Rudolf Wels

Architect Rudolf Wels was one of the most remarkable personality of the interwar architecture in Czechoslovakia. He studied at the Viennese Academy by Friedrich Ohman. He attended there courses by Adolf Loose, whose influence on his future work in Vienna is very considerable. Rudolf Wels worked in Karlovy Vary from the 1920s. He reconstructed and built new structures for the famous glassworks factory Moser in 1921-1922. He also designed several sets of vases with art decor. These were successful on The International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Art that was taking place in Paris in 1925.

He designed Municipal House of Culture in 1923-1925 in Sokolov, where he built two school buildings as well in the next year – the German municipal school and Czech school. His most highly regarded works contain the building of the insurance company (presently health centre) on the Milada Horáková Square, spa house Bellevue and the building of Spa N. VI in Carlsbad. Rudolf Wels moved to Prague in the 1930s, where he founded an atelier with Guido Lagus. Wels was detained in Terezín in 1942 and next year sent to the concentration camp Auschwitz, where he was murdered.

Text: Michael Rund. In: Archiweb