Ágnes Ivett Oszkó: Lipót Baumhorn. Holnap Kiadó, 2020

Text: Rudolf Klein

This work by Ágnes Oszkó was published by Holnap Kiadó in the series titled the Masters of Architecture, one of the most detailed and comprehensive series of specialist books not only in Hungary, but also in the wider region. In the year 2020 the volumes on Árkay and Baumhorn followed each other. The latter is an excellently edited book format publication of the author’s doctoral dissertation edited by Tamás Csáki, and is a comprehensive survey of Baumhorn’s oeuvre. Lipót Baumhorn designed the largest number of synagogues in the world, a total of 26 between 1888 and 1932. The majority of European Jews lived in areas formerly belonging to Poland, where the majority of the Catholic and Israelite Poles were degraded into the peasantry by the Russian occupation, and so the haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment originating from Germany spread only in the German Empire and Austro-Hungary, the two ambitious empires, along with the reformed synagogue architecture in its wake, and Baumhorn was its most prominent representative.