Kurt Jonas
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Kurt Jonas | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1914 |
| Died | 1942 (aged 27–28) |
| Citizenship | South Africa Germany |
| Alma mater | Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin University of the Witwatersrand Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Employer | Harold Le Roith |
Kurt Jonas (1914–1942) was a German-South African architect. As a disciple of Modernist architecture, he was part of what Le Corbusier termed Le Groupe Transvaal, together with Harold Le Roith, Rex Distin Martienssen, John Fassler, Bernard Cooke, Duncan Howie, Monte Bryer and Roy Kantorowich.[4] According to the architect and architectural historian, Clive Chipkin, Jonas was "aware of the need that the new architecture and fundamental social change in South Africa should be complimentary."[5]
Jonas was born in Johannesburg in the Union of South Africa in 1914 to a German Jewish migrant parents.[2][1][6] The family returned to Germany in 1918 and Jonas studied at the Lessing-Gymnasium in Frankfurt. He studied classics and later economics and law at the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin in Berlin.[2][1][6] He returned with his family to South Africa in 1934 in the wake of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany.[1][6] In the same year he enrolled to study a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.[1][6] Jonas later told Rusty Bernstein and Jock Isacowitz that he had been subject to antisemitism in Germany.[7]