Rudolf Wels (28 April 1882, in

Osek OSEK (''Offene Systeme und deren Schnittstellen für die Elektronik in Kraftfahrzeugen''; English: "''Open Systems and their Interfaces for the Electronics in Motor Vehicles''") is a standards body that has produced specifications for an embedded o ...

near Rokycany, western

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

– 8 March 1944, in

KZ Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

) was a Czech

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

active in western Bohemia and in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. Rudolf Wels worked in the Karlovy Vary Region and also Prague. He designed glass for the Moser company and a designed film sets (including for the film '' Workers, Let's Go''). Wels was one of the most outstanding inter-war architects in Czechoslovakia. He studied at the Vienna Academy with

Friedrich Ohmann Friedrich Ohmann (21 December 1858, Lemberg - 6 April 1927, Vienna) was an Austrian architect in the Historicist style. Life and work His father was a building official. In 1877, he began his studies in architecture at the Technical Universit ...

. In Vienna he also attended courses given by

Adolf Loos Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos (; 10 December 1870 – 23 August 1933) was an Austrian and Czechoslovak architect, influential European theorist, and a polemicist of modern architecture. He was an inspiration to modernism and a widely-k ...

, who was to have a crucial influence on his future creative activity. From the early 1920s, Rudolf Wels worked in Karlovy Vary, where, in the period 1921-1922 he worked for the celebrated glass manufacturer Moser, refurbishing existing buildings and designing new ones. He also designed several sets of glasses for that company, as well as artistically-decorated vases, which received awards at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts held in Paris in 1925. In 1923 he designed the Miners’ Building at Falkenau (now Sokolov), where, a year later he was responsible for the design of two schools and other buildings. Among his many projects in Karlovy Vary, the most successful are the Health Insurance Building (now Polyclinic) on Náměstí Milady Horáková, the Bellevue spa hotel and the (now demolished) 6th Spa Pavilion. In the 1930s Rudolf Wels moved to Prague, where he opened a design studio jointly with the architect Guido Lagus. In 1934 Wels and Lagus were responsible for the art direction of four feature films, and in the subsequent years they designed a number of luxury apartment buildings. In 1939, Rudolf Wels transcribed the memoirs of his father Šimon (né Wedeles) and added an afterword. The manuscript was published fifty years later as “U Bernátů”(At the Bernards’). In 1942, Rudolf Wels was interned with his wife Ida and son Martin at Terezín, from where they were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp the following year. All three died when 7000 remaining inmates of the “family camp” were killed in the gas chambers in July 1944.

External links

* http://www.zapad.cz/fotos/2006/09/2734b_medium.jpg - plaque from Rudolf Wels {{DEFAULTSORT:Wels, Rudolf 1882 births 1944 deaths 20th-century Czech people 20th-century Czech architects category:Czech Jews Czech expatriates in Austria Theresienstadt Ghetto prisoners Czech people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp People from Rokycany District Czechoslovak civilians killed in World War II