Vilmos Sarbó (Schön) de Szepesváralja

Schön (from 1898 Sarbó) Vilmos Schön was born in 1829 in Szepesváralja. One of the most important insurance specialists of his time. After his secondary school education, he began his clerical career at the Austrian Phoenix Insurance Institute and later joined the Pesti Insurance Company. From 1868 to 1899, he was the company's managing director for 30 years, and after his resignation, he was a member of the board of directors until his death in 1906. He was a major shareholder and member of the supervisory boards of several banks and industrial companies. In 1898, he was awarded the Hungarian nobility of Szepesváralja for his work in economics.

Sarbó - Schön at birth - Vilmos was born in 1829, probably in Szepesváralján in a Jewish middle-class family. He began his career as an insurance clerk at the Austrian Phoenix Insurance Institute in Pest, founded in 1860. After the establishment of the Pesti Insurance Company in 1864, he joined the company and by 1867 he was its managing director. He had five children with his wife Aurelia Lőwy: Teresa, Elsa, Leo, Arthur and Emil. Schön Vilmos Schön remained CEO of the company, which was renamed Foncière Pesti Biztosító, until 1898 and remained a member of the board of directors until his death in 1906. He joined the first Hungarian General Insurance Company (EMÁBIT) and remained with it for 75 years until his death. His eldest son Leo (1864-1916) was also a clerk in the insurance company and after his retirement became the company's chief executive. His second son, Arthur (1867-1943), an internationally renowned neurologist, speech therapist and university lecturer, was also employed by Foncière. In 1898, Vilmos Schön received the Hungarian nobility of Szepesváralja for his successful work in economics. He had already used the name Sarbó a few years earlier, but officially took it in 1898. After a short illness, Vilmos Sarbó died at the age of 77 at his home in Budapest. He was buried in the cemetery of rákoskereszttúr.

Not much is known about Vilmos Schön's early career. He joined the Austrian company Phönix in August 1864, at the age of 35, when he set up the Vienna-based insurance management agency in Pest. Schön must have had some insurance or management experience by then, because as first secretary, he was the chief executive of the general agency. According to press reports, he competed with Vilmos Ormody, the head of the First Hungarian Insurance Department, for the post of general manager of the Pesti Insurance Institute, which became vacant in 1867, and finally won the position in May 1867. The company, which had been in business for only two years at the time, faced serious financial difficulties in the midst of the 'small crisis' in Pest, but under Schön's leadership it managed to survive this and the stock market crash in Vienna in 1873. After the crises, Pesti Biztosító was consolidated under a new ownership structure. At the end of 1879, the company, then renamed Foncière Pesti Biztosító, was taken over by French and Viennese investors. Schön's work was acknowledged by the new owners, as he remained CEO of the company for another 19 years. He retired from direct management of the company in 1898 at the age of nearly 70. However, he did not leave the management until his death in 1906, first as chairman of the board of directors, and then as a simple director. He left the operational management of the company to his eldest son Leo and to Mór Reich, a member of the large shareholding family who had also played a decisive role in the early years. The two co-managing directors had already been chosen by Schön as his successors. The two young clerks worked as secretaries to Vilmos Schön until 1893, and from then on as directors.

The Schön - or Sarbo by then - family did not disappear from the Foncière management after Leo's death in 1916. Schön Vilmos Schön's middle son, Arthur - already an internationally renowned neurologist - was the company's chief physician from 1915 until his death in 1843. This position, in one of the most important life insurance companies on the market, was far from being a mere decree or supplement to a hospital and university teaching post.

There is no mention of Vilmos Schön's role in public life. As CEO of an insurance company, he appeared primarily in a patronage and support role. The only foundation we know of that bears his name is one that he set up shortly before his retirement, to the value of 60 forints, which was used to award scholarships to students at the Budapest Trade Academy.

Schön has also appeared in the economy outside the insurance sector, of course. We have no trace of his board memberships, but around the turn of the century we find him on the supervisory boards of the Hungarian Mortgage Credit Bank based in Cluj, the Hungarian Local Interest Railways Joint Stock Company, the Upper Hungarian Mining and Coal Works Joint Stock Company and the Salgó-Tarján Coal Mine Joint Stock Company.

The memory of Schön Vilmos is best remembered through his middle son, Artúr Sarbó. Apart from Foncière's company and court documents, his name is most often found in publications about him.

No name 1898: Vilmos Sarbó of Szepesváralja. Country World. (19.) 24. 1.

No name 1903: Vilmos Sarbó of Szepesváralja. Country-World. (24.) 1. 11.

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

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

Újvári Péter (ed.) 1929: Hungarian Jewish lexicon. Budapest.