Jewish Engineers Practising in Győr Before the Second World War

Extract from Zalán Biczó’s work “Encyclopaedia of Engineers in Győr“

This post is part of a series. Zalán Biczó, local historian and librarian at Széchenyi István University in Győr, has recently published encyclopaedias based on extensive research, which provide basic information – still accessible today – on the lives and work of doctors, teachers, lawyers and engineers who lived and worked in Győr before the Second World War.

We are grateful to Zalán Biczó for compiling, at our request, a list of individuals who were most likely of Jewish origin; we are publishing this list below, where it can be read or downloaded in PDF format (in Hungarian only).

In doing so, we wish to pay tribute to these outstanding figures of the former Jewish community.

In the foreword to the book, Balázs Kovács, President of the Győr Local Family History Researchers’ Society, writes as follows:

“… /In this/ volume, the work of a significant proportion of the engineers listed – the former ‘cultural engineers’, or, to use modern terminology, architects, civil engineers, road builders and railway engineers – remains visible to this day: residential, public and industrial buildings; transport infrastructure; public roads, railways and bridges; a multitude of structures enabling water management and flood defences… the list is almost endless.

It is particularly commendable in this field that – alongside the better-known, more frequently mentioned architects – the work of the engineers responsible for the structural stability of these buildings is also brought to the fore. The intellectual prowess of another significant group of engineers listed in the volume – mechanical and chemical engineers – is also evidenced by numerous technical innovations and inventions that serve the comfort of people today.

Particular mention should be made of the engineers who settled in Győr at the end of the 19th century and worked there, as it was they who, in practice, realised the plans of the city’s authorities at the time: the industrialisation of Győr…”

---