Lecture about architect Rudolf Wels

The lecture on Rudolf Wels will take place

on May 11, 2006, at 5:00 PM

at the Regional Library in Karlovy Vary.

Architect Rudolf Wels was one of the most remarkable figures in our interwar architecture. He studied at the Vienna Academy under Friedrich Ohmann. In Vienna, he also attended courses of Adolf Loos, whose influence was very significant for his future architectural work. From the 1920s, Rudolf Wels worked in Karlovy Vary. Between 1921 and 1922, he remodeled and built new buildings for the famous glass company Moser. It is also noteworthy that he designed a number of drink sets and vases with artistic decorations for the company Moser. These were very successful at the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925.
From 1923 to 1925, he developed a project for the Mining House in Sokolov, where a year later he also built two school buildings - a civic school and a Czech school. Among his most successful works are the health insurance company building (now Polyclinic) in Milada Horáková Square, the Bellevue spa house, and also the building of Spa VI in Karlovy Vary. In the 1930s, Rudolf Wels moved to Prague, where he established a studio with Ing. Guido Lagus. In 1942, Wels was interned in Terezín and the following year sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, from where he never returned. Like many others for whom German was their mother tongue, Rudolf Wels became one of the "forgotten" personalities of interwar Czechoslovakia.