The chronicle of Eger Tobacco Factory

The cigar factory

registered Philip Morris & Co. Ltd. at a headquarters on 110-112 Broad Street, New York. While this future giant was seeking to settle itself in to the feverish, bubbling, pliable American market, war was brewing in Europe. During the four and a half years of bitter struggle that followed the outbreak of war on June 8th 1914, ten million people met their deaths at the hands of hitherto unheard-of and unimagined weapons and machines in the soi-disant civilized regions of the world. Yet in Eger, a little town in an as yet still great empire, none of this disturbed the tranquil workings of the tobacco factory. Demand for cigars did not diminish, orders from the army became permanent fixtures. Deep in the trenches the soldiers wrapped themselves in rough blankets, but the smoke of a good cigar was like a soft eiderdown to their spirits, breathing scents of home and freedom.

Scarcity of goods was common in the home country, as a contemporary issue of the Eger local newspaper bears out, saying “Yesterday was another heated day for the tabacconists.

A consignment of tobacco arrived, bringing with it the natural consequence that a vast amount of pushing and shoving took place outside the tobacconists’ establishments, which neither civil nor military forces could bring under control, and which in some areas developed into genuine street scuffles, with people striking each other quite violently.”

The social home was managed by two sisters from the Eger convent of the Merciful Sisters