Max Herz
| Max Herz | |
|---|---|
Max Herz
|
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| Born |
Herz Miksa 19 May 1856 Ottlaka, Habsburg Empire (today Grăniceri, Romania) |
| Died | 5 May 1919 Zurich, Switzerland |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Alma mater |
TU Wien, Vienna Technical University of Budapest |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Practice |
Alajos Hauszmann Henrich von Ferstel Carl König |
Max Herz (born as Herz Miksa (Ottlaka, Hungary (today Grăniceri, Romania), 19 May 1856 – Zurich, Switzerland, 5 May 1919) Hungarian architect, conservator, museum director and architectural historian, active in Egypt.
Max Herz was born into a family of limited means. His father made a living from agriculture. Max Herz finished his primary and secondary schooling in Temesvár [now Timişoara, Romania]. He studied architecture under Alajos Hauszmann in Budapest (Technical University; 1874–1877) and under Henrich von Ferstel and Carl König in Vienna (Technical College; 1877–1880). After his final examinations he undertook a long journey through Italy, which also took him to Egypt in the autumn of 1880. Quite unexpectedly, Julius Franz Pasha, the head of the Technical Office of the Waqf Ministry (≈Ministry of Religious Affairs) offered Herz a job in Cairo. He accepted, and joined the office, which was also responsible for the conservation of mosques. As chief architect to the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe, he directed the conservation of monuments of Arab-Islamic and Coptic architecture all over Egypt, first of all in Cairo from 1890 until the end of 1914.
Upon the outbreak of World War I, at the end of 1914, Herz, a Hungarian citizen, was forced into retirement and expelled from the country as an enemy alien by the British authorities; though officially an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire with special rights, Egypt had been under British military occupation from 1882 on. Leaving all his possessions behind, he went to Milan with his family, where the relatives of his Italian wife lived. As he had to stay in a neutral country in order to receive his pension from Egypt, he moved on to Zurich after Italy declared war on her ally, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, on 23 May 1915. The world in which he had lived collapsed. The sudden death of his son (17) in the autumn of 1914 was a great blow, from which he never really recovered and which considerably aggravated his situation. The man, who had been full of optimism all his life, gradually broke. He developed a gastric illness and died during an operation. In accordance with his wish, he lies buried in the grave he himself designed for his son in Milan (Cimitero Monumentale). When his widow died in 1949, she was buried next to them.
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Wikipedia