Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The Parish Church of St. Michael, 1941

■ The statue of St. Michael by Tibor Vitt

tion. Part of the overall effect is provided by the weathered quarry-stone dual portal set in a pointed arch on the north side and, especially, the dynamic group of the flat-roofed, prism-shaped tower and the side-entrance of the approach to the latter. "What 1 find particularly effective," says Virgil Bierbach (Borbíró), the renowned editor of the journal Tér és jjorma (Space and Form, 1941) in his evaluation of the building, "is how absolutely Hungarian this grouping is in its character. The master builders of the Székely lands (Inner Transylvania) gave a similar shape to their churches ... The unit of the porch and the approach to the tower is a motif characteristic of those lands.” (Under the second Vienna Award of 30 August 1940, northern Transylvania was returned to Hungary. However, the decision accelerated the process of Hungary's fatal alignment with Nazi Germany. In these years the employment of motifs borrowed from the folk architecture of the returning territories—Transylvania and Upper Northern Hungary (today Slovakia)—became an increasingly regular feature of buildings in Hungary, including those of a modern style.)

The organ loft is accessible from the squat stair turret on the left of the building. Here, too, on the western front, there is a small baptistery.

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