Index – Culture – In Budapest, it was enriched with six old and new sculptures from Andrássy út
Henrik Haggenmacher arrived in Hungary in 1856 as the child of wealthy Swiss mill owners. The young man worked in my ships on the Danube, and then he was employed as a chief swordsman at the First Buda-Pest Steam Mill Company seven years later with the help of a winther. Due to his aptitude, he soon became the technical and commercial director of the company.
It is worth noting that until 1870 his deputy was a compatriot named Julius Maggi, who, two decades later, founded the company Maggi, which is still famous today for producing broth cubes and capsules.
Henrik had set up more and more steam mills in the capital to revive his innumerable inventions and growing wealth. Malma also operated in Szemere Street, next to the Western Railway Station and the Margaret Bridge. Due to the expansion of the portfolio, in 1867 he bought the First Hungarian Equity Brewery on the Jászberényi út in Kőbánya, founded by Ágost Barber Jr. In addition to brewing, he was also interested in land affairs.
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Gallery: It was enriched with six old and new sculptures from Andrássy útPhoto: Péter Papajcsik / Index
He also had several rental palaces built on Lipót Boulevard and Sugár út.
His constructions have always been of good taste and demanding workmanship. One of these attractive city rental palaces is the house at 52 Andrássy út. The building, which features Italian Renaissance elements, was designed by Henrik Schmahl, including the Paris Court, the Del Medico and Gschwindt palaces on Andrássy Street, the Grossinger tenement house at Király utca, and the Stern building at 7 Rákóczi út. apartment building and today’s Urania National Film Theater. According to the latest research, this tenement house near Oktogon was built between 1881 and 1883. The original stone cladding of the property was delivered by the Trieste company Cava Romana, which also supplied artfully carved quadrangular stones to the Opera House, which was built at the time.
The most exciting part of the former façade was the six full-length sculptures depicted in antique depiction, which, according to the architectural topography of Attila Déry, came from the workshop of sculptor Károly Schaffer. Although the book noted by the architect has only guessed the meaning of the statues placed on the column heads, deciphering it is easy based on the life path of the Haggenmacher family.
The child closest to the boulevard, relying on gears, symbolizes handicraft making because the ancestors of the family were still looking for bread in Switzerland as bearded rifle makers, which over time turned their activities into surnames. See Haggenmacher. Nor is it an incidental fact that Henrik’s younger brother, Károly, who also operates in Budapest, contributed 15 significant inventions to the European food industry, which is also expressed in this statue. To the right of this figure is the allegorical depiction of Wisdom, Knowledge, with books and an owl at its feet, scheduling.
To the right of these two statues is Klóthó, who weaves the thread of human life. But here’s a little screw. Since this moira does not touch the twine, the putto, along with the beehive at its feet, suggests that the family was no longer vulnerable to the whims of life and the lack of money that affected many at that time. They are followed in line by a statue of Heracles with the skull of a Kitharion lion on his head and an ash drum in his right arm, which refers not only to the militancy of the Haggenmachers, but also to the assimilation of a family of German descent, according to Greek tradition. are considered ancestors. The fifth statue belongs to the figure of the goddess who holds the cornucopia of Fortuna, but instead of the traditional depiction, she also rests her right leg on a chunky book that tries to express that essentially everyone is a blacksmith of their own success, not blind luck. The last figure is a figurative figure in a Phrygian cap holding a coat of arms depicting a Swiss cross. This statue symbolizes the origin and birthplace of the builder.
The sculptures are either during the siege of Budapest or during the II. they may have disappeared from the façade in the years following World War II.
We don’t know exactly that. The reconstruction of the sculptures, or more precisely their re-carving, is also a great word because we know of their existence almost only because of the recordings of Hermann Oskar Rückwardt, a Prussian and Bavarian royal photographer, published in 1890.
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Gallery: It was enriched with six old and new sculptures from Andrássy útPhoto: Péter Papajcsik / Index
The former Haggenma tenement house on Andrássy út, which will be operated as a three-star hotel with 121 rooms this spring, has now been completely renovated externally by carving out six sculptures. Due to the conversion, the inner courtyard was converted into an atrium lobby covered with a glass roof. The client of the investment was CD Hungary Kft., The hotel will be operated by Continental Group Kft. The hotel has been given the not-so-imaginative A52 first name, which will hopefully change soon and not some sort of trendy crappy English first name.
The renovation plans for the listed building with a net floor area of 5,200 square meters were also noted by the Archikon Architects. The contractor was Market Zrt. Due to the change of function, but taking into account the expectations of the monument, the building had to be touched by professionals in many places. During the reconstruction, more than 7,000 cubic meters of demolition debris was removed from the site and more than 250 tons of structural steel was placed in the walls.