With great sadness we mourn the loss of Anna Perczel, an architect, urban planner, and activist who researched and fought to preserve the historic buildings of Budapest’s pre-war downtown Jewish neighborhoods. She died in Budapest Sunday (June 13), aged 79.
Born in Paris in 1942, Anna graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Budapest University of Technology in 1967.
After the fall of communism, she focused attention on the inner city districts of Budapest that had been Jewish neighborhoods before the Holocaust and whose rich but rundown architectural fabric of typical tenements and courtyards was threatened by commercial developers and the wrecking ball.
She prepared a detailed survey of these buildings in 1996-98 and in 2007 published “Unprotected Heritage: Residential Buildings in the Jewish Quarter,” a book with parallel text in Hungarian and English based on her survey that provided a detailed description of the architecture and history of around 100 buildings, many of them under threat of demolition.
In 2004, she co-founded OVAS! (Protest!), a citizens’ association aimed at protecting the historic buildings of the area. She remained chair of OVAS! until her death, and in 2020 received the Perika Prize, a professional award intended to recognize the achievements of artists who, in addition to architecture, have created outstanding, socially influential value in several scientific and / or artistic fields in an innovative way.
“She was an architect, although she did not build, but defended buildings and neighbourhoods designed by others,” OVAS! said in a statement.
“She was concerned not only with the buildings but also with the fate of their inhabitants, as she showed during long conversations with them during walks and events in the neighbourhood. […] In her numerous writings and books, interviews and speeches, she spoke out for the protected buildings of the historic Jewish quarter of Erzsébetváros, for the valuable districts of Józsefváros and Kőbánya, which were in danger of being destroyed by the bulldozers [of] urban renewal and […] political bickering.”
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony paid tribute to Anna.
“This is a sad day for domestic urban planning,” he wrote on Facebook.
.Anna Perczel, architect, founder of the OVÁS! Association, has passed away. Without Anna’s persistent and sacrificial work, there would not be much left of the historical Jewish quarter and the architectural heritage of the inner Erzsébetváros [district]. […] As a trained architect, urbanist; as a citizen who feels responsible for the future of Budapest, [Anna] took on hard conflicts in order to ensure that our built heritage could survive the [forces] of the real estate market. Budapest has lost an important friend with her death. Her memory obliges us to look not only at momentary interests in the development of the city, because, like the Earth, we have only borrowed our beautiful capital from previous generations, so that we can preserve it and pass it on to those who follow us. God rest you, Anna!
In 2017, OVAS! launched a new web site called „Who lived, who built here?” that elaborates the contribution of Jews and Jewish architects to the physical development of Budapest as a metropolis. It includes an interactive map that pinpoints scores of buildings, mainly in the inner city districts.Part of the aim is to highlight “invisible” Jewish heritage, from small synagogues to apartment blocks and commercial buildings. It also provides biographical information — and pictures — on dozens of architects.
May her soul be bound up in the bond of life! Her memory is already a blessing to all who knew her.