Fabó Beáta - Gall, Anthony: I came from the East to a City of Great Palaces. Károly Kós, the early years 1907-1914 (Budapest, 2013)

A view from afar

A VIEW FROM AFAR

When we recall one of the greatest Renaissance figures of 20th century Transylvania, Károly Kós, strangely enough the memories and relics of the earliest stage of his career seem to be fading, appearing on the imaginary horizon only as some distant, hazy blur or a list of dead data. This type of remembrance, however, can easily be misleading, if we look at it superficially. Next to the middle-aged or old Károly Kós, who can be recalled from living memory, there appears a young architect, at the onset of his career. He is the one who arrived in the capital of Hungary more than 110 years ago. Today we feel awe and appreciation at what he gave to Budapest and to the Hungary of his time in a mere decade, between 1902 and 1912. As we start to see this young man more and more clearly, we can make out his surroundings in increasingly greater detail. We realise how many relics and memories have been preserved, despite all the great upheavals of the 20th century.

Our exhibition and our book seek to recall the context in which the inexperienced young architect became so remarkably successful. This includes childhood influences, his family background, his wife (Ida Balázs), Transylvania, his fellow students as well as the professional, social and financial environment that he lived and worked in. The first few years after he moved to Budapest were characterised by curiosity. He wandered far and wide, all around the city, discovering, in the meantime also the opportunities it could offer him, such as the Library of the Museum of Applied Art. His attention was most of all focussed on the city and his immediate university surroundings. He had never thought of becoming an architect before. As a child he had wanted to become a sailor or a forester. He started his university studies at the Engineering Faculty, but the architecture students soon caught his attention and he decided to join them.

The whole family, the two parents and their four children, with Károly the only boy among them, moved to Budapest, where they remained until 1909. They moved to Budapest just to ensure that the only boy could receive an engineering degree, which would, in turn, provide him a decent job and income. The decision to change from engineering to architecture, made at the end of his second year, and the discussion he had about it with his parents are described in his autobiography, with all the different emotions, opinions and deep interpersonal relationships and dramatic situations it involved.

According to his autobiography, Kós was a popular person. Popular amongst his colleagues as well as his teachers, such as Frigyes Schulek and Dezső Hültl. He stuck by the friends he made during his university years, especially Dezső Zrumeczky and Dénes Györgyi, but he got on well with his other fellow students as well. In 1907, for example, he set out on a Transylvanian study trip together with Károly Machlup, János Prokisch and Tibor Révész. In his autobiography he mentioned how, during his summer holidays while still a secondary school student he would ride his bike to visit his classmates living near Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca and in and around the Kalotaszeg/Tara Cälatei region, whose families got to like him and always welcomed him as a guest. It was during one of these visits that he met the younger sister of one of his classmates, Ida Balázs, who would later become his wife.

He liked to work hard. As he confessed, he found it immensely difficult to cope with the university requirements at the Engineering Faculty. He would often walk the significant distance from his lodgings to the inner city of Budapest. He set out to realise his plans with endurance and he was known for his brave initiatives. This fact is well illustrated by the history of the exhibition of the works of young architecture students organised in the winter of 1906-07 together with Dénes Györgyi. The idea dawned on him while visiting an arts exhibition that it would be worth another exhibition to show the public the drawing prowess of architecture students. He set out to organise it and it seems to have brought him luck. The exhibition earned him a stipend for studying folk architecture and one of his sketches on display, that of A Small Country House - and Experiment with Transylvanian folk architecture was selected for publication in the periodical Művészet (Art). He was not only lucky but also talented and he won several student competitions. He made good use of these opportunities - he summarised his experiences of the study trip in Transylvania that he made with the stipend in a hand-written and illustrated booklet for the curator of the stipend, Elek Lippich. It's an interesting fact that both documents, Design of a Small Country House (Hungarian Museum of Architecture) and the handwritten booklet (National Széchenyi Library) survived in their original form. As yet another acknowledgement, excerpts of the handwritten book were published in the high-quality architectural periodical, A Ház (The House).

Frigyes Schulek, who read medieval architecture at the university and was Kós1 supervisor, played an important role in gaining supporters for his young colleague. Schulek admired his talent and did a lot to help kick-start his career. He was determined to keep Kós on the right track - for instance, he warned him well in advance when he found Kós' assignment for his end-term exams too weak to hand in. On the other hand, he was the first to acknowledge when Kós made excellent designs. However, he refused to help him get a clerical job at the municipality - yet helped him win a respectable assignment from the National Museum and Library Authority, namely, designing the building of the Székely National Museum. According to Kós' later account, Schulek promised to help him gain a new commission at least every second year.

Straight after graduation - and a discussion with no other than Schulek - architect Móric Pogány offered a job to Károly Kós. The few months they spent as colleagues sprouted a friendship that lasted several years. Pogány needed the social and professional prestige that came with the Gold Medal handed out by the Association of