The main Unger playing-card workshops // Az Unger kártya főműhelyek
The continued research of the past year has yielded new results and it has now been possible to locate the exact places where the two main playing-card workshops of Mátyás Unger the Elder and Younger were located in Győr: one in Apáca utca, formerly #323, now #27, next to the German Hospital and Church. Altogether, though, the old house no longer exists as it was torn down with its two neighbouring houses to the left and right when the German Hospital built a new building adjacent to its original edifice in the latter half of the 19th century. It is now an old folks’ home, according to Dr. Gyula Vadász. This house belonged to the Ungers from the 1810s to the early 1840s, when they had to have it auctioned off and moved to Bástya utca #260, now Duna kapu tér #7. This brown house was newly erected in 1850, and the Ungers therefore took residence in the Apatur ház on Széchenyi tér at around this time, but kept their playing-card workshop there until c 1857, when they ceased their playing-card production in Győr.
Standard 56-card deck (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Despite the fact that the original house in Apáca utca is obsolete now, we have been able to make considerable progress with the reconstruction, ie outside-in analysis of the artisanal playing-card production in 19th century in Győr. To be continued… and photographs will also be added to this post soon.
The Ungers and Sopron
The Ungers from Győr are originally an old family of Sopron, another picturesque historic town located further west in the Small Hungarian Plain in Western Transdanubia. At the end of the 19th century, the offspring of these Ungers, who remained in Hungary, relocated back to the town of their ancestors. This is why my great-grandmother Anna — or Ancs as she was referred to by others — was also born there. More details will follow later.
Card-maker Mátyás senior‘s parental home is displayed in the picture below, and most likely he was also born there in 1789. It is located in Halász utca 1, in an historical suburb. Mátyás’ father was János György Unger, a town councillor. There were at least three siblings who reached adult age: Mihály, who presumably was a vintner, Márton, town scribe and councillor, who married into the well-known Rupprecht family and Anna Maria, who seems to have married another town councilor, Lőrinc Ofner, according to my most recent discoveries.
The adjacent house, Halász utca 3, in the photograph below, was later inhabited by my great-grandmother Anna’s Uncle Pepi (known to us as Pepi bácsi only) and his family. They lived in Sopron until WWI or shortly thereafter.
Since I have just planned an art and culture trip to London for September, it is already quite late, so this will remain a rather short post. This although there would be much more to report, especially after another fruitful session at the Bavarian State Library today.
