Gedeon judge

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Gedeon judge

Gedeon Richter (born September 23, 1872 in Ecséd ( Hungary ), † December 30, 1944 in Budapest ) was a Jewish-Hungarian pharmacist and founder of the modern Hungarian pharmaceutical industry .

Life

“ Shoes on the Danube Bank ”, a memorial erected in Budapest in 2005 to commemorate the pogroms against Jews by Arrow Cross members in Hungary. The memorial was desecrated on June 15, 2009.
Memorial plaque to Gedeon Richter on the building at Katona József utca 21 from which he was deported. Affixed December 7, 2009.

Richter was born in Ecséd, the son of a farmer . His mother died of childbed fever shortly after he was born , and his father died a year later. He grew up with his maternal grandparents in Gyöngyös from 1873 and attended the renowned Franciscan high school. From 1890 he worked as a pharmacy intern at Nándor Mersits. In 1893 Richter finished his apprenticeship in pharmacy at the Hungarian Royal Franz Josef University in Kolozsvár . He then went to Budapest to the Péter Pázmány University , where he studied for a year at the Faculty of Science and a year at the Faculty of Medicine, and in 1895 received his diploma as a pharmacist . Two years later he traveled to several European pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies and made their drug manufacturing methods his own. In 1901 he bought a pharmacy at the corner of Üllői Street and Márton Street in Budapest, called Arany Sas ( Hungarian : "Golden Eagle") and obtained a license to manufacture medicines. Initially, his developments focused on organotherapy, a naturopathic treatment. In 1902 he married Anna Winkler, the daughter of a Jewish timber manufacturer who supported his son-in-law in his activities. The marriage had a son László.

National Socialist Persecution

When Hitler's pressure on the Hungarian government with regard to the “ final solution to the Jewish question ” increased in April 1943 , the government under Miklós Kállay decided to eliminate Jews from public, cultural and economic life. Judges would have the opportunity with the help of the Red Cross before the Nazi persecution in Switzerland to escape, but he did not abandon his business. He and his wife received protective passports from the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg along with thousands of other Jews and were able to be protected from persecution for a while in shelters. The Swedish shelters, together with those of Spain, formed an international ghetto around the Great Synagogue in Budapest , which housed around 30,000 people. However, in the last weeks up to the conquest of Budapest by the Red Army in mid-January 1945 members of the Arrow Cross , a fascist and anti-Semitic party in Hungary, cruelly murdered Jews at random. The number of victims can only be estimated. Historians assume that around 4,000 armed supporters of the Arrow Cross were responsible for around 8,000 murders of Jews in Budapest. The Hungarian historian Krisztián Ungváry speaks of 2,600 to 3,600 Jews who were shot on the banks of the Danube and thrown into the Danube, including Gedeon Richter on December 30, 1944. According to an eyewitness report, Richter hugged his wife, said goodbye to her and had to line up with the other men. Everyone had to undress except for their underwear in the freezing cold. The first fifty men were led away and "shot into the river", as it says on the memorial plaques on the banks of the Danube. The 72-year-old Gedeon Richter was one of the victims. His wife survived the Arrow Cross massacre and the war, but mentally she never recovered from this cruel tragedy. Gedeon Richter's remains have never been found.

Memorials

In 1945, immediately after the end of the war, a symbolic grave was built in his honor in a family crypt in the Swiss city of Lugano . In 1972, a memorial plaque was installed in his factory to mark the 100th anniversary of Richter's birth and a memorial was erected at the “Goldener Adler” pharmacy. On December 7, 2009, another memorial plaque was placed on the building from which he was deported, at 21 Katona József Street . In the house where he was born there is a school called "Richter Gedeon Elementary School" in Ecséd. The room he was born in now functions as a gym.

Entrepreneurial activity

In 1906 Richter bought an area of ​​3,252 m 2 in Budapest and set up the first pharmaceutical production facility in the Kőbánya district at 63 Cserkesz Street. The factory had its first major successes with an acetylsalicylic acid derivative called Kalmopyrin and the disinfectant hydrogen peroxide in tablet form called Hyperol which were patented in 1912 and an important role in world war I were playing. Until the outbreak of the First World War, the company produced over 100 drugs and had around 40 foreign representations around the world. In 1923 the company was converted into a stock corporation, but the majority of the shares and management remained with the Richter family. The company was one of the first pharmaceutical groups in Europe to manufacture insulin . The first foreign branch was opened in Zagreb that same year . Furthermore, ten branches were founded abroad between 1931 and 1935. Before the war he already held 24 pharmaceutical patents.

Second World War

Richter developed the first drugs to increase blood pressure , an adrenal hormone extract ( adrenaline ), an antipyretic pain reliever, Kalmopyrin , a calcium acetyl salicylate . and tonogen (Cardura), which is used to treat high blood pressure or symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). At the beginning of the Second World War , his pharmaceutical network was represented in five continents with 10 subsidiaries and branches in 34 countries. In 1942, anti-Semitic laws removed him from his position as director. However, he continued to run his factory from his private home with some of the staff he trusted. In autumn 1944 the factory was almost completely paralyzed.

post war period

After the war, the factory was rebuilt in Kőbánya under the name of Kőbányai Gyógyszerárugyár ( Hungarian : Kőbányai Pharmaceutical Factory ) . With the beginning of the planned economy era in 1948, the company was nationalized. After the Iron Curtain was opened in 1989, the company was privatized again under the name Gedeon Richter Pharmaceutical Factory and has been traded on the stock exchange since 1994. Today the Gedeon Richter concern is the only independent Hungarian, multinational pharmaceutical company.

swell

  • Lajos Pillich: Judge Gedeon . In: Magyar tudóslexikon A-tól Zs-ig . Editor-in-chief: Nagy Ferenc. Besser, Budapest 1997, ISBN 963-85433-5-3 , pp. 679-680.
  • István Reményi Gyenes: Ismerjük őket? Zsidó származású nevezetes magyarok . Ex Libris Kiadó, Budapest 2000, ISBN 963-85530-3-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of Richter AG . Retrieved March 14, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b Tibor Rasztik, A historical company founder: Gedeon Richter (1872-1944) , in: Historical businessmen: Gedeon Richter , Gedeon Richter Ltd. Pp. 17-34. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
  3. ^ Shoes on the banks of the Danube , Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
  4. ^ Gerhard Botz, Stefan Karner: War. Memory. History. Vienna 2009, limited preview in Google Books , p. 324.
  5. ↑ Shoes on the Danube Bank - a shocking monument . budapest.com. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
  6. ↑ Kalmopyrin ( Memento from March 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved March 19, 2017.
  7. ↑ Gedeon Richter relies on the German market , Ärztezeitung, December 11, 2012. Accessed on March 19, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Judge, Gedeon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian pharmacist and founder of the modern Hungarian pharmaceutical industry
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Ecséd
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1944
Place of death Budapest