- Written by: Kordos Szabolcs
- Photos: Huszár Dávid, Fortepan - Schoch Frigyes
- Reading time: 4 minutes
Hegedüs Villa: the Finance Minister, Andy Vajna and the Pirate Flag
Excerpt from the bestselling book New Secrets of a City – Budapest Legends, Legendary Budapest Citizens by Szabolcs Kordos (with photographs by Dávid Huszár).
High above the city stands a peculiar little villa that has always fascinated the people of Budapest. Many may not even know its name, yet when travelling from Pest to Buda across the Elisabeth Bridge, their eyes are sure to be drawn to this charming red-brick building with towers, resembling a medieval castle. In this chapter, we introduce the villa full of secrets, rising above one of the most beautiful locations of Gellért Hill.
Numerous urban legends are connected to Orom Street 4. One of them claims that the house was copied from an Italian villa. This story happens to be true. Frigyes Schoch, the owner of the plot, must have been a cosmopolitan, adventurous, clever, and somewhat unscrupulous character. A descendant of a Swiss family, he made his fortune as a construction entrepreneur, working on railway stations and public buildings, while also trading on the stock exchange and becoming deeply involved in various financial speculations. At the same time, he travelled extensively and was a passionate photographer. He acquired the plot with its magnificent view with remarkable foresight, and when the architect he commissioned, Ferenc K. Császár, showed him photographs of the Castello Türcke palace standing on the top of Capo Santa Chiara in Genoa, he immediately fell in love with the sight. He wanted the very same building, only not on a hillside in Genoa, but on the top of Gellért Hill. Frigyes Schoch actually ordered two versions of the villa, imagining them standing proudly as mirror images of each other. It is fascinating to imagine how the Budapest skyline would look today with two such villas, but this vision will now remain only a dream. The first – and only – villa was completed in the early 1910s. It even had its own garage, which represented the ultimate luxury at the time. On the drawings of the small tower room, the designer wrote the word “The Boss”. It was most likely Schoch’s private domain, from where he could see the entire city from behind his desk and weave his ambitious plans. After 1914, however, he had to think about how to escape the financial difficulties caused by the war. He never managed to recover: in 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic nationalised the entire building. Afterwards, Buda’s iconic villa came into the possession of Hestia House Building Ltd.
Dr Lóránt Hegedüs purchased the property in 1926, and thanks to him, city historians often refer to the red-brick building simply as the Hegedüs Villa. Like Schoch, Hegedüs was also a colourful and fascinating personality. The economic politician served as Minister of Finance in both the Teleki and Bethlen governments. He was a member of the Hungarian delegation at the Treaty of Trianon negotiations and undertook the difficult task of steering Hungary away from a situation threatened by state bankruptcy. Before his appointment as minister, Hegedüs spent more than six years living in the United States, where he researched immigration issues. Later, he became director of the Hungarian Commercial Bank and president of the Association of Savings Banks and Banks. As a final touch to his remarkable life story, he was also related to the famous Hungarian writer Mór Jókai, wrote a regular column for Pesti Hírlap, and demonstrated his talents as a humorist and science-fiction writer. A true Renaissance figure – and a man who endured a devastating family tragedy. On 31 July 1942, Hegedüs’s wife and daughter committed suicide together in the villa on Orom Street. According to reports in contemporary newspapers, the woman had suffered from depression for a long time; the Pesti Hirlap wrote that “on doctors’ advice, a nurse was constantly present beside the mentally ill lady.” Mrs. Hegedüs was terrified of becoming impoverished, while her daughter Margit could no longer bear her suffering. As a chemistry lecturer at the University of Szeged, Margit had access to deadly poisons. On the fatal day, she took enough cyanide with her to have killed ten people. The women’s bodies were discovered by the cook. The retired finance minister, who was already suffering from illness at the time, was not told the truth; he was only informed that his wife had been taken to hospital. Two years later, he too followed his family into death. The Hegedüs heirs were allowed to remain on Gellért Hill until the mid-1940s, after which the property was taken from them and converted into a dormitory for foreign students.
However, the story of the villa was far from over, as after the fall of communism the building continued to attract famous, extraordinary and, naturally, wealthy residents. I spoke with several owners and former tenants, none of whom wished to be named, but all agreed that living at Orom Street 4 is a true lifestyle experience. “I was incredibly lucky to be able to rent one of the apartments through a property advertisement. I loved every moment I spent there. There are only a few apartments in the entire building, and some of the larger ones are around 400 square metres, which creates a truly exclusive atmosphere. The view from above, from the tower, is simply unbeatable. I have never seen anything like it since. Of course, the building also contains some of the strangest floor plans. Waking up in a castle tower must be an extraordinary feeling, but these spaces can also be somewhat inconvenient,” said one former tenant, who sometimes felt as if he were living alone in the villa because of the owners’ frequent absence. The most famous resident of the tower apartment was Andy Vajna, who rented the panoramic apartment overlooking the city at the beginning of his “return” to Hungary, together with his partner at the time. Former residents interviewed for the article remember the producer as a good neighbour who loved cooking and often invited them over as well. According to stories, his friend Arnold Schwarzenegger also tasted Vajna’s cooking here, at Orom Street. After living there for several years, Vajna eventually rented another billionaire’s enormous, walled-off villa and moved away from Gellért Hill. The urban legends about someone flying a pirate flag from the top of the tower apartment for months are also true. The skull-and-crossbones emblem only fluttered in the wind occasionally – perhaps the “lord of the castle” used it to signal to his subjects that he was present in his palace. The mystery was heightened by the fact that, during this period, the name Jack Sparrow appeared on the doorbell. Many believed that the producer himself was behind this strange theatrical game, but according to former residents, it was actually a lawyer involved in controversial affairs and his girlfriend who imagined themselves as Johnny Depp. Today, the residents’ community is small but remarkably colourful – at least as colourful as the city they overlook.
