Henrik Haggenmacher Sr.

 

The elder Henrik Haggenmacher had a long career before becoming a leading figure in the Budapest milling industry.

Henrik Haggenmacher was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1827. His family worked in the milling industry. (In the 19th century, Swiss mills were the most modern, which is why István Széchenyi introduced Swiss technology for the first steam mill in Hungary. An article about him in 1876 described him as follows: „Mr Haggenmacher is a thoughtful man, a miller through and through, who runs his business with enthusiasm and intelligence.” (Anyagi Érdekeink, 30 September 1876)

After his father's business went bankrupt, Henrik began travelling as a miller at the age of 19, after finishing secondary school. His first journey took him to Prague, to his older brother Kaspar Emmanuel, who was working there at the time. In 1850, he was employed at a mill in the Czech Republic, from where he came to Hungary, not alone, but with his brother Károly.

Both the elder Henrik and Károly, who was eight years his junior, found their calling in the Hungarian milling industry, and they helped the industry develop by constantly competing with each other. Károly did not start his own business, but he was a successful inventor and manager. Henrik's privately owned mill on Szemere Street was almost next door to the First Pest-Buda Steam Mill, one of his major competitors, where his brother Károly was chief engineer and technical director. However, their professional rivalry did not affect the brothers' relationship in their private lives. Károly also had a good technical sense and earned his fortune from the sale of his inventions.

It is not surprising that Swiss milling experts found employment in the Hungarian milling industry, as this industry was booming in Pest-Buda at the time. Henrik first found employment at the Blum mill on the Danube, then became the head miller at the Barber and Klusemann mill in Újlak, which had been newly established in 1853.

As soon as Henrik settled in Hungary, he started a family, but he did not choose a party in Hungary. Instead, he visited Winterthur in 1854 with the express purpose of marrying Maria Magdolna Liechti, who was 20 years old at the time. Over the years, his wife gave birth to 12 children, 10 of whom survived to adulthood.

With his wife's dowry of 200 francs, Henrik was able to become independent. This money was enough to lease the „Ördögmalom” (Devil's Mill) in Buda, which was then still a watermill operating on the Rákos stream. Henrik began developing it relatively quickly and switched to steam power as early as 1858.

Henrik Haggenmacher was no stranger to innovation. At that time, millstones were still widely used in the milling industry, with the harder varieties being the most suitable. Most millstones, for example, were made from stones extracted from French and Belgian mines. However, in the 1850s, a suitable stone was found in Hungary, in the village of Fony in Abaúj County, and it was tested in Haggenmacher's Ördögmalma mill.

He became a citizen of Pest in 1861, while retaining his Swiss citizenship. He sold his first mill in 1867 and used the proceeds to build a new mill on Szemere Street. He also invested his growing fortune in real estate, purchasing a farmstead in Herminamező and plots of land on the then newly developed Sugárút.

He also obtained a flour selling licence from the Pest City Council, so he sold flour from 1868 onwards. He was a founding shareholder of the Pesti Molnárok és Sütők Gőzmalom Rt. (Pest Millers and Bakers Steam Mill Ltd.). Haggenmacher's mill was privately owned, i.e. it was not a joint-stock company, yet it was able to compete with the 11 other steam mills in Budapest belonging to larger companies. The quality of his products is well demonstrated by the fact that he won an award at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna.

However, he then suffered a near-fatal blow when, while he was in Vienna at the World Exhibition, his mill on Szemere Street burned down. Fortunately, he was able to rebuild the mill and even purchase a new one from his insurance payout and his own capital.

He was not only skilled in economics, but also in engineering, and proved himself as an inventor. He was constantly developing new ideas and held numerous patents in the milling industry. There is also information that his solutions were used in the equipment of other mills. For example, in 1857, a new mill was built in Nagysáros, near Eperjes, using his solution.

In 1876, Anyagi Érdekeink wrote the following about Henrik Haggenmacher's steam mill (30 September 1867): „This is because, when the new equipment was installed in this factory, the Wegmann roller grinding system, which had been known for about two years, was implemented consistently throughout. However, the roller stands are not designed according to Wegmann's method, but according to Mr Haggenmacher's own invention. Wegmann's rollers are simple, they only operate once, and after each crushing, the ground material immediately reaches the sorting rollers. Haggenmacher has combined four rollers, with the middle rollers working on both sides of the outer surfaces, and the ground material is continuously crushed three times in succession by the rollers before being transferred to the separating rollers.”

The paper also mentioned Haggenmacher's own inventions, including a grain threshing machine, a flour mixer and several other smaller devices. The paper also reported that the mill had been awarded a medal of honour by the Hungarian Industrial Association.

It is interesting to note that he did not have his milling machines manufactured by Ganz, but in the Czech Republic. This was probably for reasons of confidentiality, as Ganz was not only a factory but also a competing industrial development company. Haggenmacher presumably took great care to ensure that his solutions did not fall into the wrong hands.

He not only found domestic markets for his mills, but also established extensive foreign connections for his products, not only in Europe but also in South America.

In addition to the milling industry, he also became involved in the beer industry, becoming a shareholder in 1867 in a small local brewery in Kőbánya called Barber-Klusemann, which was transformed into a joint-stock company called Első Magyar Részvényyserfőzde Rt. He saw further opportunities in the brewing industry, because during the Vienna stock market crash of 1873, he bought the Frohner brewery in Promontor (today's Budafok), the management of which he handed over to his eldest son, also named Henrik, in 1880.

In the 1880s, he invested in more and more real estate, built high-quality apartment buildings, and owned a total of 16 apartment buildings, which also provided him with a handsome income.

His social status is well illustrated by the fact that at the coronation in 1867, Henrik Haggenmacher was among the members of the Budapest banderium in the horse parade, wearing a light blue kalpak with a heron feather, a white coat, blue trousers, a blue tie and black boots.

As he retained his Swiss citizenship, the respected entrepreneur became Swiss consul in 1872, a position he held with great diligence for 40 years.

In addition, Henrik Haggenmacher carried out extensive social and charitable work, including actions such as donating the price of one and a half hundredweight of flour to the National Institute for the Blind in 1874. After his wife's death, he established a 4,000-korona foundation in her memory for the benefit of the National Protestant Orphanage. When he turned 80, he donated a total of 50,000 crowns to 24 charitable organisations, including the National Child Protection League, the White Cross Orphanage, the Protestant Orphanage and the Sanatorium for Lung Patients.

Henrik Haggenmacher lived a very long life, outliving even his eldest son, and passed away on 5 June 1917 at the age of 90 (one month after his son, Henrik Haggenmacher Jr.).

 

Interesting facts

In the summer of 1874, there was a minor debate in the Capital City Public Works Council about rebuilding the mill that had burned down in 1873. The mill was located within the city limits, where, according to a 1872 regulation, only factories operating with steam engines with a maximum of 4-5 horsepower could be established, but the burned-down mill operated with larger machines. One view prevailing in the Public Works Council was that Haggenmacher should not be allowed to rebuild his mill, while another was that the steam engines on which the regulation was based remained intact, meaning that Haggenmacher would not be establishing a new plant, but only rebuilding the damaged building. The council sent a special committee headed by Vice-President Frigyes Podmaniczky to investigate the matter, which ultimately concluded that it was indeed a case of restoration, and therefore granted permission for the reconstruction by a vote of 8 to 6.

One of Henrik Haggenmacher's businesses was the Clemens restaurant in City Park. In 1877, he had an ice house built for this purpose, but during construction in the autumn of 1877, an accident occurred in which seven people were buried under loose soil, two of whom, the foreman and a day labourer, died. The foreman was found responsible for the accident, as he had worked recklessly, ignoring the bricklayer's warnings.

 

• Literature:
• Zsuzsa Pekár: Haggenmachers in Hungary. The first generation Turul 1994 (Bulletin of the Hungarian Heraldic and Genealogical Society) Booklet 1-2.
• Abuses by the Haggenmacher brewery Magyar Kereskedők Lapja (Hungarian Traders' Journal) 13 May 1905.
• Sources of Budapest's History. Districts, neighbourhoods: Budafok-Tétény (Budapest, 2002)
• István Pénzes: András Mechwart 1834–1907 (Foundry Museum Booklets) 8 2001