Research Projects

Research Project "Jewish Architects of Modernism in Galicia: Ferdinand Kassler and Contemporaries"

Research Project "Jewish Architects of Modernism in Galicia: Ferdinand Kassler and Contemporaries".

The research project (since 2018) deals with the legacy and fate of Jewish architects in Galicia, who, almost without exception, fell victim to the Holocaust and have been forgotten. Within the framework of field research, among others. In the course of field research in Warsaw, Vienna, Krakow, and Lviv, the biographies and works of those Jewish architects in Galicia who had a decisive influence on the architecture of Lviv, Krakow, Przemysl, Czernowitz, and Drohobycz are examined, Stryj, Stanislaw (today Ivano-Frankivsk), Kolomyja and other cities of Galicia and Bukovina, and the international European architectural milieu, especially in Vienna, Warsaw and Germany.
The field research was carried out between 2018 and 2020, numerous institutions were contacted, work was done in numerous archives. Some of them are mentioned below: Muzeum Żydów Polskich, Muzeum miasta Warszawy, TU Politechnika Warszawska, Monument Protection Office of Warsaw and Masowsze. Remains of the few remaining projects or fragments of buildings as well as current architectural activities were analyzed, inventoried and documented. 
In connection with the research of the personality of Ferdinand Kassler, the most famous Jewish architect of modernism in Galicia, the research focused on the archives of the Podgórze district in Kraków, Kassler's birthplace.

The following special print on the topic is a summary of a lecture given by Bohdan Cherkes at the Conference Bauhaus 1919 – 2019 past / present / future 14 -15.05.2019 in Bialystok Poland (download). 
A comprehensive monograph is in preparation and will be published in 2022.

Bohdan Cherkes Jewish Architects and Modernism in Galicia: Ferdynand Kasler and his Works”
Special print.

 

Bohdan Cherkes Jewish Architects and Modernism in Galicia: Ferdynand Kasler and his Works”