F. Mentényi Klára szerk.: Műemlékvédelmi Szemle 1997/1-2. szám Az Országos Műemléki Felügyelőség tájékoztatója (Budapest, 1997)

MŰHELY - Prakfalvi Endre: Két egykor volt zsinagógáról: Várpalota, Veszprém

Endre PRAKFALVY ON TWO FORMER SYNAGOGUES - VÁRPALOTA , VESZPRÉM The study wishes to contribute to the result of the lately increased research in connection with Hungarian synagogue architecture. (Anikó Gazda, Ines Müller). Since the research of Anna Zádor between the two world wars we do not have new basic facts concerning the architectural history of the building and this is not the purpose of this study either. It shows the story of the two buildings following 1945 as two aspects of architectural policy characterizing the period. The classicist building in Várpalota recalling antique models was „saved" contrary to the heavy war damages. In the program of building a socialist „new city" in Várpalota it got a new function. It was composed into the complex of the miner's apprentice school of Gyula Rimanóczy. The Romantic synagogue attributed to Mátyás Zitterbarth the younger could not excape its fate however. As a result of different factors its original form was totally changed and rebuilt, it was used as encircling walls for the office building of the Miner's Trust. In this case the official aversion of the period (the so called „fifties") could be discovered towards Romanticism as style. The power had decided stylistic preferences as a means of legitimation and historical incompetence. The national form of the so called socialist content had prescribed classicist stylistic elements and could not bear Romantic characteristics. The text published here (1953) is a document for the hopeless endeavours of monument preservation to rescue the building.