Mór Ribáry (Reich) de Alsólócz

 

Mór Ribáry (until 1902 Reich) was born in 1859 in the village of Alsólóc in Bratislava County. In 1873, at the age of 14, he began his career as a clerk at the Pesti Insurance Institute, where he became general manager in 1916 and worked for the company for 54 years until his death in 1927. He was a member of the board of directors or supervisory board of several companies of the Adriatic Insurance Group in Hungary and abroad. In 1914 he was awarded Hungarian nobility with the first name of Alsólóczi for his work in economics.

His life

Ribáry - Reich at birth - Mór was born on 18 July 1859 in the village of Alsólóc in Bratislava County (now Slovakia) in a family of Jewish peasants. His parents were Salamon Reich and Rozália Basch. Not much is known about his education. In 1873 he was already working at the Pesti Insurance Institute. He spent the whole of his 54-year career as a clerk in the company, which became Foncière Pesti Biztosító in 1879 and Foncière General Biztosító in 1920, becoming its secretary and then director, and finally managing director in 1916. He and his wife Klara Spitzer were married in Budapest on 20 September 1891. They had three children, Frigyes, Alajos and Olga. His eldest son, Frigyes Ribáry, followed in his father's footsteps and became an official at Foncière, and from 1926 was a member of the company's board of directors. Alajos Ribáry, who worked as an architect, founded the Wolfinger and Company Shipping Company in Budapest before the First World War. Mór Reich changed his name to Ribári in 1902, and in 1914 he received the Hungarian nobility with the first name of Alsólóczi for his successful work in the field of economics. From then on the family used the name Ribáry. Mór Ribáry died in Budapest on 13 December 1927, aged 68.

Professional activity

In 1873, at the age of 14, Mór Reich joined the Pesti Insurance Company, probably as an unpaid apprentice. This career start was not at all unusual for the insurance company managers of the time, and Tódor Gergely, later CEO of the First Hungarian General, began his career in the same way. Not much is known about his early years as an official. The first point at which we can grasp Reich's career is 1893, when he appointed the former secretaries of the general manager Vilmos Schön (Sarbó) Schön, his son Schön (Sarbó) Leo and Mór Reich as directors and gave them the right to register companies. We do not know for how many years Reich had previously been the secretary to the general manager, nor what exactly the job entailed. In any case, he did not have the usual career of clerk, head of department, director. Earlier sources do not even mention him once as head of department during the first 20 years of his career, and the appointment as director and, above all, as a company secretary, clearly indicate that this was a graduation from the fast track to the post of CEO secretary, a job which the then 34-year-old clerk skipped.

The careers of Reich and Leó Schön (Sarbó) continued to run parallel in the company, which was renamed Foncière Pest Insurance in 1979. After the death of the managing director in 1906, they managed the insurance company as co-managing directors for ten years, and in 1910 they were both appointed to the company's board of directors. Mór Reich - or Ribáry by then - was CEO of Foncière for 11 years after the death of Leó Sarbó in 1916. In 1923, on the occasion of the half-century anniversary of his career as a civil servant, he was appointed Government Counsellor General. In 1920, Foncière Pesti Insurance, now Foncière General Insurance, was taken over by Riunione Adriatica. Ribáry remained a respected leader in the Italian-Austrian group, and in addition to his position as CEO of Foncière, he was appointed to the Hungarian board of the parent company and to the board of directors of several subsidiaries in Hungary and abroad. During the post-Trianon nostrification process, Ribáry continued to play a key role in Foncière subsidiaries in the successor states, serving as vice-president of the Belgrade and Cluj-Napoca companies and as a board member of Continentale Insurance in Prague. In Hungary, he was a member of the board of Hungária General Biztosító, among others.

The death of Mór Ribáry in 1927 did not end the Ribáry family's strong representation in the group. His eldest son Frigyes was a member of the board of Foncière from 1926 to 1938. His youngest son, Alajos, an architect and stockbroker, did not follow his father into the insurance business, but two of his sons did. Ernő Ribáry, the eldest, a lawyer, also became a Foncière board member and legal adviser, while Károly Ribáry pursued a career as an official with Adria Insurance. The two youngest of Alajos Ribáry's sons - the grandsons of Mór Ribáry - also had distinguished careers: Leo was a senior official at the Anglo-Hungarian Bank and Géza was legal adviser to IBUSZ and founder of the Lawyers' Economic Party.

In the years following the First World War, Mór Ribáry was one of the most respected professionals in the entire Hungarian insurance sector. He was a member of the Insurance Advisory Council, which was attached to the Insurance Supervisory Authority for Private Insurance Companies and whose main task was to give opinions on draft legislation and to provide actuarial support for decisions. He also played an important role in the sector's cartel organisation, the National Association of Insurance Institutes, and was co-chairman of the Cargo Insurance Convention.

Mór Ribáry was not involved in much business outside insurance. At the time of his death, Mór Sátori was the only member of the board of directors of the United Plaster, Fertiliser and Chemical Factories Joint Stock Company.

 

Public activities

Virtually nothing remains of Mór Ribáry's public life. His membership of the board of directors of the Credit and Aid Association of the Central Officials and Servants of the Foncière Pesti Insurance Institute can also be classified more as an official duty than as a charitable activity.

 

His writings and publications

Mór Ribáry has published little, neither in general public and economic journals nor in insurance journals.

 

In memory of

There are no memoirs about Mór Ribáry and the Ribáry family, despite the fact that several members of the family held important economic positions in Budapest between the two world wars. Tragically, their memory is best preserved in the story of the internment of the two Ribáry sons. In June 1944, during the German occupation and the Arrow Cross dictatorship, Alajos Ribáry, his wife Frigyes and Frigyes, and two other Jewish couples agreed with a couple of swindlers to fly them to Egypt in exchange for one million pengo in cash and jewellery. But instead of the airport, they fell into Gestapo hands. They were first taken to an internment camp in Budapest and from there to Germany. The case became the focus of interest in the Hungarian press in the wake of the couple's trial in 1945. In particular, the fraudulent group could be linked to Jenő Kiss Zilahi, an anti-Semitic education politician who had made a name for himself in the past.

 

 

 

 

 

Sources

Without a name 1936: a small car belonging to Károly Ribáry, deputy general manager of an insurance company, is run over by a bus with unknown registration plates. Newspaper. 4 June 1936 3.

Without a name 1945:Jenő Zilahy Kiss in a new role: a couple sent wealthy Pest families to an internment camp instead of Egypt. South American Hungarians. 13 September 1945 5.

Gyula Horváth - Gábor Tamás 2019: Foncère Pesti Biztosító. Insurance and Risk. (6.) 2. 104-107.

Béla Kempelen 1913: Hungarian noble families. Volume 8. Budapest.

Béla Kempelen 1939: Hungarian Jews and noble families of Jewish origin. Volume 3. Budapest.

Ágnes Kenyeres (ed.) 1994: Hungarian Biographical Dictionary. Budapest.