page_title: Max Herz
section_title: The private architect
hierarchical_section_title: Max Herz / Activities / The private architect
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the Rifai mosque.
context_page_description: Max Herz Hungarian architect, conservator, museum director and architectural historian, active in Egypt.
context_section_description: Herz was also active as a private architect in Cairo, though we know little about his achievements in this field. The author of his Arabic obituary, who consulted his former colleagues and subordinates, mentions more than 150 buildings in Cairo in various styles: mainly in "the Arab style", but also in western styles, among others in the Gothic style. While this number cannot be regarded as inordinately high for the whole oeuvre of an architect – the Hungarian architect József Hild designed 917 buildings in the course of his career –, this number should be treated with reservation: Herz's unusually heavy workload in the Comité would not have left him much spare time and it is problematic too that only a few of them are known. Herz does not mention this subject in surviving documents. The biographies written by his wife after his death mention no more than a few buildings.
  Herz's name is closely connected to the "neo-Mamluk style". This architectural style, which was born in the context of the so-called neo-styles within the historicism then fashionable in Europe, revives the memory of the architecture of the Mamluk period, which saw Egypt as the greatest power in the Middle East and North Africa, with Cairo as her capital, a resplendent metropolis which had no equal in the known world. This style, which conjured up the memory of the country's glorious past, quickly became popular in Egypt, where it acquired the status of a national architectural style within the theoretical framework of a burgeoning nationalism.
  Herz was regarded as the foremost authority on this style, although he had not invented it. (The expression "Arab style" above refers to this style.) In this style he erected the sumptuous palace of Count Zogheb, the consul of Denmark, in Qasr al-Nil Street; it was demolished in the 1960s. In the same quarter stood a palace which its new owner, the tobacco manufacturer Nestor Gianaclis, decided to have remodelled in the neo-Mamluk style, entrusting the task to Max Herz in 1898. The beautifully remodelled neo-Mamluk palace was acquired by the newly founded American University in Cairo in 1919: it is still standing as one of the university's central buildings in Tahrir Square.
  In a similar vein, the Rifai mosque also represents the neo-Mamluk style. Its construction began around 1870 by the order of Khushyar hanim, the pious mother of Khedive Ismail, according to plans prepared by the Egyptian architect Husayn Fahmi. Work stopped around 1880 due to technical problems and a shortage of funds. A quarter of a century later, in 1906, Khedive Abbas II Hilmi entrusted Max Herz with the completion of the gigantic edifice opposite the grandiose mosque of Sultan Hasan (757-764/1356-1362). As far as possible, Herz strove to follow the ideas of the architect, to whom he had been connected by personal ties too, but in many cases he had to rely upon his own expertise and invention because the original plans were not extant and in many cases the concepts of the architect were not known. The completion of the superb mosque, which also served as the burial place of members of the Khedivial family, represented a great personal and professional success for Max Herz. It was in connection with this work that the Khedive promoted him to the next grade in the civil service. As holder of one of the top grades, he became entitled to use the honorary title "Pasha" from then on; until then he used the honorary title "Bey".
  Vague neo-Mamluk references could be detected on his own villa, which was built according to his own designs at 19 Shaykh Barakat (now Kamal al-Din Salah) Street behind Tahrir Square; the villa was demolished long ago.
  Herz built the head office of the former Crédit Foncier Égyptien on the corner of today's Abd al-Khaliq Tharwat and Muhammad Bey Farid Streets in downtown Cairo in the Beaux-Arts style following the designs of Carlo Prampolini. The building is still standing.
  In cooperation with Anton Battigelli, in 1898 Herz carried out extension work on the building of the Austro-Hungarian "Rudolf" Hospital (Ospedale Rodo
caption: Interior of the Rifai mosque.
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