Family Memories of Hungary
Family Memories of Hungary

Summary/Abstract: The grown-ups in my family felt about Hungary much what Talleyrand had felt about the ancien régime in France, that only those who had lived in the old days knew what douceur de vivre was. The grown-ups provided plenty of evidence, what’s more. I have in my possession a photograph album from about 1900, the leather binding a little the worse for wear but with “Kapuvár” set into it in letters that have lost much of their original gilt. A coloured postcard on the very first page shows a long façade in the classical style familiar in the Habsburg Empire, and “Vár külseje” printed on it by way of explanation – the outside of the castle. Castle, on just two floors? The other side of the house is an architectural jumble incorporating external stairs and a wooden veranda more appropriate to a Swiss chalet. The interior is what might be called Walter Scott Baronial, mahogany, carpets hanging from ironwork banisters, tiled stoves, and antlers on every wall, even of the bedrooms. Gustav Springer, my great-grandfather and the man who bought and enjoyed Kapuvár, earns a mention in the history books. Vienna and 1842 were the right place and the right time for his creativity as banker, entrepreneur and railway builder. In a recent book based on tax registers for the year 1910, Roman Sandgruber, a professor of economic history, ranks Gustav the fourth richest man in Austria at that time, with an annual income of over four million crowns. According to a sympathetic contemporary writing under the pseudonym Comte Vasili, Gustav was “small and stout, very affable and not lacking wit, with the attractions of a playboy”. His large head was conspicuously bald. Any servant was tipped a crown if he said that the Herr Baron had just come from the barber and was right, but fined a crown if he was wrong. One of Gustav’s maxims was “Grund fliegt nimmer weg”, – land never flies away.

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