Manfréd Weiss de Csepel, Baron

Manfréd Weiss was born into a family of Czech-Jewish origin in Pest in 1857. The family was not wealthy, his grandfather was a pipe maker, his father traded in Czech plum jam and other products. Young Manfred studied to be a merchant, graduated from the trade academy, and was sent by his father to a business partner in Hamburg, a colonial merchant, for an apprenticeship in 1873. Soon afterwards, at the age of 20, the young apprentice became the manager of the trading house and might have become a successful colonial merchant in Hamburg had his father not suddenly fallen ill in 1877.

Manfred Weiss returned home, joined the family business, and the company did successful business with the army during the invasion of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878. A few years later, he and his elder brother Bertold - a successful produce merchant and economics writer - started a new business producing canned goods. From 1882, the "Weiss Berthold and Manfréd First Hungarian Canned Food Factory" was established in Lövölde Square, and their product was branded "Globus". The biggest customer was the army. Soon afterwards the factory moved to the Közvágóhíd area, where they also produced their own cans.

However, the production of the tin was very similar to the production of another product, and that was ammunition. The two brothers struck a deal with the army to refurbish the army's obsolete old ammunition at the factory, using spare capacity. Due to an explosion in 1890, the company was ordered by the authorities to move, and at that time they relocated their plant to Csepel, an area that was actually vacant - an advantage for ammunition production - but which did not then belong to Budapest.

Csepel already had a large-scale production of canned goods and ammunition, as well as a completely new "weapon", the goulash cannon, or mobile camp kitchen, which was supplied to the army from 1909.

Bertold Weiss entered politics in 1896, leaving Manfred to run the factory on his own. His business policy was to be the first to break into a new field, with a product that no one else was making at home, and to start making new products in times of crisis. However, he was not only concerned with developing the factory, introducing new products and concluding contracts. He also paid particular attention to the welfare of his workers. At the time of his death, the Népszava - which in 1922 could not be called a friend of capitalism and capitalist industrialists - wrote:

"Manfred Weiss has played a major role in turning small factories into huge factories employing thousands of workers in 40 years. It was precisely because he was at the head of the largest companies and because his influence extended to many others that, in the struggle which the workers were forced to wage for their livelihood, they had to personally represent their interests against him in these pages. (...) Now, however, when we have to look back on a lifetime's work, we must conclude that Manfred Weiss was also a modern capitalist in the sense that, within the limits set by capitalist management, he did not grasp the workers' point of view on labour relations with arrogance and obstinacy, but with reason."

Weiss founded a maternity home, a sanatorium for lung patients, a children's home (the Alice Weiss Csepel nursery), a crèche, a pregnancy counsellor and a workers' home for his workers, and built modern workers' housing by the standards of the time. It set up a fund to provide for disabled workers and to support the widows and orphans of clerks. It paid factory workers above the average wage. He was also one of the founders and president of the National Federation of Industrialists. In addition to his own workers, he was also a major philanthropist, supporting young or sick or ageing writers and artists. On several occasions, the factory's food products were used to support soup kitchens, and he was vice-president of the National Association for the Protection of Children. He was also actively involved in the charitable work of his parish.

During the war, which made him a fabulous fortune, his taxes paid in 1917 amounted to 34 million crowns, as he was a supplier to the army. He gave a lot to charity, for example donating an X-ray machine to the Red Cross and one to the army.

In addition to the Csepel factory, he also had significant investments in other companies, for example, for a time he was one of the main shareholders of the Hungarian Textile Industry Ltd.

His work was also recognised by the state, in 1896 he received the title of nobility with the first name "Csepel", in 1901 the Order of the Iron Crown III, in 1915 the membership of the Major General, and from 1918 the rank of baron.

He lost his wife, by whom he had six children, early in 1904 and never married after that. His children produced a total of eleven grandchildren. Manó Rózsavölgyi wrote about his family life in the January 7, 1923 issue of Uj Idők:

"From eight in the morning until nine at night he worked in the offices and factories, with such vigour and pace that the much younger factory directors and engineers could not follow him, - but from one-thirty until one-thirty at noon he not only ate his lunch, but took his turn, and even visited his children and attended to all their affairs. To his relatives and friends, even on the busiest days, he always had time and, most importantly and most surprisingly, always promptly."

Manfréd Weiss, for example, gave a huge sum of money for the construction of the Csepel Workers' Home (culture house), but in vain - he became an enemy of the new order during the Soviet Republic. His factory was to be nationalised, his villa was robbed, and he attempted suicide. After his return home, he lived only two years, suffering a stroke in November 1922, and died on 25 December 1922.

This is how the newspaper Világ bade farewell to the otherwise reclusive industrialist, who gave only one interview in his life, on 28 December 1922:

"Dressed in bourgeois simplicity, he lived with the modesty of a petty bourgeois among his millions, perhaps billions today, with no luxury and no passion other than work, which perhaps gave him the beauty reserved for creative artists. (...) Somehow this creative spirit, unrelated to the love of money, radiated from Manfred Weiss's being, and perhaps this explains why he was popular among the workers of Csepel, quickly became popular on the estate of Derekegyháza, which he acquired only towards the end of his life, and gained greater popularity in the eyes of the public than the other great fortune-holders. There was a time when, rightly or wrongly, Manfréd Weiss was seen as the richest man in Hungary, and yet he was always spoken of with a tone of sympathy."

The funeral was attended by the leaders of the political class of the time, of course, but also by thousands of workers. The family continued to run the factory. In addition to the sons, Jenő Weiss and Alfonz, the husbands of the four daughters were also involved in the management of the company. Ferenc Chorin Sr. was the president of the National Association of Hungarian Industrialists. Elza's husband, Alfréd Mauthner, was involved in vegetable oil production, Marianne's husband, Móric Kornfeld, was a director of the Ganz Danubius factory, while Alfréd Kohner's family was involved in banking. The company was mainly managed by Ferenc Chorin and Móric Kornfeld.

The family, since almost all of them were of Jewish origin, and the fact that they had all converted to Christianity, had good relations with Governor Miklós Horthy and his circle, and were Hungarian nobles, were able to ensure their survival by handing over the Weiss companies to the SS. The company was nationalised after the war, and the unified factory, which was renamed several times, was dissolved in 1983, when the Csepel Iron and Metal Works Trust was split into several units.The Csepel Works Industrial Centre was set up to coordinate the dismembered companies, but the companies that thus became somewhat independent were loss-making, and many were closed or privatised in the early years of the regime change. Today, the vast industrial estate is home to a number of small and large enterprises.

Interesting facts

The goulash cannon, or mobile field kitchen, was developed by the Austro-Hungarian army on the model of the device successfully used in the Russian army (although there had been attempts at this in Hungary as early as 1881). After a long period of development work, the product was ready for series production in 1909, and the army ordered it from Weiss at a unit price of 3,900 crowns. The Weiss factory patented the goulash cannon in several countries.

Sources

• BG: Meet Manfréd Weiss, the most innovative Hungarian entrepreneur of the 20th century In: Tudas.hu 1 June 2020.
• Csaba Domonkos:The death of Baron Manfréd Weiss of Csepel, member of the General Council PestBuda.hu 27 December 2022.
• László Varga: A career with a fine knife. The Weiss Family and Manfréd Weiss In:Historical Review, 1983 (Vol. 26)No. 1
• Where does this word come from: gulyáságyú? in: honvedelem.hu 31 January 2015.