Schwimmer family

The Schwimmer family was consisted of three generations of individuals who lived in Hungary, the United States, and Austria during the 19th and 20th centuries. The first generation consisted of Bertha Katscher (1856-1927) and her husband Max Schwimmer (1845-1922), both from secular Jewish, upper middle class backgrounds. Bertha and Max had three children: Rosika (1877-1948), Béla (1879-1934), and Franciska (1880-1963). Béla married Marie Karp and had one child, Vilma (1921-1948. Rosika and Franciska would become Vilma's guardians in 1935 following Béla's death.

Bertha Katscher (or Berta Kácser) was born on December 9, 1856 in Temesvár (then Hungary, now Timisoara in Romania) to Rosalia Engel Katscher and Ignaz Katscher, who had married in 1852 in Makó, Hungary. Among Bertha's brothers and sisters were Leopold Katscher, noted pacifist, lawyer and journalist, and Helen Kohlbach.

Max (Miksa or Maximilian) Bernát Schwimmer was born on November 5, 1845 in Szeged to Bernát (Bernhard) Schwimmer and his first wife. Max and his brothers, as well as their father and grandfather, bought and sold horses to Turkey and Balkan states. The Schwimmer brothers also had a farm, orchards, flour mills, and a distillery. Max trained as an agriculturist and experimented with corn on the family farm in Temesvár, but generally identified himself as a merchant on official documentation.

Bertha and Max married on January 16, 1877 in Temesvár. Shortly thereafter, due to Max's failing health, they moved to Budapest where they started a business of their own and had their first child. Once Max's health had improved, they returned to Temesvár where he reentered business with his brothers, and they had their second and third children. Bertha, an atheist, and Max, an agnostic, did not emphasize religion in the children's upbringing. Music, however, was central in the household, and the entire family would often sing and play music together in the evenings. The family eventually moved to Szabadka (today Subotica in Serbia), where the three Schwimmer siblings spent their teens. In the late 1890s, Max's brother Adolf and family in-fighting bankrupted the Schwimmers, and they moved back to Budapest. Max died in Budapest on January 4, 1922. Bertha emigrated with her daughter to the United States in 1922, and she died on October 29, 1927 in New York.

Max and Bertha's first child, Rosika (Rózsa, Rózsika), was born on September 11, 1877. For biographical information on Rosika see the finding aid for the Rosika Schwimmer papers: http://www.nypl.org/archives/2500

Béla (Bernhard), their second child, was born on January 4, 1879. By May 1915, Béla was serving in the Austro-Hungarian military as a commandant of a Red Cross train, and in January 1920, he was discharged from service. Béla was professionally involved in the theater and cabaret world, primarily as a writer. He frequently used the last name of Sarlay or Sarlai, which may have functioned as a stage name or pen name. In Budapest, he was the secretary of the Royal Orfeum during S.Z. Sakall's directorship (1913-1920); he also worked at Endre Nagy's and László Beöthy's theaters. Later he lived in Vienna, Austria, working as a playwright and movie producer and writing operettas. He married Marie (Mitzi) Karp, and their daughter, Vilma, was born in 1921. By September 1926 they were divorced. Béla died in December 1934 in Vienna.

Franciska (Franzi), born October 22, 1880, graduated from the National Music Academy in Budapest and became a piano and music teacher, consciously deciding against a life as a concert pianist or composer. Throughout her career she taught private students, both children and adults. From about 1914 to 1922, she was a music teacher for disabled children at the Gyógypedagógiai Gyermekszanatórium in Budapest, and she also taught piano at a municipal high school in Budapest. In the 1910s, especially surrounding the 1913 International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Budapest, she assisted her sister in feminist organization activities, and was close to a number of figures in the Hungarian and international women's movement. In 1922, she emigrated with her mother to the United States to join her sister, arriving on August 4th. She financially supported her mother, herself and her sister through her work as a piano teacher in Chicago and then in New York. Commissioned by Doubleday Doran & Co, she wrote the book Great Musicians as Children (1929), with the intention of introducing children to musicians by presenting them as they were in childhood. Beginning in 1926 and until their deaths, Franciska lived together with her sister on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Edith Wynner, their assistant and protégé, joined them in the apartment in 1941. Franciska died in New York on December 20, 1963.

Vilma Mitzi Schwimmer was born to Béla Schwimmer and Marie Karp in Vienna on March 20, 1921. After her father died, her estranged mother transferred custody and guardianship of Vilma to the Schwimmer sisters, and Vilma emigrated to New York City in 1935. While working in Georgia she met Edward James Cain. They married in Brooklyn in 1944 but were separated by the end of the same year and divorced in 1947 in Texas. Vilma died of a seizure in New York the following year.

From the guide to the Schwimmer family papers, 1837-1976, 1876-1948, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)