Architect Letzel - the author of the palace that survived Hiroshima

Prague - Architect and builder Jan Letzel became a link between Japan and the Czech lands at the beginning of the 20th century, working in the Land of the Rising Sun from 1907 to 1923. He created an extensive body of work for which he earned the admiration of the Japanese. He constructed both private and public buildings, and his most significant project, the Industrial Palace in Hiroshima, was intended for exhibition purposes at the time it was built (1913-1915), ultimately becoming a symbol of peace. The native of Náchod, Letzel, who was also involved in the decoration of the Art Nouveau Hotel Europa in Prague, died 90 years ago, on December 26, 1925.
Letzel's reinforced concrete palace, originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Palace for product exhibitions, was opened in August 1915. Thirty years later, on August 6, 1945, an American atomic bomb was detonated in its vicinity, destroying the city, but Letzel's building remained standing. The palace, now called the Atomic Dome or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, is still maintained in the same condition as it was just after the explosion. It serves as a reminder of the devastation of nuclear weapons and as a symbol of hope for a world without nuclear weapons. In 1996, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Jan Letzel was born on April 9, 1880, in Náchod, as the sixth child of hotelier Jan Letzel. From 1901 to 1904, he studied architecture at the School of Art and Crafts in Prague under Professor Jan Kotěra, becoming his most talented student. His classmate was, for instance, Josef Gočár.
In Bohemia, from 1904 to 1905, he participated in the modification of the external metal elements of the Art Nouveau Hotel U arcivévody Štěpána (later Hotel Šroubek, now Hotel Europa) on Wenceslas Square. The only independent building he realized in Bohemia in 1905 was the spa house in Mšené near Budyně nad Ohří. He applied Japanese motifs in the decoration of the Art Nouveau interior here.
He then went to Egypt, where he worked for the court architect of the Egyptian viceroy, and subsequently moved to Japan in 1907. There, he was initially employed in a German atelier, later joining forces with another Czech, Jan Karel Hora. They were successful, designing buildings of all kinds - villas, residences, university campuses, and monumental structures. However, only fragments of these remain to this day - the gate of the Cemetery of Foreign Legions in Yokohama and the gate of a school in Tokyo. Letzel's reinforced concrete constructions, which withstood frequent earthquakes, brought him great prestige in Japan.
Letzel was happy in Japan, as evidenced by his enthusiastic letters to Kotěra. He was fascinated by the centuries-old culture and way of life, learned calligraphy, and wore a kimono. He raced around Tokyo or Yokohama in a Laurin & Klement car. He also adopted a little girl named Hanako, for whom he paid a scholarship to a dance academy in the USA and later introduced her to his circle of Czechs and Czech families. His probably last building, completed in 1916, was the Mijadžima Hotel near Hiroshima.
After the end of World War I and the establishment of Czechoslovakia, he worked as the first unpaid trade representative of the Czechoslovak Embassy in Tokyo. In March 1920, after 13 years of separation from his family, he returned by ship through Hong Kong, Singapore, and Marseille to Prague. In Prague, he initially worked as an occasional advisor to the Ministry of Commerce, then began to focus on organizing Czechoslovak-Japanese relations in the commercial sphere. In this role, he established contact with the Japanese company Suzuki and returned to Japan in 1922.
There, in September 1923, he experienced a catastrophic earthquake that surpassed all his previous experiences: in the vicinity of Yokohama and Tokyo, it claimed over 100,000 lives. Shaken, he returned to his homeland, and shortly thereafter began to exhibit signs of mental illness.
The last months of his life were spent in a mental health facility in the Catherine complex in Prague's New Town. He died at the young age of 45, on December 26, 1925, in Prague. He is buried in the cemetery in his hometown of Náchod.
Several documentaries have been made about his life and work, and a book has also been published.