Két sírkápolna a történelmi Veszprémi Egyházmegyében: Békás és Szőlőskislak – Ybl Miklós és Ágoston József Művei
Authors: Prakfalvi Endre 
Published: March 2018

The research was triggered off by the documentation of the building history of the mausoleum of the Brüll family in the neolog Jewish cemetery in Kozma street, Budapest. The revived antique, in ante temple style mausoleum erected over a crypt was completed in 1902 as the joint work of architect Kálmán Gerster and sculptor Alajos Stróbl. The interior of the cell is adorned with a fine floral mosaic composition (cartoon by Ferenc Lohr).

At Békás in Veszprém county the sepulchral monument of the founder of the Society of Hungarian Engineers and Architects was unveiled in the Békássy–Hollán mausoleum in 1903. The periodical Művészet reported that the frescoes were painted by Dezső Kölber after cartoons by Károly Lotz. Documents in the Archives of the Veszprém Archiepiscopacy and Collegiate Chapter reveal that the chapel built in revival gothic style was consecrated on the day of the Sacred Name of the Virgin, on 12 September 1869, so that masses could be celebrated for the salvation of the departed souls. The church demanded that the builders provide guarantees for the survival of the chapel “until the end of time”. The architect’s name is not put down, but the article of 1903 expressly names Ybl as the planner of the funerary chapel, which has not been listed in his oeuvre so far.

During an assessment of art historical values we came across the ruins of the Ágoston–Kacskovics family’s mausoleum on the edge of Balatonboglár, in Szőlőskislak. Until 1993 the diocese of Veszprém also included Somogy County. The remains of the archaizing building displays several remarkable elements. One is the set of wall-lining bricks stamped with the initials LNJ, which are undoubtedly from the brick-yard of the architect Ödön Lechner’s family in Kőbánya. The other is a glazed, ribbed-surface ornamental brick type arranged around the red triangular limestone symbolizing the eye of God in the pediment. Earlier, this brick type was known on the St. Ladislaus church in Kőbánya and the façades of the Museum of Applied Arts (1896) both planned by Lechner. The floor pavers – produced by Wienerberger – were acquired in Vienna. It is again the obligation for maintenance in good condition that accounts for ample documents kept in the Archiepiscopal Library, which reveal that the crypt was consecrated in 1883, the chapel in 1884, on the feast day of Saint Ignatius Loyola. The erection of the chapel might have been related in connection with the re-burial here of landowner Ignácz Kacskovics, lord lieutenant of the county (and maybe with the change of the manorial centre). The use of the Lechner “design” bricks here precedes the well-known examples by a decade. The building was designed by József Áoston of Kisjóka, who qualified as an engineer from the Technical University of Budapest in 1875.

In the central cemetery of Pécs there are two similar historicizing family mausoleums close to each other. The classicizing monuments also displaying motifs of the Jugendstil were built in 1909 (and later?) from the terracotta elements of the Zsolnay Factory of Pécs. The mausoleum of the Nagy family who played an important role in the life of the city is still privately owned. The other one underwent a strange metamorphosis in 1963, as it was not redeemed again. The party committee of the city decided to convert it into a labour movement pantheon, and had the cross surrounded by palm branches in the pediment replaced by the red star. (The classicist character suited the socialist realist ideal of the fifties.) Their conservation in their current form is justified.