Lajos Oelschläger-Őry (born in 1896 in the town of Kassa – in Slovakian Košice; died in 1984 at Miskolc) was a Hungarian architect of German origin from the Szepes region. He spent the most productive period of his life (between the two world wars, during the time of the first Czechoslovak Republic) in Kassa. His most famous buildings in Kassa are, among others: the Forum (Slovan) movie theatre, the Orthodox synagogue and school, the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Firehouse and the summer swimming stadium. These have become by now an integral part of the protected historic building stock of the town of Kassa. And due to this fact, the architect became one of the key personalities the ECoC Košice 2013 project (along with the writer Sándor Márai, the sculptor Gyula Kosice and the film director Juraj Jakubisko).
Among his later works the Town Hall and the Lutheran church of Tornalja (now Tornaľa), the Scala (Tokajík) movie theatre in Eperjes (Prešov), the Town Hall and the Capitol (Mier) movie theatre in Nagymihály (Michalovce), the Jewish school of Ungvár (Užhorod), the buildings of the Commerce Academy and the Jewish Orphanage in Munkács (Mukacheve), the Community Center at Nagyszőlős (Vynohradiv), the Roman Catholic church in Ladomérmindszent (Ladomerská Vieska), as well as the restaurant Taverna, a building extension at the Grandhotel in Ótátrafüred (Starý Smokovec) deserve mentioning.
Lajos Oelschläger became a member of the Order of Vitéz in 1939 and Magyarized his name to Lajos Őry. In 1945, as a result of the Beneš decrees he had to leave Kassa and Czechoslovakia together with his family. He settled in Miskolc, Hungary. There, as an employee of the socialist design companies Északterv and Borsodterv, he designed several buildings, such as the Foal farm of Csipkéskút, the Elementary school of Miklós street and the Pharmacy Center in Miskolc, as well as the Diósgyőr Health Centre.
The architects Adriana Priatková and Péter Pásztor, members of the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University of Košice, organized the exhibition of the architect’s work with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and the Hungarian Academy of Arts. The opening of the exhibition took place on December 6, 2012 in Kassa (Košice) in the exhibition space on Erzsébet (Alžbetina) street of the East Slovak Gallery. The same gallery hosted the presentation of the richly illustrated 344-page monograph written in three languages (Slovak, Hungarian and English) about the architect on January 18, 2013 (on the eve of the Opening Ceremony of the European Capital of Culture year in 2013).
After its premiere, the exhibition travelled to Miskolc, Bratislava, Uzhhorod, Mukacheve, Berehove, etc. Cluj-Napoca is the 13th place where the exhibition can be seen.
Péter Pásztor