Manfréd Weiss

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Manfréd Weiss

Manfréd Weiss (born April 11, 1857 in Pest , † December 25, 1922 ) was a Hungarian industrialist.

Life

Manfréd Weiss comes from a devout Jewish merchant family in Pest. Immediately after his visit to the commercial academy in Pest, he took over the management of a Hamburg export company at the age of 19.

In 1882 he and his brother Berthold founded the first canning factory in Hungary in Budapest. He also had his own plant built for the manufacture of the cans himself, in which cartridges were also manufactured from 1889 . Three years later, however, he founded his own factory for the manufacture of cartridges, in which other weapons were also manufactured. In Fiume he also built a shipyard where torpedoes were produced. In Csepel , the 21st district in Budapest, he started up the Manfréd Weiss Stahl- und Metallwerke AG Csepel steel factory in 1911 , which became the largest arms factory in Austria-Hungary and also exported to England, Spain, Italy and Russia. In 1909 he designed a field kitchen for the Austro-Hungarian Army based on the pressure cooking principle. This made it possible for the first time to prepare food for the troops during the march. This field kitchen (M.1909) should last for 80 years. A model of it is exhibited in the Vienna Army History Museum .

In 1896 he was ennobled by the Hungarian King Franz Joseph and given the name Csepeli .

During the First World War , up to 30,000 workers were employed in these plants , producing cartridges and artillery projectiles on the one hand, and canned meat and coffee on the other. In 1918 he was awarded the title of baron .

After the loss of the First World War, the markets collapsed and only 400 workers remained. The works were looted by Romanian occupation troops during the Hungarian-Romanian War in 1919 and Weiss himself was arrested by the communists in the same year. After his release, however, he partially rebuilt his works and switched production to civilian goods. So he initially produced bicycles and sewing machines, but also raw materials such as rolled parts or steel pipes.

The next step was the establishment of an aircraft factory. In 1922 he was employing 10,000 people again.

Act

He was a co-founder of the Hungarian National Association of Industrialists and its deputy chairman.

Weiss was known for his charity. So he founded a maternity ward and kindergartens. A military hospital was also built on Csepel , as well as a lung sanatorium and a home for the elderly.

literature

Web links

Commons : Manfréd Weiss  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Army History Museum / Military History Institute (ed.): The Army History Museum in the Vienna Arsenal . Verlag Militaria , Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902551-69-6 , p. 96.
personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Manfréd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Pest , Hungary
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 1922