The year 2022 marks the 10th anniversary of Jewish Heritage Europe. The theme of our birthday celebrations is the “Anniversary of Anniversaries” — that is, using JHE’s own anniversary to feature other significant or symbolic anniversaries.
Here we highlight the Budapest-based architect Lipot Baumhorn, modern Europe’s most prolific synagogue architect. This year marks the 90th anniversary of his death in 1932.
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We’ve posted a lot about Baumhorn and his work on JHE, but we didn’t want to let the 90th anniversary of his death go by without giving him more recognition in our Anniversary of Anniversaries series, so we are posting here some videos, images, and other links that highlight his work.
Baumhorn was born in 1860 in the town of Kisbér, about 100 km west of Budapest, so 2020 marked his 160th birthday — occasion for a series of “Baumhorn160” exhibitions and other initiatives in towns and cities where he worked.
The most prolific synagogue architect in pre-WW2 Europe, he designed or remodelled more than a score of synagogues in what are now Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, and Serbia.
They are listed on his gravestone in Budapest’s vast Kozma utca Jewish cemetery:
Here’s the entire gravestone, which recently has been cleaned and restored. The carving of the great dome of the New Synagogue in Szeged, dedicated in 1903, dominates the stone, above the list of his synagogues and a flowery epitaph, which reads in translation:
Our inspired artist: His inspiration and heart gave birth/To the lines of synagogues that look toward heaven and awaken piety/Above his peaceful home hovered devotion/The soul of a father and husband gave birth to heaven-seeking consolation.
JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber wrote the first lengthy appreciation in English of Baumhorn in her 1994 book “Upon the Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today.” In it, she described traveling to seek out his synagogues and find information about him, as well as finding and literally uncovering his tomb in Budapest’s Kozma utca Jewish cemetery, which was totally forgotten and overgrown with brush and vines.
Click here to read her chapter about Baumhorn, “Synagogues Seeking Heaven”
Much has changed since then.
In a 1999 article about Baumhorn, Ruth wrote that the fate of Baumhorn and his work “can be seen as a metaphor for the modern Jewish experience in Hungary: optimism, splendor, destruction, oblivion and, since the fall of communism, rediscovery and revival.”
Though some of Baumhorn’s synagogues were destroyed during or after WW2, some have been restored, or virtually reconstructed in recent years, and he and his architectural work have become topics of research and study — as well as appreciation and tourism.
Some of his synagogues are used as cultural venues (Szolnok and Esztergom, Hungary; Nitra and Lucenec, Slovakia; Novi Sad, Serbia); some are still houses of worship.
Two of his synagogues (in Cegled and on Budapest’s Dozsa Gyorgy ut) are currently used as sports halls, however; and two remain empty and in deteriorating condition — his last great, stand-alone synagogue, that in Gyöngyös, Hungary (1931), designed with his son-in-law György Somogyi, and the Fabric Synagogue in Timisoara, Romania (1897-99). The World Monuments Fund recently put the Fabric synagogue on its Watch List of endangered heritage sites.
A first major exhibition about Baumhorn and his work took place in Budapest in 1999.
Over the past two years the traveling “Baumhorn160” outdoor exhibit curated by the art historian Ágnes Ivett Oszkó, who has researched and written widely on Baumhorn — including a new book about him, based on her PhD dissertation — showcased Baumhorn’s work.
Besides synagogues, the exhibit highlighted buildings such as banks, homes, office buildings, schools, and apartment buildings.
This is a cute animated video about Baumhorn and is work — focusing mainly on his secular buildings in Timisoara, Romania (rather than the Fabric Synagogue he designed there). It’s in Romanian, but the images tell the story:
Watch a video (in English) about the Szeged Synagogue:
Here are some more images of some of Baumhorn’s synagogues:
Click here to see our earlier posts about Baumhorn and his work
Read Ruth’s article in the New York Times about the 1999 exhibition about Baumhorn
Click the link below to download the pdf of Ruth’s book chapter on Baumhorn:
SYNAGOGUES SEEKING HEAVEN: Looking for Lipót Baumhorn
1 comment on “Anniversary of Anniversaries: 90 years since the death of prolific synagogue architect Lipót Baumhorn”
24th Sept 1913 The Eger Synagogue inauguration After presenting the president of the synagogue and thanks giving to the President on behalf of the Jewish community, Klauber Frigyes my Grandfsther ,the school teacher of the Real people’s School, took the floor and received general cheers for his work on the construction of the building and over his the undying merits