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Film director
I was born in Budapest. As an Oscar-winning film director, I made my mark on film history in Hollywood with the classic Casablanca.
Birth name
Kertész Mihály
Born
1886-12-24, Budapest
Deceased
1962-04-10, Hollywood
Education
Drama Academy
Profession
Film director
Scientific Degree
University degree
Awards
Oscar Award
He was born in Budapest at 12 Gyár Street on December 25, 1886, at 9 PM, as Manó Kaminer into a Jewish family. His father, Ignác Kaminer (Izsák), was a house painter born in Delatyn (Galicia), and his mother, Nott Gold (Nathan Aranka), was born in Nagyvárad. At 17 years old (in 1903), he ran away from home with a circus and later studied acting. In 1905, he changed his last name to Kertész.
He graduated from the Acting Academy in 1906. He worked in Pécs and Szeged. His first film was made in 1912. The following year, he traveled to Denmark on a study trip to the flourishing Nordisk studio. There, he worked as an assistant and director, and also played the lead role in the film Atlantis. In 1914, he returned to Hungary and worked at Jenő Janovics' film studio. During World War I, he served as a Hungarian soldier. During the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was involved in Béla Kun’s Art Committee and the Actor Examination Jury, appeared in propaganda programs, made a film supporting the commune, and oversaw news footage of May Day celebrations. After the fall of the Soviet Republic, he emigrated to Austria. Among the films he made in Austria and Germany, the most famous is Sodom and Gomorrah (1922).
In 1926, Kertész emigrated to the United States and Anglicized his name to Michael Curtiz. Over his long Hollywood career, he directed more than 100 films.
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
