In January 1939, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) set up a special committee to deal with the increasing number of requests for assistance from architects situated in Nazi-occupied central Europe.
The Refugee Committee Papers, which include related correspondence and record the committee's activities, are held in the RIBA Archives and have inspired ongoing research.
Architects fleeing persecution
Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 saw the beginning of systematic discrimination and persecution of certain groups of the German population: initially political opponents and those of Jewish heritage, and then increasingly anyone who was not considered ‘Aryan’, heterosexual, or in line with the party’s politics and views.
People started losing their positions, their jobs, their access to education, and the possibility to provide for themselves or their families. As they felt they could no longer stay in Germany, many decided to emigrate, and Britain was one of the few countries they believed could provide refuge - particularly for its longstanding tradition of tolerance.
In their attempt to relocate to Britain, they were joined later in the decade by inhabitants of other countries affected by Germany’s expansion policy, such as Austria, Czechoslovakia (now Czechia), and eventually Hungary. The refugees came from a variety of different backgrounds, including architecture.
Creation of RIBA’s Refugee Committee
In response to the sharp rise in related requests for admission to this country, in January 1939 RIBA set up a special committee, which was tasked to strike a difficult balance between giving assistance to foreign colleagues and safeguarding job opportunities for local architects in a period of economic uncertainty.
The ‘RIBA Refugee Committee’, headed by RIBA Librarian Edward ‘Bobby’ Carter, considered and acted on urgent cases, made recommendations to the Home Office, undertook statistical analysis, and consulted other professional institutes. It eventually produced a detailed report for the RIBA Council, which was praised in the architectural press for its clarity. The activities of the committee, however, were cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War in September of the same year.
Reflecting on the committee’s legacy
Between 1938 and 1941, more than 200 individuals (mostly architects) became known to RIBA and its Refugee Committee, either directly or via other refugee organisations. Some of these architects had already achieved recognition, while others had barely managed to embark on their careers.
Some succeeded in emigrating and rebuilding their lives abroad. Of those who stayed behind, many did not survive the war. The Refugee Committee Papers, which include the related correspondence and record the activities of the committee, are held within RIBA Archives.
Some, despite being recommended by the committee for labour permits or supported by prominent British architects, could just not leave their countries in time. Among them, is notable Czech architect and graphic designer František Zelenka, who died at Auschwitz in 1944. Others suffered a different fate: German architect Eric Gloeden, who had been in London for a period in 1939, died a few years later with his wife at the hands of the Gestapo, having given shelter to one of the individuals involved in the failed 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
These victims of the Holocaust deserve to be remembered, and their work and life celebrated through actions that bring their stories to life.
Displaced Lives conference at 66 Portland Place, London
As a response to this call for action, RIBA invited researchers from around the world to participate in a hybrid conference that highlighted these individuals and their extraordinary work. The conference sought to give back a voice to those often-forgotten architects and to celebrate their lives and their work. It also aimed to provide a better understanding of the phenomenon of migration in the late 1930s of one particular profession from continental Europe to the United Kingdom and beyond.
The arrival of the refugees from Nazism in Britain after 1933 and their initial reception
Dr Anthony Grenville sets out the historical background to the arrival in Britain of architects among the refugees, mostly Jewish, who fled from Nazism while exploring the social, professional and religious composition of the refugees as a group and their reception in Britain upon arrival.
The RIBA Refugee Committee
Valeria Carullo explores the origins of the RIBA Refugee Committee alongside its course of action, to highlight the cultural attitudes of the British architectural establishment at the outbreak of the Second World War, and introduces the wide range of individuals who were brought to its attention during the committee’s short lifespan.
Creative escape routes: The work of Gusztáv Feuer and Auguszta Kurz in Prague and Budapest in the interwar period
Ágnes Anna Sebestyén highlights the extraordinary lives of designer couple Gusztáv Feuer and Auguszta Kurz, including the professional dynamics of the duo alongside their creative means of escape among administrative and other hindrances.
Eugenio Giacomo Faludi (Budapest 1896- Toronto 1981). Architect and planner between Italy, London, and Canada
Dr Stefano Poli examines the background, inspiration, and originality of Eugenio Giacomo Faludi’s work in Italy and Canada, with particular emphasis on the importance of the London junction, which allowed Faludi to gain accreditation through publications and to establish the relationships that led him to start a new business in Toronto.
Buoyed Against Adversity: Architects from Czechoslovakia look to Britain
Dr Irena Murray touches on the lives and work of Czech and Slovak architects who sought the assistance of the RIBA Refugee Committee in relocating to Britain, relying on select conference speakers to provide a deeper insight into some of the architects’ contributions before and after the war.
Jacques Groag, architect in Olomouc, Vienna, Prague, and London
Professor Vladimir Šlapeta looks at the life and designs of architect Jacques Groag who worked across Europe before finding asylum in London during the Second World War, while also comparing his work with the work of other architects such as Ernst Plischke and Adolf Rading.
Erwin (Ervin) Katona and interwar “German” architecture in Prague
Dr Lenka Kerdová shares Ervin Katona's unconventional biography, his life and career until he emigrated to Great Britain and the functioning of the Prague interwar architectural scene for German-speaking architects, with Katona representing the circle of architects at the border between Czech and German cultural backgrounds.
Czech Jewish Architect Karl Kohn (1903-1980) and his work between Czechoslovakia and Ecuador
Dr Zuzana Güllendi-Cimprichova unpacks Karl Kohn's vision of modernity through his designs that followed a Central European canon of forms while in a position of exile alongside which factors influenced his rapid integration into the architectural debates in Ecuador and his professional success as well as in Czechoslovakia and Ecuador.
Lost on the way to the promised land
Professor Henrieta Moravčíková focuses on a selected circle of Bratislava's Jewish community, consisting of architects, visual artists and entrepreneurs, who were united not only by close working relationships in the field of modern architecture and construction but also by a strong social commitment.
Ideas in transit
Dr Peter Papp examines the journey of Oskar Singer, his career, and his works after his arrival in Britain from Slovakia, not covered so far in any biography. Papp also explores the two building systems Singer developed in Britain and later in Pakistan.
Jewish refugees architects in New Zealand
Daniele Abreu e Lima brings to light the reception and life of five influential Jewish architects and looks at how much their individual contributions helped to transform the architectural scene in New Zealand but, also, in the amount of cultural and religious renunciation they had to endure to be accepted in the country.
Challenges and opportunities: The émigré architect experience in Australia
Rebecca Hawcroft explores the careers of six architects in the RIBA Refugee Committee Papers known to have migrated to Australia, as well as the wider context of émigré architects from the 1930s to 1960s, and their impact on the development of a modernist design culture.
Diaspora destination: Modern Jewish Melbourne 1937 – 1979
Catherine Townsend looks at the importance of the formation of modern Jewish Melbourne within the global diaspora, and investigates the role they played in fostering post-war community, and re-centres the Jewish community’s critical role in nurturing émigré creatives in Australia and elsewhere.
Visionary architecture and design from Vienna - Vienna's forgotten architects
Dr Caroline Wohlgemuth explores the golden age of Viennese architecture and design through the works of fleeing architects who were renowned for social housing projects and became active primarily as furniture designers and interior architects.
Donkeys, pit-ponies, and socialism: The architectures of Egon Riss
Professor Gary Boyd pieces together the fragments and gaps of Egon Riss’s architectural work, exploring the hidden continuities across the displacements experienced to reappraise his contribution to European architecture.
RIBA John and David Hubert bursary
Research presentation by grant recipient Ivanna Bakhaieva.
Four California émigré architects
Professor Volker M. Welter shares in detail the lives and works of Leopold Fischer, Friedrich Frankel, Bruno Sklarek, and Ulrich Plaut— four German-speaking, Jewish architects who were exiled to Los Angeles between 1937 and 1940.
Felix Augenfeld: Vienna, London, New York
Janet Parks focuses on the life of Felix Augenfeld, a Viennese-born architect documented in the RIBA Refugee Committee papers, who is perhaps best known now as the designer of the chair that Sigmund Freud sat in while he listened to his patients.
The persecuted Jewish Architects who fled the Nazis and created the architecture of Israel
Dr Agnes Grunwald-Spier MBE investigates the lives of some of the Jewish architects who fled Nazi persecution by going to pre-Israel Palestine in the 1930s, including their influence from the Bauhaus which is made apparent in the style of the city of Tel Aviv which has UNESCO World Heritage status.
View more from inside RIBA Collections.
The Displaced Lives conference was supported by a grant from The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR)
