Die „Berliner Renaissance“ in Budapest

Abstract

From the 1850s to the 1880s several young Hungarians went to Berlin to study at the Baukadamie. The Technical University in Budapest was not yet in the position to offer the kind of education available in western Europe, besides travelling to the Prussian capital provided a welcome alternative to Vienna, whose cultural and political dominance in Hungary was for many too overwhelming. At the Berlin Bauakademie the teachers of the post-Schinkelian period, such as August Stüler, Johann Strack and Richard Lucae, inculcated in their students a form of Neorenaissance which would be later termed as “Berlin Renaissance” by contemporaries in Hungary. This variant was characterized by restrained forms and a somewhat dry approach, a trend which for some time remained distinctive and distinguishable within the spectrum of revived styles in Hungarian architecture. The Hungarian representatives of the “Berlin Renaissance”, e.g. Antal Szkalnitzky, Emil Unger, Ferenc Kolbenheyer and Alajos Hauszmann gained important positions in their profession, thus brought the trend to prominence. Yet architects trained elsewhere, chiefly in Vienna and at other cultural centres of the German-speaking world, brought similar impulses and soon a general language of Neorenaissance architecture, typical of most Central European countries, evolved.