Unger Eliza, née Goldstein - (26.03.1899, Przemyśl - 26.08.1983, Warsaw) - engineer and architect.

She was born on 26 March 1899 in Przemyśl, into a Jewish, assimilated intelligentsia family, as the daughter of Eng. Joachim Goldstein and Marianna, née Kuttin[1.1].

In 1924, she graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Lviv Polytechnic, and two years later became a member of the Polish Polytechnic Society in Lviv. One of her first jobs she performed after receiving her engineering degree was an architectural and conservation inventory of a synagogue (unfortunately, it is not known which one), commissioned by the local Jewish Community. 

In 1925, in Lviv, she married Oswald Erik Unger[1.2], later to become an engineer constructing roads and bridges, whom she met during her studies and with whom, from 1927, she ran a construction-technical office (in cooperation with Eng. Edward Jakóbowicz), under the name "O. i E. Unger i E. Jakóbowicz".

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The residential house of Eliza and Oswald Unger at ul. Kapitańska in Gdynia, in the Grabówek district, designed by themselves. Photo from Jarosław Drozd's private archive.

In 1929, already without a partner, the Unger family moved the company to the dynamically developing city of Gdynia and registered it with the local Land Court under RHA No. 174 and the name "Inżynierowie O. i E. Ungerowie Spółka z o.o. w Gdyni". The couple officially moved to Gdynia on 10 July 1930. In the Grabówek district they built two villas at 4 and 6 Kapitańska Street. The first constituted the company's headquarters, while the neighbouring was the family house, where their two sons were born: Józef Andrzej (b. 14 July 1932, d. 23 June 2018) and Piotr Marian (b. 18 March 1934, d. 6 March 2010). 

The former recalled the office as follows:

"my parents had a separate building right next door for the business they ran. There, my mother created her work - on a drawing board and using wonderful tools that Grandpa Goldstein gave her for her diploma. Many of these triangles, as well as the t-square, survived the war and were only lost after the death of the Parents. They were made of dark wood with black edges, so that they matched the décor of that study, [...]. It had two long windows to the south, a wall to the west, and walls to the east and south as well, but with doors to the living room and hall - importantly - made of glass. […] With its back to the west wall there was an armchair, [...] probably black, leather, like the other armchairs in the study, but not low, for chatting, rather high, for desk work. In front of the desk there was a table surrounded by these low chairs - I can't remember the details - and along the west wall and parts of the east and north walls (they weren't all glass) there were bookshelves, in dark walnut colour with black slats, glazed, modern, designed by my mum as was the entire study."

The Unger's company carried out all construction work in Gdynia, from drafting to execution. When registering it, the spouses encountered legal problems, as they were co-owners of the company with Eng. Jakubowicz, which was still in the commercial register of the Magistrates' Court in Lviv[1.3]. Therefore, there was a reasonable suspicion that they intended to run one enterprise under two companies: as a general partnership and as a limited liability company[1.4].

Refusing the Ungers to register the company by the Magistrates' Court in Gdynia forced them to place their affairs in the hands of their lawyer Dr. Otto Menasché, the leader of the Gdynia Zionists, thanks to whose efforts the Court of Appeal in Poznań overturned the appealed decision and returned the case to the District Court in Gdynia for consideration. As a result of this, the company was entered in the commercial register under number RHB 478 on 27 April 1938. Although it had minimal share capital (PLN 10,000), it proved to be one of the most important in Gdynia in its sector.

Undoubtedly the company's biggest projects were the construction (designed by Eliza Unger) of the modern office building of the company "Bananas. Polski Przemysł Owocowy Sp. z o. o." at 24 Kwiatkowskiego Street (1935) and the primary school at Leśna Street. The construction of a large fish cold store (1935-1936), a fish and vegetable cannery and a fish smoking plant of the "Anglo-Scott. Nadmorski Przemysł Rybny Abraham Feingold w Gdyni" company (1935), as well as "Bananas" warehouses (1938–1939) at the port, were also noteworthy.

However, the most representative building constructed by the Unger company was the luxurious tenement house of Izrael Reich and Wolf Birnbaum at 28 Abrahama Street (designed by Edward Fuhrschmied). In total, between 1929 and 1939, as many as 47 architectural projects by Eliza Unger (housing, schools, industrial buildings in the port), diverse in their form, were carried out within the city and port of Gdynia.

The outbreak of World War II found her in Warsaw, where she moved with her husband and sons in July 1939. She survived the occupation by hiding on the Aryan side as Eliza Unger, only changing her maiden name to "Goszczyńska". Her elder son, Józef Andrzej, recalled: "I never found out what prompted my mother, having received - I don't know from where, from whom - some call for registration, to tear it up in front of several people and declare that she would not register as a Jew. […] So why did my mother do so? I don't know and I'll never know. She herself claimed that it was a premonition, a divine grace, something mystical".

Until the late summer of 1940, Eliza Unger lived with her sons in Warsaw's Żoliborz, at Lisa-Kuli Street, on the first floor of the Grabowski villa, in a rented flat. They then moved to Anin (to the Baranowski villa, at Ósma Poprzeczna Street), in 1943 to Radzymin and in the summer of 1944 (shortly before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising) to Wieliszew, where, as A. Unger recalled, they lived in "a summer hut, no bigger than 5x5 m, with a furnace inside and a pump in front of the house". They moved back to Anin in November 1944 and to Warsaw in 1946. Earlier, in February 1945, Oswald Erik Unger, who had been a prisoner of war in Oflag II-C in Woldenberg (Dobiegniewo) throughout the Second World War, returned from captivity.

In the new reality of the People's Republic of Poland, under the leadership of Eliza Unger, the building of the Central Commission of Trade Unions (later OPZZ) at 36/40 Kopernika Street (corner of Sewerynów Street) in Warsaw was rebuilt. From 1949, she worked in scientific terms as the head of the Department at the Institute of Housing in Warsaw. In the 1960s, she received employment at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology, where she taught economics of design. She was a member of the Warsaw Branch of the Association of Polish Architects and in 1965 received the Bronze Badge of SARP for her active work.

In 1964 she was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the Gold Cross of Merit of the People's Republic of Poland. She was the only foreigner and the only woman to give a lecture (in 1960) at the Vienna Research Society for Housing, Building and Planning (German. Forschungsgesellschaft für Wohnen, Bauen und Planen, FGW), constituting a group of the Austrian Association of Engineers and Architects, and since 1969 an independent association[1.5]. Eliza Unger has also co-authored a publication: with Natan Borowski, Leon Makowiecki, entitled "Analiza projektów domów jednorodzinnych" (Wydawnictwo Arkady, Warsaw 1962) and with Karol Marwege titled "Studia nad programowaniem domów i mieszkań dla osób starszych" (Institute of Housing, Warsaw 1964).

She died on 26 August 1983 in Warsaw at the age of 84 and was buried at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw (cemetery section II B 24, row 3, place 8).

Jarosław Drozd PhD

The biography was created as part of the project "Polskie Żydówki dla Niepodległej" (Polish Jewish Women for the Independent), implemented with a grant from the Totalizator Sportowy Foundation.