Mihály Ignatius Friedlander (1901-1982)
Written by Thomas Tuohy
Occupation: Engineer
Family Background
Mihály (Michael) Ignatius Friedlander was the second child of Deszö Friedlander and Hermina Litzman. He was born in the county of Varazdin in Croatia, then part of Hungary, but by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 this was ceded to Croatia and later included in Jugoslavia. His first language was Serbo-Croat, but he grew up also fluent in Hungarian and German. In July 1924 he graduated with a diploma in structural engineering (Bauingenieur) at the Technischen Hochschule in Vienna, and in May 1925 he was employed by the Viennese contractors Furdei & Cavallar as overseer for the building of a silk mill at Sopron (Odenberg), in Hungary. His other projects for this company were a re-inforced concrete bridge, 25 metres long, across a river, and subsidiary school buildings near Budapest.
He returned to Croatia as building manager of a textile factory in Maribor (Marburg), and then oversaw building work at a textile factory in Varazdin (Warasdin). These silk mills, together with another at Mohatsch (Mohacz) in Hungary, were established by Imre Madarász (1884-1936) who was married to Mihály’s elder sister Margit before 1921, by which time he had changed his name, in common with other Jews facing anti-semitic discrimination in Hungary. Previously he was named Kremsier, after the city in Moravia (Kromeřiz), where his family came from and where he may have been born. His new name Madarász means fowler or hunter in Hungarian. Earlier in his career Imre dealt in wholesale suiting material in Vienna. At Sopron, relatively close to Vienna, he employed Czech textile workers with whom Adolf Spira had made contact through his business. George Spira (qv DCB) was the son of Adolf Spira, whose wife Margit Loebl (1893-1944) was the daughter of Riza Kremsier (1869-1964), Imre’s niece.
His Education
Mihály was sent to Zurich where he attended the Seiderwebschule (Silk weaving school) and qualified as a textile engineer. In 1929 he became Director of the Madarász silk mill at Varazdin. He was a member of the Zagreb Engineers Board (Kammer), but their activities were reduced, then ceased, during the war. In April 1941, the Axis powers invaded Jugoslavia and Croatia was ruled by the Ustaše, an indigenous fascist organisation that persecuted Jews and confiscated property. Consequently, Mihály was imprisoned. After the war he worked for the Ministry for Industry in Zagreb, becoming chief engineer and deputy to the director of industrial planning for Croatia, and a member of the planning group for Jugoslavia, before leaving for England in 1951.
Marriage
In 1937 Mihály married Blanka Manzoni, born in Petrinja (Blanka Mariya Olga Manzoni, 8.8.1899 -14.4.1991) a Roman Catholic. She was the daughter of Steva Manzoni, a member of the family of the famous Milanese novelist, Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), and his wife Olga. Blanka was a paediatrician, who graduated in Graz (where many Slovenes and Croatians studied), and continued her training in Paris, where she relished the opportunity to go to so many concerts and theatres. During the Ustaše racial persecutions, Blanka refused to treat the child of one of their officers unless Mihaly was released, and he was one of the very few survivors amongst the population of 40,000 Jews, most of whom died in concentration camps. Blanka’s brother Sacha Manzoni became a surgeon at the Italian Hospital, Queens Square, London, where he operated on her hips in the 1970s. He married Bessie Bettini and they lived in a flat at Rutland Gate, Kensington. Bessie had connections in Rome and bought a property on the Costa Smeralda in Sardegna. In later life Blanka and Mihály went annually to the spa at Abano, near Padua. When living in Cumberland Mihály regularly swam in the sea at St Bees during his lunch break from West Cumberland Silk Mills.
Funding West Cumberland Silk Mills
In 1937, six months after the death of Imre Madarász, his widow Margit married the doctor who had been looking after him. This was Dr Mishka Weiszberg, with whom she was having an affair when Imre was alive. Imre’s fortune passed to Margit, and their son George Madarász (1921-2001), and the Madarász/Friedlander families provided a substantial part of the capital for Miki Sekers (1910-1972) (qv DCB) and Tomi de Gara (1914-1976) (qv DCB), from Budapest, when they established the West Cumberland Silk Mills in Whitehaven in 1938.
George Spira describes how gold was smuggled out of Croatia with the help of a Jugoslav navy captain, who was related by marriage to Margit Friedlander Madarász. Miki Sekers, and his father Pal Szekeres, a textile engineer from Sopron, had worked at the Madarász mill there. The Madarász mills in Hungary were confiscated by the communists on 20 April October 1948. Details of the Madarász holding are provided in a letter dated 21 March 1960 sent by Miki Sekers as a declaration to the Foreign Compensation Commission in London. Miki states that he had known Imre Madarász since 1930. Margit and her son George each inherited half of 9,000 shares in the Sopron Silk industry company. Additionally George had 40% of a new issue, 6,300 shares, amounting to 64% of shares held in private hands. George also owned 64% of the subsidiary mill at Mohacz. The family later received compensation for their confiscated properties.
The Friedlander and Madarasz Expertise
Mihaly’s nephew George Madarász studied at the Reich Deutsche Schule Budapest from September 1931-39, then at St Bees School in Cumberland. He did a BSc in Textile Chemistry at Manchester University, and then a PhD, in the Physical Chemistry department of Leeds University, 1943-46. From 1946-49 he worked for Petrocarbon Ltd., and from 1949-51 he was a research fellow at Manchester University. Letters exchanged between Tomi de Gara and Miki Sekers with the Madarász/Friedlander family in 1947 reveal that the research post at Leeds was financed by West Cumberland Silk Mills. Letters also reveal that an allowance of £600 per annum was being sent by WCSM to Margit Madarász Weisberg, as well as an extra £200. Tomi de Gara advised George not to redeem his mother’s gold bullion deposits (see George Spira account of gold smuggled to set up WCSM above). His ‘parents’ had lived briefly in Haifa, but returned to Zagreb where they had met Mihály, and were discussing emigrating to Australia. George secured his British naturalisation papers in May 1947. Mihály Friedlander was ‘doing a very interesting work supervising the textile production of Croatia’ and in his cv, written in German, Mihály describes being Director of the Textile Industry Group in the Ministry of Industry, Zagreb. In 1950 he founded a monthly ‘Textil’ in Agram (German for Zagreb), contributing articles, and later became President of the Textile Group of the Union of Engineers in Croatia. However, in 1951 he was in jail, imprisoned by the Communists who thought that to have survived the war he must have been a collaborator. He was released in a general amnesty later in 1951.
In June 1951 Miki Sekers wrote to Mihály regretting that they had not ‘joined forces’ in 1939, and asking him to consider unspecified suggestions put by him and Tomi de Gara. Mihaly was subsequently employed at the silk mill in various capacities. He was involved in planning and modernising an extension to WCSM, where he was involved with sales to German speaking countries, and became a later director. In his office he had a large map of the world.
Blanka did not leave Zagreb until 1953, being only allowed out of the country for a short time for a specific event. She did not intend to return and had to leave all her possessions behind, including her fur coats! In Zagreb their apartment at Marticeva 13/II, was very central, near the foot of the hill of the historic city centre, within easy reach of the opera house (Fellner and Helmer, 1895), where Mihály told the author there was a notice in the gods asking patrons not to spit into the stalls!
Life in West Cumberland
In Whitehaven they had a modest modern semi-detached house, 4 Westview, near Cartgate, Hensingham. Mihály was involved with Rotary and he and Blanka were regular members of the audience at Rosehill theatre where WCSM employees were given a discount. Mihály also had an interest in painting portraits, generally of older faces, in which he achieved greater character than he managed with his youthful subjects. He went to evening classes given by Trevor Green at Wyndham School in Egremont, together with Bill Hamilton, and when drawing from a clothed model would represent her nude! He was a supporter of the Lowes Court gallery in the Main Street, Egremont. His collection included works by Lyonel Feininger (1871-1951) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), and he had works by Percy Kelly (1918-1993), but all on a small scale. These were inherited by Blankitsa Bettini, a niece of Bessie Manzoni, from whom Helen Madarász bought works by the Hungarian painters Peter Benedict and Erno Agoston.
Every Friday the Friedlanders were invited by the De Garas to Croft Lodge for lunch, and this continued after Tomi died in 1976. Mihály, who normally wore a bow tie, would wind up the grandfather clock in the hall and use a brass coffee grinder to make Turkish coffee. He had a wry unhurried wit and conversation frequently slipped into Serbo Croat as he clarified questions from Blanka. Her command of English was much more limited than Mihály’s. Kitty Hamilton and Pat Bychowski took her to English Literature study classes given by Elisabeth Carrick, through the Workers Educational Association. Here her cosmopolitan intellectual education was an advantage in tackling Milton’s Paradise Lost. But when Blanka gave a talk about Yugoslavia to the ladies of the Inner Wheel at the Chase Hotel in Whitehaven, she had asked Michael what the English was for horsehair so she could describe the mattresses they used. Mischievously Mihály told her it was “bed bugs” and she passed this misinformation on to her audience!
Blanka always made a great fuss of children, sometimes to their embarrassment. She did not drive and was lonely and depressed after Mihály died in 1982 but Joan Halfpenny, widow of Arthur Halfpenny, a senior manager at Marchon, lived at Cartgate and kept an eye on her. Eventually, she found her in a coma from an overdose and took her to hospital, but Blanka said she had wanted to die. She had outlived her husband by nearly a decade.
Sources
- Thanks especially to Helen Madarász and David Sekers for providing documentary material.
- This account is also based on personal contact, with further information from Bobbie de Gara, Myrna Hamilton and Helen Simpson.