Viktor Axmann

Viktor Axmann was a Croatian Jewish architect. He spent most of his life in Osijek, but he died in 1946 in a communist labor camp in Valpovo. He finished the Technical College in Munich, Germany. Afterwards he specialized in Vienna, Austria, where he got in touch with contemporary ideas of urban architecture of Josef Hoffman, Otto Wagner and Camillo Sitte. In 1905, he became a construction entrepreneur in Osijek, where he built numerous secession-style buildings. His most important work of that period is the Urania Cinema, for which he received a prestigious award at the 1st International Cinema Exhibition in Vienna. After World War I he gradually abandoned the secession in favor of modernism. In that period, he built numerous architecturally important buildings in Osijek, such as the Apprentices' Dormitory, Workers' Insurance Office, two pavilions of the Osijek Hospital, House of Falcons, Boarding School, the palace of the County Office of Workers' Insurance and Office of the Matches' Factory "Drava" Pension Fund.