Heinrich Kulka

Henry Kulka was born into a family of Jewish draper Moritz Kulka from Litovel. In 1918–1923, he studied architecture at the Technical University in Vienna, but the local conservative environment discouraged him and he did not finish his studies. In 1919, he went to the private school of Adolf Loos, which was in operation only briefly. In the same year, he became Loos’s assistant, and since 1927, he led his office in Vienna. Kulka remained in Vienna even after Loos’s death in 1933, working as an independent architect. In 1938, after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, he fled to Hradec Králové where the family of his wife Hilda Beranová lived. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia, he escaped to England, and then, allegedly at the intercession of Jan Masaryk, to New Zealand. After the war, he briefly returned to Hradec Králové, but he soon fled to Auckland, New Zealand, again. He worked on projects for the local Fletcher Construction Company until 1960; after retirement, he designed private buildings.

LZL