Zsigmond Kohner

According to family tradition, the ancestor of the family, Mózes Náthán Kohner or Kuhner Náthán, moved from Leipzig to Neumarkt in the Czech Republic sometime at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, and later the family members established trade connections in Hungary. The first to move to Hungary was Adolf Kohner Ábrahám Kohner, who settled in Hódmezővásárhely, Csanád county, in the 1830s. Here, Adolf Kohner Ábrahám married into the family of Lőrinc Sváb, a wholesaler, and married his daughter Lujza. Through the marriage he also acquired land in Valkány in Torontál County. Adolf Ábrahám moved to Pest in 1840 and died here in 1860. His brother Henrik took over the family business, which was already operating in Pest, and the company was admitted to the Board of Wholesalers of Pest in 1852.

Zsigmond Kohner (1840-1908), the eldest son of Adolf Ábrahám, joined the family business in 1862, at the age of 22. In the same year, Zsigmond Kohner married Lujza (1843-1879), the 19-year-old daughter of Simon Vilmos Schosberger, a wealthy merchant from Pest, and had eight children, seven daughters and one son. The young couple moved into the second floor of the father-in-law's palace on the corner of Nádor utca and János Arany utca. Simon Vilmos Schosberger not only had a large fortune, but he was also the president of the Jewish community for a time and in 1863 he was granted a nobility with the first name of Tornyai.

Zsigmond worked in the family business, and in 1867 he participated in the foundation of the Pesti Bank-, Bizomány- und Árurakházi Részvénytársulat, but the Kohner family (with his uncle and brother Charles) also had a major interest in the concession of the Kassa-Oderberg Railway.

He left the family firm in 1872, presumably because of a dispute, and then founded the Adolf Kohner Sons Public Company, which was then based at his residence, his father-in-law's palace. He was also linked to his wife's family in another way, as he invested his wife's dowry in the new company. Initially, he was engaged in trading in produce and managing the family fortune, and many family, i.e. non-business, expenses were also covered by this company. All Kohner's sons of age (his brothers in the early days) were co-owners of the business, with the eldest, the senior, always taking over, a position held by Sigismund from the time of the foundation.

In addition to the family business, in 1873 he became one of the founders of the General Pest-Lipótváros Savings Bank, and a year later he became a member of the board of the Anglo-Hungarian Bank, and first a member of the board and then vice-president of the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest.

In addition to banking, he was a member of the board of directors of the Salgótarján Coal Mining Joint Stock Company from 1890, and from 1891 of the Adria Hungarian Royal Shipping Company.

Together with several members of the family he became a virilist in Pest in 1888. The members of the family, including Sigismund, became increasingly serious landowners, buying a great many manors, not to belong to the landowning social class, but for business purposes. The landed estates were responsible for the grain trade and for supplying their milling and sugar businesses with raw materials, i.e. agricultural produce. For example, thanks to the large landed estates, Sigismund became a virilist in Besenyszög in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county after his estate here. The family managed the land holdings in a grouped way, and there was little delimitation as to which property belonged to which family member.

In 1878 he was elected a member of the board of the Budapest Commodity and Stock Exchange, and in 1893 he was elected a member of the electoral court of the stock exchange in the grain hall. He held the post until 1906, when he resigned for health reasons - his heart was troubled. He did a lot for his parish, set up several foundations, founded the parish elementary and civil school for boys, and supported the establishment of the Adél Bródy Children's Hospital. Under Sigismund, Hungarian became the official administrative and ecclesiastical language of the Pest parish. This is how Zsigmond Kohner was described in the obituary of the January 5, 1908 issue of the newspaper Hét (The Week):

"For a merchant he was a Hungarian gentleman, and what means even more to us, he was seen to be one. And this appearance was not deceiving. Not so much so that even those who cannot consider a merchant as the same as a landowner saw in Zsigmond Kohner an individuality and worthiness. Life and will developed him into a creative and useful force. In the developmental phases of Hungarian industry and trade, he always saw with a keen eye the points of future value and devoted his talent and money to supporting enterprises that promised to be national economic factors. Transport and mining companies, the first-rate forces of the sugar and milling industries, were won over by him, and the commercial world saw in him one of its leading personalities."

Zsigmond Kohner was resting in Abbazia on 1 January 1908, as he did every year, when he died suddenly of heart failure. At that time the family had direct interests in 25 financial and industrial companies, as well as a number of other businesses indirectly.

Points of interest

Zsigmond Kohner's daughter Helén married her cousin, Dr. Adolf Kohner in 1891. It is likely that the marriage was somewhat arranged, that is to say, that it was made with the knowledge, or even the will, of the father, Zsigmond. Dr. Adolf Kohner's career had been guided by his uncle Zsigmond, and at the time of the wedding the young man had a considerable fortune of 300,000 forints. Helen received a dowry of 150 000 forints in cash.

Literature:

• 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)