Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 16. (Budapest, 1997)

ÁCS Piroska: Lechner Ödön köztéri szobrának története

PIROSKA ÁCS THE HISTORY OF ÖDÖN LECHNER'S PUBLIC STATUE "Papsie, where have you gone?" This is the question one of the most famous representatives of the Nyugat literary movement, the poet and publicist Ernő Szép ( 1884—1953) asked in his sketch published in the columns of the daily paper Hírlap on the 28th November 1948. The cause of his despair was the disappearance of "Papsie

's" that is Ödön Lechner

's - statue from its site at the side of the Café Japan on the Ferenc Liszt square, where a bus depot was to be built. Finally this project was not realized, but the monument never recovered its original site either. After much hesitation, an appropriate location was found for it in the front garden at the right side of the Museum of Applied Arts' main entrance, its colour gratefully harmonizing with the pirogranite face-work of the building. Ödön (Edmund) Lechner, an architect striving to develop a typically Hungarian form of expression, died on the 10th July 1914. The Hungarian Architects' Society immediately initiated a fund-raising action among his admirers and the general public for a memorial statue. However, this initiative was soon and long-lastingly pushed into the background by the outbreak of World War I: it was May 1927 when János Gundel, the next owner of the Café Japan, commissioned the painter Ernő Barta for a memorial tablet representing Ödön Lechner and Pál Szinyei Merse, the two 'heads' of the once legendary artists' table. The inauguration of the memorial tablet, an event doubled by the business trick consisting in the reestablishment of the artists' table, was opened by a speech of István Csók. The Ödön Lechner Society, also called Society of the Friends of Hungarian Architecture,

1 was created on the 28th June of following year. According to the words of the first meeting's chairman Elek Petrovics, the goal of the Society was "the cultivation of Ödön Lechner

's memory and style, the propagation of his artistic and national conceptions, the development of a unified Hungarian style in architecture, and finally the expansion of architectural culture in Hungary". The figure of the open-minded architect was thus turned, in post-Trianon Hungary, into the symbol of a specific, "Hungarian" style of architecture, as reported by the painter Lipót (Leopold) Herman in the daily paper Pesti Napló: "The Lechner Society was created for the purpose of collectiong writings and illustrations defining the features and the real character of this genius, as well as the richly blossoming and fruit-producing garden of his imagination. Its goal is to immortalize Lechner 's real personnality by propagating his beliefs, his theories and his artistic perception, and to popularize the conviction of Ödön Lechner being the incarnation of art and national thought."

2 On that first meeting, the general assembly elected the three members of the Board (the writer Ödön Gerő, the architect Flóris Korb, professor honoris causa at the technical university and László Márkus, the head director of the Opera), a managing director (the architect Béla Jánszky), a financial director (the outstanding art