Jeno Eisenberger

Jenö Eisenberger (born November 16, 1922 in Sátoraljaújhely , Kingdom of Hungary ; † August 14, 2016 in Vienna ) was a Hungarian-Austrian merchant and owner of one of the most important Austrian art collections .

biography

Eisenberger was born in 1922 as one of nine children of a wine merchant. He attended the Jewish elementary school in Cheder , then the Jewish elementary school and until 1937 a Talmud school. He worked in a linen factory and then as a self-employed shirt tailor. In 1943 he obtained " Aryan " papers. When the German Wehrmacht occupied Hungary in 1944, he became a member of a youth organization of the fascist Arrow Cross members , at the same time he worked for an illegal Jewish aid organization. In October of the same year he fled east to meet the Red Army . Only four of the nine siblings survived the Shoah like him .

After the liberation he started a clothes trade in Budapest , later he made men's underwear and mother-of-pearl buttons . In 1947 he took part in the Israeli War of Independence , at which time Hungary became communist and its company was nationalized. With the severance payment, he started in 1949 with a stand at the Naschmarkt in Vienna . In 1961 he opened Austria's first self-service chain , LÖWA .

In 1972 he sold them to the German Tengelmann Group, which turned them into the Zielpunkt supermarkets between 1976 and 1998 . In 1972 he founded the supermarket chain PAM PAM with Julius Meinl . In 1974 Eisenberger got out as a partner and opened his Eisenberger store in Vienna- Inzersdorf (near the Alterlaa residential park ) , which later became a Praktiker construction store, currently (2020) Center Alterlaa with Interspar u. a.

In 1964 he married Vera, born in Bratislava in 1934. Grünsfeld / Schwartz, an educator who had studied art history and encouraged him to start a collection in the 1980s. Vera Eisenberger died in Vienna in 2000.

collection

The Eisenberger Collection is one of the most important private art collections in Austria. It was put together by the Eisenberger couple under the motto "We collect Austria." The collection is divided into several areas:

• Masterpieces of Austrian and Hungarian painting and important arts and crafts of the Biedermeier and Art Nouveau; with important works by Broncia Koller-Pinell , Olga Wisinger-Florian , Emil Jakob Schindler , Carl Moll
• Ceramics, including by Michael Powolny , an outstanding collection of Lötz vases
• A major collection of Judaica ; it includes all important ritual objects such as Torah crowns , Torah essays , Torah shields , Esther scrolls , spice boxes , Hanukkah candlesticks , donation boxes , etc., especially from the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy .
• Utensils, furniture and glass
• Austrian contemporary art, the u. a. with Hans Staudacher , Markus Prachensky and Gunter Damisch is represented

literature

• Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (Ed.): … I want to be an Austrian: Judaica from the Eisenberger Collection. An exhibition by the Jewish Museum Vienna , February 9 - April 30, 2000 . Vienna 2000, ISBN 978-3901398117 .
• Danielle Spera :  "Where do you buy pictures if not in a museum?" The collector Jenö Eisenberger on his passion for art, about anti-Semitism and his love for Austria. In:  Nu - News über uns , Volume 2003, No. 11 / March 2003, pp. 4–8 (each unpaginated). (Online at ANNO ). .
• Christof Habres: If only I were Austrian ...: Jenö Eisenberger - an extraordinary life . Metroverlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-99300-092-9 .

Web links

• Jenö Eisenberger (interview)

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Jewish Museum Vienna mourns Jenö Eisenberger. Jewish Museum Vienna , archived from the original on August 17, 2016 ; accessed on August 18, 2016 .