Józef Awin

Józef Awin (1883, Lviv — 1942, Lviv, Yanivsky concentration camp) was an engineer, architect, restorer, photographer, graphic artist, painter and watercolorist, historian and theorist of art, collector.

Józef Awin was born in a patriarchal family of Aaron-Leib Awin, a merchant, and Jitta Awin, née Katz. He studied at the Higher Technical School in Lviv in 1902-1906 and at the Technical University in Munich in 1906-1907, where he got his diploma of an engineer architect.

Awin founded his own architectural design bureau in Lviv in 1911; in 1919, the bureau was located on Ochronek (now Konyskoho) street 6 and later on Pełczyńska (now Vitovskoho) street 37, in a house which Awin built for himself in 1928. From the late 1900s he actively worked as a construction engineer and architect designer. As early as this period he began to gradually acquire a reputation of the leading ideologue of the Jewish stylistic trend in the architecture of Eastern Galicia. In his program of this style, he called for the use of the traditions of ancient Jewish art in Galicia, in particular in the architecture and decorative arrangement of synagogues through stylization of motifs of old Jewish manuscripts, fabrics, tombstones, metal products, etc. in the décor. Yuriy Biriuliov, a Lviv researcher, considers Awin's architectural projects and theoretical views of this period in the context of the secession art. Sergey Kravtsov, an Israeli historian of architecture, associates them with German national romanticism and neobaroque. Józef Awin presented his views of the national art in lectures and articles published in Polish periodicals Przyszlość, Wschód, Moria, Chwila, Nasza Opinia, as well as in Viennese and Budapest magazines Menorah and Das Zelt, Múlt és Jövő and others. His architectural projects of the later period, namely 1920-1930s, belong, in terms of style, to the local modifications of Art Deco and constructivism.

In implementing his projects, he collaborated with famous Lviv sculptors, including Józef Starzyński, Zygmunt Kurczyński, Bernard Kober and others.

As a professional architect and popularizer of Jewish art, Awin took an active part in the life of the religious community. It was on his initiative that in 1925 the Committee for the Protection of Jewish Art Monuments under the Jewish Community in Lviv (pol. Kuratorium opieki nad zabytkami sztuki żydowskiej przy żydowskiej gminie wyznaniowej we Lwowie) was established, where he was responsible for restoration works. During his work in this organization, Józef Awin created a large number of drawings and photographs which he exhibited at various exhibitions in Lviv. In 1928, at the Exhibition of Jewish Books and Monuments, photographs of Jewish architectural monuments, as well as drawings and watercolors of objects of worship from the Great City Synagogue in Lviv and his private collection were shown. He was also the initiator and co-founder of the Museum of Jewish Community in Lviv (opened in 1934) and was actively involved in the museum’s activities. Awin was a city councilor, a honorary long-term member of the Humanitarian Society Leopolis B'nei Brith, founded several cultural and educational and charitable organizations, including the Jewish Intelligentsia Club, the Union of Jewish Engineers involved in the reconstruction of the Land of Israel, the Jewish Engineers Union in Lviv, etc. As an engineer architect, he belonged to the Professional Union of Architects and Builders in Lviv and to the Society of Architects of the Polish Republic, where he was a member of the Board in 1936-1937.

Together with his brother he co-owned the Lviv firm "T. and J. Awins. Glass and crystal" (in 1934 it was located on Jagełłońska (now Hnatiuka) street 4).

During the Second World War Awin, like most Lviv Jews, found himself in the ghetto. In 1942, in the course of the so-called August action, he was taken from the ghetto to the Yanivsky concentration camp in Lviv and executed by a firing squad.