77. 18 C.f. Anne Dutlinger, ed., Art, Music and Education as Strategies for Survival: Theresienstadt 1941–45 (New York: Herodias, 2001); Linney Wix, ed., Through a Narrow Window: Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Her Terezin Students (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010). 19 Lamberti, “Making Art in the Terezin,” 110. 20 Branson, “Seeing Through ‘Paradise’,” 40. 21 Ibid., 38. 22 Otto, “Passages with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,” 245. 23 Hannelore Brenner, The Girls of Room 28 (New York: Schocken, 2009). 24 Wix, “The Art and Teaching of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,” in Through a Narrow Window, ed. Wix, 28. 25 Five hundred and fifty-five different names are legible and another sixty-seven are only partially recognizable. Otto, “Passages with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,” 249 fn. 58. 26 Lamberti, “Making Art in the Terezin,” 109. 27 Megan Brandow-Faller, The Female Secession (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2020), 125–79. 28 C.f. my “Blurred Boundaries: Life, Work and Legacy of Vally Wieselthier,” in Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism, ed. Elana Shapira (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018), 229–46. 29 Makarova, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, 11. 30 Katharina Hövelmann, Bauhaus in Wien? Möbeldesign, Innenraumgestaltung und Architektur in der Wiener Ateliergemeinschaft von Friedl Dicker and Franz Singer (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 2018), 48. 31 Friedl Dicker-Brandeis to Anny Wottitz, 1920/21. http://www.makarovainit.com/ friedl/anne_brief.pdf (accessed November 16, 2020). 32 Otto, “Passages with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,” 232. 33 C.f. Katerina Ray, “Bauhaus Hausfrau: Gender Formation in Design Education,” Journal of Architectural Education 55, no. 2 (November 2001): 73–80; Anja Baumhoff, The Gendered World of the Bauhaus (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001). 34 Katharina Hövelmann, Bauhaus, 119. 35 Ibid., 103, 106, 109. 36 Katharina Hövelmann, “‘Das moderne Wohnprinzip’. Kleinwohnungsgestaltung der Ateliergemeinschaft unter der Leitung von Friedl Dicker und Franz Singer” (Master’s Thesis, University of Vienna, 2012), 56. 37 Franz Singer to Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (August 13, 1935), quoted in “Der (Fast) Vergessene Vorzeige-Kindergarten des Roten Wien,” 5. https://markusgrass.files. wordpress.com/2011/12/erste_republik_rotes_wien_goethehof_kindergarten.pdf. 38 Hövelmann, Bauhaus, 225. 39 Julie Johnson, “The Other Legacy of Vienna 1900: The Ars Combinatoria of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,” Austrian History Yearbook 51 (2020): 243–68.

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40 Brenner, The Girls of Room 28, 158. 41 Makarova, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, 19. 42 Otto, “Passages with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,” 233–6. 43 Quoted in Brenner, The Girls of Room 28, 158. 44 C.f. Otto, “Passages with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis”; Johnson Kristina Yu and Linney Wix, “Friedl Dicker and the Weimar Bauhaus,” in Through a Narrow Window, ed. Wix, 111–24. 45 Marcel Franciscono, Walter Gropius and the Creation of the Bauhaus in Weimar (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 180. 46 Ibid. 47 Quoted in Elena Makarova, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis: Vienna 1898-Auschwitz 1944 (Los Angeles: Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2001), 199. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 200–1. 50 Eva Štichová-Beldová, quoted in Makarova, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (2001), 213–14. 51 Quoted in ibid., 211. 52 Ibid., 215. 53 Ibid., 214. 54 Ibid., 217. 55 *Sonja Spitzova’s deportation date to Auschwitz. https://www.holocaust.cz/en/ database-of-victims/victim/125363-sonja-spitzova/ (accessed November 15, 2020). 56 Makarova, Dicker-Brandeis, 202–3. 57 For recent discussions on the collaboration of Bauhaus designers such as Fritz Ertl and Franz Ehrlich with the Nazi rule, see Branko Miletic, “The Nazis & Bauhaus: Very Much a German Story,” in Architecture & Design (2019), https://www. architectureanddesign.com.au/features/comment/the-nazis-bauhaus-very-much-agerman-story and further Michael Scott Moore, “Bauhaus and the Nazis: Politics of Collaboration,” in Pacific Standard (2010, updated 2017), https://psmag.com/socialjustice/bauhaus-and-the-nazis-the-politics-of-collaboration-7223 (accessed November 16, 2020). See also Jonathan Petropoulos, Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 58 Christopher Long, “Wiener Wohnkultur: Interior Design in Vienna, 1910–1938,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 5, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 1997/98): 48. 59 Laura Morowitz, “Nazi Aesthetics in Vienna and the 1943 Gustav Klimt Retrospective,” Oxford Art Journal 39, no. 1 (March 2016): 107–29. 60 Quoted in Wix, “Art and Teaching,” 35.

Part Three

Survival Through Design— Projecting Transformative Designs onto the Future

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Flights of Fancy: Willy de Majo and the Youthful Foundations of a Lifelong Design Practice Lesley Whitworth

During his lifetime graphic designer Willy de Majo achieved a high profile, both at home in London and abroad. His obituarist described him as a designer of “exceptional competence,”1 and his renown as the energetic founding president of the important professional body Icograda, the International Council of Graphic Design Associations, is assured. The de Majo family transferred the Willy de Majo Archive to the University of Brighton Design Archives in 2009,2 since when it has played a part in our evolving understanding of the émigré experience in Britain.3 This chapter builds on work that established the prevalence of a range of travel-related imagery in his outputs.4 Using a mixed methodology it seeks to interrogate the background of this Jewish European as a means of contextualizing the later emergence of that imagery in his work. In what follows, attention to the visual repertoire associated with his later life is necessarily confined, although close analysis of one singular early example of his draftsmanship is included to support the investigation.

The Milieu of Home Life Like his two older siblings, Wilhelm de Majo was born in Vienna, the city of his mother’s birth.5 This family tradition, underlined by the twelve years it took to complete the family, strongly suggests the continuing importance of the city in their lives. Notwithstanding this, these de Majos were said to be “a prominent Belgrade family.”6 Willy de Majo later described his father’s place of residence before the 1939–1945 war as “Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and for a period, Vienna, Austria.”7 This period might perhaps have been one when the children were young, and yet Willy completed his education in the city. The de Majos are said to have “also lived in Vienna,”8 so the question of where the young Willy and his family called home is a complicated one. We need also to remember that not all of the family may have been in the same place at the same time. Quite possibly, the foundations of his sense of belonging were heterogeneous from the very beginning. We might further hypothesize that his parents’ exogamous marriage deepened this sense of heterogeneity.9 Improved relations between Ashkenazi Jews like his mother

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and Sephardi Jews like his father became a feature of intellectual circles only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.10 Even so, marriages like theirs remained comparatively rare even in the interwar period.11 As their marriage took place in 1904, we may surmise that his parents were somewhat exceptional in this sense, and their partnership can also be interpreted as indicative of a certain social standing. As a Sephardic man growing up in Belgrade, Max Menachem de Majo (1875–1941) would have observed community members engaged in diverse ways as “lawyers, doctors, tailors making men’s and women’s clothes, as well as military uniforms, milliners, glass cutters, shoemakers, upholsterers, watchmakers, owners of grocery stores, wheat exporters, barkeepers, transporters, and tinsmiths.”12 A mere decade and a half later, the list included “agents of foreign trading firms, bankers, chocolate manufacturers, textile manufacturers, hat makers, engravers, electro technicians, booksellers, exporters, moulders, upholsterers, photographers, etc.,” which was “indicative of further social and professional stratification.”13 In his line of work, a connection with the city at the very heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire could only be beneficial. It seems highly probable that the connection with Vienna was not merely familial but also commercial. The description of import and export agent that attaches to the head of the family14 gives little sense of the scale of the undertaking for which he was responsible, but there are other clues that it was extensive. The first of these is the maintenance of dual homes, separated by not one, but two borders.15 A second is access to a ready method of conveyance between them.16 Third, once Willy embarked on his precocious career in design, there are said to have been opportunities to try out some early ideas in Austria (see Figure 11.1) and Sweden17: what would have been more

Figure 11.1  Advertisement for JH Jersey Modelle, showing a change of business premises in Vienna. Undated. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives

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natural than if these arose in part from the breadth of the family’s existing network? First, however, he attended the Vienna Handelsakademie (business school) for an administrative education, preparatory to entering his father’s business. Whether or not Max had himself benefitted from such an education, his interest in inculcating modern methods was presumably sufficient to ensure that Wilhelm did, which is surely evidence of clear-sighted parental ambition. The experience did not cement this plan of action however, and the pupil was drawn irresistibly to the practice of the commercial arts. Following his studies he relocated to Belgrade and set up an independent studio, which was active from some time in 1935. While taking up a place in a preexisting family enterprise at such a young age would have been quite unremarkable, establishing an entirely new one, in a comparatively untested field, is certainly worthy of note. The degree of parental resistance he encountered is not known,18 but the fashion-orientation of much of the textile trade might have inclined them toward understanding.19 In light of the direction taken by Willy, it is also worthwhile considering the designerly ambience inhabited by his sister Katarina following her marriage. Her husband Miša Manojlović (1901–1941) was a partner with Isak Azriel in a burgeoning modernist architectural practice in Belgrade.20 In Sarajevo, another son of a business-minded father, in another part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, fought hard to free himself from the strictures of the commercial world to pursue his studies as a painter. Here, though, the pursuit was of the fine arts, and Daniel Kabiljo (1894–1944) eventually gained external support to become the first professionally trained Jewish artist from that city.21 The first generation of Bosnian painters usually traveled in furtherance of their art education “to another of the Empire’s centers,” and in Kabiljo’s case this embraced time spent in Vienna, Munich, and Zagreb.22 Had either young man been intent on studying the applied arts, his route might have been less obvious. Substantial recognition of this field “barely existed in pre-war Serbia,” where this sphere of activity was considered rather “low.”23 While practice of the applied arts gained legitimacy during the interwar period, the Belgrade School of Applied Arts did not open until 1938. Before that, the requisite infrastructure was lacking. “There were no specialized schools or associations of artists and artisans, nor were there journals and exhibitions or patrons and collectors. Further, a system of criticism and cooperation between the artists and the industry itself did not exist.”24 A further telling comparison is with an exact peer of de Majo. Karoline Furhmann afterward known as Dorrit Dekk (1917– 2014) was born in Brno in yet another part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Later to become another émigré and fellow graphic designer in Britain, she initially chose for her studies a course in theater design at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts).25 It is author Robin Kinross’ contention that the elements necessary for “the professional practice of graphic design had not fully emerged [at this time] […] even less in Austria than in Britain.”26 Yet this argument seems hard to sustain. An exemplary commercial training had been available not far away at Berlin’s Reimann Schule since 1902, and by about 1930 a third of its students came from outside Germany.27 Equally, there were local precedents for successful practice without the benefit of a conventional arts education; Willy could hardly have failed to notice the

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example of two older Viennese while he was growing up. These were Julius Klinger (1876–1942) and Joseph Binder (1898–1972), both of them Jewish. Representatives of two previous generations of designer and hence the precursors of his own career path, they were both effective self-publicists, described in the United States - which they both visited to teach - as “Europe’s most prominent poster artist” in the case of Klinger,28 and “among the most distinguished commercial artists” in the case of the younger Binder.29 Klinger was the subject of a monograph published before Willy was born, and one of the subjects of an exhibition at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry when the boy was ten.30 Their work was highly regarded and would have been visible to him in public display settings. Klinger received a technical education only at the Technologische Gewerbemuseum,31 while Binder was apprenticed initially as a lithographer, only afterward studying at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule.32 After time away Klinger set up a studio and school on the Schellinggasse in the premier part of the city,33 meaning that another means by which Willy might have attained the rudiments of his craft would have been to attend classes there. Binder founded his own studio in 1924 called, perhaps immodestly, Vienna Graphics, and three years later this self-confidence carried through into the foundation of the national Austrian designers’ association, Design Austria.34 Fortunately for Willy, his determined shortcut to practice obviated the need to negotiate any such courses.

The Business Milieu In seeking to consider the relative merits of Vienna and Belgrade as business locations for the young Willy’s nascent enterprise, one is forced to confront the shifting fortunes and boundaries of a set of central and southeast European territories throughout critical periods in this story.35 Indeed, so complex are the fluctuating national conditions within which the story is set, that it is hardly going too far, to say that each generation of the family experienced a different set of parameters. The last Ottoman troops left Belgrade only eight years before Willy’s father, Max, was born there. Max’s father almost certainly retained Judeo-Spanish as the language of domestic and local engagement.36 By the end of the nineteenth century many Sephardic men had gone from having “some partial knowledge more or less of other languages,” to being fluent in Serbo-Croatian, which they nevertheless used predominantly to communicate “outside their own group, and only in the language domains that involved more interethnic cooperation, principally, the domain of work.”37 Among the merchant class and better-educated elite, proficiency in German was also a feature.38 Willy’s older sister Katarina’s childhood was spent in the glory years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when Austria-Hungary constituted a major European power. Vast and—predicated on the productive complementarity of its component parts39—economically successful, it developed the world’s fourth-largest machine building industry in the years leading up to the First World War.40 By the time that Willy’s middle sibling joined Vienna’s two million inhabitants,41 it was one of the most important cities in the world: vibrant with wealth, and synonymous with culture and learning. At the same time, for comparative purposes, the population of Belgrade

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stood at 100,000.42 Less than eighteen months after Willy’s birth, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, shortly to become the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, came into being and Austria-Hungary was no more. Vienna’s magnificence sat even more awkwardly in the absolutely changed circumstances of a social-democratic republic, shrunken within the borders of the Austrian nation-state at the conclusion of the 1914–1918 war. Top heavy and lacking an adequate hinterland, it labored under the demands of almost one-third of the entire population.43 While the new vision of “Red Vienna” might have caused consternation among the better-off, the following decade literally crackled with political tension. Ideologically suspicious of widening consumption, the Austrian government maintained an austere outlook: newspaper advertising decreased by 37 percent between 1928 and 1935; sales in 1937 of household effects represented only 58 percent of those from 1929.44 Austria’s economic performance was among the worst in Europe during the 1930s, which could only damage “the prospects for professionals whose fortune was wedded to the rise of modern consumerism.”45 By contrast, Serbia’s fortunes were rather moving in the opposite direction, and within that, economic opportunities for its Jewish residents were expanding. Engagement in two Balkan conflicts and the First World War sharpened the country’s appetite for selfdefinition and brought new degrees of integration to Jews who had already become known as “Serbs of Moses’ Faith” in the late part of the last century.46 A decade after the Armistice a monument was completed in the Sephardic Cemetery in Belgrade, which spoke eloquently and concretely of belonging. It, and the battlefield experiences it represented, countered “the centuries old Jewish experience [under Ottoman rule] of resisting assimilation and safeguarding personal religious and national identity.”47 The sense of permanence it embodied marked the respectful acknowledgment by one community of another, of shared losses, and combined roles to forge a new state as loyal subjects of the Karađorđević dynasty. The larger entity of which Serbia was a part rode out the period of international disquiet following the imposition of direct rule by King Alexander, largely thanks to Czech quietude.48 Both successor-states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia and soon-to-be Yugoslavia enjoyed a degree of interdependence thanks to investments of cash, expertise, and personnel being made by the former to the latter, and orders placed with the former by the latter, financed by loans from the same.49 At the micro level, Belgrade too experienced significant inward investment and intensive bouts of construction between the First and Second World Wars.50 The new mood offered wide possibilities for gentile and Jewish Serbian architects to work together on projects for a broad clientele.51 Jews’ positive regard for the city of Belgrade was premised on it being a Balkan capital that offered limitless possibilities to all of its inhabitants, which induced from them countless contributions in many fields of creativity.52 Significant numbers of interwar “residential-business, trade, catering, and industrial structures [were] designed and created by Jewish professionals interested in innovative materials and structures.”53 One of them was Willy’s brother-in-law Miša Manojlović. There must still have been a de Majo presence in Vienna at the end of 1933 when Willy’s sister Katarina, known as Keti, married there, as her parents had done. Whether all generations of the family retreated to Serbia afterward, following the disturbing

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civil war and power-grab of the earlier part of that year, is presently unknown. By the following year planning permission had been granted for a family home at 16 Sanje Živanović Street, Belgrade, and Miša and Keti were listed as owners.54 At some point in 1935 Willy de Majo, still a teenager, audaciously opened his own studio there and began to attract poster and other commissions.

The Christmas Greeting of 1936 The composition visible at Figure 11.2 is a vibrant statement full of energy and movement. Examined closely, it contains references to four different means of transport, in addition to the forward propulsion of the liveried servant. The amplification of the greeting in five separate European languages suggests a commercial impulse behind the generic message, to extend its reach—perhaps among a widening list of clients. The words are in French, German, Hungarian, Serbo-Croat in both Cyrillic and Latin forms, and English. The conventional Christmas and New Year felicitations might reinforce this possible business context, given that a Jewish individual is proffering them, although celebrations were widespread among acculturated Jews. The candle garlanded with greenery is a traditional seasonal trope, as is the rotund Santa with his diminutive cherubic sidekick. In this depiction, the winged figure (potentially capable of flight) is surmounted by a star and is irresistibly reminiscent of the crowning glory that sits atop many Christmas trees, the tree itself being absent here. All of the action

Figure 11.2  Christmas Greeting, 1936. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives

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takes place on a ground that is a palette, complete with pencil, paintbrush, and mobile daubs of paint. The tools are unambiguously those of the artist and relate to de Majo’s recently adopted professional identity. Equivalence is thereby established between the ground on which the action is taking place, and the capabilities on which his career was premised. Central to the composition is a globe, also shown to be in motion. It seems as clear a statement of geographical ambition as any that can be imagined. The globe is situated at the base of a column, forming a third dynamic perpendicular element, between the glowing candle, pencil, and paintbrush. Within the column a skier is positioned midjump, in the act of vaulting the globe. The sport of skiing attained a newfound status at this time, assisted by developments in lamination, allowing the production of highperformance skis by the mid-1930s.55 Ski afficionados established new ski resorts such as Val d’Isère in the French Alps,56 and the first hill designed specifically for ski flying was built in Yugoslavia in 1934.57 This inclusion is therefore topical and de Majo was presumably an enthusiast, but maybe we can go further and infer active participation, given the intimate nature of this range of pictorial references.58 The horse included in the upper portion of the invented crest may point to an additional leisure activity and mode of travel. Horses would have been an indispensable part of an import and export business and middle-class life in the not too distant past, so experience with them is not hard to imagine, although the reference could simply be familial. Pausing in its circuit of the globe is the modern equivalent, a vehicle, and one of striking distinctiveness. Emerging from the 1936 Cord 810 convertible coupé is de Majo.59 How such a shot with an American car was achieved is harder to say, but its inclusion is far from mysterious. Its low, sleek lines were accompanied by technical innovations making it an instant style icon, and surely the designer’s car par excellence.60 Debuted only in November 1935, and ceasing production in 1937, the window of opportunity for one of the low number made to reach central Europe was small, but not impossible.61 Alternatively, this might be an ingenious use of collage. It appears possible that a further, deeper point is being made here. The 1933 suspension of parliament in Austria by Engelbert Dollfuß marked the end of a socialdemocratic, cooperatively minded period of government, and the arrival in 1934 of a deeply conservative autocracy. This regime viewed consumption less as a tool to levelup living conditions, and more as one to concretize hierarchies. Part of its program involved the development of a so-called people’s car, which duly emerged in 1936 ahead of that conceived by Hitler. While it did not turn out to be the affordable “Austrian Wonder” anticipated by the press, it could with more accuracy be viewed as the Austrian Volkswagen.62 The comparison was unavoidable, as was the association between the Steyr 50 and Dollfuß’ and his successor’s fascist politics. Remarkably there is a family resemblance between the American Cord and the Austrian car, almost as if the long wheelbase of the former had been squeezed to create the more rounded shapes of the “Baby.” Given the pinpoint-sharp timing of the parallel arrivals of these cars in relation to the creation of this 1936 Christmas card,63 a political inference may be deduced; one that looks westward toward the expansive, democratic consumer spaces of the United States. The invented crest inside its shield-shaped frame looks backward toward a longer European heraldic past, which contrasts with the youthful profile of the United States.

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It features the initials W and M, the aforementioned horse, and a fleur-de-lis; one of two in the picture, with the other occupying a similar position to the North Pole. The fleursde-lis are almost certainly a reference to the international Scout movement with which de Majo was associated.64 A confident signature, date, and location complete the piece.

Departure The year 1937, heralded by this card, came and went productively. There are indications in de Majo’s archive that a promising beginning had been made. For one thing he seems to have had regular input into the monthly trade journal of the Yugoslav air industry, and we might reasonably speculate that this work constituted a useful backbone to the new venture. If equivalent cards were produced in the following years, it seems unlikely they would have manifested the same exuberance. Europe was in shadow, and Yugoslavia had troubles of its own, separate from but overlapping with those caused by the agendas of National Socialism and fascism. The geographical integrity to which it aspired was dissolving, and different component parts were twisting away in different directions. The following year brought Germany’s annexation of Austria, and by 1939 he was in Britain. The exact means of his journey remain mysterious at present, but it’s difficult to believe that a man enjoying such a close association with the Yugoslav air industry would have struggled to find a friend in such a circumstance. Apart from the SerboCroat and German that were a part of his oral heritage, de Majo had acquired some proficiency in French and English, the latter giving him an undoubted advantage when compared with someone like Victor Gruen (1903–1980), another Viennese who spent his brief sojourn in London en route to New York sharpening his rudimentary English skills.65 In one other way, we might note de Majo’s definite advantage over his fellow countryman, and that was the tremendous portability of his skill set as a graphic designer. Architect Gruen completed his Realgymnasium (secondary school) education in 1917, next receiving a technical training at a state trade school, and from 1924 completing his studies at the Master School for Architecture at Vienna’s Akademie der bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts). Yet despite this longevity of experience, he was disadvantaged in the United States by the lack of a formal license to practice, until eventually certified in the state of California as late as 1948.66 In fact, de Majo’s linguistic suppleness enabled him to find a war role within the overseas department of the BBC, which could be regarded as locating him at the heart of the British establishment. He subsequently left to take a more active role in the conflict. In spite of fervent efforts to remain neutral in the war, the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, and it would be hard not to conclude that this propelled his course of action. He was afterward awarded a military MBE in recognition of his service with the RAF/ Royal Yugoslav Air Force. We now know that by the end of that year his mother, father, sister and brother-in-law, and two nieces had all been murdered by the Nazis.67 When de Majo himself discovered their fate is unclear, but possibly not until much later. The situation for Serbian Jews in the aftermath of the war was not such as would draw anyone back.68

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Figure 11.3  Business card representing Graforel Relief Lettering. Undated. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives

Remarkably by the time he returned to civilian life and established WM de Majo & Associates in London in 1946, he was still only twenty-nine. Following a postwar study tour of Canada and the United States, he had also established a New York office by 1948.69 The business card shown in Figure 11.3 mentions New York, Paris, London, the British Commonwealth, Scandinavia, and the Western Hemisphere. It says much about the conceptual and geographical reach of the man.

Conclusion Born of exceptional parents into the ferment of central and southeastern European dynastic politics, as empires that had shaped cultural thinking about space and stretch, and latitude collapsed in on themselves, releasing new fissures and new identities, Willy de Majo was the scion of an established and successful metropolitan family for whom travel and transit were integral parts of life. Born in Vienna and immersed in its artistic traditions, he was nevertheless rooted also in Belgrade with its different economic climate and air of possibility. Even before Nazism claimed the Germanspeaking world, a choice had been made on commercial grounds, I conjecture, and the wisdom of this disassociation can only have become more and more evident. I believe that for de Majo his identification with Yugoslavia, both commercially and militarily, was an aspect of his modernity, and a statement of faith in this new proposition. If his national and cultural affiliations were complicated, then so too was the mechanism of his migration. There is emerging evidence that this was a man who did not so much reach a decision to leave, with its concomitant sense of rupture, as one

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who strategically paused a sequence of journeys. This would by no means mitigate the emotional turbulence wrought in the wake of such a vital life-choice, rather it amplifies Kinross’ point about the “irreducibility to a common pattern” of émigré departures.70 His subsequent service with the Royal Yugoslav Air Force took his theoretical admiration for the aeronautical industry into the realms of the desperately practical. Perhaps it was also the fulfillment of a boyhood dream. Certainly it can only have been part of a confluence of factors contributing to a lifetime of riffing on the subject and iconography of travel. These emerged from a cosmopolitan worldview and a playful imagination, but also something much deeper: an expansive conception of human potential, coupled with a deep, grounded respect for the things that transport makes possible, arising from the most profound personal experience.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the following people for their kind responses to my inquiries during the preparation of this work: Professor Jeremy Aynsley, Sue Breakell, Branka Dzidic, Dr. Fani Gargova, Dr. Elana Shapira, Paul Shaw, Dr. Jana Škerlová.

Notes 1

2 3

4

5

6

Dick Negus, “Obituary: Willy de Majo,” Independent, October 23, 1993, https://www. independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-willy-de-majo-1512513.html (accessed June 30, 2020). This provides a good overview of the many professional accolades he achieved. Where it joined the Icograda Archive, which arrived in 2007. See for example Sue Breakell and Lesley Whitworth, “Émigré Designers in the University of Brighton Design Archives,” Journal of Design History 28, no. 1 (2015): 83–97, and Breakell and Whitworth, “‘A Valuable Stimulus to Design Development’: Six Émigré Designers at the University of Brighton Design Archives,” in Designs on Britain: Great British Design by Great Jewish Designers (London: Jewish Museum London, 2017). As discussed by the author in two papers given at “Designs on Britain: Jewish Émigré Designers,” Victoria & Albert Museum, November 30, 2017, and “Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism,” University of Applied Arts Vienna, May 16–17, 2019. Willy de Majo was born July 25, 1917. Turkish Community of Vienna Births Register available via SephardicGen website. http://www.sephardicgen.com/databases/ viennaBirthsSrchFrm.html (accessed June 30, 2020). My sincere thanks to Fani Gargova for drawing this and other sources to my attention, and helping with their interpretation. Aleksandra Ilijevski, “The Lost Voices of Serbian Modernism: Miša Manojlović and Isak Azriel,” Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies 27, no. 1–2: 130. My thanks to Elana Shapira for drawing this article to my attention, and for her continuing encouragement to develop this work.

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Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, Yad Vashem (testimony provided by Willy de Majo) with thanks once more to Fani Gargova. https://yvng.yadvashem.org/ nameDetails.html?language=en&s_lastName=&s_firstName=&s_place=&itemId=10 15370&ind=1&winId=2349749079360400937 (accessed May 27, 2019). 8 Ilijevski, “Lost Voices,” 130. 9 Turkish Community of Vienna Weddings Register available via SephardicGen website. http://www.sephardicgen.com/databases/viennaWeddingsSrchFrm.html (accessed June 30, 2020). 10 Ivana Vučina Simović, “The Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Sarajevo: From Social, Cultural and Linguistic Divergence to Convergence,” Transversal: Zeitschrift für Jüdische Studien, 13 Jahrgang 2/2012: 49. 11 Ibid., 58. 12 Milan Ristović, “The Jews of Serbia (1804–1918): From Princely Protection to Formal Emancipation,” 38–9, citing a list from 1896 to 1897. In Tullia Catalan and Marco Dogo, eds., The Jews and the Nation-States of Southeastern Europe from the 19th Century to the Great Depression: Combining Viewpoints on a Controversial Story (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). 13 Ibid. 14 Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, entry on Max Menahem De Majo. 15 Although Belgrade lay close to the perimeter of the empire, Hungary lay between it and Austria. It is not yet known how exactly the family managed their time in each location. 16 Almost certainly the railway, although these were significantly underdeveloped. See S. H. Beaver, “Railways in the Balkan Peninsula,” The Geographical Journal 97, no. 5. DOI: 10.2307/1787398. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1787398 (accessed June 26, 2020). 17 Willy de Majo entry, Who’s Who in Graphic Art (Zurich: Amstutz & Herdeg Graphis, 1962). 18 For some evidence of his father’s view see Sue Breakell in this volume. 19 Dick Negus tells us that it was a business dealing with textiles: Negus, “Obituary.” 20 See Ilijevski, “Lost Voices.” 21 Mirjam Rajner, “Between Local and Universal: Daniel Kabiljo, a Sephardi Artist in Sarajevo on the Eve of the Holocaust,” El Prezente 4 (2010): 243–4. https://www. academia.edu/12079603/_Between_Local_and_Universal_Daniel_Kabiljo_a_ Sephardi_Artist_in_Sarajevo_on_the_Eve_of_the_Holocaust_?auto=download (accessed March 3, 2020). 22 Ibid., 244, 246. 23 Bojana Popović, “Women and Applied Arts in Belgrade 1918–1941,” in On the Very Edge of Modernism and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia (1918–1941), ed. Jelena Bogdanović, Lilien Filipovitch Robinson, and Igor Marjanović (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014), 151. 24 Ibid. 25 The University of Brighton Design Archives received the Dorrit Dekk Archive in 2015. 26 Robin Kinross, “Émigré Graphic Designers in Britain: Around the Second World War and Afterwards,” Journal of Design History 3, no. 1 (1990): 41–2. 27 Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser, “The Reimann School and Studios, London 1937– 41,” in Insiders Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019), 87.

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28 Jeremy Aynsley, Julius Klinger: Posters for a Modern Age (Miami Beach: The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, 2017), 10. 29 Oliver Kühschelm, “(Mis)Understanding Consumption: Expertise and Consumer Policies in Vienna, 1918–1938,” in Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture, ed. Alison J. Clarke and Elana Shapira (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 45. 30 Aynsley, Julius Klinger, 11 and 44. 31 There is also a suggestion that he received private lessons from Koloman Moser. Ibid., 10–11. 32 Alice Twemlow, “Joseph Binder: Biography.” https://www.aiga.org/medalistjosephbinder/ (accessed April 14, 2020). 33 Aynsley, Julius Klinger, 25. 34 Twemlow, “Joseph Binder.” Ibid. 35 The complexities of key political and military events of the period lie outside the scope of this chapter. For recent scholarship see Sabrina P. Ramet, ed., Interwar East Central Europe, 1918–1941: The Failure of Democracy-building, the Fate of Minorities (London: Routledge, 2020). 36 Simović, “Sephardim and Ashkenazim,” 54. 37 Ibid., 43. 38 Ibid., 45–6. 39 Ivan Berend and Gyorky Ranki, “Economic Problems of the Danube Region after the Break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,” Journal of Contemporary History 4, no. 3 (1969): 169–85. 40 After the United States, Britain, and Germany, Max-Stephan Schulze, “The Machinebuilding Industry and Austria’s Great Depression after 1873,” Economic History Review 50, no. 2 (2003): 282. 41 Population figure for 1910: Kühschelm, “(Mis)Understanding Consumption,” 45. 42 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Serbia (accessed June 22, 20). 43 Kühschelm, “(Mis)Understanding Consumption,” 47. 44 Ibid., 53. 45 Ibid., 56–7. 46 Vuk Dautović, “A Monument to Fallen Jewish Soldiers in the Wars Fought between 1912 and 1919 at the Sephardic Cemetery in Belgrade,” Acta Historiae Artis Slovenica, Visualizing Memory and Making History: Public Monuments in Former Yugoslav Space in the Twentieth Century 18, no. 2 (2013): 184–5. 47 Ibid. See also Vuk Dautović and Vladana Putnik, “The Construction of the House of the Jewish Church-School Community in Belgrade and the Process of Jewish Emancipation,” Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, 28 Nos. 1–2 (2017): 191–213. 48 Jana Škerlová, “Czechoslovak-Yugoslav Relations in the First Year of King Alexander’s Dictatorship,” Istorija 20. Veka, (2016) : 75–95. 49 Jana Škerlová, correspondence with the author, May 1, 2020, for which, grateful thanks. 50 Aleksandar Kadijevic ́, “The Creative Presence of Jews in Belgrade Architecture of the Twentieth Century,” Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies 27, no. 1–2 (2013): 147–54, here 149. 51 Ibid., 150. 52 Ibid., 147. 53 Ibid., 150. 54 Ilijevski, “Lost Voices,” 130. 55 Seth Masia, “The Splitkein Patent,” Skiing Heritage Journal, December 2003.

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56 “Val d’Isere: The Doctor Who Hid a Jewish Girl, and the Resort That Wants to Forget.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-50828696 (accessed May 18, 2020). 57 Borut Batagelj “Slovenian Skiing Identity: Historical Path and Reflection,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 6 (2013): 654. https://doi.org/10.1 080/09523367.2012.761001 (accessed August 2, 2020). 58 It is also conceivable that de Majo received commissions from the ski industry. 59 I could not have hoped to identify the car without the unparalleled visual resources of the web. 60 It is one of a very small number of automobiles on permanent display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. See https://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z9090/Cord810.aspx (accessed May 10, 2020). 61 Ibid. 62 Kühschelm, “(Mis)Understanding Consumption,” 53. 63 Verena Pawlowsky, “Luxury Item or Urgent Commercial Need: Occupational Position and Automobile Ownership in 1930s Austria,” Journal of Transport History 34, no. 2 (2013): 177–95, here 188. 64 Evidence in the Willy de Majo Archive. 65 Born Viktor Grünbaum. Joseph Malherek, “Victor Gruen’s Retail Therapy: Exiled Jewish Communities and the Invention of the American Shopping Mall as a Postwar Ideal,” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 61, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ ybw001 (accessed March 6, 2020). 66 Ibid (unpaginated). 67 Ilijevski, “Lost Voices,” 133–4. 68 Kadijevic ,́ “Creative Presence,” 154, and Haris Dajč, “Jews of Former Yugoslavia and Their Decline after Wars in Yugoslavia: Legal and Material Positions in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina 1991–2016,” Belgrade Historical Review VIII (2017): 117–23. https://www.academia.edu/35510522/JEWS_OF_FORMER_YUGOSLAVIA_ AND_THEIR_DECLINE_AFTER_WARS_IN_YUGOSLAVIA_LEGAL_AND_ MATERIAL_POSITIONS_IN_SERBIA_CROATIA_AND_BOSNIA_and_ HERZEGOVINA_1991_2016?email_work_card=view-paper (accessed April 25, 2020). 69 Negus, “Obituary.” 70 Kinross, “Émigré Graphic Designers,” 48.

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Sustaining Independence: Marie Frommer’s Networks and Architectural Practices in Berlin and in New York Tanja Poppelreuter

The 1960 New York Times article “Women Gain Role in Architecture” reported that among the approximately 13,000 architects registered with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) the New York Chapter had twelve fully accredited women members. Among those only Dr.-Ing. Marie Frommer (1890–1976) and Read Weber (1907– 1990) ran independent practices.1 The article revealed just how few women practiced architecture independently in 1960, highlighted Frommer’s exceptional position and raises the question as to the ways in which she established and maintained her practice. Although Frommer gained some recognition during her lifetime, it is only since the 1990s that critical studies on her work have been published. While the existing literature predominantly discusses her work in Berlin, this chapter does not focus on her activities in one geographical location or on her stylistic preferences as evidenced in her work;2 it instead retraces Frommer’s clients, collaborators, and professional women acquaintances.3 As a result networks can be identified that provide strong indications of the ways in which Frommer acquired commissions and established a public profile. The networks that she was involved with appear to have been a means to mitigate disadvantages brought about by her being a professional woman as well as a Jew. It can be argued that her responses to disadvantages were decisive in her ability to sustain an independent practice.

Retail Commissions and Women’s Networks in Berlin In 1924/25 Frommer (Figure 12.1) opened her first architectural office in Berlin. She had gained a diploma in architecture at the Technische Hochschule Berlin (today’s Technical University of Berlin) in 1916 and completed her doctorate on Flusslauf und Stadtentwicklung (Courses of Rivers and Urban Development) in 1919 under art historian and architect Cornelius Gurlitt (1850–1938) at the Technische Hochschule Dresden (today’s Dresden University of Technology); with this she was the first woman in Germany with a doctoral degree in this subject area.4

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Figure 12.1  Lotte Jacobi. Photo of Marie Frommer, c. 1960. Source: Alamy, R9NW5X

Little is known about Frommer’s professional training up until 1924/25; during the First World War she worked on a restoration project in Angerburg, East Prussia (today Węgorzewo, Poland) as well as for the Building and Planning Department and the Town Planning Department in Dresden while writing her doctoral thesis.5 Afterward, she trained in architectural firms in Germany and worked on projects abroad.6 That Frommer opened her practice in 1924/257 was perhaps stimulated by the economic recovery of the Weimar Republic that had been—after a period of hyperinflation and the collapse of the fiscal system—stabilized with the help of the Dawes Plan.8 At that time she was not the first woman in independent practice; Emilie Winkelmann (1875–1951), for example, had had a practice in Berlin since 1907. Frommer was a representative of a generation of women who were enabled by political and societal changes to choose and practice architecture. Most women who studied architecture appear, however, to have worked in employment.9 Frommer’s first known commissions were for the Jewish-owned Schuh- und Seidenhaus Leiser (Shoe and Silk Store Leiser) in 1925/26 and again in 1927 (Figure 12.2).

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Figure 12.2 Marie Frommer, Seidenhaus Leiser, Königsstraße (today Rathaustraße), Berlin, 1927. Source: Ernst Pollack. Moderne Ladenbauten: Außen- und Innenarchitektur. Berlin-Charlottenburg: Ernst Pollak Verlag, 1929, 43. © MAK—Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna

The business had been founded by Julius Klausner and Hermann Leiser in 1891, and by the 1920s it had become one of the largest shoe retailers in Berlin. In 1928 architect and architectural historian Paul Zucker (1888–1971)—who would also emigrate to New York where he became a professor at the Cooper Union—designed a Leiser store on Tauentzienstraße 20, and in 1930 Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953) was commissioned with the Leiser shop on Schönhauser Allee.10 Frommer altered and modernized the shopping windows and the shop interior on Tauentzienstraße 17 and remodeled a larger branch on Königsstraße (today Rathausstraße).11 That Leiser chose to commission Jewish architects was not unusual. Architectural historian Myra Warhaftig has shown that the approximately 100 Jewish architects who practiced in Berlin before 1933 received commissions predominantly from Jewish clients.12 Leiser might have chosen Frommer to support a woman in architecture. It is also possible that not only her portfolio, reputation, and skill convinced her client but that she was appointed for reasons of gender; to appoint a woman to design a large-scale modern store might have been considered an advantage because the primary clientele for these stores were women. A similar train of thought that—at the same time—led women to be considered suitable to design houses and modern kitchens might have also been at play when considering the design of modern stores and department stores. Frommer could have been chosen out of the notion that a

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woman could recognize the needs of female customers and would thus be able to adopt her design to encourage Kauflust (desire to buy).13 Between 1928 and 1930 Frommer built her most substantial retail project; the fivestory department store Textilia in Mährisch-Ostrau (today Ostrava, Czech Republic) for the Jewish textiles merchant Igo (also Hugo) Wechsler.14 Textilia was one of several modernist department stores that were built in Mährisch-Ostrau after the First World War by members of a wealthy Jewish community. The Viennese department store Rix, built in 1928 by the Czech architect Ernst Korner (1888–1966) and Moritz Bachner’s (1871–1935) six-story department store Bachner designed by Mendelssohn in 1933, were Textilia’s main competitors.15 Whether Leiser or members of the Jewish community in Berlin recommended her to Wechsler is not known, but it can be assumed that her work for Leiser promoted her reputation as a capable architect for large-scale retail projects. The commissions from Leiser and Wechsler indicate her professional relationship with Jewish business-owners but her Hotel Villa Majestic in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, a project that ran in parallel with Textilia, is linked to Frommer’s engagement in Women’s Organizations. Here, Frommer joined two existing buildings and modernized the façades and interiors.16 As a hotel exclusively available for women it provided rooms, studios, and apartments appropriate for women living alone or traveling without a male chaperone. The restaurant and two bars also provided suitable places to meet and from 1930 gatherings of the Berlin branch of the Soroptimist Club and of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Ingenieurinnen (Association of German Women Engineers) took place here (Figure 12.3);17 Frommer was involved with both organizations. For the Gesellschaft Deutscher Ingenieurinnen at the Weltkraftkonferenz (World Energy Conference) she gave a talk in 1930 on her work as an independent architect.18 Frommer’s office “employed on average two secretaries, 6–7 assistants and draughtsmen, and as many site managers as projects were in progress and assistant site managers where needed.”19 The level of her success might have prompted the invitation for the talk that will have had the goal to motivate women toward choosing engineering professions. The Soroptimist Club (today Soroptimist International) was also an organization that supported professional women. In 1930 Frommer was a founding member of the branch in Berlin. Initiated in 1921 in Oakland, California, the “sorores optimae” admitted representatives of distinct professions—similar to the Rotary Club.20 The club organized gatherings, events, and talks, fostered international connections in support of professional women, and addressed societal challenges experienced by women. By 1930 several branches aside from the one in Berlin had been founded in the United States as well as in London, Glasgow, Paris, and Geneva.21 Among the members of the Berlin branch were surgeon Dr. Edith Peritz (1897– 1985)22—the first president—gentile Tilla Durieux (1880–1971) who was an actress and the former wife of art dealer and editor Paul Cassirer (1871–1926), writer and journalist Dr. Gabriele Tergit (aka Elise Reifenberg née Hirschmann, 1894–1982),23 photographer Lotte Jacobi (1896–1990), gentile Irene Witte (1894–1976)—whose 1922 translation of Christine Frederick’s book Household Engineering was of pivotal

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Figure 12.3 Marie Frommer, Hotel Majestic, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, 1928/29, Great Bar. Source: AKG-Images, AKG26960

influence to Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s (1897–2000) 1926 design of the Frankfurt Kitchen24—and gentile Margarete Kaiser, author of the sex manual Die Liebe als Kunst (Love as Art) and editor of the magazine Die schaffende Frau (The Creating Woman).25 Frommer was involved in several activities of the club such as the 1931 exhibition Wohnung und Mode (Living and Fashion) organized by the Stadtverband Berliner Frauenvereine (Municipal League of Berlin Women’s Associations). The club planned an exhibit of a professional woman’s office and Frommer was to give a talk on Contemporary Living as part of the exhibition.26 For Die schaffende Frau Frommer wrote the column Wohnberatung (Advice on Living) that provided readers with suggestions and guidance for interior decoration.27 An exhibition unrelated to the club that Frommer was involved with and that indicates her connections with women in architecture was Die gestaltende Frau (The Designer Woman) at the Jewish-owned department store Wertheim in 1930. Here, Frommer’s work was exhibited alongside that of the gentile architects Hanna Löv (1901– 1989), Elisabeth von Tippelskirch-Knobelsdorff (1877–1959), and Winkelmann.28 From 1931 Frommer’s activities outside her architectural practice diminished, possibly because of an increase in design projects. As Vertrauensarchitekt (trusted architect) she was commissioned by the “Allianz und Stuttgarter Verein, Schweizerische Lebensversicherungs, und Rentenanstalt [Swiss Life Insurance and Pension Company, today Swiss Life], and Guyerzeller Bank”29—the latter of which might have come about

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due to Frommer’s acquaintance with Swiss architect Lux (Louise) Guyer (1894–1955), who was related to the Guyer-Zeller family.30 Between 1924/25 and 1934 Frommer established an architectural practice; the commissions of which grew from shop alterations to the remodeling of a hotel to conversions of office buildings for international clients. An indication of the level of confidence that her clients had in her skill and professionalism that would have been a foundation of her independent practice is expressed in a 1935 letter of recommendation: Your ability, your energy and prudence have resulted in a masterful conversion, which is excellent in the technical sense as well as in architectural-artistic aspects, and this despite the rush and the repeated changes of the original program, so that the virtually new house is in every sense of the word work well done, which we enjoy very much.31

Still, it was not only skill and professionalism that drove the success of Frommer’s practice in Berlin. During the early stages of her career she was commissioned by Jewish clients, which suggests the support of this community. Her talk at the Weltkraftkonferenz, her column in Die schaffende Frau, and her engagement in the Soroptomist Club show her to have been also well-connected among professional women. Her engagement with these organizations, together with her skills as an architect, seems to have been a means to develop her reputation and expand her practice. This came to a complete halt and her practice disintegrated after Jewish architects began losing their memberships to the Bund Deutscher Architekten (Association of German Architects, BDA). From 1933 the BDA was gradually subsumed into the newly founded Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of Culture) to which a new application had to be made. As a Jew Frommer’s application was rejected and in November 1934 she lost her permission to practice.32 The above letter of recommendation was written a year later by the directorate of the Schweizerische Lebensversicherungs und Rentenanstalt and probably to support her in exile. After completing ongoing projects Frommer was forced to leave Germany and in 1936/37 she moved to London.33

First Exile in London After arriving in London she was supported by her brother Leopold Frommer (1894– 1943), a mechanical engineer who had been forced into exile in 1934 and who worked at High Duty Alloys, Ltd., in Slough.34 While in London, she did not join the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) nor register with the Architects Registration Board (ARB).35 The only work she was engaged with was “the designing of many bombproof shelters.”36 These might have been so-called Anderson Shelters, rudimentary self-built air-raid shelters that were sent to households in kit form from 1939.37 It is possible that Frommer helped with installing Anderson Shelters on private properties. Frommer is also mentioned in the 1937 article “A New Buttress for the Alliance” in The International Women’s News. The article reported on the inauguration of the

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Second Wednesday Luncheon Club hosted by the British suffragist and politician Dame Margery Corbett Ashby (1882–1981) who was, among other things, the president of the International Alliance of Women.38 None of Frommer’s activities appear to have yielded opportunities to reestablish her practice and she left London to immigrate to the United States in November 1939 and arrived in New York on December 5.39

New York Clients and Collaborators During the late 1930s New York provided exile for a great number of refugees who were supported by multiple organizations.40 Frommer received help through her connections with the Soroptimist Club as demonstrated in her providing the address of the club member Miss M.F.E. Smith upon her arrival.41 A number of her acquaintances and clients also found refuge in New York. Among them were the Soroptimists Annot (Anna Ottilie Krigar-Menzel, 1894–1981), who later founded the Annot Art School and Gallery at the Rockefeller Center, possibly Kaiser42 as well as Jacobi and Peritz, who rejoined the Soroptimist Club.43 Frommer’s former client Leiser, whose business was sold under coercion after 1933, came to New York, and Wechsler, whose property was seized and “Aryanized” in October 1940, came to the United States as well.44 It was not until 1946 that Frommer regained a license to practice architecture in New York but almost immediately upon arrival she was mentioned in newspaper articles. The earliest was at the end of January 1940 when Frommer joined the members of the League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia in a visit to a slum area in Washington D.C. She was introduced as having assisted in planning low-cost houses in Germany.45 While this cannot be corroborated as having been part of her expertise it shows the organizers interest in housing and in the expertise of an architect trained in Germany. It also indicates that Frommer either drew on preexisting connections to join this group or that she was able to create opportunities quickly. In October 1940 Frommer appears again in the press for a talk on “the influence of women as homemakers and consumers on manufacturing and domestic architecture” at a dinner of the Business and Professional Women’s Club in Utica, New York.46 This topic was more in keeping with her expertise and akin to the content of her column in Die schaffende Frau. After reestablishing her practice Frommer continued to give talks discussing “Designs for the Modern Store Under Present Conditions”47 in 1951 and “the necessity of exchange of ideas between builder and architect to further the understanding and performance of progressive housing” in 1958.48 The first talk indicated Frommer’s ongoing involvement in shop designs, an activity that is also mentioned in the 1970 entry of the American Architects Directory. Here, Frommer’s practice is recorded as having been focused on “layout & rehab. for sundry off. in downtown N.Y.C.” between 1951 and 1970.49 Unfortunately, only four of her “sundry offices” were published—all of which were designed during the 1940s.50 The earliest was the 1943/44 interior of Radio Frank’s Night Club that Frommer refurbished in collaboration with German interior decorator Paul Bry

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(1899–1953).51 The client might have been “Radio” Frank Smith a lyrical tenor and radio personality.52 Frommer might have already known Bry as he had studied interior architecture and practiced in Berlin where he, among other projects, designed the interior and furniture for the consulting room of Austrian-American psychoanalyst Dr. René Árpád Spitz (1887–1974).53 Bry had relocated to Paris in 1933 where he worked with Joachim Hoffmann (aka Jo Kim, 1908–1995) before coming to New York in 1938.54 The club was published in the architectural magazine Pencil Points: The Magazine of Architecture that also featured Frommer’s first independent project, the 1945/46 Specialty Shop Regina in New Rochelle (Figure 12.4).55 This shop was photographed by Ezra Stoller (1915–2004) who in the 1950s would become well known for his photographs of modernist architecture. It is likely that Frommer approached Stoller to obtain professional photographs in an effort to enhance her public profile.56

Figure 12.4a Marie Frommer. Speciality Shop “Regina,” New Rochelle, NY, 1945/46. Photograph: Ezra Stoller. Source: “Inexpensive Design of Speciality Shop.” Progressive Architecture: Pencil Points (New York, August 1946), 73

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Figure 12.4b  Marie Frommer, Cases. Speciality Shop. “Regina,” New Rochelle, NY, 1945/46. Source: “Inexpensive Design of Speciality Shop.” Progressive Architecture: Pencil Points (New York, August 1946), 75

The first of these was the interior for the Jewish law office of Milton Mansbach (1901–1983) & Louis J. Paley in 1948 (Figure 12.5).57 The offices were photographed by Ben Schnall (1906–1998) and published in Interiors the editor of which was Austrian émigré writer and architect Bernard Rudofsky (1905–1988). Mansbach had been admitted to the New York bar in 1924 and appears together with Paley in court records and newspapers during the 1930s. Both seem to have been employed at the law firm Lachman & Goldsmith before founding Mansbach & Paley between 1946 and 1948.58 The last retail project that Frommer published was the 1949 store Creative Looms; it was also photographed by Schnall and featured in The Architectural Record (Figure 12.6).59 The shop made textiles for designers such as Pierre Kleykamp (1921–1984), Joseph Provato, and Ruth Adler Schnee (1923–) who, in a 2002 interview, recalled that it was established by Mr. Hesslein and Lili Blumenau (1912–1976). Blumenau had studied in Berlin, Paris, arrived in New York in 1938 and had attended the Black Mountain College in North Carolina.60

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Figure 12.5  Marie Frommer, Library in the Law Office of Mansbach & Paley, New York, 1948, Photograph: Ben Schnall. Source: “New Light on Forensic Interiors.” Interiors 5 (1948): 97

There is no full account of Frommer’s oeuvre; little is known about the clients of her published commissions and even less on her other work. In context with the Jewish population of New York, it is not surprising that some of her clients were Jewish business owners. Jews were the largest minority group in New York and between 1920 and 1960 formed between a quarter and a third of the city’s population.61 It seems, however, that there were societal aspects that led to the commissioning of a Jewish architect by a Jewish business owner. On the example of the rise of large Jewish law offices in New York during the 1950s law and ethics scholar Eli Wald has shown that, despite a decline in antisemitism, factors such as “discriminatory hiring and promotion practices” of White Anglo-Saxon and Protestant (WASP) firms created a phenomenon according to which Jewish law firms predominantly hired Jewish lawyers.62 This fostered a separation of communities while at the same time providing opportunities for Jewish lawyers. While Wald’s study focused on law offices, a study on the hiring practices of

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Figure 12.6  Marie Frommer, Showroom and Building for Creative Looms, Inc. Photograph: Ben Schnall. Source: “Showroom and Building for Creative Looms, Inc.” Architectural Record 106, no. 4 (New York, 1949): 124

architects and designers by Jewish business owners in 1950s New York has not yet been undertaken. This example allows only for the assumption that in postwar New York—as had been the case in 1920s Berlin—mechanisms and conventions existed that fostered the appointment of Jewish architects by Jewish business owners.

Conclusions The fragmentary traces of Frommer’s career suggest that she was involved with specific types of networks in Berlin and in New York. In both cities Frommer seems to have applied similar methods to acquire commissions and raise her public profile in that she engaged with women’s organizations, Jewish professional communities, and in New York with other exiles.

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These networks are reflective of Frommer’s status in both contexts and it appears that she chose networks and organizations where her being a Jew, a professional woman, or an exile would not be an overt disadvantage and where the challenges associated with her disadvantages were known and shared by the members of these networks and communities. She might have joined women’s organizations to support other women, but also in the hope of finding support and gaining recognition. She might also have been involved in Jewish communities in Berlin and New York knowing that here her cultural heritage would not be a hindrance, while perhaps being aware that hiring practices among Jewish business owners would provide opportunities that would have been more difficult to obtain elsewhere. It appears that Frommer chose networks as a means to mitigate disadvantages, so that her networks were among the pivotal elements in sustaining an independent architectural practice in Berlin as well as New York.

Acknowledgments I wish to dedicate this chapter to the memory of my friend Gregory Spooner. For their generous support I thank my colleague Ines Sonder, Berlin; Graham Clayden, St Thomas’ Hospital; Sevak Edward Gulbekian, Rudolf Steiner Press; Forest Row, Sabine Hank, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin; Antje Kalcher, Universität der Künste, Berlin; Kelly Mcannaney, Archivist National Archives, New York City; Gordana Milavic, Maudsley Hospital, London; Andrea Pahlke, LABO, Berlin; Reverent Tom Ravetz, The Christian Community in Great Britain and Ireland; and Erica Stoller, New York.

Notes 1 2

Thomas W. Ennis, “Women Gain Role in Architecture,” The New York Times, March 13, 1960, K+R and 6R. Research on Frommer is challenging because her papers and that of her family appear to have been lost. Email conversation with Doris Bailiss, May 4, 2020, and Tom Ravetz, May 8, 2020. For literature on Frommer see, e.g., “A Thousand Women in Architecture: Part 1,” Architectural Record 103, no. 3 (1948): 105–15, Susana Torre, ed., Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1977), 98. Mary Pepchinski, “Frauen und moderne Architektur: Drei Dresdnerinnen der Weimarer Zeit,” in Frauen an Hochschulen: Förderung, Konkurrenz, Mobbing, Kultur, Kunst, Können, Komposition, ed. Karin Reiche (Dresden: Technische Universität, Referat Gleichstellung für Frau und Mann, 1995), 121–34. Kerstin Dörhöfer, Pionierinnen in der Architektur: Eine Baugeschichte der Moderne (Tübingen, Berlin: Wasmuth, 2004), 124–35, Tina Cieslik, “Marie Frommer: Architektin, Emigrantin” (MA diss., ETH Zuerich, 2008), Arne Sildatke, “Die Berliner Architektin Marie Frommer und ihr Beitrag zur Architektur der Moderne” (MA diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 2008), Ines Sonder, “Marie Frommer: Projekte zwischen Berlin und Exil in New York,” in Frau Architekt, ed. Mary Pepchinski et al. (Berlin: Wasmuth, 2017), 141–5.

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On networks in exile see Burcu Dogramaci and Karin Wimmer, eds. Netzwerke des Exils: Künstlerische Verflechtungen, Austausch und Patronage nach 1933 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2011). 4 Arne Sildatke, “Flusslauf und Stadtentwicklung: Marie Frommer’s Dissertation als Beitrag zur Theorie des Städtebaus (1919),” in Theoretikerinnen des Städtebaus: Texte und Projekte für die Stadt, ed. Katja Frey and Eliana Perotti (Berlin: Reimer, 2015), 121–34. 5 Marie Frommer, “Application for Membership,” in The American Institute of Architects, Application No. AP8861 (August 28, 1952): 2. 6 Marie Frommer, “Lebenslauf [ca. 1957],” in Entschädigungsamt Berlin, Frommer, Marie: File no. 150.633, Landesamt für Bürger- und Ordnungsangelegenheiten Berlin [hereto forward LABO]. 7 It is not clear when her practice opened. Frommer’s 1952 application at the AIA mentions 1925 and her 1957 CV 1924: Frommer, “Application for Membership,” 3 and Frommer, “Lebenslauf [ca. 1957].” 8 Adelheid von Saldern, “Einleitung,” in Geschichte des Wohnens: 1918–1945, Reform, Reaktion, Zerstörung, ed. Gerd Kähler (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Stuttgart, 1996), 15. 9 Corinna Isabel Bauer, “Bauhaus- und Tessenow-Schülerinnen: Genderaspekte im Spannungsverhältnis von Tradition und Moderne” (PhD diss., Universität Kassel, 2006), 33 ff. 10 “Erich Mendelsohn: Haus des Deutschen Metallarbeiterverbandes, Kaufhaus Schocken, Leiser-Filiale,” Bauwelt 41 (1930): 15–16. Wolfgang Schäche, Norbert Szymanski, Paul Zucker: Der vergessene Architekt (Berlin: Jovis, 2005), 139. 11 Arne Sildatke, Dekorative Moderne: Das Art Déco in der Raumkunst der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Hopf, 2013), 383ff. 12 Myra Warhaftig, Deutsche jüdische Architekten vor und nach 1933—Das Lexikon (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2005), 23 + 168. 13 Women as primary customers in Department Stores in particular were discussed in Paul Lerner, The Consuming Temple: Jews, Department Stores and the Consumer Revolution in Germany, 1880–1940 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015), 3ff. 14 Marie Frommer, “Warenhaus in Mährisch-Ostrau,” Bauwelt 22, no. 4 (1931): 122. Other retail projects in Berlin were the shoe shop Jacoby, the conversion of the Modellhaus Max Becker in 1931–1932 and a shoe shop for Nicolas Greco in Deauville, France. “A Thousand Women”: 105–15. Dörhöfer, Pionierinnen, 124–35. 15 “Ernst Korner,” The Other Moderns: Sydney’s Forgotten European Design Legacy. https://theothermoderns.com/2017/08/29/ernst-korner/ (accessed July 9, 2020), “Department Store Bachner,” Bachner Erich Mendelsohn Moravská Ostrava. http:// bachner.cz/od-bachner/?lang=en (accessed July 9, 2020). 16 “Eine Frau baut ein Hotel,” Die schaffende Frau 1, no. 7 (1929/30): 240. See also “Architektin Dr.-Ing. Marie Frommer, Berlin: Umbau der Villa Majestic in BerlinWilmersdorf zum Hotel,” Bauwelt 21, no. 15 (1930): 9–12. 17 The preexisting Club berufstätiger Frauen joined the Soroptimist Club in 1930. “Bericht des Clubs berufstätiger Frauen (Soroptimist-Club Berlin)” Die schaffende Frau 1 (August 1930): 374. 18 Dörhöfer, Pionierinnen, 128. 19 “Ich beschäftigte im Durchschnitt 2 Sekretärinnen,” 6–7 Assistenten und Zeichner, und so viele Bauführer, als Bauten liefen, mit Hilfsbauführeren [sic], wo es nötig wurde. Frommer, “Lebenslauf [ca. 1957].” One of her employees was Rudolf 3

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Hamburger (1903–1980) who might to have assisted with the hotel while studying in Hans Poelzig’s master class at the Akademie der Künste. Eduard Kögel, “Zwei Poelzigschüler in der Emigration: Rudolf Hamburger und Richard Paulick zwischen Shanghai und Ost-Berlin (1930–1955)” (PhD diss., Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, 2007), 39. 20 “Bericht des Clubs berufstätiger Frauen (Soroptimist-Club, Berlin),” Die schaffende Frau 1, no. 9 (June 1930): 317–9. 21 “Soroptimist-Klub Berlin: Mitteilungen für Februar 1931, Zirkular Nr. 5,” in Soroptimist Club, Landesarchiv Berlin, D Rep. 920–05, Nr. 4. 22 Felicitas von Aretin, Mit Wagemut und Wissensdurst: Die ersten Frauen in Universitäten und Berufen (München: Elisabeth Sandmann, 2018), 169–77. 23 Elke-Vera Kotowski, Salondamen und Frauenzimmer: Selbstemanzipation deutschjüdischer Frauen in zwei Jahrhunderten (Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016) and Hans Wagener, Gabriele Tergit: Gestohlene Jahre (Osnabrück: V&R Unipress, 2013). 24 Christine Frederick, Die rationelle Haushaltsführung: Betriebswissenschaftliche Studien, trans. Irene Witte (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1922). Rita Pokorny, “Die Rationalisierungsexpertin Irene M. Witte (1894–1976)” (PhD diss., Technische Universität Berlin, 2003). 25 “Generalversammlung 1931: Punkt IV der Tagesordnung: Vorstandswahlen,” in Soroptimist Club, Landesarchiv Berlin D Rep. 920–05 Nr. 4. 26 Whether this talk took place is not certain as it was announced but not mentioned in the subsequent annual report. “Jahresbericht 26. Mai 1932” in Soroptimist Club, Landesarchiv Berlin, D Rep. 920–05 Nr. 4. 27 Marie Frommer, “Wohnberatung,” Die schaffende Frau 1, no. 13/14 (1930): 429. 28 “Ausstellung des deutschen Staatsürgerinnen-Verbandes,” in Die gestaltende Frau (Berlin: Deutsche Staatsbürgerinnenverband, 1930). 29 Marie Frommer, “Lebenslauf [ca. 1957].” 30 Cieslik, Marie Frommer, 43–4. 31 “Ihrem Können, Ihrer Tatkraft und Umsicht ist es gelungen den schwierigen Umbau sowohl in technischer, wie auch in architektonisch-künstlerischer Beziehung trotz der Eile und der mehrfachen Aenderungen des ursprünglichen Bauprogramms in vorbildlicher Weise zu meistern, sodass das sozusagen neue Haus ein in jeder Hinsicht wohl gelungenes Werk ist, an dem wir Freude haben.” Direktorate of the Schweizerische Lebensversicherungs- und Rentenanstalt, Letter to Marie Frommer, December 30, 1935, LABO. 32 Eugen Hönig an Marie Frommer, November 14, 1934, LABO and Anke Blümm, “Im Namen der Baukultur 1933–1945: Der BDA im Dritten Reich,” Bund Deutscher Architekten BDA, Aufbruch in den Untergang 1933–1945 (Berlin: Bund Deutscher Architekten, 2017). https://www.bda-bund.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/BDAChronik_Band-04_1933-1945.pdf (accessed May 1, 2020), 10–17. 33 It is not clear when exactly she arrived in Britain. Her indemnification application mentions that she left in 1937; other paperwork mentions late summer 1936. Marie Frommer, “Erklärung zum Antrag vom heutigen Datum: 25. Oktober 1952,” LABO and “Brief an Rechtsanwalt Max Baum. Begründung, 28. November 1958,” LABO. 34 Marie Frommer, “Eidesstattliche Versicherung am 29. Juni 1956,” LABO. See also “Frommer, Leopold, Frommer, Jadwiga: File no. 59.891,” LABO., “Obituary: Dr.-Ing. Leopold Frommer,” The Journal of the Institute of Metals and Metallurgical Abstracts 69 (1943), 511–12. Reinhard Rürop, Schicksale und Karrieren. Gedenkbuch für

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35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42

43 44

45 46

47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54

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die von den Nationalsozialisten aus der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft vertriebenen Forscherinnen und Forscher (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2008), 198–9. Email from Katherine Onadeko, ARB on June 25, 2019, and Stephanie Johnson, RIBA on June 20, 2019. “Miss McKernan to Receive Scroll,” Utica Daily Press, October 9, 1940. Anderson Shelters, https://www.andersonshelters.org.uk (accessed May 5, 2020). “A New Buttress for the Alliance,” The International Women’s News 31, nos. 11–12 (1937): 81–2. Marie Frommer, “Bescheid, 20. Oktober 1953,” LABO. Claus-Dieter Krohn, Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993). “Frommer, Marie, S.S. Statendam, List or Manifest, December 5, 1939: List 14, Line 22” in Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820–1897. Records of the US Customs Service, Record Group 36. National Archives at Washington, DC. Soroptimist Club of New York. Temporary Roster, February 7, 1939. This assumption is based on the following immigration records: “Kaiser, Margaret, S.S. Laconia, List or Manifest, December 5, 1936: List 5, Line 1” in Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820–1897. Records of the US Customs Service, Record Group 36. National Archives at Washington, DC. See collection of letters from Frommer to Jacobi, at the University of New Hampshire, Milne Special Collections and Archives, Estate Jacobi, MC 58, Box 7 f.31. Darlene Leiser-Shely, “Signs,” Aktuell aus und über Berlin, https://bit.ly/386nRH4 (accessed June 15, 2020) and Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, Igo Wechsler, https://bit.ly/2YDXJQH (accessed June 15, 2020). David Lawson, Libuše Salomonovičová, Hana Šústková, Ostrava and its Jews: “Now No-one Sings You Lullabies” (London, Portland: Vallentine Mitchell, 2018), 47ff and 152ff. “Women Voters Visit Slum Areas to Be Rehabilitated,” The Evening Star, January 31, 1940, B-11. “Miss Mary L. McKernan Given 1940 Women’s Scroll of Honor,” Utica Daily Press, October 9, 1940. Frommer also joined the Saturday’s Children Club in 1942. “Saturday’s Children Include Eleven Nationalities in Roster,” The New York Times, March 8, 1942, 4D. “Clinic Offers Free Tips on Modernization,” New York Amsterdam News, March 10, 1951, 124. “County Builders Elect Officers,” Orangetown Telegram, November 27, 1958, 4. George Koyl, ed., American Architects Directory, 3rd edition (New York City: R. R. Bowker Company, 1970), 301. Other projects were Multiple dwellings on 19 West 31st Street, alterations to Manhattan Towers Hotel, a Penthouse on Park Avenue, Site Plan for Military Housing, a townhouse on 75 East 52nd Street. “Building Plans Filed,” New York Times, November 8, 1946, 41 and Koyl, American Architects Directory, 301. “Radio Frank’s Knight Club, New York City,” Pencil Points (July 1944): 60–1. “Paul Bry, Designer: Interior Decorator,” The New York Times, June 30, 1953, 23. “Old Bavaria Features ‘Radio’ Frank Smith,” The News—Owl, September 8, 1933, 6. Volker M. Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2012), 198. Paul Bry, “Vom Forsthaus zum Jungesellenheim,” Innendekoration 44, no. 1 (1933): 244–7. “Bry, Paul, S.S. Washington, List or Manifest, February 24, 1938: List 9, Line 2” in Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820–1897. Records of

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55 56

57 58

59 60

61 62

Designing Transformation the US Customs Service, Record Group 36. National Archives at Washington, DC. “Guide to the Kim Hoffmann Photograph Collection 1937–198 (bulk 1949–1960) PR 77: Biographical Note,” New York Historical Society. Museum & Library, https:// bit.ly/3843wSL (accessed June 22, 2020), Paul Bry, How to Build Your Own Furniture (New York: Macmillan, 1951). “Inexpensive Design for Specialty Shop,” Pencil Points: Progressive Architecture (August 1946): 73–6. The film that would have contained images of the shop could not be found in Stoller’s archives, and Erica Stoller speculates that the photographs could have been commissioned outside his regular business and as a personal favor. Email conversation with Erica Stoller, June 5, 2020. “New Light on Forensic Interiors,” Interiors 5 (1948): 96–8. The Yellow Pages, 1948, 873. Email conversation with Harold Appel May 14, 2020. “Right Of Executor-Trustee to Double Commissions,” Banking Law Journal 51, no. 9 (1934): 752–809, “141 New Lawyers Admitted to Bar,” The Standard Union, January 30, 1924, 3. “Milton Mansbach, Registration Card, Serial Number 1872, Order Number 10734,” Draft Registration Cards for New York State, 10/16/1940 - 3/31/1947. 863 boxes. NAI: 7644744. Records of the Selective Service System, 1926–1975, Record Group 147. National Archives and Records Administration, St Louis, Missouri. “Showroom and Building for Creative Looms, Inc.,” The Architectural Record 104, no. 10 (1949): 124. “Oral history interview with Ruth Adler Schnee, 2002 November 24–30,” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, https://s.si.edu/3eJO6FF (accessed June 25, 2020). Nell Znamierowski, “Lili Blumenau 1912–1976,” Craft Horizons 37, no. 1 (1977): 10. Eli Lederhendler, New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950–1970 (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 11ff. Eli Wald, “The Jewish Law Firm: Past and Present,” HLS Center on the Legal Profession Research Paper No. 2015–9, https://digitalcommons.du.edu/law_facpub/28 (accessed June 1, 2020).

13

“Memory’s Instruments and Its Very Medium”: The Archival Practices of Émigré Designers Sue Breakell

Polish historian and educator Feliks Tych suggested that the effacement and displacement of material traces of the Holocaust “turned historians into archaeologists, who try to decipher tombstones,” digging through the metaphorical and literal ruins of buildings or into the earth in forests.1 In this chapter, I excavate the archives of three émigré designers, where lost pre-flight Central European stories may be buried beneath the presented narrative veneer or “grain” of the archive.2 I will discuss some of these designers’ strategies to employ their archives as what Marianne Hirsch calls “memory’s instruments and its very medium,”3 using “the papers or objects that make possible the transmission of memories across time and place.”4 In such an analysis, the understanding of their placing within that excavation site is as significant as the mapping of an archaeological dig.5 Archives constitute a web of component pieces, connected elements, moments, transactions of a life, a meaningful dialogue inherent in their shared provenance, and their journey through time, for “as people and objects gather time, movement and change, they are constantly transformed, and these transformations of person and object are tied up with each other […]. objects become invested with meaning through the social interaction they are caught up in.”6 The archives of three émigré designers, held at the University of Brighton Design Archives, offer an opportunity to examine these questions, as well as their contribution to design in Britain.7 Here, alongside several other émigré archives, they are linked not only by professional and personal relationships but through the institutions that employed, sustained, and connected them to networks in their new country. Hans Arnold Rothholz (1919–2000), the youngest, was just fourteen when he traveled to London from his birthplace in Dresden. He studied at the Reimann School in London, before establishing a successful career as a consultant designer, including poster designs for the Post Office and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and a long-standing consultancy for art suppliers Winsor & Newton.8 FHK Henrion (1914–1990) left Germany in the same year as Rothholz, as a lone adult, traveling first to join relatives in Paris, where his design education began, moving to Britain from 1936. His career, which made him “the model of the modern British professionalized graphic designer,” was firmly established through his wartime propaganda work for the Ministry of Information, and as a consultant designer

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in the 1950s, before being at the forefront of corporate identity design.9 Willy de Majo (1917–1993) was born in Vienna to a Viennese-Yugoslavian parents, moved to Belgrade in 1935 and to London in 1939, going on to establish a successful design studio in 1946, and to cofound the International Council for Graphic Design Associations (Icograda).10 Each archive, like its creator, has a different character and tells overt and covert life narratives. By and large, these are professional archives: in a subject-based collection, archives are accessioned primarily for their design research value and their contribution to the design culture of their new country: the “stone thrown into the lake of British cultural life.”11 Families who place them may not wish to include personal materials beyond the professional biography, which may itself be silent on this theme, as Alison J. Clarke identifies in the case of social designer Victor Papanek, despite “the lived émigré experience […] articulated in the fraught process of managing a new identity, livelihood and professional personhood.”12 Nevertheless, among the professional papers, and in the gaps between, these personal and private experiences irrupt and erupt. We might speculate as to the archive’s significance for self-actualization, offering a sense of continuity through the disjuncture of repeated relocation, and an external signifier of an accumulated life story. As archaeologists Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall point out, “people are not just multiple, they are also distributed. A person is ultimately composed of all the objects they have made and transacted and these objects represent their agency.”13 Like a snail’s shell, the archive’s accretions might represent a metaphorical shelter, a consistent place of belonging. Historians James Jordan, Lisa Leff, and Joachim Schlör acknowledge that studying archives in the context of migration history contributes an additional layer of sophistication by making us aware of the fact that these repositories on which we rely for our research do not provide us with “complete” narratives. On the contrary, they tell stories about absence, fragmentation and loss, challenging researchers from all fields to develop new and creative ways to write history.14

Certainly, archives by their very nature cannot provide a complete narrative, but the fragmentation that can result from migration is particularly marked. The partial concealment that can characterize émigré stories may be embodied in the archive: archives that do not survive cannot speak. Records may have been left behind, or lost on the way, perhaps sent or retrieved later when it was safe: a few precious surviving items might play a symbolic role through their rarity. Archives can represent success and acceptance; prestige, security, and establishment; or potentially dangerous, revealing traces—there are reasons to be uncomfortable about the evidence of a life that was dangerous to live. The material remains of a successful design career are a mark of survival and achievement, a lasting legacy, a means of influencing how one is remembered. Many archives bear subtle evidence of the processing of the émigré story, perhaps by foregrounding new life narratives of success and security, functioning as a metaautobiography. Literary scholar Nicola King suggests that “experiences such as war [and] migration […] may make the relationship between the self ‘before’ and the self ‘after’ much more problematic.”15 The sharing of personal testimony “redefin[es] the boundaries of private and public, recognizing the historically significant, common émigré narrative in their own personal quest.”16 Personal items can have talismanic poignancy within

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an émigré’s professional archive, shedding new light on adjacent records. This chapter identifies a range of archival practices, including controlled accumulation of evidence of success, security, and integration; strategic erasure; redemptive curatorial arrangement; the preservation of random survivors, talismanic pieces too loaded with significance to be destroyed, but bearing leaky secrets; and diachronic eruptions and irruptions, where events, and their remains and memories, are pulled through time and reactivated.

Rothholz Arnold Rothholz was too young to have received a design education in Germany, traveling from Dresden with his mother in 1933. Little is known of his life there: it is thought that his father had a chemical factory, which was confiscated by the Nazis, but his parents had divorced when he was a baby and his mother had reverted to her maiden name with little subsequent contact.17 By studying at an educational establishment that had made the same journey as him, from Germany to London, he made an explicit and early connection with his Central European creative community. The Reimann School, owned by Jewish sculptor, designer, and art educator Albert Reimann (1874– 1976), had relocated from Berlin to London in 1936, becoming the only commercially oriented design school in London. It brought with it new pedagogic programs such as Display Design, and an innovative organization placing school and studio alongside one another.18 While bringing the experience of its German model, its declared aim was “not to impose pure German methods but to demonstrate in theory and practice that a very proved technique may be utilized to serve the demands of British taste.”19 Thus Rothholz was trained at an institution, which, like him, was adapting culturally to its new environment, with a mixture of German and British teaching staff, and a British advisory board. For students like Rothholz, the Reimann connected him with his ruptured German identity, education, and professional peers, while simultaneously bridging and cementing it to his new British identity. The choice of the Reimann School was both culturally relevant to his Central European origins, and pragmatic, given its professionally oriented program. At some point, as an adult, and an established graphic designer, Rothholz collated a sequence of twelve items from his archive, creative outputs from different stages of his career, all placed in matching envelopes, labeled on the outside by Rothholz, suggesting they are ascribed a certain significance.20 It begins with a little book of child’s drawings, titled “First Drawings 1923/4,” and ends in the early 1950s, by which time Rothholz’s career as a consultant designer was well established (Figure 13.1). It includes student work from the Reimann, and later freelance design commissions, including posters for the Post Office and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. The drawing book’s few words are in German, and we must presume it traveled with him to Britain in 1933. The label for the student work includes the school’s logo; the artist’s mannequin featured in the piece also appears in a later poster design in the sequence. With these pieces, Rothholz employs a redemptive curatorial strategy of arrangement. The little book of drawings is a poignant and affective relic, retrospectively redolent of a lost and innocent childhood, and symbolic of the rupture from Rothholz’s place of origin. It is rehabilitated by being placed in a sequence with other selected pieces through which

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Figure 13.1  HA Rothholz, photograph of an installation featuring his book cover design for Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1938. Student work from the Reimann School, indicated by his inclusion of the Reimann School logo in the label. HA Rothholz Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives, RHZ/1/2/1/3

he orders and narrates his life as an émigré. The sequence becomes a visual essay or autobiographical narrative, in which its components acquire new meanings by their juxtaposition, reminding us that “meanings change and are renegotiated through the life of an object […] the present significance of an object derives from the persons and events to which it is connected.”21 We are reminded of French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s widely cited archive fever: “a compulsive, repetitive and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement.”22

Henrion Unlike Rothholz, FHK Henrion left Germany as a young adult, aged nineteen. Born Heiner Kohn in Nuremberg, his father was a solicitor, originally from Ulm; his mother was from a family of goldsmiths and was said to be artistic.23 In 1933 he went to live with relatives in Paris: two of his mother’s brothers had moved to France at the end of

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the nineteenth century.24 In Paris, he established a design career that, as documented in his archive, illustrates the trajectory of the evolving design profession in Europe: “Commercial art of the 1930s became graphic design in the 1940s, was seen as part of industrial design in the fifties (design for industry and mass production) to end up in the sixties and seventies at visual communication design.”25 A later autobiographical document in the archive emphasizes that Henrion’s career was forged through an international outlook and an ability to make the most of networking opportunities: his Paris years were as critical to this as London.26 At the school run by poster designer Paul Colin (1892–1985) he studied alongside eighty students from all over Europe. Swiss designer Herbert Leupin (1916–1999) sat next to Henrion: “I learned a lot from him and particularly from his Swiss background.”27 Ecole Colin was “a meeting place for actors, producers, painters and writers: to be at his school was to take part in the life of Paris at the time which, especially for foreigners, meant a lesson learned for life which was never to be equaled.” These were golden years for the poster, especially in Paris, driven by the notion of the poster artist, for whom letters were a later, separate commercial application.28 Posters, Henrion wrote, “were the most symbolic, the most glamorous, and the most noticed and discussed medium not only of publicity, but of design in general.” Students would rush onto the street to stare at a new poster by Cassandre, discussing it “passionately.”29 Working on lettering, which Colin was not much interested in, he contributed to the visual culture of the city, also gaining threedimensional experience through creating “affiches lumineuses” for the Paris electricity board, courtesy of artist Marcel Roche’s Salon de la Lumière.30 Henrion, then, brought a particular combination of artistically inflected design training, energetic adaptability, and international perspective to London in 1936. A display of his posters in the French pavilion at the 1936 Levant Fair in Palestine was severely curtailed due to the Arab revolt,31 but his work was seen by British Crown Agents who commissioned posters for the European market, bringing Henrion to London. For a time he moved between Paris and London, with a design accepted for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition32 even as he developed his London network through German Jewish brand designer and founder of Landor, Walter Landor (born Walter Landauer, 1913–1995), whom he had met on a ski-ing holiday in Germany, and who had been living in London since 1932.33 Landor introduced Henrion to designer Milner Gray (1899–1997) and Russian Jewish émigré and British architect and designer Misha Black (1910–1977), for whose International Design Partnership he did a variety of work including lettering, which he felt had a greater design significance than in Paris. He also began design for exhibitions, including the MARS group of architects in 1938. The establishing of this portfolio design career was interrupted by internment: I no longer had a German passport, just French identity papers […]. I was classed as an enemy alien […]. I was interned for six months on the Isle of Man. So when I came out, at the end of 1940, I moved from the IOM (Isle of Man) to the MOI (Ministry of Information), which was rather extraordinary. And I was completely bewildered because, from being behind barbed wire one week, I was in an RAF airfield the next. It was such a sudden change, it practically undid me. From being distrusted to trusted with secret information all within a week.34

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Although Henrion participated energetically in the camp’s creative life,35 we can begin to imagine the psychological impact of this apparent step backward. Once released, his design career went from strength to strength, through propaganda work for the MOI and the USA Office for War Information. Cementing his new life, Henrion took a new and distinctly Francophile name in 1941 and became a naturalized British citizen in 1948. Henrion’s archive is extensive, and, in keeping with this narrative, analysis of the characteristics of the archival fonds suggests that it prioritizes and privileges the visual and the professional.36 As Adrian Shaughnessy puts it, “perhaps to build effective identities for others you first have to know how to build an identity for yourself,” and Henrion’s medium here is the visual.37 With limited associated text documentation, the work, whether in process or complete, is left to speak for itself, rendering the archive more monumental, a demonstration of career prestige and achievement. In keeping with that overarching archival characteristic, the autobiographical account cited above, written for a book proposal, is oriented to professional life and success. But records of Henrion’s Central European identity and his transformation to the consummate designer exist, scattered through the archive. By employing a similar strategy to Rothholz’s, we can curate these records to foreground a parallel narrative. For example, among a body of family photographs are a slightly blurred photograph of two small boys and a woman, captioned “Appelsberg 1917. Mutter mit Franz und Heiner” (Mother with Franz and Heiner [Henrion]),38 and a photograph of Henrion aged nineteen, captioned “vor der Abreise nach Paris 1933” (before the journey to Paris), in what is likely to be his mother’s handwriting. The same hand has labeled a photograph of Henrion looking over the rooftops of Paris in 1933, alongside another unknown hand (Figure 13.2). These traces may be juxtaposed with letters of support for Henrion’s naturalization in 1946, easily garnered from influential figures like Sir Robert Fraser at the Central Office of Information, and Milner Gray, who had employed him at the Ministry of Information during the war, alongside many other émigré designers “were [Henrion] to transfer the bulk of his creative production to this county this would induce, in my opinion, a valuable stimulus to design development here.”39 He also had to produce, from his German life, administrative papers declaring his Jewish identity, now redeemed by their use in gaining citizenship in a new country, acquiring new meanings by being employed not to condemn but to secure his future. These documents hold a quiet power and make possible the successful career, which is the overarching narrative of the archive, embodied in highly staged photographs of the successful designer in his studio. Milner Gray’s is one of a flurry of references, dating back to Paul Colin in 1936, and including the London Press Exchange (1937), Vogue (1940), and the Post Office Public Relations department (1940). Their accumulation in a rare biographical file testifies not only to Henrion’s talent but to his resourcefulness both in making opportunities and in documenting them to secure his future, a security based on his origins and experience in mainland Europe and their benefit to his new country. Contradictory narratives interweave here, of rejection, value and acceptance. Marking the passage of time, the photographs reference events outside their frame, which knocked this story off its course. Knowing this, we can read them sequentially: the childhood photograph is a “before,” the “vor der Abreise” points to the liminal moment when life changed, made more poignant by his mother’s writing, stating what we, also outside the frame, know with hindsight. The studio

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Figure 13.2  FHK Henrion in Paris, 1933. Photographer unknown. FHK Henrion Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives, by courtesy of the Henrion Estate

portrait is “after,” the redemptive happy ending. Although they do not live adjacently in the archive, extracted, curated, and viewed together, they represent the narrative arc of a “life that was no longer to be and that, against all odds, nevertheless continued to be.”40

De Majo The archive that accumulated in the course of Willy de Majo’s career in Britain is very much the official story of a successful designer, consciously kept and carefully controlled, evidence of his secure career and reputation. This large and, like Henrion’s, somewhat monolithic archive reveals, on closer reading, several archival strategies, operating in the construction of a life narrative. Extensive photographs of design work are arranged in albums; multiple copies of loose images, with lengthy captions, produced for public relations circulation, account for the work and assert its prestige. Job bags gather preparatory documentation and artwork, containing and managing projects. A further layer of documentation chaperones the material in its working life—labels and instructions keep track of the movements and processes

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through which these records circulated within and outside the studio. This material systematization manifests a sheer force of will in control, ensuring artwork is returned, and creative rights asserted clearly. The management of documentation is essential to the business of design, but not all systems are so legible in the archive. This archive is always aware of its audience, and conscious of what it wants them to know. Perhaps not surprisingly for such a mobile practitioner, who had proved adept at reestablishing himself, de Majo could marshal impressive PR skills, expressed in numerous professional biographical summaries. Here, his premigration life is often reduced to the conventional phrase “trained on the continent,” lending an aura of sophistication, or to the wrong ears sounding dangerously “foreign.”41 De Majo’s complex story of multiple journeys is belied by the brevity of these references: a vastly simplified summary is that he was born in Vienna in a Sephardic Jewish family to a Yugoslavian father and a Viennese mother and underwent business and some artistic training in Vienna, before moving to Belgrade in 1935, where he established his design career, and to London in 1939.42 The archive does not easily reveal the full sequence of events, and the limited revelations are, if not contradictory, then differently emphasized. In a trade journal, probably from the late 1950s, Alexander Mayne writes that he was born in Yugoslavia and “educated in Switzerland and Austria.”43 Surprisingly, a portrait in Belgrade journal Industrijsko Oblikovanje (Industrial Design) in 1978 makes no reference to his Jugoslav connection: he is “a graphic designer from London” who “acquired the necessary training in several West European countries [and] established his own design studio in 1946,” whereas actually his first design practice was in Belgrade soon after 193544 (Figure 13.3). Accounts of his move to Britain are equally inconsistent. One declares simply, “By 1939, I had decided to emigrate, and the early war years found me in England”; while Mayne says, “He longed to try his hand in the wider world […] in 1939 […] his father wished to open a branch of his business in the British Isles, and asked his son to give up his practice and establish this new overseas office.”45 According to a third version, on his return to civilian life [after Yugoslav military service in 1938] de Majo […] decided that the time had perhaps come for him to expand his horizons and to go abroad to a country where greater use was made of publicity and product design. Thus when in 1939 he was invited to attend the Rover Scout Moot in Scotland […] he decided to visit Britain and stay on for six months in order to learn English before proceeding to America.46

In each of these varying accounts, de Majo makes a decision about how to tell his story: for “what and how much to reveal of […] [émigré] experiences was a justifiably private decision.”47 Who wants to know, and for what purpose? What to include, and how might it be interpreted? As émigré stories began to be exhumed and explored in response to a blossoming of research interest in the later decades of the twentieth century,48 de Majo was contacted by a student researching émigré graphic designers of the 1940s, to which he declared, “as far as I am aware, you are the first person to follow with this line of research.”49 Gradually unveiling his past, he compiled multiply reiterated lists of designers,

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Figure 13.3 Willy de Majo, Letterhead, late 1930s. Featuring a stylized self-portrait, it shows his twin connections with Belgrade and Vienna. Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives

annotating the documents as he processed his place in this shared story, beginning to make sense of his own professional journey, among myriad others, united by their Central European origins. These are moments of instability, beneath the controlled PRoriented statements in the professional, public facing parts of the archive, which skate around the details of his premigration life. This sudden flowering of memories, long concealed, now permitted, brings others with it. Two autobiographical documents appear contemporaneous to this exchange and provide the richest insight of the three designers, into their background in Central Europe. The first, a short but illuminating handwritten document, is critical to an understanding of how de Majo recalled his early life in Vienna in retrospect; a second, typed document makes little reference to his childhood but provides a lively account, from his time in Belgrade to his early career in London.50 Here we see “the past that surfaces undergoes conscious and unconscious processing as it takes written form, and

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the present in which it is recalled informs the interpretation that is offered and the way it is expressed.”51 Written in the first person, from a distance, the manuscript account reads almost as a fairy tale or a novel, recalling Hayden White’s notion of history written as romance or tragedy.52 Its first-draft grammar and language are not corrected or polished for public presentation. However, it is photocopied, which suggests it was considered significant, whether to share or to preserve. It begins with an evocative description of de Majo’s early life in Vienna, where migration and survival were part of his heritage, and a familial and business network across Europe and beyond: My father who had come as a youngster from Belgrade to be trained as a businessman, had met my mother, a beautiful Viennese lady, the daughter of a local printer, fell in love and married her […] Things were not easy in the aftermath of the First World War […] We lived in a typical 3 roomed middle-class flat in the third district […]. We never went hungry […]. Food and second hand clothing parcels from relatives in the USA […] were received most gratefully […]. By the 1930s my father had established his own export business in partnership with a young Viennese friend who dealt mainly with the export of printed cotton goods and machinery to Jugoslavia and Bulgaria and the import of textiles from England and […]. Italy, and fruit and railway sleepers from Jugoslavia.53

De Majo’s own story pulls against the family narrative of strength in unity: he was “a naughty child who didn’t feel like doing much work and created a lot of heart ache for my parents.” There was little sense of belonging in the family business, sent to the Handelsakademie (business school) for “3 boring and agonising years” of business training, he then began as office boy in his father’s company. From this counternarrative develops the emergence of his artistic identity. Whenever my father wasn’t looking or away, I pretended to be a commercial artist who had been given various tasks. At that time Vienna had several famous poster artists like Josef [sic] Binder, [Hermann] Kosel, [Atelier] Weber Mendel who inspired my first WM logo, [Hans] Wagula and others. There were many brilliant posters to be seen all over town as well as on the Vienna Underground Railway […]. One of my friends who was a talented artist often spent Saturdays and evenings with me to develop all sorts of “imaginary” commissions and I also took a short evening course at the Urania [Vienna People’s Polytechnic] with Professor Puchinger […]. The thought that I might enjoy or become a commercial artist […] did not occur to me until 1934, when I borrowed some money from my mother & Sister to purchase my first proper box of coloured pencils, paints and brushes […]. My office drawers and walls at home were soon filled with posters and showcards, the 2 things I seem to concentrate on, or caricature type drawing.54

The final narrative element is a transformative event of adversity, fueling a determination to succeed. De Majo finally told his father about his artistic ambitions, and “to his credit […] eventually he agreed to have me tested by a well known professor of the Vienna Kunst Academy […] if I passed the exam he would not put any obstacle in my way but

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if I failed I was to continue with my training as a Business man.”55 The professor’s studio was “an impressive place in a suburb of Vienna, a huge white room looking out onto a wintry garden with a huge wood burning tile oven in one corner, 6 artist desks with paint brushes paints and the other usual paraphernalia and a drawing board cover[ed] with clean white sheets of cartridge paper.” Given a brief for “a poster to promote a new brand of cigarette,” in a scenario more about performance than ability, he was paralyzed with fear. Despite the professor’s encouragement, he failed to produce a design: [I] was sent home with a note saying that my father should forget about it and that I would never make an artist and certainly not a commercial one […] Not surprisingly my father was quite please [sic] with the result […]. After brooding for several days I was determined to proof [sic] the blighter wrong and that’s really the beginning of my carrier [sic].56

At this critical moment, the document ends. The story is picked up in the typescript document, where a different kind of life writing takes over, describing his life in Belgrade as an aspiring designer. Written in the third person, formatted, and initiated in the conventional PR voice, this document turns to a picaresque in the war experiences it recounts. Again, it begins with the standard opening phrase: “He was born and educated on the Continent where he worked mainly as a graphic designer and art director after having been trained as a sales representative and businessman.” He describes how, in Belgrade, he establishes himself through hard work: window displays, newspaper adverts, and signs, including “the largest commercial sign produced to date in Southern Europe.”57 Like Henrion in Paris, in Belgrade de Majo is not just witnessing the visual culture of the city, as he did in Vienna, but is an active participant, an emerging designer. In both documents, de Majo explores his buried émigré self through the act of life writing, disrupting, and running counter to the controlled surface of the professional archive, even when borrowing its conventions and forms. We see his Central European, Jewish identity breaking through its veil. The documents embody a divide in his life between left-behind Vienna (childhood; the expectations of his father’s business on which family security was built; the emergence of a private artistic identity, inspired by the visual culture in the city, of which he could not be part) and carried-with-him Belgrade (adulthood; the conscious construction and presentation of his public and professional self; a professional artistic practice through which he participates in the visual culture of the city). Both documents testify to the self-performance at play, as a subjectivity is composed, and memories recalled and made sense of. In Vienna he is powerless, the city is intimidating; in Belgrade, he has agency and opportunity to make the city his own. The caricature portrait on his stationery of the time, presenting himself as a designer, and as his own creation, embodies this journey, evoking his early private enjoyment of caricature as a boy in Vienna. Each version of de Majo’s story, each stratification of self-narration over time, contributes to a process of self-actualization in context. He creates not one “official” narrative, but a fluid repository of elements, to be configured and constructed as required, in multiple narratives, which together allow the reader to identify “clues to the underlying processes influencing production.”58

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Conclusion Through such examples of archival strategies and practices, these designers’ Central European origins and identities emerge from the fabric of the archive, each in its own way. Rothholz’s archive being smaller, and there are proportionally fewer traces of his early life, and they are less legible in the stratification of the archive, though arguably therefore more talismanic. Henrion’s archive appears more consistently to have accommodated his past in his new life, whereas de Majo’s archive gives the impression of a revelatory moment. While all these interpretations are subjective, they demonstrate how critical such archival survivals are for the designer’s continuous and reconciled life narrative, and to subsequent phenomenological research. De Majo was already a designer when he left Central Europe; Henrion hoped to become one and found this identity in Paris; Rothholz’s design identity emerged in London, but with a strong connection to central Europe through the Reimann School, which offers potential reconciliation with his lost place of origin. For Henrion and de Majo, the cities of their birth, or of the earlier stages of their migration, leave their mark and form part of what they take with them, networking as designers and through their circulating creative products out in the world. The archives work hard to ensure these designers are secure: Henrion’s framing of the transition from “distrusted to trusted” is echoed by de Majo describing himself as “unwanted by anyone, an alien.” For all, design—and a design career manifested in an archive accumulated over time—is a mark of trust and acceptance, a means of being present, embedded, embodied even, in the new country.59 On its transfer to a public collection, the diachronic dimension of the archive facilitates new modes of meaning-making. Read as products of their specific social and cultural context, amplified by their co-location in the institution, these archives bear witness to the interconnected histories of design and migration, and of the transmission of modernism through the Central European Jewish diaspora.60 Taking their lead from the designers whose lives generated these raw materials, subsequent users of the archive—curators, archivists, researchers—benefit from the long view offered by the archive’s mobility through time and space. The archive connects and reconnects, within its own walls, and out into the ever-moving present, where these cultural references and networks generate new points of relevance, both in Britain and in the Central European countries, which were the places of ultimate origin of these bodies of material knowledge.

Notes 1 2 3 4

Feliks Tych, cited in James Jordan, Lisa Leff, and Joachim Schlör, eds., “Introduction,” in Jewish Migration and the Archive (London: Routledge, 2017), 1. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Marianne Hirsch Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). Jordan, Leff and Schlor, Jewish Migration, 3.

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6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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For discussion of a materiality oriented analysis of an archival fonds, see Sue Breakell “The True Object of Study: The Material Body of the Archive,” in Materiality and the Archives of Creative Practice, ed. Sue Breakell and Wendy Russell (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2021). Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall, “The Cultural Biography of Objects,” World Archaeology 31, no. 2 (1999): 169. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1999.9980439 For details of the Design Archives’ collections, see http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/ collections/design-archives/archives. For an introduction to its émigré collections and their significance, see Sue Breakell and Lesley Whitworth, “Émigré Designers in the University of Brighton Design Archives,” Journal of Design History 28, no. 1 (2015): 83–97, https://doi-org.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/10.1093/jdh/ept006 See also Monica Bohm-Duchen, ed., Insiders Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019). For details of the Rothholz archive, see http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/collections/designarchives/archives/ha-rothholz-archive For details of the Henrion archive, see http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/collections/designarchives/archives/fhk-henrion. For the fullest published account of Henrion’s life and career, see Adrian Shaughnessy, F H K Henrion: The Complete Designer (London: Unit Editions, 2013), which draws heavily on the Henrion Archive. Quote from Shaughnessy, 14. For details of the de Majo archive, see http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/collections/designarchives/archives/willy-de-majo-archive Daniel Snowman, The Hitler Émigrés: The Cultural Impact on Britain of Refugees from Nazism (London: Pimlico, 2003), xii. Alison J. Clarke, “Real and Imagined Networks of an Émigré Biography: Victor J. Papanek Social Designer,” in Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture, ed. Elana Shapira and Alison J. Clarke (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 124. Gosden and Marshall “Cultural Biography,” 176, discussed as an aspect of Melanesian material culture. Jordan, Leff and Schlor, Jewish Migration, 5. Nicola King Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 2. Judith Szapor, “Private Archives and Public Lives: The Migrations of Alexander Weissberg and the Polyani Archives,” in Jordan, Leff, and Schlor, Jewish Migration, 94. Email to the author from a Rothholz family member, August 2020. Anonymous, “Reimann Comes to London,” Display (January 1937), 606, cited in Yasuko Suga “Modernism, Commercialism and Display Design in Britain: The Reimann School and Studios of Industrial and Commercial Art,” Journal of Design History 19, no. 2 (2006): 144, https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epl008. The Reimann-Schule was founded by the German Jewish sculptor and artisan Albert Reimann in Berlin 1902 and moved to London in 1936. For a detailed history of the Berlin Reimann-Schule, see Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser, Die Reimann-Schule in Berlin und London (1902–1943). Ein jüdisches Unternehmen zur Kunst- und Designausbildung internationaler Prägung bis zur Vernichtung durch das Hitlerregime (Aachen: Shaker Media, 2009). For history of the Reimann School, see Suga “Modernism, Commercialism and Display Design in Britain,” and Yasuko Suga, The Reimann School: A Design Diaspora (London: Artmonksy Arts, 2013); and Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser, “The Reimann School and Studios, London 1937–1941” in Bohm-Duchen, Insiders/Outsiders.

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20 University of Brighton Design Archives, H A Rothholz Archive RHZ/1/2/1/3 21 Gosden and Marshall, “Cultural Biography,” 170. 22 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 91. Derrida’s ideas of the archive have tended to dominate the field, but they nevertheless offer insights of enduring relevance. 23 Shaughnessy, Henrion, 22. 24 For discussion of the complexity and multistaged nature of the journeys made by Design Archives émigrés, see Breakell and Whitworth “Émigré Designers.” 25 Proposal for an autobiographical book, FHK Henrion Archive HEN21 p1 26 Henrion’s accouut supports Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel’s depiction of Paris as an increasingly more outward looking center of the avant-garde by the 1930s in “Peripheral Circulations, Transient Centralities: The International Geography of the Avant-Gardes in the Interwar Period (1918–1940),” Visual Resources 35, no. 3–4 (2019): 295–322, https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2018.1476013 27 University of Brighton Design Archives, FHK Henrion Archive, HEN21. 28 Henrion describes how Colin would always exhibit his posters without lettering; and Raymond Savignac, then one of Cassandre’s assistants, would first create a design, then add lettering for different clients to whom he tried to sell it (FHK Henrion Archive, HEN21). 29 See FHK Henrion archive HEN 21, and FHK Henrion, “A Little Scandal on the Street,” Penrose Annual 63 (1970), 24–39. 30 Marcel Roche was part of a group exhibition in 1934, which included the work of Paul Colin and of Moise Kisling, a Jewish-Hungarian painter who had made his home in Paris. 31 Later known as “The Great Revolt,” a nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine against the British administration. 32 Henrion was told that as a foreigner he would need special authorization for his design to be used in the exhibition. FHK Henrion Archive, biographical file. 33 Shaughnessy, Henrion, 22. 34 University of Brighton Design Archives, FHK Henrion Archive, HEN21. 35 A teacher in Onchan camp’s school of art, Henrion was the Onchan’s “most notable established artist” according to Rachel Dickson, Sarah MacDougall, and Ulrike Smalley, “Astounding and Encouraging: High and Low Art Produced in Internment on the Isle of Man during the Second World War,” in Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity behind Barbed Wire, ed. Gillian Carr and Harold Mythm (London: Routledge, 2012). He also contributed drawings to the camp newspaper the Onchan Pioneer (David Cesarani and Tony Kushner, eds., The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain [London: Routledge, 2013], 195. See also Rachel Dickson “‘Our Horizon Is the Barbed Wire’: Artistic Life in the British Internment Camps,” in Insiders/Outsiders). 36 See Breakell, Materiality. 37 Shaughnessy, Henrion, 14. 38 Born Heinrich Fritz Kay Kohn, as a child he was known as Heiner. For details of his name changes, see Shaughnessy, Henrion, 22. 39 FHK Henrion Archive. 40 Hirsch, Family Frames, 243. 41 Very little survives from before De Majo’s move to London, other than some examples of his graphic design work from Belgrade.

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42 For de Majo’s familial and Belgrade context, see Lesley Whitworth’s chapter in this volume. 43 Variations in the spelling of Yugoslavia are left as in the original documents. 44 Alexander Mayne, “Close Up: W. M. de Majo,” Conference & Exhibitions Journal, undated (late 1950s); Miko Fruht, Industrijsko Oblikovanje, 1978, Willy de Majo Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives. 45 Willy de Majo Archive. 46 Ibid. 47 Szapor, “Private Archives,” 95. 48 See, for example, Cheryl Buckley and Tobias Hochscherf, “Introduction: From German ‘Invasion’ to Transnationalism: Continental European Émigrés and Visual Culture in Britain, 1933–56,” Visual Culture in Britain 13, no. 2 (2012): 157–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/14714787.2012.676529 for an account of émigré historiography. 49 Willy de Majo Archive. 50 Ibid. 51 Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self: Personal Narratives and Historical Practice (London: Routledge, 2019). 52 King, Memory, 3. 53 Willy de Majo Archive. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Summerfield, Histories of the Self, 91. 59 As demonstrated in Designs on Britain, an exhibition at the Jewish Museum London, 2017. https://jewishmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/designs-on-britain/. Drawing heavily on the University of Brighton Design Archives collections, its catalogue featured a chapter by Breakell and Whitworth, “’A Valuable Stimulus to Design Development’: Six Émigré Designers at the University of Brighton Design Archives,” in Designs on Britain: Great British Design by Great Jewish Designers (London: Jewish Museum London, 2017), 37–43. 60 Summerfield, Histories of the Self, 93.

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Facing the Sun: German-Speaking Émigrés and the Roots of Israeli Climatic Building Design Or Aleksandrowicz

The occurrence of a cultural transfer of modernist architecture from Europe to British Palestine during the 1930s has become a widely accepted axiom in current architectural historiography. Disagreements do exist on the degree of influence exerted on local architects by each of the central protagonists of the modern movement in architecture or by different architecture schools; yet there is still a general consensus among researchers and architects alike that one cannot understand the transformation in the visual language of local architecture without tracing its origins back to Europe, and even more specifically, to the modernist architectural style promoted mainly in German-speaking countries in the interwar period.1 This chapter presents the lesser-known effect of ideas and practices that emerged in Europe after the First World War on the emergence of a bioclimatic approach to building design in British Palestine. It examines how cultural transfer in the field of architecture extended beyond matters of style and visual language to include other performative aspects of buildings. The bioclimatic approach to design, which attempts to harness scientific research methods to improve the climatic performance of buildings, was imported to Palestine almost exclusively by German-speaking immigrants of diverse professional backgrounds. Among them, a pivotal role was played by hygiene experts, who regarded the superficial and sometimes erroneous consideration of climate in local building design as a genuine threat to the health of the Hebrew Nation and thus to its capacity to face the social challenges and political struggles it was witnessing during the 1930s and 1940s. With climatic building design becoming a question of national health, the common cultural background and scientific thinking shared by many of these Jewish émigrés to Palestine facilitated the forging of uncommon cooperation between architects and scientists to answer design questions on the effects of climate on buildings. In a relatively short time, this cooperation resulted in a pronounced change in the common architectural understanding of the effects of the local climate on buildings and eventually led to the implementation of new climatic concepts in actual projects from the late 1940s onward. Unlike the effect of Central European modernist aesthetics

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on the local architecture, which substantially waned after the Second World War, this climatic approach to building design has had a continuous effect on Israeli architecture at least until the late 1970s.2

Hygiene and European Modernist Architecture The way bioclimatic building design is justified today hardy resembles the discourse that encompassed its early manifestations during the first decades of the twentieth century. Unlike today, where climatic design considerations are put forward to address the pressing issues of climate change and energy efficiency, a century ago, the main motivation behind the promotion of climatic design was that of public health. By the end of the nineteenth century, European building design and urban planning were generally perceived as the source of—and therefore also the solution to—urban epidemics, especially that of tuberculosis.3 At that time, it was believed that tuberculosis can be cured and even prevented by exposing the human body to solar radiation and by properly ventilating indoor spaces.4 This made the provision of solar access and indoor ventilation a key element in health-oriented architectural design, which first manifested itself in the construction of sanatoria—health-promoting facilities that were intentionally located outside cities.5 Following the common beliefs among physicians, these buildings were designed for treating patients through maximal solar exposure of the main building facades and provision of adequate openness of interior spaces to the free movement of air.6 After the First World War and the ensuing social upheavals across Europe, similar ideas on the typical features of “healthy buildings” were used to promote a new type of socially oriented architecture. Emphasis was now given not only to buildings designed for healing the few outside cities, but also to the design of everyday environments that would help in preventing illnesses from occurring in the first place.7 Maybe the most salient, while not the only, example of this approach was the development of the Zeilenbau scheme for public housing in 1920s Germany.8 The scheme was almost entirely based on following the semi-medical imperative of providing maximal and equal solar exposure to the main building facades, thus determining building orientation and massing according to the daily and monthly change in the position of the sun relative to the earth.9 The scheme also supported the cross ventilation of apartments, which was also perceived as a basic requisite in securing healthy living conditions.

Sun and Wind: The Palestinian Version From its very early stages, Zionist architecture in Palestine fully adopted the modern European focus on sun and wind as the most important climatic factors to be considered in architectural design. In 1909, the Berlin-based Jewish architect Alexander Baerwald (1877–1930), who was invited to design the Technion building in Haifa, traveled to Palestine to study its local building traditions, and shortly after returning to Germany,

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published an article describing his findings in the Zionist mouthpiece Die Welt.10 In his article, which was one of the earliest essays on the nature of modern Hebrew architecture in Palestine, Baerwald suggested that the development of a modern Hebrew style in architecture should be based on deep understanding of local building traditions. He then argued that the spatial layout and structure of local buildings are mostly affected by the local climate and that the two main climatic elements to be considered by builders in Palestine are the sun and the wind. Unlike the common attitude in Europe toward solar exposure, Baerwald added that in Palestine blocking solar radiation from penetrating indoor spaces was favorable since it mitigated indoor overheating during the hot season.11 While Baerwald’s focus on sun and wind resonated contemporary European discourse on health implications of indoor solar access and ventilation, he also wisely adapted it to suit the specific climatic conditions of Palestine and mainly to the need of integrating a different, preventive approach to the penetration of solar radiation into buildings. After his immigration to Palestine in 1925, Baerwald was disappointed to find that local Jewish architects remained indifferent to his advice to learn from the design principles behind the climatic know-how of local builders in their own modern designs. Baerwald critically observed that this indifference resulted in the design of “uncomfortable and unhygienic” buildings.12 A gradual transformation to a more serious consideration of climate in local architectural design was beginning to take place in the early 1930s, reflecting the emergence of a new generation of Jewish architects who began working in Palestine after completing their studies in Europe during the 1920s. The most prominent proponent of the climatically oriented approach to design was Arieh Sharon (born Ludwig Kurzmann, 1900–1984), who studied architecture at the Bauhaus between 1926 and 1929. Upon his return to Palestine in 1931, after working for two years in Hannes Meyer’s office in Berlin, he became a key figure in organizing a circle of young modernist architects (the Chug) who attempted, quite successfully, to introduce new ideas on functional and rational design into the country.13 Sharon saw climate as an integral and central component of healthy building design for the masses, reflecting a clear influence of ideas prevalent in Germany during his time at the Bauhaus and as an employee in Meyer’s office. In an article he published in 1937 on local building of public housing, Sharon described the faults of prewar European housing developments, which were devoid of “all hygiene conditions of ventilation and solar insolation,” and added that the “climatic and hygienic conditions” are one of the three main subjects that should be considered in the design of local housing projects (the other two were “land development” and “functional apartment plan”).14 In his analysis of the climatic considerations in local architectural design, Sharon argued that the wind, and not the sun, is the main climatic factor according to which bioclimatic design should evolve. His argument for the lesser attention he gave to the sun was that since insulation materials were expensive and therefore practically unavailable in most housing projects, much of the negative effects of a building’s exposure to solar radiation cannot be avoided. Therefore, Sharon concluded, cooling of indoor spaces could only be achieved after maximizing indoor cross ventilation by orienting the main facades to west and east, the prevailing wind directions in Palestine, despite their exposure to much higher amounts of solar radiation during summer.15 Similar ideas

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also appeared in other articles published by local architects during the same time,16 reflecting a common belief that was not built upon much empirical or even theoretical evidence but rather on the architects’ common sense and wishful thinking.17 It was not long before people began to argue that the architects’ climatic common sense failed to deliver: by the end of the 1930s, the popular opinion among Jews in Palestine was that the thermal performance of modern buildings is poor and may even be regarded as inferior when compared to older local buildings, especially during the hot season.18 Local experts on hygiene expressed their concerns over the negative effects of poor building performance on public health.19 Yet, while such criticism was not unique to Palestine, since European physicians and hygiene experts had long been criticizing dwelling conditions as part of what they saw as their professional obligation,20 in Palestine the call for “healthy” indoor conditions was imbued with additional, nationalist motivations.

Hygiene and the Climatic Building of a Nation Among the Jewish population in Palestine of the 1930s, hygiene was given an exceptional significance beyond that of a cultural repertoire for a healthy management of everyday life, as it was commonly perceived in Europe.21 Zionist hygienic imperatives and recommendations, which were imported directly from Europe, had the national function of promoting a totally new way of life for Jews that would contrast the alleged illnesses and abnormalities of Jewish life in the diaspora.22 For that purpose, an entire mechanism for hygiene education was set in motion by the Zionist establishment, encompassing the Hebrew education system, popular newspapers and journals, and public health centers that were built in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv through the support of the Jewish-American philanthropists Nathan Straus.23 In 1941, Walter Strauss (1895–1990), the head of the Straus Health Center in Jerusalem who emigrated from Berlin in 1937 (Figure 14.1), used the center’s new Hebrew journal for analyzing what he believed to be a crucial weak point in securing public hygiene: the new modern architecture in Palestine. Strauss took advantage of the almost full halt in building activities in Palestine brought by the Second World War and argued that the forced pause in construction is actually a blessing in disguise, since it provided time for reflection on what was achieved and what was not achieved during the intense construction activities of the 1920s and 1930s.24 In his three-part article, Strauss showed a striking understanding of the performative aspects of design. He followed Baerwald’s ideas by arguing that traditional building in Palestine suited the local climate well and that the adoption of European aesthetic ideals was all wrong because it stemmed from very different environmental conditions.25 Nevertheless, his professional background enabled Strauss to go beyond Baerwald’s basic instincts and to systematically analyze the poor performance of new construction in light of the laws of thermodynamics, concluding that in Palestine the exposure of building envelopes to solar radiation is the single most important climatic factor that should receive attention from designers. Therefore, and contrary to the common belief among local architects of that time, Strauss concluded that the effect of orienting the

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Figure 14.1 Walter Strauss’s and his wife’s application for a certificate of naturalization in Mandatory Palestine, signed on August 29, 1939. Source: Israel State Archives, Mem-6397/35

main building façades toward the prevailing wind directions had only a minor positive effect and that design should be directed first toward minimizing the absorption of solar radiation in a building’s envelope.26 What was exceptional in Strauss’s use of words was his argument that the same scientific approach that was applied to medicine should also be applied to architectural design. The argument was highly unconventional, since many architects of that time, not only in Palestine but also in Europe, had only superficial interest in genuine scientific approach to building performance, not to mention the required knowledge in building physics.27 This superficial approach resulted in simplistic conclusions similar to the emphasis on wind-inducing design advocated by Sharon and his colleagues in Palestine. The framing of the architectural problem of climatic building design in terms relating to the national hygiene of Jews in Palestine gave the question of climatic building design an increased, national significance. Thus, Strauss’s seemingly objective approach to public health did not limit itself to medical advice but called for harnessing

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science for the development of a new and healthy architecture that could support the creation of a healthy Hebrew nation in Palestine: There is a need for a mental and creative reform among architects. One should overcome the impeding element—the European example of the conventional aesthetic forms. The public should be educated and confronted with the fact that its inclination towards European forms of building is an obstacle for progress. And finally—scientific building research, which exists in all civilized countries, should be initiated. From the firm foundation of scientific and practical experience the design of a new building form will grow, its apex will be the creation of a building style suitable for the land of our future—a national style in the best meaning of the word.28

German-Speaking Émigré Professionals Join Forces In Palestine of the 1940s, Strauss’s call for initiating scientific building research was not left unanswered. While, as noted above, the interest in climatic building performance was not absent from local architectural discourse in previous decades, architects were unable to turn to the scientific path without joining forces with professionals from other fields, like civil engineers, climatologists, physicists, and physiologists. Émigré professionals from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, who settled in Palestine, greatly advanced the local expertise in these fields and enabled the realization of such cooperation. The common professional and cultural background of these émigrés, the fact that they shared not only the German language but also the language of scientific exploration, facilitated the creation of personal and professional ties that culminated in the emergence of scientific research on climatic building design in Palestine. An unlikely reader of Strauss’s article, which was published in a Hebrew medical periodical, was architect Werner Joseph Wittkower (1903–1997). Born in Berlin, Wittkower immigrated to Palestine in 1933 soon after the Nazis came to power; his older brother Rudolf Wittkower (1901–1971), a renowned art historian, left Germany to England in the same year.29 Reacting to Strauss’s article, he sent a letter to the editor, in which he expressed his “special interest” in the publication, argued that he had come to similar conclusions, and stressed that he believed that the sun, and not the wind, is the main climatic factor that should be taken into account in local building design.30 Wittkower’s special interest in a climatic analysis presented by an expert on hygiene was not a mere coincidence since he had already been grappling with matters of design from hygienic and climatic perspectives for several years. At first, this interest was manifested in a series of architectural projects in which he was involved in Germany and later in Palestine. Wittkower, who studied architecture during the second half of the 1920s at Technische Hochschule Stuttgart (today’s Stuttgart University), worked during that time in the office of architect Richard Döcker (1894–1968),31 who was regarded as one of the pioneers of a new wave of hygienic architecture, culminating in his design for a hospital in Waiblingen (1926–1928).32 While it is hard to know whether Wittkower was involved in this project while working in Döcker’s office, it is likely that

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Döcker’s interest in hygiene had affected Wittkower’s inclination toward climatically aware and hygienic design. As an independent architect in Germany, Wittkower designed a Jewish Kinderheim (a children’s home for recreational purposes) in Bad Saarow and a small hospital of thirty beds in Münchener Strasse in Berlin, from which no drawings or photos survived (both projects were completed in 1930).33 In 1932, he was invited by Kurt Rojek, for whom he designed a villa in Berlin, to design a wooden holiday cabin that Rojek wanted to market. It was exhibited at the Sonne, Luft und Haus für Alle (Sun, Air and House for Everyone) exhibition that took place in Berlin and focused on affordable holiday houses for all classes.34 After immigrating to Palestine, Wittkower designed the small private hospital Rafael in Ramat Gan (completed in 1935), was responsible for the interior design of the Carmel sanatorium in Haifa, which was designed by Richard Kauffmann in 1935, and designed the Hachlama sanatorium in Ramat Gan (completed in 1937) (Figure 14.2).35 Arguably, this series of projects raised Wittkower’s awareness to the necessity of further investigating the relation between architectural design, health, and climate.

Figure 14.2  Newspaper ad for the Hachlama sanatorium in Ramat Gan, designed by Werner Joseph Wittkower and opened in 1937. Source: Tel Aviv Municipality Yearbook, 1939, 3

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Yet Wittkower’s unique contribution to the architectural history of Palestine and Israel does not lie in his buildings, but rather in his pivotal role in the scientific turn in local bioclimatic building design since the early 1940s. By following the same path delineated by Strauss—scientific analysis of climatic factors, and cross-professional cooperation for the creation of new Jewish architecture in Palestine—he was able to systematically and critically analyze the climatic challenges of local design and to put his theoretical observations into empirical testing. One of Wittkower’s remarkable achievements from that time was an unpublished eighty-three-page manuscript written in German, in which he provided an exceptionally detailed—though only theoretical—analysis of the climatic factors that affected the building of what he called “healthy living spaces” in Palestine (Figure 14.3).36 While the major findings of his theoretical analysis later appeared in several articles published in Hebrew during the 1940s,37 the manuscript also included a preface that was not published in Hebrew, which described Wittkower’s more fundamental approach to climatic building design. In the preface, Wittkower reflected on the wisdom of traditional local architecture and condemned the deficiencies of modern Jewish architecture in Palestine. At the same time, he argued that tradition as a way of elucidating effective bioclimatic design had its downside since it required a long process of trial and error. In the case of the new, modern Jewish architecture in Palestine, which can neither rely on generations-long

Figure 14.3  Werner Joseph Wittkower, a schematic study of the shading effect of awnings on a southern façade in Palestine at different dates and times as appeared in his unpublished manuscript “Bauliche Gestaltung klimatisch gesunder Wohnräume in Palästina,” 1942. Source: Rudolf Feige Collection, the German-speaking Jewry Heritage Museum, Tefen, Israel

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tradition nor adopt the non-modern building technologies and spatial arrangements of the local Palestinian architecture, it was thus impractical to wait for several generations until satisfactory results were achieved. According to Wittkower, the alternative path presented by modernity is the application of science for rapid optimization of building performance. The main weakness of that approach was that local architects did not genuinely know how to take advantage of the benefits of science, mainly because of inadequate education or mere ignorance. Wittkower’s conclusion was simple: a group of what Wittkower called “experts”—architects and other professionals—should join forces and go out and perform real-life experiments to answer the design questions required for securing healthy indoor conditions in new constructions in Palestine.38 Wittkower did not only preach but also set out to gather such a group of experts with whom he consulted. They were all German-speaking Jewish émigrés who came to Palestine during the 1930s: Rudolf Feige (1889–1948), the head of the meteorological service of Palestine, who fled Nazi Germany in 1935; Walter Strauss, who is mentioned above; Theodor Gruschka (1888–1967), who came to Palestine from Czechoslovakia in 1939 and became the general manager of Hadassah Hospital in Tel Aviv; Emanuel Goldberg (1881–1970), a Jewish chemist and inventor who was removed by the Nazis from his high position in Zeiss Ikon company and settled in Tel Aviv in 1937; and Walter Koch (1909–1967), a Viennese-born Jewish physician who escaped Vienna right after the Anschluss (leaving a position at Prof. Julius Bauer’s internal medicine department at the Wiener Allgemeine Poliklinik [Vienna Polyclinic]) and held a position in the Department of Hygiene at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.39 Eventually, together with Feige and Koch, Wittkower managed to secure funding from the Board for Scientific and Industrial Research of the British Administration in Palestine for realizing an experiment that was designed to scientifically answer the question that had been troubling local architects for more than a decade: what is the optimal climatic orientation of a building in Palestine?40 This pioneering experiment took place in a newly built public housing block in Tel Aviv’s Yad Eliyahu neighborhood. The indoor conditions in two apartments of identical design but different orientations (north-south and east-west) were monitored for ten days in late September–early October 1946, leading to the conclusion that “dwelling houses or office or school buildings with the longer walls [the longer facades, O.A.] facing north and south offer a higher degree of climatic comfort than similar buildings with the longer walls facing east and west.”41 The experiment showed that sun was indeed more important than wind for securing better indoor summer conditions in Palestine. Although rudimentary in nature and in retrospect also too simplistic in its articulation, the experiment’s conclusion bore the significance of providing an empirical basis for answering a major design question. This was not an insignificant achievement: the evidence provided by science was regarded at that time as decisive enough to convince local architects that solar insolation should play a central role in determining a preferable orientation of a building.42 Thus, while Arieh Sharon’s past recommendation to rely mainly on winds to secure summer indoor cooling was now shown to be illadvised, he nevertheless was happy to embrace Wittkower’s new findings and to ask him to prepare a basic guide on “healthy indoor climate design” to be used by the team of planners he gathered as the chief architect of Israel’s first masterplan in 1949.43

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Conclusion: Cultural Transfer and Bioclimatic Architecture in Israel Despite his successful realization of some of his ideas on climate, building, and scientific exploration, Wittkower managed to receive funding for just another experiment, conducted in 1951 and funded by the Scientific Council of Israel.44 Without solid institutional backing, and with booming building activities after the establishment of the Israeli state, he preferred to turn his energy to his successful architectural practice instead of competing on the scarce resources allocated to building research in Israel in the 1950s. As a result, significant research activities in the field took place only after the establishment of the Department of Indoor Climate at the Technion’s Building Research Station in 1960, headed by architect Baruch Givoni (1920–2019).45 Yet Wittkower’s approach and experiments were a crucial element in the shifting focus of Israeli bioclimatic building design from the wind to the sun. This was highly evident in the work of Arieh Sharon and his partner Benjamin Idelson in the 1950s. While their work from that time used some vague climatic justifications for undeniable copying of Modern Brazilian architecture, it aligned with the scientific findings on the significance of sun protections in the Israeli context, a direct result of Wittkower’s pioneering work (Figure 14.4).46

Figure 14.4  The south-western corner of the southern wing of Gilman Building in Tel Aviv University Campus, designed by Werner Joseph Wittkower, Erich Baumann, and Israel Stein, and completed in 1965. The design of the sun protections, as applied to the southern (right) and western (left) facades, reflected Wittkower’s emphasis on sun protection design in the Israeli context and the difference in the sun angle incidence on differently oriented facades. Source: Tel Aviv University Archive, Tel Aviv, Israel, photograph by Isaac Berez

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Climatically speaking, Israeli architecture moved from the wind to the sun between the 1930s and the 1950s. This transformation reflected not only a cultural import of concepts and ideas on architecture, climate, and hygiene that were common in Europe and particularly in Germany of the 1920s, but also a methodological shift in the application of science for resolving design questions. The scientific basis for this transformation originated from German and European advancements in building physics. Yet the specific cultural motivations of the Jewish population in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s, and the use of architecture to accommodate the urgent need for building a “healthy” nation, made the country one of the first places in which architects adopted building physics research methods to guide their designs. The forced emigration of prominent experts in matters of hygiene, building physics, and climatology to Palestine, and their belonging to a cohesive milieu based on their shared cultural background, made this leap forward possible through interdisciplinary cooperation of architects and scientists that was uncommon at that time and may be also regarded as uncommon today.

Notes Al Mansfeld, “Architecture in Israel—Past and Future,” Technion Magazine 1970, no. 2 (1970); Yona Fischer, “Bauten aus den 20er und 30er Jahren in Tel Aviv,” Werk 73, no. 1 (1973); Arieh Sharon, Kibbutz+Bauhaus (Stuttgart: Karl Krämer Verlag and Massada, 1976); Michael Levin, “The Architects Who Brought the Bauhaus to Israel [in Hebrew],” Kav 2 (1981); Michael Levin, White City: International Style Architecture in Israel (Tel Aviv: The Tel Aviv Museum, 1984); Gilbert Herbert and Ita HeinzeGreenberg, “The Anatomy of a Profession: Architects in Palestine during the British Mandate,” Architectura: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Baukunst 22, no. 2 (1992); Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, “Contested Zionism—Alternative Modernism: Erich Mendelsohn and the Tel Aviv Chug in Mandate Palestine,” Architectural History 39 (1996); Nitza Metzger-Szmuk, Dwelling on the Dunes: Tel Aviv, Modern Movement and Bauhaus Ideals (Paris: Editions de l’éclat, 2004); Sharon Rotbard, White City, Black City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015); Ronny Schüler, “Forms, Ideals, and Methods. Bauhaus Transfers to Mandatory Palestine,” Wolkenkuckucksheim | Cloud-CuckooLand 24, no. 39 (2019). 2 Or Aleksandrowicz, “Appearance and Performance: Israeli Building Climatology and Its Effect on Local Architectural Practice (1940–1977),” Architectural Science Review 60, no. 5 (2017). 3 Paul Overy, Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture between the Wars (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), 6–67; Margaret Campbell, “What Tuberculosis Did for Modernism: The Influence of a Curative Environment on Modernist Design and Architecture,” Medical History 49, no. 4 (2005). 4 Richard A. Hobday, “Sunlight Therapy and Solar Architecture,” Medical History 41, no. 4 (1997); T. C. Medici, “Die Tuberkulose und das moderne Wohnideal,” Praxis 92, no. 34 (2003); Richard A. Hobday and S. J. Dancer, “Roles of Sunlight and Natural Ventilation for Controlling Infection: Historical and Current Perspectives,” Journal of Hospital Infection 84, no. 4 (2013). 5 Overy, Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture between the Wars, 21–8; Eva Eylers, “Planning the Nation: The Sanatorium Movement in Germany,” The Journal of Architecture 19, no. 5 (2014). 1

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Eylers, “Planning the Nation: The Sanatorium Movement in Germany.” Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 9–49; Overy, Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture between the Wars, 89–97; Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design since 1880 (4th edition) (Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 120–48. 8 Sigfried Giedion, Befreites wohnen (Zurich: Orell Füssli, 1929), 14–15; Ken Butti and John Perlin, A Golden Thread: 2,500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1980), 167–8; Anthony Denzer, “Modern Architecture and Theories of Solar Orientation,” SOLAR 2014: 43th ASES National Solar Conference, San Francisco, July 6–10, 2014; Ute Poerschke, “Solar Buildings in the 1920s: The Discourse on Best Sun Orientation in Modern Housing,” SOLAR 2015: 44th ASES National Solar Conference, Pennsylvania State University, PA, July 28–30, 2015. 9 Susan R. Henderson, Building Culture: Ernst May and the New Frankfurt am Main Initiative, 1926–1931 (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2013), 400–26. 10 Alexander Baerwald, “Bauliche Probleme in Palästina,” Die Welt 14, no. 41 (1910); Yossi Ben-Artzi, “Alexander Baerwald’s ‘Learning Journey’ [in Hebrew],” Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly, no. 96 (2006); Ita Heinze-Greenberg, Europa in Palästina: Die Architekten des Zionistischen Projekts 1902–1923 (Zürich: Gta-Verlag, 2011). 11 Baerwald, “Bauliche Probleme in Palästina.” 12 Alexander Baerwald, “The Art of Homeland [in Hebrew],” Mischar Wetaasia 3, no. 3–4 (1925): 95. 13 Nitzan-Shiftan, “Contested Zionism—Alternative Modernism: Erich Mendelsohn and the Tel Aviv Chug in Mandate Palestine”; Ines Sonder, “Bauhaus Architecture in Israel: De-constructing a Modernist Vernacular and the Myth of Tel Aviv’s ‘White City’,” in Handbook of Israel: Major Debates, ed. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Julius H. Schoeps, Yitzhak Sternberg, and Olaf Glöckner (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). 14 Arieh Sharon, “Planning of Cooperative Houses [in Hebrew],” Habinyan 1, no. 1 (1937): 1. 15 Ibid. 16 Dov Karmi, “Apartment Orientation in Tel Aviv [in Hebrew],” Habinjan Bamisrah Hakarov 1, no. 9–10 (1936); Shlomo Ginzburg, “Apartment Orientation in Haifa [in Hebrew],” ibid; Arieh Sharon, “Public Buildings in Palestine [in Hebrew],” in Twenty Years of Building: Workers’ Settlements, Housing and Public Institutions (Engineers’, Architects’ and Surveyors’ Union, 1940). See also Sigal Davidi, “Caring for Parents: Modern Dwellings for Elderly German-Jewish Immigrants in Mandatory Palestine,” The Journal of Architecture 25, no. 3 (2020). 17 Avia Hashimshoni, “Climatic Problems from the Architect’s Point of View [in Hebrew],” in Climate and Man in Israel, ed. Human Environmental Physiology Group (Jerusalem: National Council for Research and Development, 1962); Werner Joseph Wittkower, “Climate-Adapted Building in Israel: How Far Has Our Knowledge Influenced Building Practice?,” Energy and Buildings 7, no. 3 (1984). 18 Leo Adler, “Why? Impressions of a New Immigrant [in Hebrew],” Habinjan Bamisrah Hakarov 1, no. 1 (1934); M. B., “Towards Reform in the Construction of Houses in Tel Aviv [in Hebrew],” Haaretz (October 15, 1935); Dov Ashbel, “The Great Heat Wave [in Hebrew],” ibid., May 6, 1935; A. R., “The Land’s Climate and Our Homes [in Hebrew],” ibid., May 8, 1935; Leo Adler, “The Architecture in Our Land [in Hebrew],” Gazit 2, no. 8–9 (1936); Sharon, “Public Buildings in Palestine”; Dov Karmi, “The Sun Breakers [in Hebrew],” Journal of the Association of Engineers and Architects in Israel 10, no. 3 (1953); Hashimshoni, “Climatic Problems from the Architect’s Point of View.”

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19 Walter Strauss, “The Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate, Part 2 [in Hebrew],” Hygiene and Health Chronicles 1, no. 11 (1941); Theodor Gruschka, “The Residential Flat in the Climate of Palestine [in Hebrew],” in Engineering Survey (Tel Aviv: Engineers’, Architects’ and Surveyors’ Union of Palestine, 1944). 20 Didem Ekici, “The Physiology of the House: Modern Architecture and the Science of Hygiene,” in Healing Spaces, Modern Architecture, and the Body, ed. Sarah Schrank and Didem Ekici (London: Routledge, 2017). 21 Dafna Hirsch, “We Are Here to Bring the West”: Hygiene Education within the Jewish Community of Palestine during the British Mandate [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 2006), 1–18; Dafna Hirsch, “‘We Are Here to Bring the West, Not Only to Ourselves’: Zionist Occidentalism and the Discourse of Hygiene in Mandate Palestine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 4 (2009). 22 Hirsch, “We Are Here to Bring the West, Not Only to Ourselves”; Dafna Hirsch, “Hygiene, Dirt and the Shaping of a New Man among the Early Zionist Halutzim,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 3 (2014). 23 Manfred Waserman, “For Mother and Child: Hadassah in the Holy Land, 1913 through 1993,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 70, no. 3 (1993); Hirsch, “We Are Here to Bring the West, Not Only to Ourselves.” 24 Walter Strauss, “The Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate, Part 1 [in Hebrew],” Hygiene and Health Chronicles 1, no. 9–10 (1941). 25 Strauss, “The Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate, Part 2 [in Hebrew].” 26 Ibid; Walter Strauss, “The Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate, Part 3 [in Hebrew],” Hygiene and Health Chronicles 1, no. 12 (1941); Strauss, “The Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate, Part 1 [in Hebrew].” 27 Jos Tomlow, “Bauphysik und die technische Literatur des Neuen Bauens,” Bauphysik 29, no. 2 (2007); Jos Tomlow, “Building Physics and Its Performance in Modern Movement Architecture,” Docomomo Journal 44 (2011). 28 Strauss, “The Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate, Part 3 [in Hebrew],” 51. Quoted translated by the author; original emphasis. 29 Howard Hibbard, “Rudolf Wittkower,” The Burlington Magazine 114, no. 828 (1972); Uzi Agassi, “‘Humanization of Space’: W.J. Wittkower, Architectonic Creation BerlinPalestine [in Hebrew],” in W. J. Wittkower, “the Cool Breeze Comes from the West”: 65 Years in the World of Architecture, ed. Uzi Agassi (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1993); Myra Warhaftig, “Sie legten den Grundstein”: Leben und Wirken deutschsprachiger Jüdischer Architekten in Palästina, 1918–1948 (Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1996), 326–31. 30 Werner Joseph Wittkower, “On the Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate [in Hebrew],” Hygiene and Health Chronicles 2, no. 6 (1942). 31 Agassi, “Humanization of Space.”; Warhaftig, “Sie legten den Grundstein,” 326–31. 32 Giedion, Befreites wohnen, 57–8; Overy, Light, Air and Openness: Modern Architecture between the Wars, 10–13. 33 Agassi, “Humanization of Space.” 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Werner Joseph Wittkower, “Bauliche Gestaltung klimatisch gesunder Wohnräume in Palästina” [Building Design of Climatically Healthy Living Spaces in Palestine, unpublished manuscript], Rudolf Feige Collection (The German-speaking Jewry Heritage Museum, Tefen, Israel, 1942). 37 Werner Joseph Wittkower, “Towards Reform of Town and House Planning in Palestine [in Hebrew],” Journal of the Association of Engineers and Architects in

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Index Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 161, 214 Acculturated Jews 1, 33 n.53, 47, 106, 118 n.30, 161, 179, 212 Acculturation 1–3, 9, 27 n.12, 30 n.36, 122–3, 161, 191 Adler Schnee, Ruth 229, 236 n.60 advertising 82, 98, 149–51, 208, 211 Agudas Achim, Orthodox Jewish association, Brno 108 Agudas Achim Synagogue. See Brno AIA (American Institute of Architects) 221 Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. See Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Albers, Josef 79 Albini, Alfred 96 Aleksander, Božidar 99 Allenstein (Olsztyn, Poland) 12 Allianz und Stuttgarter Verein, Schweizerische Lebensversicherungs,- und Rentenanstalt (today Swiss Life) 225 American Architects Directory 227, 235 n.49 American Joint Distribution Committee 64 Amit, Edna 199 Angerburg (Węgorzewo, Poland) 222 Annot (Anna Ottilie Krigar-Menzel) 227 “Anschluss”, Annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany, 1938 158, 168–9, 170 n.25, 214, 261 anti-Jewish laws 151 antisemitism 2, 7, 21–2, 27 n.11, 29 n.29, 44–5, 53, 54 n.11, 61–2, 116 n.2, 130–1, 168, 230 antisemitic, also anti-Jewish bias 32 n.53, 33 n.56, 122, 127–8, 132, 139, 143, 149, 174–5, 178 antisemitic stereotypes 41, 128 The Architectural Record, journal (New York) 229, 231 architecture architectural culture 90, 100 architectural modernism 90–1

architectural periodicals 96 architectural publications 95 architectural typology 93 proto-functionalist architecture 93 Architekt SIA, journal 59, 70 n.4 Architekturzentrum Wien 160 Archival practices 24, 237–51 Arendt, Hannah 9, 32 nn.50–2, 42 “Aufklärung und die Judenfrage” (Enlightenment and the Jewish Question, 1932) 32 n.51 Arrow Cross Units 52 Art Deco 47–8, 55 n.20, 56 n.27, 93, 102 n.17, 102 n.23 Art Nouveau 46, 55 n.24, 91–3 Arts and Crafts Movement 140, 144 “Aryanization” 84–5 Ashby, Margery Corbett 227 Ashkenazi 2, 207 assimilation 3, 25 n.2, 26 n.9, 32 n.52, 34 n.65, 54 n.11, 132, 141, 211 Association of Hungarian Engineers and Architects 143, 148 Association of Industrialists of Croatia and Slavonia 90 Auschwitz 15, 18, 57 n.42, 102 n.21, 103 n.31, 115, 120 n.41, 127, 189, 192 Australia 98, 152, 155 n.41, 181 Austria, also Republic of Austria 1, 6, 10, 13, 17, 24, 25 n.3, 38 n.90, 42, 52, 122, 145, 165, 169 n.4, 181, 190, 192, 201, 207–11, 213–14, 217 n.15, 244, 258 Austria-Hungary 44, 183, 210–11. See also Austro-Hungarian Empire; Habsburg Monarchy multiethnic population 141 Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (today MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna) 167, 180, 186 n.8, 210, 223 Austro-Hungarian Empire 1, 6, 21, 139, 208–11

296 autobiography 127, 173, 177, 240–2, 245, 250 n.25 avant-garde 2, 11, 17, 20, 46–7, 55 n.20, 61–2, 66, 77, 90–1, 95–8, 126, 134 n.7, 173, 175, 181, 189, 196, 198, 201, 250 n.26 Azriel, Isak 209, 216 n.6 Bachner, Moritz 224 department store Bachner, MährischOstrau, (today Ostrava, Czech Republic) 224 Baerwald, Alexander “The Art of Homeland [in Hebrew]” (1925) 264 n.12 “Bauliche Probleme in Palästina” (1910) 264 nn.10–11 Bahr, Hermann 90, 101 n.5 Balázs, Béla 147–8, 175, 180, 187 nn.30–1 Balkans 23, 45 Baranyai, Aladar 93 Barlach, Ernst 102 n.24 Bauer, Hinko 96 Bauer, Leopold 12 Breda & Weinstein department store, Opava (German Troppau) (1926–28) 12, 34 n.64 Baugewerkschule in Rixdorf/Neukölln 74 Bauhaus Bauhaus Dessau 84 Bauhaus Weimar (also Weimar Bauhaus) 22, 78, 94, 143, 189, 191, 193–8, 201 gender 195 Gesamtkunstwerk 79 ‘Jerusalem Bauhaus’ 49 school 22, 46 students 22, 79 style 17, 19, 32 n.47, 34 n.65, 35 n.71, 46–7, 55 n.20 ‘Tel Aviv Bauhaus’ 46, 48 weaving department 79 Baukunst (art of building) 78 Bauman, Zygmunt 6, 30 n.30 Baumhorn, Lipót 112 BBC 214 Beer, Theodor 93 Beethoven 42 Behrens, Peter 36 n.76, 118 n.29

Index New Synagogue in Žilina, Slovakia (1929–31) 112–4, 112 Stern Building, Zagreb (1927) 91 Belgium 78 Belgrade 2, 11, 23, 92, 207–12, 215, 217 n.15, 217 n.23, 218 nn.46–7, 218 n.50, 238, 244, 245, 245–7, 250 n.41 School of Applied Arts 209 Sephardic Cemetery 211, 218 n.46 Beller, Steven 25 n.2, 190, 202 nn.7–8 “belonging” 4–5, 7–8, 19, 36 n.76, 51, 207, 211, 238, 246 Benedik, Slavko 93, 96, 101 n.14 Benedik & Baranyai, architectural studio 91, 93, 94, 102 n.17 Villa Ilić, Zagreb (1918–20) 93 Benjamin, Walter 8 Benn, Gottfried 86 n.1 Das moderne Ich (1920) 86 n.1 Berény, Robert 182 Berényi, Lili 180, 187 n.27 Berger, Otti 103 n.31 Berlin 2, 5, 10–12, 15, 18–20, 22–4, 25 n.1, 27 n.13, 28 n.23, 29 n.23, 33 n.56, 34 n.65, 36 n.75, 42, 60, 73–87, 91, 94, 97, 101 n.9, 101 n.11, 103 n.31, 108, 118 n.29, 143, 161, 175, 195, 221–6, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233 n.14, 239, 249 n.18, 255, 256, 258, 259 Berlin-Mitte 14, 76 Berlin-Potsdam railroad line 80 Berlin-Zehlendorf 82 “Greater Berlin Act” 79 Greater Berlin (Groß-Berlin) 74–5, 78 Grunewald forest 82 Onkel-Toms Hütte Settlement, Zehlendorf 82–4 Potsdamer Platz 75 Scheunenviertel 28 n.23, 33 n.56 Bertig, Irena 129, 136 n.33 “Besitz” (property) 11, 33–4 n.56 Betlheim, Stjepan 94 Biedermeier 158, 163–4 “Bildung” (education) 11, 33–4 n.56 Binder, Joseph 23, 218 n.32, 218 n.34, 246 Vienna Graphics 210 bioclimatic design 24, 255, 260 biographical research 121 Birnstein, Esther née Šwarzbartová 199

Index Bjelovar (Croatia) 91 Black, Misha 241 Black Mountain College in North Carolina 229 Blau, Eve 101 n.8 Bloch, Ernst 8, 31–2 nn.45–8 The Principle of Hope (1938–40) 8 “Symbol: Die Juden” (Symbol: The Jews, 1912/13) 8, 31 n.46 Bloch-Bauer, Adele 201 Blumenau, Lili 236 n.60 Creative Looms 229, 231 B’nai Brith, Jewish organization 161 Bolshevik Republic of Councils 139. See also Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919) Bolshevik Revolution, Hungary 21 Bondy, Egon 64 Born, Wolfgang 181, 187 n.33 Borský Mikuláš, Slovakia 60 Bortnyik, Sándor 148 Műhely (Private school) 148 Bosnia 219 n.68 Böß, Gustav 83 Bourgeois (aesthete, clients, culture, domestic sphere, interior, lifestyles) 2, 49, 108, 129, 144, 145, 162, 165 Brand, Reneé 87 n.30 Niemandsland (1940) 87 n.30 Brandeis, Ludvik 18, 35 n.67 Brandeis, Pavel 197 Brandeis Toy Department Store, Prague 13–14, 13, 14, 18 Bratislava (Pozsony in Hungarian, Pressburg in German) 2, 10, 12, 15, 19, 55 n.15, 59–69, 70 n.2, 70 n.4, 70 n.14, 71 nn.36–7, 110, 118 n.28 Chevra Kadisha 64, 66 “Hausbergl” district 68 Jewish hospital 19, 64–5 orthodox community 64–6 orthodox Synagogue in Heydukova Street Synagogue (1923–26) 110 Braun, Otto 83 Brecht, Berthold 195 Breda, Max 12 Breuer, Marcel 15, 42, 46, 79, 140 Breughel, Pieter the Elder 182

297

Briggs, Ella 38 n.90 housing complex in Berlin-Mariendorf (1930) 23 “Pestalozzi-hof ” and Ledigenheim, Vienna-Döbling (1925) 23 Britain 10, 24, 25 n.1, 35 n.67, 140, 144, 207, 209, 214, 218 n.40, 237, 239, 243–4, 248. See also England British Commonwealth 215 British Crown Agents 241 Brno 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 15, 18, 20, 30 n.30, 46, 90, 105–20, 209 Agudas Achim Synagogue (1936) 20, 105–20, 105, 109, 110 Brno Botanical Garden 115 Great Synagogue in Přízova Street (former Nadační), (1853–55) destroyed 106 Jewish community 106–7, 113–14, 116, 117 n.9, 117 n.13 Křenova neighborhood (Křenová suburb) 107 New Synagogue Ponávka street, (1906) destroyed 107 Polish Shul (Polish School Synagogue) in Křenova Street (1883) 106–7 ritual bath in Dorných Street 107 Špilberk Castle (Spielberg Fortress) 115 synagogues 10, 20, 105–20 Brod, Max 31 n.45 Brooklyn Museum, New York 182 Brown, Margaret Wise 184, 188 n.50 Wheel on the Chimney (1954) 184, 188 n.50 Bry, Paul 235 n.51, 235 nn.53–4 Radio Frank’s Night Club, New York 227–8 Buber, Martin 8 Bucharest 11, 15, 17 Budapest 2, 6, 10, 11, 18, 19, 26 n.4, 28–9 n.23, 30 n.34, 41–57, 59, 60, 139, 140, 141, 142, 148, 149, 150, 152, 173–5, 177, 178, 180–3, 185 n.5, 186 n.14, 188 n.48 Andrássy Avenue 43–4 Erzsébetváros or Elisabeth-Town, Pest 44 Eskü tér (now March 15th square) 152

298

Index

Gründerzeit 43 Hegedűs Gyula Street Synagogue 48 hilly villa districts of Buda 44 Margit Island 41, 44 Neolog Rákoskeresztúr cemetery 142 New Leopold Town 10, 19, 41–57 (see also New Leopold Town) Old Leopold Town (Ó-Lipótváros) 44, 54 n.7 Shoes on the Danube Bank Memorial 52 Vígszínház theater 48 Budapesti Műhely (Budapest Workshop) 17, 145, 175. See also Kozma, Lajos Die Bühne, journal (Vienna) 180 building climatology 263 building orientation 254 building physics 257, 263 Building Society of the Reichsbank (Wohnstättengesellschaft mbH) 81 Bukovina 1–2, 20, 26 n.5, 107–9, 115, 116 nn.1–2 BUKUM (Buch, Kunst, Musikalien), Vienna 180 Bund Deutscher Architekten (Association of German Architects, BDA) 226, 234 n.32 Buraczewska, Wanda 129 Burstin, Maksymilian 122 Buscher, Alma 196 Business and Professional Women’s Club in Utica, New York 227 Bystřice nad Pernštejnem, Czech Republic 108 Bytova kultura, magazine (Brno) 111 Cahiers d’Art, journal (Paris) 96 California 214, 224 Canada 215 capitalism 12, 26 n.4 Cassirer, Paul 102 n.24, 224 Catholic church 56 n.30, 144 culture 144 Catholicism 53 n.1, 102 n.21 Catlin, Stanton Loomis 183, 188 n.43 Central Europe 1–8, 10–13, 17, 19–21, 23–4, 28 n.20, 29 n.29, 30 n.37, 31 n.44, 33 n.54, 33 n.56, 45, 54 n.6,

90, 94, 126, 135 n.12, 175, 183–4, 213, 245, 248. See also Mitteleuropa Central European consciousness 11, 17 Children’s art 189–91, 193, 198–9, 201 CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) 11–12, 94, 96 citizenship 5, 7, 19, 26 n.4, 139, 242 Cižek, Franz 187 n.41, 189, 193, 198–9 Papier-Schneide-und Klebearbeiten (1914) 200 Club of Architects in Brno 111 Cold War 53 Colin, Paul 242, 250 n.30 Ecole Colin, Paris 241 collage 85, 189–90, 197, 199–200, 213 collective memory 4, 89 commercial art 209, 241 Communism 52, 54 n.8, 133 Communist Party (Vienna) (Budapest) 42, 66, 115, 127, 197 Constantinople, (today Istanbul, Turkey) 162, 170 n.21 Construction Office in the Public Works Department of the Provincial Office, Krakow 129 consultant designer 237–9 consumption 8, 211, 213 Cord 810 convertible coupé 213 corporate identity 238 Čovjek i prostor (Man and Space), magazine (Zagreb) 103 n.34 Croatia 18, 20, 89–103 Csakó, Elemér 140, 153 n.4 cultural adaptation 2 cultural difference 9, 29 n.29 cultural heritage 4, 25 n.1, 50, 124, 173, 177–9, 191, 201–2, 232 cultural identity 1–38, 29 n.23, 56 n.35, 89, 132, 134 n.4 “cultural mediation” 7 cultural memory 4, 25 n.2, 237. See also Collective memory cultural producers 2, 7, 30 n.37, 77 cultural renewal 1, 7 cultural stereotypes 5, 11 cultural transfers 1, 253, 262–3 culture ethnic culture 7

Index local culture 12 mass culture 7 Czech Cubism 48 Czechoslovak Republic, 1918–39 44, 59–60 Czechoslovakia, 1918–39 and 1945–92 1, 9–10, 12–14, 20, 61, 68, 105–7, 112, 114, 148, 174, 179, 181, 211, 258, 261. See also Czechoslovak Republic, 1918–39 Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, 1939–45 20, 105, 117 n.3 Czech Republic 6, 116, 119 n.37, 120 n.45, 165, 224 Danube river 44, 52, 65 “degenerate” 201 Dekk, Dorrit 209, 217 n.25 de Majo, Katarina (Keti) married name Manojlović 211 de Majo, Max (Maks) Menahem (Menachem) 217 n.14 de Majo, Willy (Wilhelm), also Willem Maks De Majo 10, 18, 23–4, 207–16, 238, 243–48 design works advertisement for JH Jersey Modelle 208, 208 business card representing Graforel Relief Lettering, undated. 215, 215 Christmas Greeting (1936) 212–14, 212 Letterhead, late (1930s) 245, 245 founding president of Icograda (International Council of Graphic Design Associations) 23, 207, 238 studio 23, 209, 212, 238, 244 WM de Majo & Associates 215 De Stijl 111, 119 n.31 Department Stores Bachner, Ostrava 13, 224 Breda & Weinstein, Opava 12 Leiser, Berlin 223–4 Textilia, Ostrava 12, 224 Wertheim, Berlin 12, 22, 34 n.65, 161, 175 Deportation(s) 52, 57 n.42, 116 n.2, 189–90, 197, 202 n.2, 204 n.55 Design Austria (Association) 210

299

design education and pedagogy 198 design practice 2, 23, 207–19, 244 design profession and professionalization 241 Dessau 84 Dessau-Törten 84 Deutsch, Julio 20, 91, 96 Deutsch, Pavao 96 Deutsch Maceljski, Gustav 101 nn.14–15 Deutsch Maceljski, Robert 90, 94, 101 nn.14–15, 102 nn.21–22 Deutsch Maceljski’s apartment at N Square n. 2 94, 95 Deutsch Maceljski, Vlatko 101 n.14 Deutsche Bauzeitung: der Holzbau, journal (Berlin) 79 Deutscher Werkbund 15, 94, 101 n.11, 171 n.36 Deutsch-Hatvany family 173 Diaspora 26 n.10, 61–2, 248, 256 Dicker-Brandeis, Friedl 10, 18, 22, 189–202, 194, 194 Atelier Singer-Dicker, Vienna 195–7 design 191, 202 garconnière for Dr Hans Heller, Wallnergasse 8, Vienna 196 kindergarten in the Goethehof, Vienna (1930–32) 196–7, 196, 197 stage-set for “Die Truppe” Germany 194–5 painting/sculpture 197, 199 Anna Selbdritt (1921) 198 Drawing for Itten’s Bauhaus almanac, Utopia (1921) 198 Interrogation (1934) 197 teaching art teaching 198–201 “Children’s Drawings” (lecture, July,1943) 199 instructing kindergarten teachers, Vienna (1931) 197 textile workshops (with WottitzMoller and later Martha Döberl) 195 workshops for Visual Arts, Berlin 195 discrimination 6–7, 22–3, 27 n.11, 171 n.26 Döberl, Martha 195 Dobrzyńska, Jadwiga 129 Döcker, Richard 258–9

300

Index

Waiblingen District Hospital Germany (1926–28) 258 Dollfuß, Engelbert 213 Domány, Ferenc 10, 18–19 large block Pozsonyi Street 38–40–42 Budapest (with Béla Hofstätter, 1935–36) 41, 42, 42–3, 48 Dresden 59, 60, 91, 97, 98, 221, 222, 237, 239 Town Planning Department 222 Drohobych, Ukraine 129 Duke of Braunschweig 92 Durieux, Tilla 94, 102 n.24, 224 Durm, Josef 93 Eastern Europe 3, 6, 20, 29–30 nn.29–30, 51, 106, 116 n.1, 135 n.12 Ehrlich, Else 181, 187 n.33 Ehrlich, Herman 93, 102 n.17 Villa Ehrlich, Zagreb (1890–91) 93, 102 n.17 Ehrlich, Hugo 12, 90–1, 93–6, 102 n.17 The “Slavenska Banka” Building, Vlaška Street 53, Zagreb (1921–23) 94 Villa Deutsch, Rokov perivoj 8, Zagreb (1920) 93 Villa Karma on Lake Geneva, Switzerland (1908–12) 93 Villa Schwartz, Ivana Gorana Kovačića Street 10, Zagreb (1922) 93 Ehrmann, Leopold 113–14 Smichov Synagogue in Stroupežnického Street, Prague (1930–31) 113–14, 113 Eisler, Arthur (Brno) 120 n.41 Eisler construction company 108, 118 n.23 Eisler, Max (Vienna) 166 “Die Arbeiten Ernst Wiesners” (1932) 71 n.39 “Aus dem Kunstleben: Bauen und Wohnen” (1931) 171 n.33 “Der Fall Abel Pann” (1926) 171 n.29 “Ein Wohnhaus für Zwei Junggesellen von Otto Eisler, Brünn” (1932) 119 n.33 “Erwin Katona – Prag/Wohnbauten” (1932) 35 n.67 “Kunst und Gemeinde” (1928) 171 n.30 Oskar Strnad (1936) 162, 170 n.19 “Die schone Wohnung” (1924) 171 n.32

“Die Synagoge in Sillein” (1931–32) 119 n.33 “Von der neuen Baukunst” (1931) 171 n.31 Von jüdischer Kunst (Josef Israels): Ein Vortrag (1910) 165, 171 n.27 “Der Wettbewerb um eine Wiener Synagoge” (1925–26) 118 n.24 Eisler, Moritz (Brno) 108 Eisler construction company 108, 115 Eisler, Otto (Brno) 10, 20, 105, 107–10, 114, 115, 119 n.31, 119 n.33, 119 n.40 Agudas Achim Synagogue, Brno (1936) 20, 105–20, 105, 109, 110 Emancipation 26 n.9, 33 n.53, 49, 132 Jewish emancipation 3, 9, 32 n.51, 43–6, 218 n.47 emigration 1, 11, 15, 17–18, 89, 263 Émigrés 15, 22–4, 42, 140, 153, 174, 184, 197, 209, 216, 237–51, 253–66 Émigré scientists 24, 253 Emperor Joseph II 44 Edict of Tolerance (1782) 44 England. See Britain enlightenment 6, 8–10, 32 nn.50–2, 46, 148, 155 n.44 Ernst, Lajos 182 Ernst Múzeum, Budapest 181–3 Europe Central Europe (see Central Europe) Eastern Europe (see Eastern Europe) Western Europe (see Western Europe) exile 8, 15, 17, 22–3, 27 n.14, 84, 115, 127, 173–4, 177, 179–81, 226–7, 231–2 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris (1925) 157 expressionism 2, 48 Fabiani, Max 159, 169 n.3 Fehl, Siegfried 6 Feige, Rudolf 261, 266 n.40 Feller, Eugen Viktor 91, 101 n.10 Feller, Matthias 91–2 Kaufhaus des Westens department store, interior design, Berlin (1907) 101 n.11 Villa Feller, Zagreb (1909–11) 91–2, 92 Ferstel, Heinrich von 20, 91 Fiatolok (Young Ones), Budapest 140–2

Index First World War, 1914–18 1, 3, 6, 17, 20, 22, 26 n.5, 26 n.9, 33 n.56, 44–6, 53 n.1, 76–7, 93, 107, 116 n.1, 117 n.2, 124, 126, 142, 144, 147–8, 174–5, 177, 179, 181–4, 187 n.27, 210–11, 222, 224, 246, 253–4 Fischer, Annie 41 Fischer, Ignjat 18, 91–4, 96 House Rado, Strossmayer Square 7, Zagreb (1897) 92–3 Sanatorium Joković, Klaićeva Street 16–18, Zagreb (1908–09) 93 Stern Building, Jurišićeva Street 1–3/Jelačić Square 11, Zagreb (adaptation, 1928) 91 Fischer, Ivana 18 Fischer, József 42, 149 Fleischer, Max 107 Foehr, Adolf 13, 14, 35 n.67 Brandeis toy department store, Provaznická 13, Prague (1930–32) 13–14 folk art, also folk arts 22, 140, 142, 144, 173–7, 180, 182–3, 193 “folk baroque” 140, 144 folk embroidery 177, 183–5 folk traditions 144, 175, 180–1 folkloristic art 2. See also folk art Foltyn, Ladislav 68 Forbat, Fred 20 460 Park Avenue Galleries, New York 184 France 4, 15, 78, 140, 144, 240 Frank, Josef 12, 17, 29 n.25, 61, 98, 157, 160, 167, 171 n.32, 195 architectural works Bunzl villa, Chimanistraße, Vienna (1936) 168 Haus & Garten also Haus und Garten, store Bösendorferstraße 5, Vienna 157–8 House Krasny, Interiors Fürfanggasse 5, Vienna (1928) 167 writings Architektur als Symbol: Elemente deutschen neuen Bauens (1931) 170 n.24 “Der Gschnas fürs G’müt und der Gschnas als Problem” (1927) 171 n.36 “Rum och inredning” (1934) 169 n.5

301

Fränkel, Rudolf Cinema Lichtburg, Berlin (1931, demolished 1970) 15 Scala Cinema and Office Building, Bucharest (1937) 15 Frankl, Paul T. 162, 170 n.21 Fraser, Sir Robert 242 Frederick, Christine 224, 234 n.24 Freie jüdische Volksbühne 179–80 Freud, Sigmund 6, 8, 27 n.14, 30 n.32, 152, 170 n.18 Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) 152 Friedman, Yona 149, 152, 154 n.29, 155 n.37 Friedmann-Wittkower, Elly 24 Fritta (Fritz Taussig/Bedřich Fritta) 192 Frommer, Leopold 226–8 High Duty Alloys, Ltd. in Slough, UK 226 Frommer, Marie 10, 12–13, 18, 23, 221–32, 222 architectural and design works Anderson Shelters, London (1939) 226, 235 n.37 Creative Looms, New York (1949) 229, 231 department store Textilia, Mährisch-Ostrau, (Ostrava, Czech Republic) (1928–30) 224 Hotel Villa Majestic, BerlinWilmersdorf (1928–29) 224, 225 Law Office of Mansbach & Paley (New York) 229, 230 Radio Frank’s Night Club, New York (1944) 227–8, 235 n.51 Schuh- und Seidenhaus Leiser (Shoe and Silk Store Leiser), Königsstraße (today Rathausstraße), Berlin (1927) 223 Schuh- und Seidenhaus Leiser (Shoe and Silk Store Leiser), Tauentzienstraße 17, Berlin (1925–26) 222, 223 Specialty Shop Regina in New Rochelle, New York (1945–46) 228, 228, 229 Sundry offices in New York (1951–70) 227

302 exhibitions “Die Gestaltende Frau” Berlin (1930) 225 “Wohnung und Mode” Berlin (1931) 225 lectures “The influence of women as homemakers and consumers on manufacturing and domestic architecture” New York (1940) 227 “Designs for the modern store under present conditions” New York (1951) 227 “The necessity of exchange of ideas between builder and architect” New York (1958) 227 writings Column “Wohnberatung” in Die schaffende Frau, Berlin (1930–31) 225, 234 n.27 Flusslauf und Stadtentwicklung (Courses of Rivers and Urban Development) (PhD Diss., 1919) 221, 233 n.4 GAGFAH (Gemeinnützige Aktiengesellschaft für Angestelltenheimstätten) 83–4 Galerie de la Rue Royale (Paris) 175 Galicia 1, 6, 20, 26 n.5, 35 n.70, 60, 107–9, 115, 116 nn.1–2, 122, 124, 162 Garay, Károly (Kari) 175, 185 n.6 Garay, Károly Sr. 177 GEHAG (Gemeinnützige Heimstätten, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft, housing society) 83 Gellhorn, Alfred 15 Generation 1, 18, 59, 69, 73, 90, 126–7, 144, 161, 173, 209–11, 222, 255, 260–1 Gentile 11–14, 17–18, 23, 41–2, 46, 51–3, 70 n.7, 85, 108, 124, 127, 129, 132, 142, 149, 164, 211, 224–5. See also non-Jew Gergely, Tibor 177–81, 183–4 460 Park Avenue Galleries (1940) 184 A-D Gallery (1946) 184 design works 179–80 group exhibitions 177–8, 181

Index illustrations to Margaret Wise Brown’s Wheel on the Chimney (1954) 184 Wakefield Gallery (1942) 184 German building industry 78 German cultural hegemony 6–7 German Empire 6 German Kulturnation 1 German language 6, 8, 200, 258 German Nazi Terror 44 German Reich 44, 77 German Technical University in Brno (Deutsche Technische Hochschule Brünn) 108 Germany 6, 12–13, 15, 17–18, 24, 34 n.63, 79, 82, 84–6, 99, 101 n.11, 106, 117 n.3, 140, 145, 151, 192, 209, 214, 221, 226–7, 237, 239–41, 254–5, 258–9, 263 Nazi Germany, 1933–45 20, 89, 103 n.36, 115, 158, 261 Gerron, Kurt The Blue Angel, actor 192 Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt (The Führer gives a City to the Jews), director (1944) 192 The Threepenny Opera, actor 192 Gesamtkunstwerk 79, 93, 158–9 Gesellschaft Deutscher Ingenieurinnen 224 Gestapo 115, 119 n.40, 132, 152 Geyduschek, Imrich 68 Giedion, Sigfried 11–12, 15, 103 n.31 Befreites wohnen (1929) 11, 264 n.8, 265 n.32 Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete (1928) 15 Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (1941) 15 Givoni, Baruch 262, 266 n.42 Gödöllő art colony 175 Goethehof Social Housing Complex, 22nd district, Vienna 196 Goldberg, Emanuel 261 Golden Twenties 94 Goldfinger, Ernö 15, 140 Goldstein, Ivo 100 n.2 Gomboš, Stjepan 95–6, 99, 103 n.35 Gombrich, Ernst 15 The Story of Art (1950) 15 Gorge, Hugo 159, 166–7, 171 n.32

Index Građevinski vjesnik (Construction News), magazine (Zagreb) 96 Graforel 215 Grailich, Elsa 71 n.26 Pressburger Interieurs (1929) 64 graphic design 23, 147, 209, 238, 241, 250 n.41 Graphische Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt, Vienna 193 Gray, Milner 241–2 Grimme, Karl Maria 181, 187 n.34 Groag, Jacqueline 37 n.85 Groag, Jacques 20, 190 Groag, Willy 190 Gropius, Walter 15, 19–20, 77–9, 84–5, 108, 111, 189, 201 Arbeitsrat für Kunst 77 “Neues Bauen” (1920) 87 n.21 Programm zur Gründung einer Hausbaugesellschaft auf künstlerisch einheitlicher Grundlage (1910) 77, 86 n.14 Sommerfeld House, Berlin (with Adolf Meyer, 1921) destroyed 79–80, 85 Grossmann, Jiří 68, 71 n.40 Gruber, Ruth 29 n.26, 52 Gruen, Victor 214, 219 n.65 Gruschka, Theodor 261, 265 n.19 Gurlitt, Cornelius 221 Gutkind, Erwin (also Erwin Anton Gutkind) 15, 73, 86 n.2 International History of City Development, series (1964–68) 15, 86 n.2 Vom städtebaulichen Problem der Einheitsgemeinde Berlin (1922) 86 n.2 Guyer, Lux (Louise) 226 Guyerzeller Bank 225 Györ (Hungary) 145 Haas, Felix Modern World Architecture (1968) 15 Union of Czech Architects prize (1970) 15 Haberle & Bauer, architectural studio 91 Habich, Franz 101 n.11 Habsburg Monarchy, Donaumonarchie 45. See also Austria-Hungary, AustroHungarian Empire

303

Hagenbund, (Austrian artists’ group) Vienna 180 Haifa (Israel) 24, 254, 259, 264 n.16 Handelsakademie (Business school), Vienna 209, 246 Häring, Hugo 83 Harlfinger, Richard 181, 187 n.33 Harlfinger-Zakucka, Fanny 181 Hatvan (Hungary) 177 Haus & Garten 17, 21, 157–8, 161–2, 164, 166–8, 169 n.3, 170 n.18 Haus und Garten store Bösendorferstraße 5, Vienna 157–8, 157 Hauszinssteuer (Germany, house investment tax 1924) 82 A Ház (The House), magazine (Budapest) 140–2, 141 Hegenbart, Fritz 92, 101 n.12 Heimlichkeit, coziness 46 Hein, Emmy 198 Heine, Th. Th. 115 Heller, Ágnes 42, 54 n.2 Heller, Hans 196 Helm, Dörte 79 Henrion, FHK 10, 18, 24, 237, 240–3, 243, 247–8, 250 nn.26–9, 250 n.32, 250 n.35 Herzl, Theordor 8, 49–51 Altneuland, (Old-New-Land, 1902) 49–51, 56 n.36 Hesslein, Mr. 229 Creative Looms 229 Hildebrandt, Hans 194, 198 historicism 2, 21, 49–53, 91, 122, 158 historiography (Viennese Modernism) 201–2 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell 55 n.21, 115, 118 n.22, 119 n.38 Hoffmann, Joachim, also Jo Kim 228 Hoffmann, Josef 93, 112, 158, 159, 201 Stoclet Palace in Brussels 93 Hofmann, Else 180 Hofstätter, Béla 10, 18–19 large block Pozsonyi Street 38–40–42, Budapest (with Ferenc Domány, 1935–36) 41, 42, 42–3, 48

304

Index

Holocaust 3–4, 6, 18, 28 n.20, 35 n.67, 51–2, 56 n.41, 85–6, 115–16, 118 n.28, 119 n.40, 127, 190, 194, 202 n.13, 217 n.21, 237. See also Shoah Hönigsberg, Leo 20, 90–1, 96 Hönigsberg & Deutsch, architectural studio 91 Villa Feller, Jurjevska Street 31-31a, Zagreb (1909–11) 92 Hopeman Brothers, Inc. 168 Horn, Gyula 42 Horowitz, David 107 Horthy, Miklós 7, 143, 148, 179 Horthy’s regime, 1920–44 143 Hronov (Czech Republic) 197 Hruby, Anton 92 Hungarian Democratic Republic, 1918–20 1 Hungarian Museum of Architecture 151, 155 n.35, 155 n.40 Hungarian Soviet Republic (Republic of Councils, also Bolshevik Republic of Councils) 44, 54 n.9, 139, 179 “Red Terror” 44 Hungary 6, 21–2, 34 n.56, 41–2, 44–6, 50–1, 54 n.2, 54 n.4, 56 n.32, 99, 139–45, 148–9, 151–2, 154 n.22, 173–5, 178–9, 181–3, 217 n.15 Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century) 175, 179 special issue on The Jewish Question in Hungary (1917) 179 Huszka, József 141–2 hygiene 59, 253, 254–9, 261, 263 Icograda (International Council of Graphic Design Associations) 23, 207, 238 Idelson, Benjamin 262 identity 1–38, 45, 52–3, 57, 89–90, 94–5, 98, 100, 106, 121–36, 140–2, 144, 148, 173–5, 179, 185, 189, 191, 193, 201, 211, 213, 215, 238–9, 242, 246–8. See also Jewish, Identity Ilić, Matilda 93 Ilić, Mirko 101 n.13 the Independent State of Croatia (NDH – Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) 99 Indigenous American crafts 184

Industrijsko Oblikovanje, journal (Belgrade) 244, 251 n.44 Innen-Dekoration, journal (Darmstadt) 91–2, 145–6, 151, 162–3 intangible world cultural heritage 177 integration 3, 6–8, 26 n.9, 51, 62, 115, 117 n.5, 118 n.30, 122, 151, 161, 211, 239 Interiors, journal (New York) 229–30 International Design Partnership, UK 241 International Red Cross 192 International School of Art 182, 184, 187 n.41 International Style 2, 20, 46, 55 n.21, 96, 98–9, 105–20 The International Women’s News, journal (London) 226, 235 n.38 internment 241, 250 n.35 Isle of Man, Britain 241, 250 n.35 Israel 10, 18, 49, 90, 260, 262–3 Eretz Israel 24 Israelite Religious Society of Brünn (Brünner Israelitischer Cultusverein) 106 Israëls, Jozef 165 Itten, Johannes 22, 194 Vorkurs (also Introductory Course, Weimar Bauhaus) 195, 198 Jacobi, Lotte 222, 224, 227 Janco, Georges 17 Janco, Jules 17 Janco, Marcel 17, 37 n.82 Janów (Ukraine) 124 Jászi, András 175 Jászi, Ferenc 175 Jászi, György 175 Jászi, Oszkár 175, 177, 179, 184, 188 n.46 The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (1929) 183 Jersey Modelle 208 Jerusalem 45, 166, 256, 261 Rechavia 12, 49 Jewish acculturation 1–3, 9, 27 n.12, 122, 161, 191 Bourgeoisie (see also Jewish, middle class) in Budapest 142 in Krakow 122

Index in Lviv 3 in Vienna 164 in Zagreb 89 community/communities 2, 10, 16, 19, 28 n.23, 44, 52–3, 59–61, 64–6, 68–9, 75–6, 89–90, 93, 97, 106–7, 113–14, 116, 117 n.9, 117 n.13, 124, 139, 142, 151, 165, 224, 231–2 culture 2–3, 10, 17–19, 25 n.4, 28 n.23, 34 n.65, 36 n.74, 124, 139, 141 emancipation 3, 9, 32 n.51, 33 n.53, 43–6, 49, 218 n.47 heritage 4–6, 28 n.21, 29 n.26, 31 n.44, 95, 119 n.37, 139–40, 161, 201 identity 2, 8–10, 17–21, 28 n.23, 32 n.50, 36 n.76, 45, 52–3, 57 n.49, 89–90, 94, 98, 100, 121, 132, 136 n.33, 148, 179, 189, 191, 242, 247 intellectuals 5, 8–9, 31 n.43, 31 n.45, 41, 45, 49, 56 n.32, 61, 115, 143, 175, 185, 192 “Jewish difference” 5, 25 n.3, 33 n.53 “Jewish living culture” 3, 27 n.14 liberal 6, 33 n.53, 41, 53, 68, 106, 114 material culture 8 middle class/Mittelstand 12, 19, 22, 41, 44, 46–7, 56 n.31, 63, 81, 90, 149, 159–61, 164–5, 193, 195, 213, 246 (see also Jewish, Bourgeoisie) minority 1–3, 16, 41, 44, 122, 133, 168, 230 networks 10, 17–18, 20–1, 23, 27 n.12, 106, 139–40, 173, 179 perspectives 1, 8–17, 36 n.74, 173 place 5, 29 n.24, 54 n.6, 124, 139, 141 quarter 4–5, 27 n.15, 28 n.20, 28 n.23, 41, 43–4, 46, 52, 54 n.6, 57 n.47, 61 Renaissance 8, 52 space 4–5, 28 n.23, 29 n.29 topography 20, 29 n.24, 106–8 traditions 3, 44, 52, 63, 116 “unique aesthetic” 60–1 Jewish home for trainees (Israelisches Lehrlingsheim), Berlin-Pankow 74 “Jewish style” 26 n.10, 122 Jews 1–38, 41, 43–7, 51–3, 60–2, 89–90, 106–9, 122, 124, 133, 139, 144, 149, 168, 173, 179, 182, 191–2, 201, 207–8, 211, 226, 230, 256–7

305

Hungarian Jews, also Hungarians of Israelite faith 42, 45–6, 153, 173, 179–81, 183 Johnson, Philip 55 n.21, 115, 118 n.22 Jónás, Dávid 50 Phönix-Courtyard, 1928, Katona József Street 27, Budapest (1928) 49, 50 Judaism Neolog 2, 112, 119 n.32 orthodox 2, 20, 30 n.36, 44, 46, 52, 64–5, 68, 106–8, 110, 118 n.26, 148, 183 reform 2, 49, 114 secular 2–3, 53, 56 n.35, 71 n.29, 170 n.18 “Judapest” (blend of Jude [“Jew”] and Budapest) 21, 56 n.26, 139–55 Judeo-Spanish 210 Jüdisches Familienblatt, journal (Bratislava) 65 Judtmann, Fritz 14 clinic for the workers’ health insurance, Vienna (with Egon Riss, 1926–27) 14 Jugendstil 159 Kabelfabrik AG, Bratislava 64 Kabiljo, Daniel 209, 217 n.21 Kaesz, Gyula 152 Kafka, Franz 11, 33 n.54 Kaiser, Margarete Die Liebe als Kunst 225 Die schaffende Frau 225–7 Kalda, Lav 94 Kalda & Štefan, architectural studio 91 Kállai, Ernö 145, 154 n.20 Kalmár, Josef 169 n.4 Kalmár, Julius 158 Kamionka Buska (Kamianka-Buzka, Ukraine) 122 Karady, Victor 2–3, 26 nn.6–7, 26 n.11, 32 n.53 Karinthy, Frigyes 147, 154 n.23 Karlsruhe 91 Károlyi, Mihály 179 Kassák, Lajos 148 Kassler, Ferdynand 37 n.78 Sprecher commercial building 8 Mickiewicz Square, Lviv (1912–21) 16

306 Sprecher Skyscraper, 7 Shevchenko Avenue, Lviv (1929–31) 16, 16 Kauffmann, Richard 259 Carmel sanatorium, Haifa (1935) 259 Kauzlarić & Gomboš, architectural studio 10, 91 Villa Hirschler-Schwarz, Josipovac 16, Zagreb (1933–35) 99 Villa Ladany, Nazorova Street 52, Zagreb (1936–37) 99 Villa Pick, Novakova Street 12, Zagreb (1936–37) 99 Villa Spitzer, Novakova Street 15, Zagreb (1931–32) 99, 99 Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) 211 Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1, 44, 95–9, 103 n.35, 207, 211, 213–15, 219 n.68, 238, 244, 251 n.43 Kinsky-Pollak, Helga 199 Király, György 145 Three Tiny Books 145 Királyi József Műegyetem (Budapest Technical University) 140 Kisjankó, Bori (Gaspar Mártonné Barbara Molnar) 177 Klausner, Julius 223 Schuh- und Seidenhaus Leiser (Shoe and Silk Store Leiser), Berlin 222–3 Klein, Alexander 83 Kleinmachnow, near Berlin 84 Klemperer, Otto 42 Kleykamp, Pierre 229 Klimt, Gustav 165, 189 ‘Klimtomania’ 201 Klinger, Julius 210 studio 210 Kner, Imre 145, 148, 154 n.16, 154 n.22 Koch, Alexander 145 Innen-Dekoration, journal 145 Koch, Walter 24, 261, 266 n.40 Kokoschka, Oskar 102 n.24 Kolmar, today Chodziez in Poland 73 Komor, András 183 König, Carl 93, 159, 169 n.3, 169 n.8 Königliche Sächsische Technische Hochschule in Dresden (Today’s Dresden University of Technology) 60

Index Königliche Technische Hochschule zu Berlin (Today’s Technical University of Berlin) 60 Korner, Ernst 233 n.15 department store Rix, Mährisch-Ostrau, (today Ostrava, Czech Republic) 224 Korner, Sofie 22 Körtvélyes (Hrušov, Slovakia) 173, 177–80, 183–5 Kosel, Hermann 246 Kossuth, Lajos 142 Kotoński, Franciszek 135 n.26 Wacław Borkowski’s guesthouse in Zakopane (1932) 130 Kovačić, Viktor 93 the Stock Exchange, Zagreb 94 Kovačić & Ehrlich, architectural studio 91 Kowalski, Zdzisław 129 Jagiellonian Library competition design (1929) 129 Kozma, Lajos (also Ludwig Kozma, and Lewis Kozma) 10, 17–18, 21–2, 47, 139–53, 155 n.34, 175 architectural works Lili and Győző (Victor) Márkus apartment, Budapest (1936) 149–50, 150 Napraforgó utca, collective housing project, Budapest (1929–31) 149 Synagogue for the Neolog Community of Kassa (now Košice), Slovakia (1926) 148 Synagogue for the Orthodox community in Pest (unrealized project, 1928) 148 Weekend House, Lupa Island, Budapest 152 Budapesti Műhely (Budapest Workshop) 17, 145, 175 Graphic design 147 Cover of A Haz magazine 141 Das Signetbuch, 1925 154 n.17 Hét Mese (Seven tales), 1917 147, 147 writings Das neue Haus (The new house) (1941) 151 A ház és lakás, mint életszenárium (The house and home as a setting for life), unpublished 155 n.35

Index “Individuality and Tradition,” in Kner Almanach (1922) 154 n.13 Zsuzsa Bergengóciában (Susie in fairyland) by Frigyes Karinthy 147 Kozma, Zsuzsa (later Susan Orlay) 152 drinks-trolley (1938–39) 150 Kracauer, Siegfried 8 Krakauer, Leopold 22 Krakow 2, 10, 11, 18, 21, 29 n.26, 33 n.56, 37 n.78, 37 n.79, 52, 90, 121–36 Jagiellonian University 130 Kazimierz, historic Jewish quarter 29 n.26, 52, 122 Nowa Huta 10, 127 Kramer, Edith 198 Krása, Hans 191 Children’s opera Brundibár, written 1939, performed 1942 191 Krasny, Agathe 167 Krasny, Otto 166, 170 n.18 Kraus, Gustav 103 nn.30–1 Kraus, Karl 8, 101–2 n.16, 115 Kraus-Lederer, Julija 103 n.30 Kreisler, Edward 122 Krigar-Menzel, Anna Ottilie. See Annot Križevci (Croatia) 91 Kulczyński, Kazimierz 132 Kulka, Heinrich 20 Kun, Béla 54 n.8, 142, 148, 179 Kundera, Milan 7, 31 n.44 Kunjina, Irina 94, 99 Kunstgewerbeschule (school of Applied Arts, today’s University of Applied Arts Vienna) 22, 193, 209–10 Kunstschau exhibitions, Vienna Kunstschau 1908 189 Kunstschau 1927 195 Kurzmann, Ludwig. See Sharon, Arieh KUT (Kepzőművészek új társaság) (New Society of Artists) 181 Lajta, Béla 18, 140, 142 architectural office, Budapest 142 competition entry for the tomb of Lajos Kossuth 142 Lajta’s style 142 Sándor Schmidl family vault, Neolog cemetery Budapest 142

307

Landauer, Fritz Synagogue in Engelstraße/ Senefelderstraße, Plauen (1928–30) destroyed 114 Synagogue in Halderstraße, Augsburg (1913–17) 114 Landor, Walter 241 language(s) 2, 6–10, 12, 13, 19, 21–2, 46, 54 n.10, 62–3, 68, 106, 109, 111–12, 114, 124–6, 139, 141, 162, 164, 185, 189, 200, 210, 212, 246, 253, 258 architectural, also architectonic 19, 62–3, 109, 112, 124–6 artistic 9–10, 21–2, 185 design 2, 162, 164 modernist, also modern, modernism 7, 12, 13, 21, 46, 68, 106, 111, 135 n.12 ornamental 141 traditional 114 visual 253 L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, magazine (France) 96, 103 n.28 Lázar, Béla 182 Le Corbusier 11, 96, 98–9, 111, 126 Le Corbusian ‘fenêtre longeuer’ 48 Michael and Sarah Stein Villa in Garches, France 46 League of Women Voters of the District of Columbia 227 Lechner, Ödön 141–2 Leiser, Hermann 223 Schuh- und Seidenhaus Leiser (Shoe and Silk Store Leiser), Berlin 12, 222–4, 227 Lesznai, Anna. née Amália Moscovitz 10, 18, 21–3, 30 n.37, 173–85, 174, 178 design works embroidered cushions 22, 175–6, 176 Nagymihályi vásár (Fair in Nagymihály), 1930s 182–3, 182 group exhibitions Brooklyn Museum, New York (1935) 182 Ernst Múzeum, Budapest (1931, 1938) 181–3 Hagenbund, Vienna (1923, 1928, 1929, 1931) 180, 187 n.35 Műcsarnok (1933) 181 Neue Galerie, Vienna (1925) 180

308

Index

Tamás Henrik Gallery (1934, 1935) 182 Wellesley College Art Museum, near Boston (1939, 1942) 184 Wiener Frauenkunst, Vienna (1927, 1928, 1930) 180–1 lectures/teaching International Schools of Art, Sandusky, Ohio (1939) 183 YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) (1939) 183 solo exhibition BUKUM, Vienna (1926) 180 writings “Háziipar és népművészet” (Home Industry and Folk Art) (1913) 176, 186 n.13 Kezdetben volt a kert (In the Beginning was the Garden, 1966) 186 n.19 Leszna (Lesné, Slovakia) 173 Leupin, Herbert 241 Levant Fair, Tel-Aviv, 1936 241 Levetus, Amelia (Amelia Sarah Levetus, A. S. Levetus) “Hungarian Architecture and Decoration” (1914) 186 n.14 “Die Stickereien der Frau Anna Lesznai in Budapest” (1914) 186 n.14 Libra, František A. 114 Synagogue in Karel Krohn street, Velvary, Czech Republic (1930–31) 114 Ljubljana (Slovenia) 90 London 2, 18, 23–4, 101 n.9, 136 n.35, 143, 151, 168, 176, 207, 214–15, 224, 226–7, 237–9, 241, 244–5, 248, 249 n.18, 250 n.41 London Press Exchange 242 Loos, Adolf 17, 20, 37 n.86, 47, 60–1, 93, 96, 98, 102 n.16, 108, 111, 115, 118 n.30, 159, 195 Tristan Tzara House, Paris (1926) 17 Villa Karma on Lake Geneva (1908) 83 Löv, Hanna 225 Löw-Beer, Jonas 107 Löwy, Slavko 18, 95–8

Radovan Building, Masarykova Street 22/Gundulićeva Street, Zagreb (1933) 18, 96, 97, 98 Schlenger House, Bogovićeva Street 4, Zagreb (1932–33) 98 Lubynski, Rudolf (also Rudolf Lubinski) 93–4 Royal and University Library, Marulić Square 19, Zagreb (1901–13) 93 Sephardic Synagogue, Sarajevo, Bosnia (1930) 93 Shell Building, Gajeva Street 5, Zagreb (1931–32) 93 Luckhardt Hans 98 Luckhardt Wassili 98 Lueger, Karl 139 Lukács, György (also Georg Lukács) 7, 31 n.43, 42, 154 n.11, 175, 179, 185 n.7 “Budapest School” 42 Lupa Island, near Budapest 152 Lurje, Viktor 159 Lviv Golden Rose Synagogue, 1582 (destroyed by Nazis in 1942) 192 Sprecher Commercial building 8 Mickiewicz Square 16 Sprecher Skyscraper, 7 Shevchenko Avenue 16, 16 Magyar ethnic majority 45 Magyar Műhely Szövetség (Hungarian Werkbund) 149 “magyarization” 141 Mährisch-Ostrau. See Ostrava majority 7, 16, 33 n.54, 41, 44–5, 49, 52, 54 n.10, 66, 68, 76, 79, 89–90, 93, 99, 116, 121–2, 124, 127, 129, 132–3, 142, 159 Málnai, Béla 142 Malonyai, Dezső 142 A Magyar Nép Művészete (The Art of the Hungarian People, 1907–22) 142 Mandatory Palestine, 1920–48 10, 12–13, 18, 22, 24, 250 n.31, 257 Mandlová, Helena 189–90, 190, 202 n.2 Mannheim, Karl 143 Mannheimer, Isaak Noah 106 “Vienna Rite” 106

Index Manojlović, Miša 209, 211, 216 n.6 Mansbach, Milton 229, 230, 236 n.58 Law Office Mansbach & Paley, New York 229–30 Marić (Mayer), Artur 93, 102 n.17 Marić (Mayer), Milan 93 Márkus, Győző (Victor) 149–50 Márkus Lajos (construction firm) 150 Márkus, Lili (also Lilly) 149–50, 153 n.1, 155 n.32 Maróti, Géza 142, 153 n.1 MARS group of architects, Britain 241 Masaryk, Tomáš G. 7, 31 n.38 Máté, Major 153, 155 n.45 Matyó embroidery 177, 184 Mebes and Emmerich, architecture firm Berlin 81 medicine 3, 26 n.7, 34 n.56, 65, 173, 199, 257, 261 Mendelsohn, Erich 12–15, 17, 20, 34 n.65, 35 n.67, 82, 87 n.32, 98, 223 Bachner department store, (MährischOstrau, today Ostrava, Czech Republic, 1933) 13, 224 Einstein Tower, Potsdam (1921) 12 Mosse media house; Berlin Tageblatt; Berlin-Mitte (1921–23) 14 Rudolf Petersdorff department store, Breslau (Wrocław, Poland) 12 Salman Schocken’s chain stores in Nuremburg, Stuttgart, and Chemnitz (Germany) 12, 34 n.65 Schuh- und Seidenhaus Leiser (Shoe and Silk Store Leiser), Schönhauser Allee, Berlin 222 Menkes, Hermann 181, 187 n.33 Menorah, (Menorah: Jüdisches Familienblatt für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur), journal (Vienna) 166 Messel, Alfred 161 Wertheim department store on Leipziger Platz 34 n.65 methodology 2–3, 5, 25 n.3, 207 metropolis 49, 74, 82, 90, 123, 139, 145 metropolitan culture 139 Mexican textiles 184

309

Meyer, Hannes 255 Sommerfeld House, Berlin (with Gropius, 1920–22) destroyed 79–80 Mezőkövesd (Hungary) 177, 183 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 8–9, 108 Villa Tugendhat, Brno (1929–30) 8–9, 108 Mietskasernen, Berlin 75 migration 1, 6–7, 27 n.14, 90, 106, 215, 238, 246, 248 Milieu 8, 41, 45–6, 94, 121–2, 132, 134 n.1, 139, 161, 167, 202, 207–12, 263 Ministry of Information (Britain) 237–8 Minor art, theory 10–11 minority 1–4, 7, 16, 33 n.54, 41, 44–5, 54 nn.9–10, 122, 133, 144, 168, 230 Mitscherlich, Alexander 56 n.38 Term “urbanity” (Urbanität) 51 Mitteleuropa 45–6, 50. See also Central Europe Mock, Alois 42 modern identities 1, 135 n.12 Moderne Welt, journal (Vienna) 62 modernism anti-modernism 2 Central European modernism 1–3, 5, 7–10, 15–17, 21, 24, 30, 139 eclectic modernism 46 European modernism 1–38, 139–55, 254 plurality in modernism 2, 17, 46, 50, 153 modernist architecture 3, 14, 16, 19–20, 102 n.16, 108, 140, 149, 228, 253–4 modernist language 7, 12, 21. See also Language(s) modernization 2–3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 16–17, 19, 25 n.4, 26 n.7, 30 n.29, 36 n.75, 45, 62–3, 68, 90, 94–5, 122, 126–7, 133 Moholy-Nagy, László 35 n.65, 46, 84, 103 n.31, 140 Molnár, Farkas 148–9 Molnár, Ferenc 48 Montessori Kindergarten 30 n.29, 196 Moorish style 114, 117 n.5 Moravánsky, Ákos 31 n.43, 90, 101 n.7 Moravia 4, 6, 30 n.33, 106–7, 116, 165 Morgenroth, Marie-Luise 94 Moscheni, Adam 129 Jagiellonian Library competition design, Krakow (1929) 129

310

Index

Moscow 143 multiethnic 3, 141, 144 Munich 91–2, 101 n.11, 209 Műcsarnok (Art Hall), Budapest 181 Museum of Modern Art, New York 119 n.40, 219 n.60 exhibition and publication The International Style: Architecture since 1922 (1932) 108 Nádai, Pál 142, 146, 153 Az Iparművészet Magyarországon (1920) 155 n.46 “Egy modern városépitőről, Lajta Béla művészete” (1914) 153 n.7 “Landhäuser und Räume in Ungarn” (1927) 154 n.21 Nagymihály (Michalovce, Slovakia) 182–3 National Organization of Hungarian Women (Magyar Asszonyok nemzeti szövetsége, MANSZ) 175 National Romanticism 2, 21, 126, 144, 151 nationalism 19, 21, 183 xenophobic nationalism 7 nationalist ideologies 1 Native American Art 184 Nazi, also National Socialism 15, 20, 23, 42, 51, 53, 56 n.26, 85, 89, 103 n.36, 105, 115, 117 n.3, 127, 152, 158, 189–90, 192, 201, 204 n.57, 214. See also NSDAP Nazi death camps (Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Treblinka) 15. See also Auschwitz Nazi persecution 22, 24, 27 n.13, 44, 84–6, 181, 183 Nazi Propaganda 127 Nazi SA (Nazi Sturmabteilung) 84 Nemzeti Szálon (National Salon), Budapest 181 neo-Baroque 21, 47–8, 53, 140, 143–8, 151 “neo-Baroque Hungary” 41 Neolog Judaism 2, 112, 119 n.32 Neology 2, 44, 68 neo-Rococo 145 Neo-Romanesque 107, 113, 117 n.5 networks cultural networks 1, 8–9, 23–4, 27 n.12 professional networks 1, 9–10, 21, 23

Neue Galerie, Vienna 180 Neue Sachlichkeit 55 n.18, 61, 108, 151 Neues Bauen (New Building) 2, 17, 87 n.21, 95–8, 106, 112 Neumann, Zlatko 20, 96, 102 n.25 Villa S, Paris (1926) 96 Neutra, Richard 15, 20, 22, 35 n.69, 82 architectural works Mosse media house, Berlin Tageblatt, Berlin-Mitte (with Erich Mendelsohn, 1921–23) 14 Zehlendorf settlement, four houses (with Erich Mendelsohn, 1923–24) 82 Survival Through Design, 1954 22–4, 38 nn.88–9 New Bauhaus School in Chicago 103 n.31 New Leopold Town, also Újlipótváros (Budapest) 10, 41–57 apartment block of Alföldi Sugar Factory 41, 43, 49 Beith Orim Jewish Community 53 Dunapark 49 Dunapark Restaurant in the apartment building of Alföldi Sugar Factory 48, 49 “Ghetto de Luxe” 45, 51–3 Jewish Cultural Centre, Bálint House 52 Kállai-Brandeisz School of Modern Dance (Mozgásművészeti Iskola) 48 Láng Téka, Jewish bookshop 53 ‘Pozsonyi Piknik’ 52 Pozsonyi Street 42–3, 48–9, 52, 55 n.19 ‘protected houses’ (védett házak) or ‘starred houses’ (csillagos házak) 51 Spinoza Café 52 St. Steven’s Park, Szent István Park Giorgio Perlasca monument 52 Raoul Wallenberg monumnet 52 New School for Social Research, New York 42 New York 10, 18, 23, 42, 45, 84, 168, 178, 182, 184, 214–15, 221, 223, 227–32 Lower Manhattan 184 Rockefeller Centre 84, 227 Upper West Side Manhattan 184 Nikolsburg (Mikulov, Czech Republic) 6, 30 n.33 Nógrádverőce (Hungary) 151

Index non-Jew 2, 4, 9–10, 17–18, 28 n.23, 29 n.29, 53, 127–8, 149, 164 Nora, Pierre 28 nn.17–18 sites of memory (lieux de mémoire) 4 Nothmann, Felicia, also Felicia Sommerfeld 75 Nothmann, Leopold 75 AHAG (Allgemeine Häuserbau AG) 75 Novalis 73, 86 n.2 Nowa Huta (Krakow) 10, 127 NSDAP (National-Socialist Party) 190, 192 numerus clausus law, 1920 Hungary 7, 45, 144, 149 Nuremberg 240 A Nyolcat (The Eight, artists’ group) 175, 177, 181 Nyugat (West), journal (Budapest) 175, 187 n.27 Oakworth, Hadley, near Wellington (UK) 85 Oesterreicher, Jakob 64 Office of War Information (USA) 242 Ohmann, Friedrich 93, 161 Orbán, Dezső (Desiderius Orban) 181–2 the Atélier, Budapest 181–2 ornament 62, 65, 79, 93, 102 n.16, 112, 115, 117 n.9, 141–2, 144–7 Országos Magyar Királyi Iparművészeti Iskola, OMKII (National School of Decorative Arts, Budapest) 148–9 Ostrava (German Mährisch-Ostrau) 2, 10, 13, 224 Ottoman Empire 44 Oud, Jacobus Johannes Pieter 111, 119 n.40 outsider 6–8, 21–2, 32 n.52, 35 n.67, 176, 181 Ozenfant, Amédée 111 Palestine. See Mandatory Palestine Paley, Louis J. 229, 230 Law Office Mansbach & Paley, New York 229–30 Palóczi, Antal 61–2, 70 n.14, 70 n.16 Pann, Abel 165–6 Papanek, Victor 238, 249 n.12 “Paradoxes of Jewish identity” 8, 10, 21 Pariah 9, 32 n.52

311

Paris 15, 17, 24, 54 n.9, 96, 101 n.9, 158, 175, 177, 215, 224, 228–9, 237, 240–3, 247–8, 250 n.26, 250 n.30 Paris International Exhibition, 1937 241 Pécsi, Eszter 42 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill 42 Pelčák, Petr 60, 70 n.9, 119 n.39 Pencil Points: The Magazine of Architecture, journal (New York) 228 Peritz, Edith 224, 227 Perriand, Charlotte 99 Peru textiles 184 Petőfi Literary Museum (Petőfi Irodalmi Muzeum, Budapest) 174, 178 Pevsner, Nikolaus 15, 35 nn.71–2, 142 The Buildings of England series (1951–74) 15 “Impressions of Hungarian Building” (1966) 35 n.71, 153 n.8 Pioneers of Modern Design. From William Morris to Walter Gropius (1936) 15 An Outline of European Architecture (1943) 15 Pfeffer, Oskar 64 director of the Sugar mill, Diosek, Slovakia 64 Piłsudski, Józef 122 Placzek, Baruch 106 Płaszów concentration camp, labor camp (Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp) 132 Podvinec, Srećko (Felix Podvinetz) 103 n.30 Podwall, Marc 116 Poelzig, Hans 83, 97, 234 n.19 Pogány, Móric 60, 70 n.7, 142–3 Pogrom 6, 33 n.56, 116–17 n.2, 136 n.28 Poland Poland-Lithuania 6 Second Polish Republic, 1918–39 3, 121–2, 134 n.6 Polányi, Cecile 175 Polish identity 21, 123–4 Polish Jews 132–3, 183 Polishness 123, 133, 135 n.11 Pollak & Bornstein, architectural studio 91 Polytechnic School in Lviv (today’s Lviv Polytechnic National University) 121, 124, 129–30, 135 n.8

312

Index

Posener, Julius 15, 36 nn.75–6 Anfänge des Funktionalismus. Von Arts and Crafts zum Deutschen Werkbund (1964) 15 “Jüdische Architekten in Berlin” (1971) 36 n.75 Post Office (Britain) 237, 239 poster design 237, 239 Potočnjak, Vladimir 96 Požega (Croatia) 91 Pozsony. See Bratislava Prague 5, 11, 13–14, 18, 27 n.13, 33 n.56, 35 n.67, 36 n.74, 91–2, 111, 113, 145, 190, 192, 197, 199–200 Pratt, Elma 182–4, 187 n.41 prejudice 9 Pressburg. See Bratislava property restitution 85–6 Provato, Joseph 229 Prussian state 78 Pšerhof, Hinko 96 psychoanalysis 6, 8 Ptaszycki, Tadeusz 127 Public discourse 1–2, 24 public health 254, 256–7 Puchinger, Erwin 246 Quastler, Desider 68 Rabka, Spa town Poland 124, 126 “Race” 31 n.38, 45 Rado, Eugen 92 RAF (Royal Yugoslav Air Force) 214, 216, 241 Rajakovac, Bogdan 95–6 Rákóczi (Hungarian national hero) 145 Rampley, Matthew 4, 6, 30 n.30, 32 n.47 Raumplan 96 Red Vienna, 1918–34 23, 38 n.90, 97, 196, 211 refugees 17, 20, 77, 107–11, 115, 116 nn.1–2, 118 n.19, 183, 185, 227 Reich Chamber of Culture, also Reichskammer der bildenden Künste 1933–45 101 n.11, 201, 226 Reifenberg, Elise née Hirschmann. See Tergit, Gabriele Reimann, Albert 24, 209, 237–40, 248

Reimann School, London 24, 237, 239–40, 248, 249 n.19 Reimann-Schule, Berlin 209, 249 n.18 Reiter, Abraham 129 Reiter, Bronisława 129 Reiter, Diana 10, 18, 21, 121, 128–33, 134 n.3, 128 Elsner Residential Building, Pawlikowskiego Street 16, Krakow (1939) 130–1, 131 Jagiellonian Library competition design (unrealized, 1929) 129 Jagiellonian University Department of Comparative Anatomy and Zoology (unrealized, 1929) 129–30 Jagiellonian University School of Nurses and Hygienists (unrealized, 1929) 130 restoration of the castle in Niepołomice (1930) 130 Wacław Borkowski’s guesthouse in Zakopane (1932) 130 Związek Inżynierów Żydów w Krakowie (co-founder Krakow’s Association of Jewish Engineers) 131–2 Reiter, Zofia (née Heinberg) 129 Reuter, Ernst 82 RfA (Reichsversicherungsanstalt für Angestellte) 84 Riegl, Alois 144 Riss, Egon 14, 35 n.70 clinic for the workers’ health insurance, Vienna (1926–27) 14 Raumveredelung. Die neue Stadt (Urban Environment Refinement. The New city) (1936) 35 n.70 Ritóok, Emma 175, 179, 186 n.20 Roche, Marcel 241, 250 n.30 Rochowanski, Leopold Wolfgang 59, 70 n.2 Columbus in der Slowakei (1936) 59, 70 n.2 Rojek, Kurt 259 Romania 2–3, 13, 94, 144, 162 Romano, Johann 106 Rosenberg, Eugen 68, 71 n.38 Rosthal 114, 119 n.37 Reform Synagogue, Český Těšín, Czech Republic (1933) destroyed 114, 119 n.37

Index Rothholz, Hans Arnold 10, 18, 24, 237, 239–40, 242, 248, 249 n.8 book cover design for Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1938 240 Rothschild, Viennese Baron 64 Royal Air Force (Britain) 214, 216 Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA, UK) 237, 239 Rudofsky, Bernard 229 Rundbogenstil 106, 117 n.3 Ruskin, John 144 Russia 44, 94 Russian Avant-Garde 47 Salon d’Automne, Paris 96 Salon de la Lumière, Paris 241 Salvisberg, Otto Rudolf 20, 81, 83 tenement housing block, “Freimietenhaus” in Berlin-Steglitz, (1925–26) 81, 81 Sandusky, Ohio (USA) 183, 184 Sarajevo 93, 209, 217 n.10, 217 n.21 the Sephardic Synagogue 93 Sartoris, Alberto 96, 103 n.27 Scandinavia 140, 215 Die schaffende Frau, journal (Berlin) 225–7, 233 n.16, 233 n.17, 234 n.20 Scheper, Hinnerk 79 Schlemmer, Oskar 195, 198 Schmeidler, Rela 129, 136 n.33 Schmidl, Sándor 142 Schmidt, Joost 79 Schnall, Ben 229–31, 230, 231 Schocken, Salman 12, 34 n.65 Schön, Edo 96 Schreiber, Jenö 151, 155 n.31 Schütte-Lihotzky, Margarete 23, 203 n.37, 225 Schutz-Brief (protective certificate) 51 Schwarz, Hedy 196 Schwendenwein, August 106 Scouts 214, 244 Second Wednesday Luncheon Club, London 227 Second World War, 1939–45 10, 20, 59, 82, 86, 103 n.35, 108, 121, 127, 132–3, 155 n.40, 169 n.3, 175, 184, 185 n.6, 193, 211, 217 n.26, 250 n.35, 254, 256 Segal, Walter 15

313

‘segregation by choice’, also “voluntary segregation” 43–5 Seidner, Zoltán 150, 150, 151 Szinházi Élet (Theater Life, journal) 151 Sephardic 2, 23, 93, 208, 210, 211, 216 n.5, 217 n.9, 218 n.46, 244 Serbia 55 n.25, 209, 211, 217 n.12, 217 n.23, 218 n.42, 219 n.68 Serbo-Croat 212, 214 Sharon, Arieh 255, 257, 260–1 “Planning of Cooperative Houses [in Hebrew]” (1937) 264 n.14 “Public Buildings in Palestine [in Hebrew]” (1940) 264 n.16, 264 n.18 Shell Corporation 93 Shoah 45, 53, 89, 103 n.31, 217 n.7, 217 n.14 Shtetl, also shtetle 42, 49, 50, 51, 53, 122–8 Simmel, Georg 8, 90, 101 n.6 Singer, Eugen 66 Singer, Franz 194, 197–8 Atelier Singer-Dicker, Vienna 195–7 garconnière for Dr Hans Heller, Wallnergasse 8 (with DickerBrandeis), Vienna 196 Montessori Kindergarten in the Goethehof Vienna (with DickerBrandeis, 1930–32) 196, 197 Stage-set for “Die Truppe” Germany (with Dicker-Brandeis) 194 Workshops for Visual Arts, Berlin (with Dicker-Brandeis) 195 Singer, Susi 193 Siódmak, Adolf 135 n.7 Funeral Hall at the Jewish Cemetery, Krakow (1926–32) 135 n.7 Sitte, Camillo 62 Slavonski Brod (Croatia) 91 Slovakia 60, 61, 66–8, 70 n.4, 112, 148, 154 n.25, 173, 177, 183 Slovakian costume 183 Slovakian embroidery 183 Slovenský staviteľ, journal (Bratislava) 59, 70 n.4 Smith, Frank 228, 235 n.52 Radio Frank’s Night Club, New York 227 Smith, M.F.E. 227 Sobotka, Walter 157, 166, 169 n.3 social housing 10, 20, 23, 78, 82 social milieu 41

314

Index

socialist 2, 10, 66, 82, 122, 127, 185, 201 solar exposure of buildings 254–5 Sommerfeld, Adolf (from 1938 Andrew Sommerfield) 10, 12, 18–20, 24, 73–86 Adolf Sommerfeld Bauausführungen (construction company) 75, 79 AHAG (Allgemeine Häuserbau AG) 75, 76, 79, 81, 82, 84, 85 patent “neuzeitlichen BlockhausBauweise” (modern blockhouse technique) 79 construction and urban development projects department store in Tempelhof, Berlin 12, 75, 75, 76 department store Wertheim in Leipziger Straße (extension), Berlin 75 Synagogue, Freiheiht 8, BerlinKöpenick (1912) destroyed 75 tenement housing block, “Freimietenhaus,” BerlinSteglitz, 1925–26 81, 81 large-scale settlement Zehlendorf “Onkel-Toms Hütte,” 1926–31 83, 83 Sommerfeld House, Limonenstraße 30, Berlin, 1920–21 destroyed 80, 80, 84 Zehlendorf settlement, four houses (1923–24) 24, 82 Sommerfeld Felicia. See Nothmann, Felicia Sommerfeld, Selig 73–4 Somogy county (Hungary) 144 Soroptimist Club (today Soroptimist International) Soroptimist Club, Berlin 224, 233 n.17, 234 n.20, 234 n.21, 234 n.25, 234 n.26 Soroptimist Club, New York 227, 235 n.41 Soros, George 152 Soros, Tivadar 56 n.26, 151, 155 n.38 Soviet-Russian occupation (Hungary) 52–3 Spiegel, Frigyes building in Pannónia Street 19, Budapest (with Endre Kovács, 1928–1929) 47

Spielberg, Steven 132 “Schindler’s List” (1993) 132 Spier, Joseph 192 Spitz, René Árpád 228 Spitzová, Sonja 200, 200, 204 n.55 sports equipment 51 skiing 213 Sprecher, Jonasz (Jojne) 16, 37 n.78 Sprecher Commercial building 8 Mickiewicz Square 16 Sprecher Skyscraper, 7 Shevchenko Avenue 16, 16 Stadtverband Berliner Frauenvereine 225 Stadtville (city villa, Zagreb) 98, 103 n.34 Ständestaat (Federal State of Austria, 1934–38) 168 Star of David 110, 113 Stein, Adela 64 Stein, Alexander 64 Stein, Hugo 63, 64 Stein Brewery, Bratislava 63 Stern, Harry 17 Stern, Ivo 91 Stern, Leon 17 Stern, Otto 91 Steyr 50 (Baby) 213 Stil-Architektur 161 Stockholm 168 Stoclet Palace (Brussels) 93 Stoller, Ezra 228, 232, 236 n.56 Straus, Nathan 256 Strauss, Walter 256–8, 260, 261, 265 n.19, 265 n.24, 265 n.25, 265 n.26, 265 n.28 “The Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate, Parts 1–3 [in Hebrew]” (1941) 265 n.19, 265 nn.24–6, 265 n.28 Strižić (Steiner), Zdenko 10, 95–8, 100, 103 n.37 The “First Croatian Savings Bank” housing estate, Januševečka/ Zorkovačka-Zvečajska-ViničkaLudbreška Street, Zagreb (1935) 97 Strnad, Oskar 159–62, 165–7, 171 n.32, 195 apartment house, Stuckgasse 14, Vienna (with Oskar Wlach, 1910–11) 161

Index House Wassermann, Paul-EhrlichGasse, Vienna (with Wlach and Josef Frank, 1914) 161 Strojek, Stefan 18, 124, 125 Apartment Building of the Pension Fund of the Community Service Bank, Szczepański Square 5, Kraków (with Tadanier, 1932–36) 124–5, 125 Poviat Office, Juliusza Słowackiego Avenue 18–20, Krakow (with Tadanier, 1935–36) 124–5 Strzygowski, Josef 165 The Studio, journal (London) 143, 176 Der Sturm, journal (Berlin) 102 n.25 Stylistic transformation 21, 140 Svijet [World], magazine (Zagreb) 95, 102 n.22 Sweden 208 Switzerland 84, 85, 140, 144, 244 Sydney (Australia) 152 Synagogue 10, 20, 28 n.20, 35 n.69, 44–5, 48, 52, 54 n.6, 54 n.11, 75, 75, 76, 93, 105–16, 105, 109, 110, 112, 113, 117 n.3, 117 n.9, 117 n.10, 119 n.37, 124, 148, 166 Syska, Stanisław 127 Szalatnai-Slatinsky, Artúr 68, 71 n.36, 110, 118 n.28 orthodox Synagogue in Heydukova Street Synagogue, Bratislava (1923–26) 110 Szép, Ernő 48 Szyszko-Bohusz, Adolf 124, 135 n.8 Tadanier, Fryderyk 10, 18, 21, 30 n.36, 121–33, 123, 134 n.2, 135 n.8, 135 n.18 architectural works Apartment Building of the Pension Fund of the Community Service Bank Szczepański Square 5, Krakow (with Stefan Strojek, 1932–36) 124–5, 125 community center at “Praca” housing estate Praska Street 52, Krakow (with Michał Zakrzewski, 1935–38) 126

315

Holiday House in Radziszów, Podlesie Street 157, Radziszów (1935–37) 125–6, 126 Municipal Office in Janów, Street Yavorivska 38, Ivano-Frankove (former Janów), Ukraine (1920) 124, 126 Poviat Office, Juliusza Słowackiego Avenue 18–20, Krakow (with Stefan Strojek, 1935–36) 124–5 writings Architekci w Krakowie, 1877–1958 (unpublished manuscript) 135 n.18 “O Bożnicy Złotej Róży” (1913) 135 n.8 Támas Gallery, Budapest 181, 182, 187 n.40 Tamás, Henrik 149, 155 n.30, 182, 187 n.40 Taut, Bruno 20, 77, 83 Arbeitsrat für Kunst 77, 87 n.16 large-scale settlement Zehlendorf “Onkel-Toms Hütte,” terrace houses, Berlin (1926–1931) 83, 83 Technische Hochschule Berlin (Today’s Technical University of Berlin) 221 Technische Hochschule Dresden (Today’s Dresden University of Technology) 221 Technische Hochschule, Vienna (Today’s Vienna University of Technology) 11, 20, 35 n.70, 91, 93, 159, 169 n.3 Tel Aviv (Israel) 2, 26 n.4, 46, 48, 56 n.28, 71 n.27, 116 n.1, 256, 259, 261, 262, 263 n.1, 264 n.13, 264 n.16, 264 n.18, 265 n.19, 265 n.21, 265 n.29, 266 n.37, 266 n.46 Tér és Forma (Space and form), magazine (Hungary) 148, 151, 154 n.26, 155 n.34 Tergit, Gabriele 224, 234 n.23 Terraingesellschaft am Neuen Botanischen Garten, Berlin 76, 79, 80 Terraingesellschaften, Berlin 74 Téry-(Buschmann), Margit 194, 195 Tessenow, Heinrich 60, 83 Theresienstadt Ghetto 15, 22, 189–93, 197–202 art education 189

316

Index

children’s art, also children’s artworks 189–91, 190, 193, 198, 200, 201 children’s home L410 189, 197 “Council of Jewish Elders” 193 Girls of Room 28 (Maagal) 193 Youth Division 193 Thonet (furniture company) 94, 99, 149 Thurn & Taxis family, Germany 92 Tippelskirch-Knobelsdorff, Elisabeth 225 Tormay, Cécile 175 Tőry, Emil 60, 70 n.7, 142, 143 Transylvania 1, 140, 144 Treaty of Trianon, 1920 143, 144–5, 148 Treaty of Versailles, 1919 44 Třebíč (Czech Republic) 4, 28 n.19, 28 n.20 Tschichold, Jan 151 Die neue Typographie, 1928 151 Tugendhat, Grete and Fritz 9 Villa Tugendhat, Brno (1929–30) 8–9, 108 Turin, Italy 70 n.7, 142, 143 Tuwim, Julian 133, 136 n.35 “We, the Polish Jews” (1944) 133 Tzara, Tristan 17, 37 n.82 Új Épitészet (New Architecture), magazine (Budapest) 152, 155 n.40, 155 n.42, 155 n.45 Újlipótváros. See New Leopold Ukraine 33 n.56, 121, 124 Ulm 240 UNESCO 4, 177, 186 n.17 Unger, David 107–8, 118 n.21 Unger, Ladislav 68 Unitas, ‘Stavebné družstvo pre výstavbu malých bytov, s.r.o.’ (Cooperative for the Construction of Small Apartments, LLC) (Bratislava) 66 University of Brighton Design Archives, UK 23, 207, 208, 212, 215, 216 n.3, 217 n.25, 237, 240, 243, 245, 249 n.7, 250 n.20, 250 n.27, 250 n.34, 251 n.44, 251 n.59 Urania Polytechnic (public educational institute), Vienna 246 urban culture 25 n.2, 53, 90, 94, 95 urban design 66, 73–4, 78 urban landscape 80, 115 United States, USA, 10–11, 13, 20, 22, 24, 34 n.60, 34 n.63, 38 n.90, 84,

90, 162, 168, 174, 181, 183–5, 210, 213–5, 224, 227, 244, 246 “utopian collective” 9 Uzelac, Milivoj 94, 95, 102 n.22 Vágó, József 142, 144, 154 n.11 Vasárnapi Kör (Sunday Circle) 175 Vaverka, František 66 Vécsei, Ignác (works with Friedrich Weinwurm) 60, 64–5 boys’ orphanage, Bratislava (1928) 65 ceremonial hall in the Jewish cemetery, Žižkova 36, Bratislava (1927–30) 65 Jewish hospital Šulekova 16, Bratislava (1932) 64, 65, 65 residential complex ‘Nová doba’ (New Era) Vajnorská ulica 50–36, Bratislava (1933–42) 66–7, 68 residential complex Unitas Šancová 21–63, Bratislava (1931) 66, 67 Schön department store, Obchodná 4, Bratislava (1935) 69 sports center Maccabee Bratislava (unrealized project, 1934) 65 Stein apartment block, Grösslingová 45, Bratislava (1936) 63–4 Verein für fromme und wohltätige Werke, Vienna 161 vernacular 126, 180, 200 vernacular culture 7, 30 n.37 ‘vernacularization’ 46 Victoria and Albert Museum (London) 151, 216 n.4 Vienna 2, 5, 6, 10–12, 14, 20, 22–3, 43, 61–2, 91–3, 96–8, 106, 111, 115, 144–5, 158–62, 165–8, 173, 175, 177, 179–82, 190–1, 193, 195–8, 201–2, 207–11, 214–16, 238, 244–7, 261 Red Vienna (see Red Vienna) Ringstrasse 191 social democratic administration 211 Technologische Gewerbemuseum, Technological Trade Museum 210 Vienna Underground Railway 246 Werkbundsiedlung 98 Vienna Technische Hochschule (Today’s Vienna University of Technology) 12, 20, 35 n.70, 91, 93, 159, 169 n.3

Index Viennese Gemütlichkeit 195 Viertel, Berthold 194 “Die Truppe” (theater group) 194 Vivendas, magazine (Spain) 151 Vocational Secondary School of Trade in Vas utca, Budapest 142 Vodička, František 66 Vogue magazine (London) 242 von Ferstel, Heinrich 20, 91 von Schirach, Baldur 201 Wagner, Martin 82–3 Wagner, Otto 12 Wakefield Gallery (Wakefield bookshop), New York 184 Walcher, Humbert 93 Waligórska, Magdalena 4, 28 n.23 Warhaftig, Myra 25 n.1, 101 n.11, 223 Deutsche jüdische Architekten vor und nach 1933 – Das Lexikon 25 n.1, 101 n.11 Warsaw University of Technology 129, 131 Washington D.C 227 Wassermann, Jakob 161 Weber, Read 221 Wechsler, Igo (also Hugo) 224, 227, 235 n.44 Department store Textilia in MährischOstrau, (today Ostrava, Czech Republic) 224 Weimar Republic, 1918–33 222 Weinstein, David 12 Weinwurm, Friedrich 10, 12, 18–19, 59–69 architectural works (with Ignác Vécsei) Villa Dr. Hugo Stein, Porubského 4, Bratislava (1926) 63 boys’ orphanage, Svoradova 11, Bratislava (1928) 65 ceremonial hall in the Jewish cemetery, Žižkova 36, Bratislava (1927–30) 65 housing complex Unitas, Šancová 21–63, Bratislava (1931) 19, 66, 67, 68 Jewish hospital, Šulekova 16, Bratislava (1925–32) 64, 65, 65 residential complex ‘Nová doba’ (New Era), Vajnorská ulica

317

50–36, Bratislava (1933–42) 66–7, 68 Schön department store, Obchodná 4, Bratislava (1935) 69 sports center Maccabee, Bratislava, unrealized project (1934) 65 Stein apartment block, Grösslingová 45, Bratislava (1936) 63–4 writings Villa Dr. Hugo Stein, Porubského 4, Bratislava (1926) 63, 63 “Zeitgemässe Baukunst“ (1924) 70 n.21 “Zur Bebauung des abgebrannten Teiles in Pozsony” (1913) 70 n.1, 70 n.17 Weinwurm, Nathan 60 Weissenhof Settlement, Stuttgart (1927) 98 Weissmann, Ernest 10, 95–6, 103 n.33 Jewish hospital (project), Zagreb (1930) 96, 103 n.37 Villa Kraus, Nazorova Street 29, Zagreb (1937) 96 Villa Podvinec, Jabukovac 23, Zagreb (1937) 96 Weltkraftkonferenz (World Energy Conference) 224 Werkbundsiedlung, Vienna 98 Wertheim Department Store, Berlin 22, 34 n.65, 161. See also department stores exhibition Die gestaltende Frau (The Designer Woman) (1930) 225 Western Europe 29 n.28, 140, 192 White Anglo-Saxon and Protestant (WASP) 230 “White Terror” also known as Horthy’s White Terror, 1919–21 44, 143 Wiener Frauenkunst 180, 181, 187 n.33 Wiener Stadttempel (Vienna’s City Synagogue, Seitensttengasse 4, 1827), also City Temple 106, 161 Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshops) 22, 158–9, 175, 186 n.8, 193 Wiener Wohnkultur (Viennese living culture) 17, 21, 159–60, 162, 164–5 Wieselthier, Vally 193

318

Index

Wiesner, Arnost (Ernst) 8, 9, 20, 37 n.86, 68 Wilhelm II 36 n.76, 92 Wilinski, Erich Ernst 74, 86 n.7 Winkelmann, Emilie 222, 225 Winsor & Newton (Firm, UK) 237 Witte, Irene 224 Wittkower, Käte 24 Wittkower, Margot 24 garden design in Zehlendorf houses settlement, Berlin 24 Wittkower, Rudolf 27, 258 Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949) 24 Wittkower, Werner Joseph 10, 18, 24, 258–62 architectural works Carmel sanatorium [interior design only], Haifa (1935) 259 Gilman Building, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv (1963–65) 262 Hachlama sanatorium, Ramat Gan (1937) 259, 259 Holiday house in: Sonne, Luft und Haus für Alle exhibition, Berlin (1932) 259 hospital at Münchener Strasse, Berlin (1930) 259 Jewish Kinderheim, Bad Saarow (1930) 259 Rafael hospital, Ramat Gan (1935) 259 Villa Rojek, Berlin (1932) 259 writings “Bauliche Gestaltung klimatisch gesunder Wohnräume in Palästina” (1942) 260, 260, 265 n.36, 266 n.38 “Building and Town Planning Recommendations for Achieving a Healthy Indoor Climate in Israel [in Hebrew]” (1949) 266 n.43 “Climate-adapted Building in Israel: How Far Has Our Knowledge Influenced Building Practice?” (1984) 264 n.17, 266 n.39, 266 n.42

“Climate and Industrial Buildings in Palestine [in Hebrew]” (1946) 266 n.37 “The Climate and Town Planning [in Hebrew]” (1944) 266 n.37 “Cool Apartments in a Hot Climate [in Hebrew]” (1947) 266 n.37 “On the Apartment as a Shelter from the Climate [in Hebrew]” (1942) 265 n.30 “Towards Reform of Town and House Planning in Palestine [in Hebrew]” (1943) 265 n.37 Wlach, Albert 160 Wlach, Klara (or Klari, née Krausz) 168, 171 n.34 Wlach, Oskar 10, 12, 157–68, 160 architectural works apartment house Stuckgasse 14, Vienna (with Oskar Strnad, 1910–11) 161 Haus & Garten also Haus und Garten, store Bösendorferstraße 5, Vienna 21, 157, 157 House Krasny, interiors, Fürfanggasse 5, Vienna (1928) 166–7, 167 House Wassermann, Paul-EhrlichGasse, Vienna (1914) 161 Wallner House, bedroom, interior, Vienna (c. 1921) 163, 163 writings “Die farbige Inkrustation der Florentiner Protorenaissance” (Diss, 1906) 170 n.13 “Einheit und Lebendigkeit” (1922) 162, 170 n.23 “Messel” (1909) 161, 170 n.16 “Zu den Arbeiten von Josef Frank” (1912) 170 n.15 Wlassics, Gyula 46, 55 n.23 Wölfflin, Heinrich 144 Wolf-Krakauer, Grete 22 World Heritage Site 4, 28 n.19 Wottitz-Moller, Anny 194–5 Wszechstronny Blok Żydów Polskich (Comprehensive Block of Polish Jews) 132

Index Yiddish 30 n.36, 45, 51, 179 Yugoslavia, see also Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Kingdom of Yugoslavia air industry 214 National Liberation Front of Yugoslavia 103 n.35 Royal Yugoslav Air Force 214, 216 YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) 183 Zadnikova, Raja 199 Zagreb 2, 10, 11, 18, 20, 56 n.34, 90–100, 101 n.11, 102 n.17, 102 n.21, 103 n.30, 103 n.35, 103 n.37, 209 Foundation and Clinical hospital at Šalata 96 N Square (now the Square of the Victims of Fascism) 94, 95 Royal and University Library 93 Technical Faculty of the University of Zagreb (Faculty of Architecture) 96 Trešnjevka neighborhood 10 The Zagreb Assembly’s exhibition complex [today the Zagreb Fair/Zagrebački velesajam] 94 Zagreb Work Group 96, 98 Zakrzewski, Michał 126, 135 n.10 Community Center at “Praca” housing estate, Krakow (with Tadanier, 1935–38) 126

319

Zehlendorf-West TerrainAktiengesellschaft 79 Zeilenbau (scheme for public housing) 254 Zeisel, Eva 140 Das Zelt, journal (Vienna) 166, 171 n.32 Zemlja (the Earth), artistic group (Zagreb) 98 Zemplén County (Zemplín region, Slovakia) 177, 180 Zentrale der Fürsorge für die Flüchtlinge aus Galizien und der Bukowina, Brno 107 Žilina (Slovakia) 112 Jewish Neologist community 112 New Synagogue in J. M. Hurbana Street (1929–31) 112 Zimbler, Liane 195 Zionism 116 n.1, 122 Zionist 2, 8, 10, 12, 24, 36 n.74, 152, 255–6 Zionist architecture 254 Zionist ideology 152 Zucker, Paul 223 Schuh- und Seidenhaus Leiser (Shoe and Silk Store Leiser), Tauentzienstraße 20, Berlin 222–3 teaching at the Cooper Union, New York 223 Zweig, Stefan 89, 152 The World of Yesterday (1942) 89, 152

320

321

322

323

324

325

326