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Fashion designer
I was born in Budapest. I was the most renowned figure of 20th-century Hungarian fashion. I dressed the political and cultural elite, creating Hungarian haute couture.
Birth name
Born
1903-02-22, Budapest
Deceased
1976-11-13, Budapest
Profession
Fashion designer
Awards
Rotschild Klára was one of the most influential figures in the history of Hungarian fashion. Born into a family of tailors, she grew up in the workshop and became involved in the work of the family salon at an early age. Although her formal education and language skills were limited, her outstanding organizational abilities and business sense made her a key figure as the directress of her father’s elite tailoring house. In the 1930s, her trips to Paris allowed her to gain first-hand insight into international fashion. A scandalous incident and the subsequent lawsuit took a heavy emotional toll on her; at the same time, the compensation she received and the publicity surrounding the case contributed significantly to the launch of her independent career. In 1934, she opened her own salon at Deák Ferenc Square, which within a short time surpassed her father’s business in success. The foundation of her achievements lay in her professional expertise, exceptional networking skills, and her ability to translate the fashion of the era for a Hungarian audience.
Her career took off with a spectacular rise in the 1930s: thanks to her exceptional social instincts, she became the fashion designer of the aristocracy and the upper elite. The prestige of her salon was established through high-society weddings and aristocratic as well as international clients, while she successfully adapted inspirations drawn from Paris to the traditions of Budapest tailoring. Having survived the war and nationalization, she returned to the top in a unique way under the communist system, becoming the head of the leading state-run haute couture salon. During the Kádár era, the wives of political leaders, artists, and diplomats dressed at her salon, while she also represented Hungarian fashion abroad. For decades, Rotschild Klára remained an unquestioned style icon and an institution in her own right—the official face of luxury behind the Iron Curtain.
The Dohány Street synagogue is one of Budapest’s touristic highlights as it is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. The synagogue was built in 1859 in the Moorish style and it can seat 3000 people. Its huge size demonstrates the significance and the high economic and cultural standards of the Budapest Jewry of the age.
The temple was designed by Ludwig Förster (1797-1863), a German architect, professor of the Vienna Academy. The clerk of works was the architect Ignác Wechselmann (1828-1903) who later bequeathed his entire wealth to the Institute of the Blind. After Förster left, Frigyes Feszl, the famous architect of the Budapest Vigadó designed the temple’s inner sanctum. The official consecration of the synagogue took place on 6 September 1859. The interior of the synagogue is 1200 square metres, the towers are 44 metres high. There are 1497 seats for men downstairs and 1472 for women in the galleries, altogether the seating capacity of the flat-ceilinged inner space is nearly 3000 people.
Atomic physics
