Text: Rudolf Klein

Both parts of this essay, published in the journal Hungarian Architecture, discuss links between Judaic-Jewish heritage and 19-20th century architecture. The first part, published in the previous issue, touched upon Judaic aniconism, as expressed in Adolf Loos’ writings and work; mon(othe)ism and Jewish Messianism. It gave a short history of debates about Judaic and Jewish impact on post-Enlightenment architecture; and discussed the raison d’être of researching ‘Jewish architecture’ for understanding modernism.
This part presents a wider context of the aforementioned questions, a short survey on the impact of Judaic ideas on basic spatial concepts of western architectural history. It focuses on Judaic/Jewish impact on 20th century cosmology, on the basis of Albert Einstein’s and Hermann Minkowski’s ideas, which exerted substantial impact on the theory of modern art and architecture. It also discusses the Einstein reception of some modern artists and theoreticians such as László Moholy Nagy, El Lissitzky, Sigfried Giedion and their influence on modern architecture.