Coronation decoration for Coronation of Charles IV.

Károly Kós received his commission for the preparatory works of the coronation ceremony of King Charles IV and Queen Zita, held on 30 December 1916, at the beginning of the month, together with fellow architects Jenő Lechner, Móric Pogány, and Dénes Györgyi. Immediately following the funeral of Emperor Franz Joseph, a meeting was held on 1 December to prepare the coronation. The artistic direction and the design of the ceremonial settings and costumes were entrusted to Count Miklós Bánffy, stage and costume designer and experienced director of the state theatres. Barely one month was available to complete the work, in winter and under wartime conditions.

Their workshop—serving simultaneously as design studio and office—was set up in unheated shop premises on Dísz Square. As Bánffy later recalled:

“In the longest room, wide drawing tables were lined up along the façade, on which the architects—Dénes Györgyi, Károly Kós, Pogány, and occasionally Lechner—had to set down precise plans on paper using long drafting rules, while behind them the young Lehoczky was painting six-metre-high coats of arms onto the walls.”

— Miklós Bánffy: Memoirs. Literary and Artistic Writings, Polis Publishing House, Cluj, 2012.

Kós later reflected on his role as follows:

“On the occasion of the coronation of 1916, two of us were commissioned to design and execute the decorations of the route between the Royal Palace and Matthias Church, the coronation mound for the sword ceremony, the grandstands, and related elements. That we were able to complete this work—undertaken on my part only under the pressure of my difficult circumstances at the time—relatively successfully, in the midst of the war and within a total of only four weeks, was undoubtedly due to Dénes Györgyi’s merit rather than my own…”

— Károly Kós, letter to Mihály Kubinszky, 2 June 1967, in: Péter Sas (ed.), The Correspondence of Károly Kós, Mundus Hungarian University Press, Budapest, 2003, pp. 624–629.

Jenő Lechner designed the entrance and interior decoration of Matthias Church. According to the plans of Móric Pogány, sculptor Manó Rákos created the platform around the Holy Trinity statue on which King Charles IV took his oath. The coronation mound erected on St. George’s Square—where the king, mounted on horseback, performed the ceremonial sword strokes as a vow to defend the country—was designed by Károly Kós. In its formal character, the structure resembled its 1867 predecessor, and in keeping with tradition, the mound was composed of soil brought to the ceremony from every county of the country. During the construction of the mound and the oath-taking platform, a heated wooden enclosure was erected around the worksite.

In an article published the following year, art writer János Szablya assessed the coronation décor as follows:

“It must be stated that the invited artists, despite many difficulties, successfully fulfilled the tasks they had undertaken.”

— János Szablya: Coronation and Art, in Magyar Iparművészet, Vol. XX, nos. 1–3, 1917, pp. 6–21.