The Harbinger of Modernism: Jewish Funerary Art in Historic Hungary at the Onset of the Twentieth Century

Nineteenth century urbanization in Europe has rewritten the way cemeteries were formed and, by the end of that era, led to the Cemetery Reform Movement (Friedhofsreform in German), in Central Europe. This period also brought about changes to European Jewish burial culture. Along the recognition of a need for reshaping the house of the living, as Jewish cemeteries were traditionally called, emancipated Jewry had to find updated and generally accessible visual means, compatible with religious norms, especially with the image ban.

The solution was partly architectural and partly ornamental: in metropolitan cemeteries mausolea and monumental cenotaphs were constructed, breaking the repetitive rows of matzevot and ­– more significantly – breaking with long standing traditions. Their designers – mainly architects – kept pace with international tendencies bringing proto- and early modernist art and architecture into cemeteries, often blending Jewish symbolism with local folklore, and different forms of art nouveau and national romanticism.

This paper focuses on this artistic phenomenon on the basis of Jewish funerary art in the former Kingdom of Hungary, where highly acclaimed Jewish architects, such as Béla Lajta, József Vágó, Emil Vidor, or Lajos Kozma shaped not only the urban landscape but also revitalised Jewish tombstone-design and graveyard-planning. Since modern art was most eminently aimed at bringing change to all aspects of society, by an analysis of these cemeteries we document social changes and intellectual history of Hungarian Jewry at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.