Ágoston Kohner

Ágoston Kohner was the younger son of the well-known wholesale merchant Adolf Kohner Ábrahám Adolf Kohner. Ágoston did not join the original family firm, but took a role in the Kohner Adolf Sons general partnership, which his brother Zsigmond had founded independently in 1872, as a spin-off from the former firm. He was not only involved in this family firm, but also held important economic positions in his own right. In the family firm, the Kohner Adolf Sons General Partnership, all the older men had an equal share of ownership, but decisions were made by the senior, oldest man, who was August's brother Sigismund. The company managed most of the businesses, the family land holdings, and often covered the family's personal expenses.

Born in 1847, Augustus originally studied engineering. At the time of his death, the newspaper Equality reported that after his engineering studies he worked in railway construction, which is not surprising given that the Kohner family had significant interests in railways. According to other sources, however, he was more interested in chemistry. When Sigismund founded his own company, Augustus joined it, not at the time of its foundation in May 1872, but a few months later in December 1872, and as part of an internal division of labour, Augustus turned to chemistry.

In 1872, Ágoston Kohner married Rosa Stein, the wife of the equally wealthy Stein family, and with this marriage the family acquired an interest in the Szászberek estate, where the Kohner brothers later established a model farm. It was not only Ágoston Kohner of the Stein family of Besenyőszög who married, but also one of his brothers, Károly. The Lower Sasberek estate was purchased in 1874. The original owners of this estate were the Prince Esterházy family. In later years, the Lower Sassberek estate became a model farm and was very prominent in the Kohner family's agricultural enterprises, and as such it became nationally renowned. The size of the estate is well illustrated by the fact that parts of it were linked by a narrow-gauge railway 14,5 kilometres long. A new Art Nouveau mansion was built on the estate in 1901.

In the general partnership of Adolf Kohner's sons, although the senior, i.e. Zsigmond, was the dominant leader at the time, the businesses and landed estates owned by the firm were not usually tied to a single person. Within the company, Agoston Kohner brought together the domestic chemical enterprises in which the company had an interest. The chemical interests were reinforced by the fact that Ágoston was involved in the founding of the Szeged distillery, of which he later became president.

It was on his initiative that the National Association of Hungarian Chemical Manufacturers was founded in 1904.

Agoston himself has been involved in the founding of many companies, and has held a significant role on a number of boards, not only in the founding of chemical companies, but also in mining, railways and insurance. In 1889, Ágoston Kohner became a board member of the Hungarian-French Insurance Company, the First Hungarian Weaving and Tying Company and the Pannonia Steam Mill Company.

Of the Kohner brothers, Ágoston was probably the most active company founder, and in the early 1890s his name appears in the founding of the Upper Hungarian Mining and Coalworks Joint Stock Company, the Hungarian General Sulphuric Acid, Fertilizer and Chemical Industry Joint Stock Company, the Szeged Hemp Mill Joint Stock Company, and the Budapest Giro and Mint Joint Stock Company. His name is among the founders of the Hungarian Trading Company, and he is also among the directors of the Gölnicvölgyi Vasút a Schlick Iron Foundry and Machine Works Joint Stock Company. It can therefore be seen that he had interests in many branches of industry and commerce.

Ágoston Kohner was not only the founder of the National Association of Hungarian Industrialists, but he was also elected to the executive committee of the GYOSZ when the association was founded in 1902. The newspaper Egyenlőség wrote this about him on 15 December 1907 at his farewell:

"In him we find the equalizer of the opposites of capital and labour. His life principle was not the exploitation of capital from the bloody sweat of others, for he himself worked more than any other worker. His work was physical and mental. And when success followed him, he weighed it with the heart that made him a good man. He did not preach altruism, but he followed it, and was only a foreman in all his undertakings, but not an oligarch. Few men can create, maintain and secure the economic prosperity of a country from such an individual as August Kohner was."

King Franz Joseph honoured Ágoston Kohner's activities in the national economy with the Order of the Iron Crown, III Class. Ágoston Kohner passed away unexpectedly on 11 December 1907 at the age of 61.

Points of interest

The Kohner family loved cars, so it is not surprising that in 1909, after her husband's death, Ágoston Kohner's wife Róza obtained her driving licence and became one of the first Hungarian women drivers, driving her Mercedes herself.

Baron Jenő Kohner, the youngest son of Ágoston Kohner, was a real playboy, also a car enthusiast, but besides his active and successful participation in the economic life (he was considered a genius), he was a well-known figure in the nightlife. He had three children by Etel Balogh, whom he never married.

Literature:

• Béla Kempelen:Hungarian noble families
• Hungarian Jewish Encyclopedia
• https://www.milev.hu/jahrzeiten/tevet-29-kohner-zsigmond?lang=en
• Norbert Hlbocsányi: The Kohner Family Businesses in Studies on the Past of Budapest - 37. (2012.)
• Norbert Hlbocsányi: The Baron Kohner family of Szászberek in: the Yearbook of the Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County Archives 29 (Szolnok, 2015)