One hundred years ago, on December 25, 1922, Manfréd Weiss, perhaps the best-known and most successful Hungarian industrialist of the era of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, and one of the most influential non-political figures of the early 20th century, died in his home in Terézváros.
Manfréd Weiss was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Pest on April 1, 1857, the youngest of six siblings. The origins of his family are still unclear: his grandfather, a pipe-maker, probably came to Hungary from Bohemia or Moravia at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, and his father, a grain merchant, was born in 1807. Following in his father’s footsteps, Manfréd Weiss continued his studies at the Academy of Commerce, then worked briefly in Hamburg, returning home after his father’s death in 1877.
Ten years after the Compromise, four years after the establishment of Budapest, the economic boom was already having an impact on the Hungarian territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as the Weiss brothers, Manfréd and Berthold, who ran their father’s wheat trading business, had also experienced. The food industry had a steady client in the Monarchy’s army (the invasion of Bosnia began in 1878); however, the soldiers were primarily looking for meat, but shipments were often spoiled by the time they reached them. The Weiss brothers came up with the idea of putting the cooked beef into sealed metal cans and delivering it to the army, with the soldiers cutting the cans open with their bayonets — a process that was only then beginning to spread around the world. The first Hungarian cannery was opened in 1882 as the First Hungarian Canning Factory of Berthold and Manfréd Weiss. However, canning, a revolutionary innovation at the time, relied heavily on the metal industry, so the brothers soon began to manufacture cans themselves, moving their factory from Lövölde Square to the site of Közvágóhíd.
The company soon became the primary supplier to the military, and the Weiss brothers further broadened their profile in the 1880s. They first started to produce cartridge holders and then cartridges, and later started to fill the cartridges as well. However, in 1890, following an explosion on the factory premises — some say caused by a technical fault, others by an accident during the production of a cartridge — the military engineering division was moved outside the city limits. Naturally, they did not want to be far from Közvágóhíd, so they chose Csepel Island, where at that time there were only a few small villages. The management of the factory was increasingly in the hands of the younger brother, Manfréd, as Berthold had political ambitions — in 1896, as a member of the Liberal Party, he was elected to be a member of parliament.
The first and second industry laws adopted in the meantime made life much easier for businesses. Following the developments in world politics, Manfréd Weiss sensed that a major war was inevitable and increased the production of his factory, for which the Monarchy’s army continued to be a secure market. He began to manufacture infantry ammunition and became the owner of the number one military manufacturing plant in the entire empire. He built more and more warehouses in the Csepel complex, and later established his own copper smelting works, a forge, and even a water tower. He bought the land, which was originally only rented, and built apartments for his factory workers and a kindergarten for their children in Csepel. He also registered several patents, perhaps most famously for the dismountable camp oven; in the early 1910s, he even set up a vehicle factory on his Csepel industrial estate.
As the country’s leading industrialist, Weiss’ political influence grew: He was a member of the board of the Austro-Hungarian State Railways Company, the Hungarian Commercial Bank of Pest, and the National Association of Industrialists. Samu Hazai, who served as Minister of Defense between 1910 and 1917, was a regular dinner guest, and he was also connected by marriage to the Kornfeld, Mauthner, and Chorin families. He bought the Károlyi family’s castle in Derekegyháza, in 1915 was made a nobleman and became a member of the House of Lords, and in 1918 was raised to the rank of baron by Charles IV.
During the First World War, the factory’s production was so large that it could supply the entire army; it also started to produce artillery ammunition, and the workers at its factory in Csepel worked in three shifts. After the end of the war, the Soviet Republic nationalized his factory. The aging industrialist then attempted suicide and only survived thanks to prompt medical help; his family sent him to Vienna for treatment. While he was away, the Romanian troops marching into Hungary removed the equipment from his factory, so after his return home, he started to rebuild his Csepel complex from practically nothing. Under the Trianon peace treaty, the military production of independent Hungary was restricted, so his factories started to produce household appliances.
Manfréd Weiss died on December 25, 1922. After his death, his children continued to run his factories until the German occupation of Hungary in 1944. Then the Nazis got their hands on the Csepel factory, whose owners were driven out of the country. The equipment was taken to Austria, and what was left was taken by the invading Soviet troops. The factory was nationalized in 1946 and operated first under the name of Rákosi Mátyás Vas- és Fémművek and then as Csepel Vas- és Fémművek until its closure in 1983.
