Béla Latja

Born Béla Leitersdorfer in Budapest-Óbuda to a middle-class family, Béla Latja graduated from the architecture faculty of Budapest Technical University in 1895. He worked for Alfred Messel in Berlin and Ödön Lechner in Budapest while studying historical architecture throughout Western Europe and North Africa. After completing the floridly “Hungarian Secession”–style Schmidl Mausoleum (1904, with Lechner), Latja worked on other Hungarian Secession projects in Budapest, such as the Education Institute for the Blind (1905–1908). These are recognized as precursors to the international progressivist style of the A Fiatalok (The Young Ones) movement, which strove for a uniquely Hungarian style in the arts and architecture by fusing vernacular Finnish, Hungarian, Transylvanian, Egyptian, and other regional motifs.