Oskar Kaufmann

Kaufmann was born in Újszentanna/Neu Sankt Anna (today Sântana), near Arad, Romania), the son of a wealthy and prestigious Jewish family in Hungary.

The tension was so great that Kaufmann's parents refused to support him financially, so that he had to leave Hungary and continue his education in Germany, at the Großherzogliche Technische Hochschule (English: Grand Ducal Technical College) in Karlsruhe.

Also during his education in Karlsruhe, Kaufmann met his future bride, Emma Gönner, daughter of the mayor of the town of Baden-Baden.

From 1905 until 1908, Kaufmann worked on small projects in Sehring's office, such as a bed and breakfast in Berlin that would later be destroyed in World War II.

It was therefore significant when Kaufmann was selected, by a jury including such notable architects as Max Liebermann and Otto March, to design a new building for the Charlottenburg opera.

When the decision to exclude Kaufmann from a competition to redesign the Berlin Royal Opera for the technical reason that he had not received German citizenship in his thirty years in Germany, was met with scorn and disagreement in the press and among architectural experts, his newfound reputation was only confirmed.

During construction of the new City Theater of Bremerhaven, Kaufmann met the young Hungarian architect Eugen Stolzer.

Stolzer had studied at the Technical University of Munich from 1904 to 1908 and had won the Hungarian National Architecture award as well as a prize from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Some furniture designed by Kaufmann was exhibited for the first time after World War II in 2015 by Markus Winter at Lampedo Gallery, New York.

In 2016 the Bröhan Museum showed his furniture in the exhibition Deutschland gegen Frankreich – Der Kampf um den Stil.

His many contacts helped him on his journey, but the outbreak of World War II kept him from reaching his intended final destination, England.

However, the rising pressure put on the Romanian Jewish community by the fascist government of Ion Antonescu and Horia Sima forced them to move once again, to Hungary.

Kaufmann avoided the mass deportation of Jews that took place in Hungary in 1944, but he was without income and found his financial situation worsening.

In 1947, the new Hungarian government, under President Zoltán Tildy, decreed that any artist over the age of 60, which included the then 74-year-old Kaufmann, would receive a state pension.