Szekeres József: Ganz Ábrahám 1814-1867. A Ganz gyárak alapítójának életrajza (Budapest, 1967)
Angol nyelvű rövid életrajz
exchanged glances of surprise and also of pity for the newcomer, but, in the absence of further bids, the hammer of the auctioneer came down with the third bang, and Ganz became the owner of the scorned property. Four days after he received his charter from the city council for setting up a foundry. The construction of the new type cupola furrace and the purchase of the indispensable tools had. to be financed from a loan, and the newly hired seven foundry hands could only trust their good fortune as to the actual receipt of their agreed wages. The director of the Rolling Hill was jealous of the newly vjon independence of his fori..er employee and soon managed to prevent the placing of any orders from other iir.s, notably the Old Buda Shipyard, the bridge-building and railway construction companies. In this predicament Ganz appealed to Kossuth for help who then wrote Széchenyi, ashing for support to the young founder. Although Széchenyi’s first reply was negative, he nonetheless intervened and the obstacles blocking the development of the new factory were at once removed. The working force of the small workshop soon numbered thirty, and Ganz added a neighbouring building to his property. The orders of the city council of Buda for communal deliveries also boosted the enterprise. By 1848, the factory had not less than sixty workers and a ten-horse-power steam engine. To fill the orders of the revolutionary goverment, the factory began to manufacture guns. According to incomplete records, the foundry made twenty-two gun-barrels during the 1848- 1849, period, each with the inscription: "Leave Alone the Hungarian !£' 1849 was a momentous year in the life of Abraham Ganz. In the summer he , anaged to pay off his debt with Kossuth notes and, in the suniaer, he married the sixteen-year-old daughter of Lőrinc Heiss, a cutler living in Pest. Accused of supporting the revolutionary goverment, he was arrested in October, and work in the factory stopped for -...any weeks. Thanks to the intervention of his Swiss patrons, he got off with the light sentence of six weeks of detention in a fortress, but this, too, was waived. In the darkest four years of political suppression, the so-called period of 142
