In Hungarian magazines of the thirties there was a lot of talk about Baron Hatvany who seems to have been a great patron of the arts. The Hatvany and Weiss were two large Jewish families united by marriage forming the wealthiest industrial-financial conglomerate of prewar Hungary. The Manfred Weiss Iron Works on the island of Csepel employed more than 100,000 workers and the Hatvany sugar mills supplied all Europe.
I'm bringing up this now because of the legal fight for the return of Baron (pic) Mór Lipót Herzog's art collection, which is valued over 100 million dollars. The collection was looted by successive regimes, and those found in Germany have been returned and slowly the Hungarian State is also getting used to the idea of giving them up to the heirs.
But wait a minute. Who are the heirs of this large and extremely wealthy Hungarian Jewish clan? Three persons: David de Csepel, a middle aged American, and two elderly half-Jew Italian ladies, daughters of a member of the family that found refuge in Buenos Aires. That's all.
In this pityful way ends the fantastic history of the large Jewish family that almost by itself created half of Hungary's industry. I feel that these three "heirs" are totally unrelated to their Orthodox ancestors, they are everything they were not; in my opinion, their great-great dad's art collection should be left in European museums.
While it was Adolf Eichmann who caused the disbandment and death of many members of this great Hungarian Jewish family, yet I feel that their leaving the Jewish people was the final cause of their extintion. Money is temporary, the Jewish people is eternal.
10 comments:
Rightful heirs are rightful heirs. We do not know that Baron Mor Lipot Herzog would have disinherited any of his heirs for leaving the Jewish faith had the Holocaust not happened and inheritance occurred in a more natural fashion. The Austrian Jewish magnate families such as Todesco didn't in the late 19th and early 20th century. We certainly can't know that Herzog felt the same as you.
The Jewish people is far from eternal. There was a time before which it did not exist. Moreover, even its current "orthodox" religious variant is so different from Judaism of the biblical era that people from that time would almost certainly barely recognize it as their religion were they magically resurrected. Three thousand years from now, who knows if there will be any Jews? For all we know, there won't be any people left. Such a huge overstatement to call the Jewish people eternal.
You are blaming the victims. Maybe the family would have descended into decadence in any event - great fortunes are generally temporary. They say the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one. Many very ordinary and poor Americans are descended from some of the great figures of the 19th century - there is regression toward the mean.
BUT, Hitler and Eichmann and the Arrow Cross and the Communists made mince meat of the Jewish people and their institutions so it is not fair to say. Certainly as between these rightful legal heirs and the governments who stole the art from them, the heirs have the better claim . Keep the art in museums but pay the heir fair compensation for what was stolen from them. I'm sure you would want no less for your heirs if what is yours was stolen from you, even if those heirs were only your cousins.
K
The de Csepel (from Weiss de Csepel) who is the main plaintiff in the case is Herzog's great-grandson, through a who married into the Weiss de Csepel family of the famous iron works on the island of Csepel. The other main claimants are his granddaughters, so all are direct heirs. Unfortunately the case gets sticky because the Hungarian government provided some compensation to Mr. de Csepel's grandmother in 1973. The Hungarian government attempted to have the case dismissed on those grounds, but the U.S. judge assigned to the case, who incidentally is Jewish (maiden name Segal), sided with the family.
OT: Regarding Turkey. It's interesting that there's a bit of a three-way battle going on here.
The Turks hate us now, but they hate the Iranians too.
Here, a Turkish opposition member, with alleged ties to the Syrian government, accuses Erdogan of "defending Israel from Iran" by allowing NATO to erect a radar station in Turkey.
The Jewish people is the nearest thing to "eternal" in human history. Families that kept their Judaism tend to have descendants while those that abandoned it, tend to go extinct.
Corollarium: If you want grandchildren, stay Jewish. Orthodox.
The Jewish people is the nearest thing to "eternal" in human history. Families that kept their Judaism tend to have descendants while those that abandoned it, tend to go extinct."
This "eternal" business is BS and you know it. If the Jewish people is the closest thing in human history, then that itself bespeaks that nothing in human history is really eternal.
As for those who assmilate not having children, that's again an overstatement. First, the biased (often orthodox and ignorant) Jews who write morality tales about those who assimilate do their best to conflate continuation of the culture with continuity of descent. When they find inconvenient assimilated, they belittle them as not representing "Jewish continuity," but the descendants still exist.
There is no gurantee that the Herzog, Weiss de Csepel or Hatvany-Deutsch families would have remained large and wealthy down the generations absent the Holocaust. Both technology and the structures of developed economies (which Hungary might have been absent WWII and the Communists) have changed so that it is unlikely a manufacturing enterprise such as an iron works employing 100k people would be able to survive.
Given the trajectory of the future that you have posted about ("Angst for the Educated"), who would be cruel enough to want a big family these days? Your grandchildren may not have any prospects for advancement or even simple employment unless they are real geniuses (not just Ashkenazi minimally above average). What a great future! I guess the ultra-Orthodox don't care about that business. They're happy to live in squalor off of our handouts and would be even happier to drag all of Israel back into medieval ignorance. Those are some great heros you have, J.
(1) Regarding the large industries established by this clan in Hungary, Csepel Island is still the industrial heartland of Hungary. They were nationalized by the Communists and today, if I am not wrong, are part of some German conglomerate.
(2) Not having children because the "trayectory of the future" appears unclear or frightening, is wrong and absurd. The future is unknowable to us. No one has the right to end the chain that comes us from the origin of life, and it makes no sense to give up the participation in life - forever. And why? Because of fear that children will have no charmed lives? Even if I knew that they were to go hungry I would have children, as the ancestors did.
"Even if I knew that they were to go hungry I would have children"
We'll simply never agree on this issue, J. I think the philosopher David Benatar (author of "Better Never to Have Been: the Harm of Coming into Being") would be even more vehement in his disagreement, but I do not advocate a position as extreme as his.
Also, for what it's worth, the fact that many details of the future are unknowable in the present is an excellent reason not to conflate the history of the Jewish people with "eternal existence." Eternal would imply some knowledge of future outcomes as well.
I'll have to concede that Csepel island is still industrially important. Herzog's heirs, Jewish-identified or not, would never have had the opportunity to control it after the early 1940's. There remains no good reason, only your bias, for sanctioning their dispossession of their remaining rightful property.
Anonymous,
I'll not defend "eternal". But at least let's agree that "money is temporary..."
Hope springs eternal.
Defeatism = Exctinction.
Anon.
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