Andor Szende

Andor Szende was born in Budapest as Andor Steigenberger into a Jewish family from Vojvodina. After graduating from State Grammar School he was admitted to the Technical University. During this time, he was a versatile track and field athlete representing the Műegyetemi Athletikai és Football Club (MAFC). He excelled particularly in high and long jump. After setting a national record in the standing long jump with 3.04 m in 1907, Szende won the standing high jump at the Hungarian Olympic trials in 1908 setting a national record with 1.44 m. He was entered in jumping events at the 1908 and 1912 Olympic Games but did not compete at either Games.

His main sport, however, became figure skating, where he achieved his first great success in 1908 as Hungarian youth champion. Because men’s and women’s disciplines had not yet been separated in Hungary in these early days, he was beaten by world champion Lili Kronberger at the next two senior championships. When she gave up competing after her marriage, Szende won national titles in 1911, 1912, and 1914 and, after World War I, 1922. Internationally, he won silver at the 1913 European Championship and three bronze medals at the World Championships (1910, 1912, 1913). In figure skating, he remained loyal to his club Budapesti KE throughout his career. He finished his career in 1922 but was nevertheless entered in figure skating at the 1924 Olympic Winter Games. Szende continued to train for figure skating and play ice hockey for several years. In the 1930s he acted as a judge in figure skating at European and World Championships. The Hungarian Olympic Committee nominated him as a judge for the 1948 Winter Olympics but again he did not appear.

Szende graduated as an architect in 1909 and then continued his studies in Berlin. Prior to World War I, he won several competitions as an architect for, amongst others, the Concert Hall and Town Hall of Cluj (1910), the Palace of Culture in Bratislava, the palace of the Bank of Budapest (1911), the Palace of Culture in Kálmán Tisza Square (1911), the Ice Palace (1912), and the New National Theatre (1913). Most of them, however, remained plans. In 1915, he was drafted in World War I and received high distinctions twice.

In the interwar-period, he was mainly known for his castle designs and his neo-baroque and neo-renaissance monumental style, which earned him the Budapest Hall of Art Architecture Award in 1927. Not before the 1940s, he designed some residential buildings in a modern style. In 1955, at the age of almost 70, he submitted a proposal to the design competition for the Pantheon in Moscow, which was never built, however.

His first wife, Ilona “Helen” Popper, died at the age of just 26. His second wife, Magdolna Szepesi, was also an international figure skating judge. The couple had two children. Nothing is known about their fate. He was laid to rest in an Israelite cemetery in Budapest.