Korányi & Fröhlich

Empires perish slowly. As the Gothic village churches outline the borders of the medieval West, or the recycled Lenin statue pedestals those of the former Empire, so the quietly lurking shutter labels mark even after a hundred years the extension of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the action radius of the shutter capitals Vienna and Budapest. After Czernowitz, Lwów, Żółkiew and Budapest, now we encountered the memory of the Korányi and Fröhlich company from Budapest in Szabadka/Subotica, on a shutter long pulled down at the corner of Gorky and Matija Gubec, formerly Damjanich and Bercsényi streets (in red on the map).




The Korányi and Fröhlich shutter and locksmith’s ware factory was founded around 1902 by Béla Korányi in Budapest’s Józsefváros district, at Kisfaludy street 5 (in blue below). The prospering company also built a representative headquarters for their shops and offices at the corner of Regiment 32 Square and Baross Street (in red below).




The traces of the former factory and many of its further products were researched by the Józsefváros Anno blog. The Budapest blog provides guidance to the reparation of the few Korányi and Fröhlich shutter pullers. One more survivor, varnished in black, was photographed by Marguerite. A further example, the surviving parasol opener of the vanished restaurant of the Kiskunfélegyáza railway station was posted on the Train Stations site.




In Subotica, just one block from the Fröhlich shutter, we also discovered a still working shutter puller by one of the Budapest companies delivering to the whole Monarchy – for example to Sepsiszentgyörgy/Sfântu Gheorghe, now in Romania – Justus Sándor and Son, at Hugo Badalić Street 3 (how was it called at that time?), in the Incognito Pension (in blue on the above map of Subotica). In the dim light, with a pocket camera, we could only take the photo below. Go, look at it and take better ones. Ask for room number one.

An Indian in Subotica

Catechist John Grey Bull (Crow) playing organ by Aloysius Vrebosch, St. Anthony’s Mission, Crow Indian Reservation, Wyola, Montana, 1925. Marquette University Archives

By leafing through the hundred year old editions of the daily Bácsmegyei Napló, we have already seen how many exotic visitors came to Szabadka/Subotica just in 1912, the glorious year of the local Art Nouveau, from the Chinese “idol god sellers” through the German students coming to work here as cowboys and the mysterious Turkish globetrotters to the Bulgarian and Serbian rulers who gave each other rendezvous at the railway station of Subotica only to point it out again and again how ugly it is. But perhaps the strangest one was that “red-skinned” Indian seminarist who dived into the city during his theological studies in Europe, and who was immediately noticed by the vigilant reporter of Bácsmegyei Napló.

Choctaw altar boys, Holy Rosary Mission, Tucker, Mississippi, ca. 1900–1915. Marquette University Archives

Bácsmegyei Napló, 4 January 1912

A Native American seminarist in Szabadka
From our correspondent. Szabadka, 3 January

Yesterday afternoon an interesting young man walked about the streets of Szabadka. His clothing was the blue cassock of the Catholic seminarists, so he was not conspicuous for anybody.

This seminarist is a red-skinned Native Indian from America.

He is called Philip Gordon, and came from the state of Minnesota in Northern America. His grandfather may have hunted for scalps, his father was perhaps still a nomad roaming the endless American plains, and the son will probably become a bishop.

Philip Gordon was baptized, and took a liking to the priestly career. Now he sailed across the ocean to the Old World, and will go to Innsbruck to learn theology.

He got to Szabadka by having got acquainted with a seminarist from the village of Bajmok, Ernő Rickert, and he invited him now to us.

The Native American speaks in English, French and some German as well.

Whatever he has hitherto seen from Hungary was very pleasant to him, and he feels quite well here.

Philip Gordon remains in Bajmok only a few days, and then he goes to Innsbruck. And a few years later he will spread Christianity among his red-skinned siblings.

One hundred years later our American reader ribizlifőzelék was just as vigilant as the reporter of Bácsmegyei Napló, and noticing this article, he recalled having seen the grave of an Indian priest of the same name in Wisconsin, where it is held in high regard. In the wake of his guidance we have established that Philip B. Gordon indeed existed. What’s more, he was the first Native American Catholic Priest in the USA. He indeed came to Hungary. And even if he did not become a bishop, he indeed spread Christianity until his death among his “red-skinned siblings”.

Rev. Philip B. Gordon (Ojibwa) and Dr. Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai), Lac Courte Oreille Indian Reservation, Reserve, Wisconsin, 1919, on a speaking tour as officers of the Society of American Indians. Marquette University Archives

“The aging Indian priest sat, as his ancestors had, beside the war drum. A stiff breeze whistled through the tops of the tall pines, but beneath their sheltering branches, the eagle feathers in his war bonnet were barely ruffled. Although the priest was a Chippewa, the headdress he often wore was Sioux; he received it while he was doing mission work in the western states.

Along the sandy river bank a campfire, adding its glow and warmth to the cool June evening in the north woods, accentuated the priest’s Indian features and his ample figure. Around him sat twenty St. Paul, Minnesota, Boy Scouts, eagerly waiting for the proceedings to begin.

Friends of the scouts and the priest had gathered at the camp the scouts called Neibel to witness the presentation of the Chippewa war drum and peace pipe to the troop by Reverend Philip Gordon (Ti-bish-ko-gi-jik). The Calumet or peace pipe had always been sacred to the Indians, and like the drum, its presentation was attended by strict ceremony.

Among the spectators was Luther Youngdahl, Minnesota’s governor and a friend of Father Gordon. He had invited the priest to drum out a song.

For forty years the drum had been used for tribal ceremonies and it was said that on a calm night it could be heard for ten miles. But now the sound reverberated through the dense woods, one of the few stands of virgin timber remaining in the once heavily forested area.”

Thus begins the biography written by Paula Delfeld in 1977 about Philip B. Gordon, the first Native American Catholic priest.

John Frog (Ojibwa) by Philip B. Gordon, Lac Courte Oreille Indian Reservation, Reserve, Wisconsin, 1922. Marquette University Archives

Philip B. Gordon was born on March 31, 1885 as one of fourteen siblings in Wisconsin, the Great Lakes region, in a commercial station called Gordon, which was founded and named after their family by his uncle. Both of his parents belonged to the Ojibwe (Chippewa) tribe, but in both lineages there was also a French ancestor. Hence they inherited the name Gaudin, which was englicized for Gordon by his uncle. Philip, who at birth received the name Ti-bish-ko-gi-jik, “Heaven Viewer”, still grew up in the traditional Native American culture, but he also fluently spoke in French and English.

The railway arrived to the Great Lakes region in Philip’s childhood, and Philip witnessed the radical changes it had brought: the clearance of the forests and the destruction of the traditional Indian way of life. Depression, alcoholism and suicide rapidly spread among the Indians deprived of their living space and livelihood. Philip, who first went to a military college, felt obliged to devote his life to his Native American brothers, thus after two years he went over to the seminary of the local Franciscan mission. There he excelled with his intelligence, physical and rhetorical skills, and so after the first year he was sent to the American College in Rome. From there he went to the theology of Innsbruck, where he remained for two years, until finishing his studies. This is the period when he also came to Szabadka.

“Philip enjoyed traveling and spent two summer vacation periods in France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and made one trip to England. Some of these were walking tours. In the land of his French ancestors, he learned to speak the language fluently and spent much of his time in the French department of Loir-et-Cher. Besides English and French, he spoke fluent German, Italian and numerous Indian dialects.”

On December 8, 1913, the feast of the Immaculate Conception he was ordained a priest in Wisconsin. His Czech bishop, Koudelka wanted to send him to an urban parish, but he successfully begged to be left among his Ojibwe brothers. In the coming decades he accomplished a huge organizational work. He built missions, organized the life of the local communities, actively fought for their rights against the authorities and the private companies who wanted to expropriate the lands and forests of the Indians. He became member, and then president of the Society of American Indians which fought for the emancipation and rights of the Native Americans. By denouncing the burning crosses as defamation of religion, he successfully defied the Ku-Klux-Klan; thanks to his perseverance, the sheriffs and other official persons, and even Baptist preachers who were members of the Klan, were dismissed or moved, so that the Klan could neve put root in Wisconsin. He carried out a great missionary work not only among the Ojibwe, but also among their ancient enemies, the Sioux; it was his merit that the two people finally made peace with each other. He was an exceptional organizer, an excellent orator, and, moreover, “a charming personality, highly educated and possessing a natural humor which made his remarks very entertaining as well as interesting and instructive.”

Rev. Philip Gordon addressing Catholic Sioux Congress, 1923. Marquette University Archives

Attendees by tipi at Catholic Sioux Congress, 1923. A bit to the right, behind the two old women stands Rev. Philip Gordon. Marquette University Archives

The local newspapers reported on his activity regularly and with large sympathy.

Philip Gordon preaches in German and English in St. Louis, calling upon the support of the Indian missions. The Guardian, Arkansas, March 11, 1922. The complete edition.

Philip Gordon speaks in the interest of the emancipation of the Indians. The Guardian, Arkansas, February 17, 1923. The complete edition.

Philip Gordon died in 1948, after thirty years of intensive work, and two years of serious illness. With the last of his strength he organized the Odjibwe Inter-Tribal Organization, which claimed hundreds of millions of dollars against the government for the lands taken away from the Indians. He was buried in his native village Gordon. His tomb is still highly respected, and, as the Indian Country News writes, it is an obligatory element of every documentary on the Native Americans of the region. Subotica can be really proud of his former visit.

Last minute Subotica

Karpatt, Pensez à demain (Think about tomorrow). From the album Sur le quai (2011).

Our trip to Subotica/Szabadka, Serbia, scheduled for March 15-16 is last minute not only because, due to a prolonged flu, I could organize and announce it just now, ten days before the event. But also because maybe this is the last moment that we can see still intact the city center of Subotica, the cradle of Hungarian Art Nouveau, as it thrived during the prosperity of the turn of the century, and was then stiffened in 1920 into a Sleeping Beauty’s dream by the new border which, annexing it to Yugoslavia, cut off all its traditional connections.

It has been rumored for a long while that the municipality of Subotica wants to destroy a large part of the historical city center to build shopping malls in their place. The demolition has already started with the prestigious People’s Theatre in the main square, two beautiful palaces of Ferenc J. Raichle, the creator of Art Nouveau in Subotica, and many other buildings, whose places are now occupied by concrete monsters, abandoned because of the crisis. However, in the autumn of 2012 the municipality proposed a new plan of urbanization, which would break down not less than 1063 buildings in the historical city center, virtually destroying the city’s complete Art Nouveau architectural heritage.

That was – this became. The People’s Theatre in the main square

Our earlier posts on Subotica: • Exhibition: Art Nouveau in Subotica • Globetrotters in and of Subotica • The railway station of Subotica: So ugly that already disgusting • Spaniards, Bulgarians, Turks… • …Chinese, American Natives and Russian conspirators in Subotica

However, we do not go to bury to Subotica, but to discover the rich architectural heritage of a dynamically developing, vibrant city of the turn of the century, as well as the history standing behind this heritage. Starting from the main square, we will walk from house to house in the Art Nouveau and eclectic district, explore the city’s social structure, the spatial and social relationship of its many ethnic communities – Hungarians, Germans, Bunjevci, Serbs, Jews –, the development of the historical city center. We will visit the two most outstanding monuments, whose construction was committed with a good sense by the ambitious city leadership to two excellent Art Nouveau architects, Dezső Jakab and Marcell Komor: the synagogue (1908), which was definitely the most beautiful synagogue in contemporary Hungary, and the town hall (1912), which was also among the most beautiful Art Nouveau town halls of the country. We will visit the Art Nouveau in Subotica exhibition, already presented in Poemas del río Wang. And finally we will visit the famous fin-de-siècle resort at Palić/Palics, the Art Nouveau buildings along the Palić Lake, the last remnant of the ancient Pannonian Sea.


On 15, Friday morning at 7 we leave by minibus from Budapest. We get around 10-11 to Subotica. We log in to the hotel, and then go to our sightseeing tour. In the meantime we sit down for a short lunch in the Art Nouveau People’s Circle, or in the Serbian pastry shop against the synagogue, to lose the least sunlight time. At five o’clock we go to the exhibition, then free sightseeing.

On 16, Saturday we meet in the main square, which is in this day a wedding scene, with alternating Balkan brass bands and competing wedding guests, and especially with the town hall which is open to the public in this day. After the town hall we go over to the synagogue, and hence to the Palić Lake. In Palić we lunch in the lakeside restaurant, and from there we leave home.

The participation fee is 70 euros, which includes the travel from Budapest to Subotica and back, the accommodation with breakfast, and the guided tour. Single room supplement: 15 euros. Deadline of application: March 8, Friday.

The Art Nouveau in Szabadka

The building of the City Museum of Szabadka/Subotica, hosting the exhibition of the Art Nouveu in Szabadka is itself one of the finest examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Szabadka, the work of the Budapest architects József and László Vágó from 1906, the great decade of the city’s Art Nouveau architecture. Its commissioner, Miksa Dömötör (1868-1944), the chief physician of the city’s Insurace Company, built it as a block of flats for rent, but he equipped the five-room luxury apartment to the left from the main entrance for himself and his family. This is the flat which is now filled – until next April – by the exhibition recalling the Art Nouveau in Szabadka with the objects of a former civic world, the objects which once filled these homes. This is the very context which gives a real significance to the exhibition. We can often encounter one or another of these objects that belonged to the everyday life of the turn of the century, but only so, put in their places in a home can they really revive the world for which they were made, and document the glorious marching in of the new style into a provincial Hungarian town.



“In the first primary class I only collected sacred images. I often looked at them, caressed them, rearranged them. After that I always collected something… Not only sacred images, but also reckoner papers. I got them mainly from Antal and Pista. We were sitting in the attic with Kató, arranging and watching our treasures…”

Sarolta Damjanovné Zimmer: Így éltünk Szabadkán (So we lived in Szabadka), Budapest-Zagreb, 2003, 19.

Quoted by Olga K. Ninkov, Director of the City Museum in her detailed
presentation of the exhibition: Bácsország, 62 (2012/3), 5-10.

Beside the works of arts and crafts and the everyday objects incorporated into art by the new style, the high art, the paintings decorating the salons are mainly represented by the works of Henrik Aczél (1876-1946), born in Nagyvárad/Oradea, whose portraits had been already praised by the great poet Endre Ady in the Nagyváradi Napló in 1902. He settled three years later in Szabadka, where, in addition to portraiture, he was also heavily involved in cultural life, giving lectures and art classes, restoring the paintings of the Town Hall’s gallery, and in 1910 founding the local Female Industrial and Applied Arts High School. He designed the cover of the popular family journal Bácsország – today, published again, the excellent journal of the Homeland Study Society of Vojvodina. His graceful, mysterious and inspired impressionist paintings were very sought for in the period, and won numerous international awards. Due to our predilection for Persian culture, we especially mention among them, as a curiosity, the Lion and Sun Order of the Shah of Persia.

A design from the sketchbook of the great local novelist Géza Csáth, 11 September 1907

Szabadka as an international rail hub and as the third largest city in contemporary Hungary, boasted a widespread postcard publishing, whose history was summed up in this year by the local collector József Horváth in his richly illustrated Szabadkai és palicsi képes levelezőlapok története (History of the postcards of Szabadka and Palics). The exhibition presents only a few of them on a postcards wall, but it selects with a good sense those which are the most rare, represent a special event, or are interesting because of the message of the sender.



The “Japanese fever” of the turn of the century, as we have already written, reached its climax around 1905, during the Russo-Japanese war, and it immediately appeared also in Subotica, which kept pace with the fashion. “The Japanese fashion has also invaded our carnival, and General Kuroki’s spirit has also conquered here – but without any destruction” – wrote the Bácsország on 12 March 1905, following the “Japanese night” organized in the National Casino. The journal also presented the photo of the daughter of the city’s chief architect Titus Mačković, dressed in kimono, which is also shown enlarged in the exposition. They started to collect Japanese engravings and carved souvenirs – the exhibition presents a number of okimonos made of ivory from the contemporary Szabadka collections –, and the Lifka Bioscope, the city’s famous movie projecting short films, put Japanese movies on his program.

“Teophil was about eight years old. On the fast-paced, flashing images he saw one of the scenes of the Russo-Japanese War. The chunchuzs attack the train – and the audience, which, together with all Lemberg, backed the Japanese, after the first presentation shouted: Banzai! It lasted only a quarter of an hour, and costed twenty cents; he kept dreaming about it in the night, but it was not repeated for a long time.”

Jan Parandowski: Decaying heavens

And the Lifka Bioscope – to which the museum has recently dedicated a separate presentation – is also enlivened here. A small room of the house has been equipped at the model of the original movie, and on the canvas – as if Henrik Aczél’s Dance of fairies came to life from the next room – continuously runs the short film of 1896 by the Lumière Brothers, also presented in Szabadka in 1905, Loïe Fuller’ Serpentine dance.


As the exhibition’s apropos was the solemn inauguration of the Art Nouveau Town Hall exactly a year ago, on 15 September 1912 – about which we will write more –, thus through the walls of th rooms, as if through windows, we can glance at the masterpieces of the great decade of the Art Nouveau in Szabadka: the town hall, the most beautiful Hungarian synagogue, the City Coffee House which worked on the ground floor of the town hall, at the site of the current “Art Nouveau McDonald’s”, from which some original furnishing has been also preserved and presented now.


As we arrive at the museum, rain starts to fall soon. While we are visiting the exhibition, it’s incessantly pouring out. An hour later we want to go on, but there is no way. The water has flooded the streets, the cars wade in it up to the door, it already covered the baseboard of the synagogue on the other side of the street, is pouring into the courtyards laying one step below the street level, flowing into the staircase of the museum undre the gate. Just like that other unexpected downpour, almost a hundred years ago, washed away the whole Art Nouveau and Szabadka. We have to flee through the courtyard and a back entrance, before it would be also closed off by water. Szabadka would not be Szabadka, were it not waiting for us with such unexpected surprises.

Szabadka Unlimited, 4. Globetrotters

We will be not the first globetrotters in Szabadka/Subotica. The really unlimited character of the city – and of the whole contemporary world – is indeed indicated by the fact that, according to the news of a hundred years ago, globetrotting was an established industry in the already multinational Szabadka, which was open to everything new. It was pursued by the most various nations: mysterious Turkish diplomats, adventurous Serbian lads, German postcard sellers, Chinese idol figurine peddlers, as well as Transylvanian Gypsy vendors who guarded masses of silver museum pieces at home, in the Carpathian mountains. Postcards and coffee houses, as we will see, played a key role in this profession, and that’s good, because otherwise where else would have a journalist of Szabadka run across so many kinds of wanderers? Therefore we illustrate our report with postcards depicting coffe houses, but this time not from Szabadka – from where our only postcard on a café was already shot off in the previous post – but from the whole contemporary world, where just the Szabadka globetrotters could reach. Nevertheless, we will also get to know some surprising news on the city as well. Would have you thought that at the turn of the century a real Turkish café worked in Szabadka, and that the Gypsies from Transylvania purchased in the Jewish shops of Szabadka the authentic masterpieces of Transylvanian folk art en gros?




Bácsmegyei Napló, 14 July 1912

From vice-consul globetrotter. Mehmed’s mysterious guest
Our correspondent. Szabadka, 13 July

In this week, an interesting person stayed for two days in Szabadka. A middle height stranger with black English moustache and in elegant tourist dres, who, however, did not live in one of the red-carpet hotels in Kossuth Street, but in the modest room of a Turkish tavern in Jókai Street. Perhaps we will never get to know who this mysterious stranger was in the reality, so we will have to accept what he told about himself. Maybe everything he told was just a tale, and perhaps he has a much more interesting and sensational past, which he wanted to hide behind the fancy tale of another biography

Mehmed’s coffee house.

About 2-3 months ago a strange label was nailed above a shop door:

Arnaulovich Mehmed’s
Turkish coffee house

In fact, it is but a common tavern. The street side room is not much different from any other pub in Szabadka. Only the last, small, only a few steps wide and long room is interesting. The walls of this room are covere with Turkish carpets, Turkish cushions replace the chairs on the floor, and the guests are served with some strange-shaped coffee sets. This is the Turkish coffee house in Szabadka. Its usual guests are some clerks, painters and journalists. At Mehmed you get excellent black cofee, like in no other place, and superb, cheap wines.

The mysterious stranger.

A week ago, the visitors of the Turkish café found an interesting guest at Mehmed. He was a middle height, slightly stooped 35-ear-old man with a high forehead, piercing eyes and English moustache, wearing a modern, elegant tourist dress. He speaks in French, German, Russian and Turkish. He lived in a small courtyard room. In the evenings he sat in the larger room of the tavern, and while talking with the owner, he was watching the guests. First he behaved in the most reticent way with the guests of the “coffe house room”, just as the owner, Mehmed avoids any more intimate contact with them. Perhaps he has something to hide, and he suspects them to be detectives. Mehmed’s guest replied to the interest of the company only after a lengthy questioning. But what then he told about himself was almost unbelievable, it was so romantic and interesting.

The Turkish general’s son.

The stranger called himself Achmed Reif Bey, and told his life story as follows:

He was born in Constantinople. His father served as a general in the Turkish army. The boy was educated by a German-born military officer calle Henrik Schuller. As a result of this education, after the completion of the secondary school, Achmed Reif Bey went to university to Paris.

He stayed six years in Paris, and during that time he received a doctorate in jurisprudence. In Paris the young bey became a completely Western-minded person. He participated with a particular interest in the actions of the International Socialist and Philantrophic Society, as one of the most enthusiastic members of the association. In addition, he worked with particularly high ambitions in the interest of the small group which was the nucleus of the triumphant New Turkish movement.

The vice-consul.

After the completition of his university studies, Achmed Reif Bey returned to Constantinople. Not much later he was assigned to the Embassy in Belgrad with the protection of his father, where he soon became a vice-consul. He also married there the daughter of the former Serbian minister Popović, with whom he received as dowry a sizable estate in Temes County. The services of the young man with a Western education were often used in diplomatic missions. Thus he often traveled to Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Moscow. In the meantime he remained a fervent supporter of the International Socialist and Philanthropic Society.



The bet.

In 1907 Reif Bey spent a longer holiday in Paris. On one occasion, at a meeting of the Philanthropic Society they debated whether it is true that the Turks are one of the laziest races. Reif Bey obviously claimed the contrary, and in order to prove his truth, he accepted a bet to go around the world in eight years together with one friend, mainly on foot. The sum of the bet was 750 thousand francs: this much receives Reif Bey if he realized what he promised. He did it the more willingly, because a globetrotting adventure like this was one of his old favorite ideas.

In 1908 Reif Bey and his friend began their journey. They have hitherto traveled around America, Africa and Western Europe, partly on foot and partly by train, as Reif Bey receives a significant amount from home, but in the terms of the bet only a specific amount for a year.

The journey was recently marred by an incident. A month ago, while climbing a rock around Strasbourg, Reif Bey’s companion fell down, and suffered severe injuries. Thus Reif Bey continues his journey alone.

The Bey knows Mehmed still from his position of vice-consul in Belgrade, because Mehmed had a Turkish coffee house in Újvidék [since 1920 Novi Sad], often visiteby the members of the Turkish consulate in Belgrad. So Reif Bey stayed at Mehmed, because he especially wanted to watch the life of the lower classes, and the tavern in Jókai Street is especially suitable for that.

Who is Reif Bey?

Whether all this is true, it would be difficult to determine. Reif Bey’s registration certificate in French and German is really issued for the name of Reif Bey. He also has French language certificates that he is a foreign correspondent of the large Constantinople newspaper “Aden”. He is obviously a very intelligent man, truly educated in the Western sense, nevertheless the true purpose and direction of his way can be also different from what he told. One thing is sure, that he is not an ordinary rogue globetrotter.

As a very characteristic and in many ways justifying circumstance, consider the following:

Achmed Reif Bey’s traveler’s suitcase is the finest and most expensive British factory product. It includes a perfect and expensive drug set, and high quality instruments of fine workmanship, which all show that Reif Bey really cannot be a poor man.

From Szabadka he continued his way by an express train to Bucharest, Russia, Asia and Australia.





Bácsmegyei Napló, 3 April 1912

The adventures of a Bačka globetrotter in Turkey
Our correspondent. Szabadka, 2 April

About half a year ago, a 23-year-old high, black-haire young people, Petko Daškalov from the village of Stapar, with two elementary school classes, came to our editorial.

He stated that he was going to go on a journey around the world, and he asked us for stamped postcards for the purpose of reporting. He told so fantastic things on his journey and plans that we gave no credit to his words, and we believed that he, as most of the so-called globetrotters, would travel around the world through the coffee houses of New York, Abbazia, Ceylon and Japan in Budapest. In order to get rid of the fast-talking globetrotter, we gave him some postcards. Petko Daškalov thanked the cards, and then he proudly set on his way around the world.

Since then we have not heard anything about Petko Daškalov. We also forgot the case, until the post brought two postcards from him today. The cards are dated from Rogatica on the 29th of the past month. In one of them Daškalov informs us to have hitherto wandered about Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Macedonia, the Sanjak and Bosnia. He went through lots of adventures everywhere, and was in danger of life lots of times. Now he is going to go to Herzegovina, Montenegro, Italy, and from there to America.

In the other postcards he describes his Turkish adventure. The letter written with a deficient orthography is as follows:

Dear Editorial! I inform you that I was arrested in Turkey, in the city of Pristina, and I was put in prison for 24 as they took me for a spion. And when I certified myself, they set me free, and I went to Skopje where a Turk shot at me, because I was suspicious to him, and I ask you to address your letter to Mostar, Poste Restante. I greet you, Petko Daškalov, Tourist

Petko Daškalov has thus honored his word. He is traveling around the world, and who knows, after which adventures and experiences will he got back, perhaps as a world-famous rich person, to his native Ósztapár.



Bácsmegyei Napló, 17 December 1911

The globetotters. Those who walk about the world with railway ticket
Our correspondent. Szabadka, 16 December

In the streets of Szabadka we know well those eccentric-looking people in strange dress who spread about themselves that they walk around the world by bet. The one wears shorts, but long-stem shoes, the other an empty duffle bag on the back, of the third the hair and beard lacks constantly and consistently the barber’s intervention, but all of them have postcards in the hand.

The spontaneous question as to why the postcards are necessary to walking around the world is explained by these eccentric globetrotters. All of them have bet that they would support themselves by selling these postcards. They go from one city to another, and as the world is round, slowly they get back to where they started from. This is why after two or three months one encounters in Szabadka the same globetrotters who now should actually walk in Calcutta.

One of these globetrotters is Imre Fiebig, who has visited several times Szabadka. He says he is a German mechanical engineer, has a whole-year railway ticket, and when the weather grows colder, he moves up to the capital. In Budapest he walks from coffee house to coffee house, covering huge distances. From the Abbazia to the New York, from there to the London, the Ceylon, the Palermo, the Fiume, everywhere selling his postcards.

And when the weather becomes milder, he takes the train, traveling from one city to another, and as soon as he gets out of the wagon, he is converted into globetrotter, and starts to beg

This is also an existence, isn’t it.

“Sátoraljaújhely in the night – Central Coffee House”

Royal Coffee House, Nagyvárad, 13 October 1912 11h 31m – “The Gypsy is now playing
«I cannot dream, my dear, but about you… etc.» While, thinking about you,
I send you infinite kisses on the hand, h. i. Weiterschütz …
Kiss the hand, unknowingly”

Bácsmegyei Napló, 15 October 1911

Ancient masterpieces among the Székely Gypsies
Our correspondent

Those brown-faced, black-eyed people who from time to time appear on our streets to sell the products of Székely folk industry, at home among the Transylvanian mountains live a peculiar life, very different from our own. There are even Sabatarians among them, and their villages are full of hitherto undiscovered and unknown historical monuments.

There is only one modernity in these itinerant traders. Namely, that whatever they sell as Székely folk industry, is all Austrian and Czech products. The public wants cheap things, and they do not want to pay for the work the Székely women and girls invest into a carpet or tablecloth throughout the year. Therefore the Székely Gypsies bring us cheap ware. They buy the Székely folk industry directly from the factories.

These Székely Gypsies usually make shopping in Szabadka. They buy their wares in the Kállay Albert Street shop of Elijah Braun, and they go with them around all Hungary. Most of them have no money when coming for the merchandise, so they bring something to put in pawn. The pawn objects of the Székely Gypsies are ancient silver ware and valuable antique goldsmith’s works. Once they sell their merchandise, they redeem them from the pawn.

Yesterday a particularly valuable silver tankard left Szabadka in this way. Its owner is the Székely Gypsy Tócsi Máté from Bécsfalva, Udvarhely county. The tankard is divided in three parts and has three handles. Each part has a different portrait. The inscription of the first one is:

FRANCISCUS WESSELENYI GENERALIS COMES MURAKOESIENSIS 1645

The second portrait, according to its label, is

MISKEI ÁDÁM COLONELLUS 1646

And the third one

CAPITANEUS IOANNES BESSENYEI 1650.

The tankard, whose capacity is about two and a half liters, was probably the common drinking cup of the three Hungarian lords. They drank of it when they came together to be grieved above the fate of the homeland.

As to how this beaker came in the possession of the Székely Gypsies, Tócsi Máté told us that he already saw it at his grandfather, and it was left to him by his father. The bottom and the handle of the beaker seems to be a more recent work, but it is also clean silver, just like the other, ancient parts of the tankard.

A lawyer in Szabadka wanted to purchase the valuable tankard. The Gypsy, however, did not want to part of it for any money. He told that this was his children’s inheritance. He also told that at home he had about a half ton of other silver ware. But the other Gypsies in his village had even more.

It would be interesting to recover the works of art in the possession of the Székely Gypsies in Bécsfalva.




My ethnographer friend, Péter Berta is just working on the recovery of these treasures. Not in Bécsfalva and not in the Székely mountains, from where the “poharas cigányok,” beaker-holding Gypsies have disappeared in the past century, but in one of the most archaic Transylvanian Gypsy community, among the Gabor Gypsies. The Gabor Gypsies in Maros/Mureș and Kolozs/Cluj county still jealously guard and leave from father to son their Renaissance silver beakers and tankards, which they only sell in the hardest financial difficulty, only to each other, and on those occasions they change hands for several hundreds of dollars. Péter, who over the past twenty years learned their language and they accepted him in their community, presents through an incredibly interesting series of articles (also in English, as he mainly publishes in British anthropological journals) the complex and ritualized working of this prestige item economy, and its power of organizing their community and culture – I hope that he would sometime publish a summary also for Río Wang. Inspired by the above report, he sent now his study (in Hungarian, but with many illustrations) in which he collected the references to these “Gypsy treasures” around the turn of the century, which also prove that these treasures were then much widely possessed by the Transylvanian Gypsies and stood in the focus of their culture than nowadays. Such unexpected findings emerge in the century old, still really unlimited Szabadka.

„Három világvándor, 1920 februárja óta tartó föld körüli útjukon”