Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)
Kerepesi út Cemetery at the Turn of the 20th Century
arcades. Several works of his were set up in the sections near the two rows of arcades, too; these include the ones topping the tombs of Baroness Brúnó Stra- lendorff (K 20), Gyula Rózsavölgyi (K 10/1), and Pál Elek (K 11). The latter are as decorative as the Eisele and the Kilián monuments, but they are less distinctive, an inconsistency especially characteristic of the mournful figure of a Heyduck solder on the Rózsavölgyi sepulchre. The sculptural component of György Zala's tomb is also Ligeti's work (K 34) as are the dual figures on Mrs. Góth née Ella Kertész (F 6 circle). A smaller but uniquely shaped work of a very personal tone is the relief on the Kern tombstone, a replica of Ligeti’s 1926 work entitled The Private Altar (K 11). Many more significant sculptures can be found above the vaults in the arcades. Among these are Richárd Füredi’s Paulheim tomb, a piece that retains its emotional effect to this day, József Róna's thematically-related but less forceful work on the Loser tomb, and the funeral sculpture topping the sepulchre of the Gundel family made by István Lipót Gách and unveiled in 1910. Adding yet another one to the cemetery's nudes is György Zala's secular and somewhat frivolous work on the Bayer-Krucsay family’s tomb, a sepulchre architecturally designed by Rezső Hikisch, whose works include the Forster tomb in the arcades and the Guttmann Mausoleum nearby (K 34/1). A longterm cooperation between Hikisch and József Damkó resulted in numerous jointly made works, such as the Rüster and the Seenger families' vaults in the arcades and the sepulchres of the Hikisches (K 20/1) and of Oszkár Haggen- macher (K 26/1) elsewhere in the cemetery. One of their first collaborative pieces is Vilmos Sóltz’s turn-of-the-century funeral monument (K 28). Several tombstone monuments were made for the arcades in the Schmidt and the Gerenday workshops, for example Gyula Jungfer’s sepulchre, which was carved in the latter. Here stands one of Gyula Donáth's last works, the Végess family's sepulchral sculpture. Jenő Bory is represented with five pieces, the most important being the Gel léri Szabós' sepulchre. Károly Than's funeral statue was sculpted by János Istók, and Nándor Gottermayer's by Lajos Mátrai Jr. and Béla Ohmann. Between the two rows of vaulted arcades on the circus of the main walkway stands the Jókai Monument, completed by 1928 to designs by Jenő Kismarty-Lechner and Richárd Füredi (K 18-19). The monument closes the mound of the grave in the style of an altar, a construction left open above in accordance with the writer's last will stipulating that there be nothing more above his grave than a headstone. The makers of the monument found a fitting visual closure to the pathway section between the 33
