Bitter Water, Sweet Life – The Magnificent Saxlehner Palace

While the family lived in the Versailles-inspired suite on the first floor, the ground floor housed offices, and the remaining apartments were rented out to wealthy tenants. András Saxlehner himself could not enjoy the splendour for long: he died in 1889, only a few years after the palace was completed. In the Saxlehner family, originally from Thuringia, textile trading was a deeply rooted tradition. András’s great-grandfather, grandfather and father all earned their living as cloth merchants. The family members also had a tendency to marry into other textile-trading families, so András Saxlehner, born in Kőszeg in 1815, did not have to spend much time considering his future career.

The young cloth merchant was an active member of the Honi Védegylet (National Defence Association), an organisation supporting Hungarian industry, where he met Lajos Kossuth, who encouraged him to open a business in Pest. The rather unusual-sounding “Black Dog” cloth shop awaited customers on Váci Street. András’s business partner was his brother, Sámuel. The business developed successfully, but the merchant’s private life took a tragic turn. His wife, Erzsébet, died young after only three years of marriage. In 1854, he married again; his chosen wife was Emília Pelikán, who gave birth to nine children over seventeen years, of whom four sons and two daughters reached adulthood. It seemed that, like his ancestors, András Saxlehner would retire comfortably as a successful cloth merchant and eventually pass the business on to his sons. Then, one day in 1862, a farmer entered his shop, and András’s life took a dramatic turn. The farmer, József Bayer, complained that he had bought land on the southern slope of Dobogó Hill in Buda, but the water from the well he had drilled there was useless: it was bitter beyond belief, his animals refused to drink it, and if they did, the consequences were even worse, as it caused them diarrhoea.

András Saxlehner had no geological training, but he had heard that a few years earlier bitter water had been discovered on the nearby Kelenföld Plateau, in the area of today’s Szent Imre Hospital. He immersed himself in research and came to the conclusion that if medicinal water springs truly existed underground, they could represent an enormous business opportunity.

Saxlehner bought the land from the farmer and, at the age of forty-eight, threw himself into his new venture with extraordinary enthusiasm. He did not proceed cautiously or think small; instead, he immediately aimed high. He trusted his instincts and the power of careful planning. He handed over the cloth business to his brother, and only one year after farmer Bayer had entered his shop, the businessman began extracting water from three wells in the Örsöd Valley, between today’s Kőérberki area and the old Balaton Road. Already in the first year, forty thousand bottles of the bitter water named after János Hunyadi were sold. By 1864, sales had reached ninety-nine thousand bottles, and by 1869, three hundred and four thousand bottles were placed on the market. By 1885, no fewer than seventy wells were operating. By then, the Hunyadi János bitter water business provided a livelihood for 250 workers and their families. Its two active ingredients were Glauber’s salt and Epsom salt. The facility introduced public lighting before it appeared on the streets of Budapest, and enormous underground reservoirs helped make extraction more efficient. It even had its own fire brigade with fourteen full-time officers. András Saxlehner invested enormous sums into his enterprise, used the most modern technology available, and was an innovator in every respect.

The magnate’s greatest idea was undoubtedly launching exports in 1869. This bold step brought spectacular success, and within a few years the Hungarian market became insignificant compared with international demand. The bitter water was a true product of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: the glass bottles were Bohemian, the corks and seals were Austrian, while the water itself was, of course, Hungarian. The famous advertising slogan was born: “The whole world uses it, and it benefits the whole world.” There was no exaggeration in this claim: from South America to India, people across half the globe truly consumed the Hungarian water to relieve digestive ailments. Saxlehner expanded not only on the market but also territorially: he purchased the surrounding plots of land, and connected the factory to Kelenföld railway station with his own two-and-a-half-kilometre-long railway line. He patented a “bottle-filling” device that was capable of filling ten thousand bottles (!) of the bitter-tasting water every hour. In his guidebook published in 1900, Gusztáv Thirring described the technology as follows: “The filling process takes place mechanically. Since human hands never come into contact with the water, the cleanliness and precision of the handling process are raised to the highest possible level. The facility consists of approximately 200 buildings, and the number of workers is 600. Its annual output reaches 5–6 million bottles.”

In addition to clean production, the former cloth merchant also understood multinational marketing: he was the first among Hungarian entrepreneurs to sign a contract with a London company and launch an international advertising campaign. He made descriptions of the health benefits of the water available in several languages and, with excellent business sense, invited renowned doctors and chemists to write short endorsements about the product’s beneficial effects. According to the promotional materials, the water helped with “constipation, loss of appetite, obesity, congestion, arteriosclerosis and haemorrhoidal complaints,” but it was also particularly recommended for “slimming treatments.”

At the height of the company’s success, advertisements for the Hungarian drink even appeared on one of New York’s skyscrapers, accompanied by the slogan: when the rooster announces the morning, drink Hunyadi János bitter water! During my research, I came across the following English-language advertisement: “In the morning, before rising or while dressing, the best time to take Hunyadi János.” Seeing the overwhelming success, more and more people began drilling wells in Buda, but none of the companies could compete with Saxlehner’s enterprise. The former cloth merchant either bought out his competitors or pushed them out of the market. An even greater challenge than domestic rivals was international counterfeiting: Saxlehner allegedly employed full-time lawyers whose task was to keep a close watch on where fake bottles appeared.

András Saxlehner worked with incredible energy, but his legendary stamina seemed to decline by 1889. He himself felt that his strength was fading, so in a suitably elegant manner he travelled with his wife to the spa town of Karlsbad for a water cure. However, he became ill on the train journey and died in a Vienna hotel – his death was probably caused by complications from pneumonia. Although the founder had passed away forever, his greatest creation continued to grow day by day. His wife, Emília, took over the leadership, while his sons Andor, Árpád, Kálmán and Ödön all took part in managing the business. They established offices in London and New York, each managed by one of the sons. One of the children also became honorary consul of Belgium, while another represented Finland. During the golden age, the Saxlehner family became connected with other prominent families as well: Kálmán married Emma Haggenmacher, a daughter of the famous Haggenmacher industrial family. (The Haggenmacher family, whose palace was also built on Andrássy Avenue and who were prominent figures in the milling and brewing industries, is discussed in another chapter of the book.) Before the First World War, fifteen million bottles of the famous Hungarian bitter water were already being sold annually. However, the war dealt a severe blow both to the country and to the company. Demand declined and never returned to its former level.