Last week Beočin was visited by the descendants of the Spitzer and Orenstein families who were once among the co-owners of the Beočin Cement Factory - Katarina Mendiondo and her son George.
photo: private archiveREMAINS OF GOOD TIMES: Katarina Mendiondo (third from the left) in the castle of her ancestors
Katarina Mendiondo lives in Brazil, where her grandmother Flora Spitzer moved with her daughter Carla and three granddaughters in 1949 from Beocin. Flora was the daughter of Edward and Anna Spitzer, nee Orenstein (it will soon become clear why we emphasize her maiden name), one of the owners of the Beočin cement factory. She spent one day in Beočin, and with Jelena Viktorova, a member of the admin team of the Facebook page "Let's return the shine to Spitzer's castle", she visited the buildings that her ancestors built and left as a legacy and heritage, but which this city failed to save from decay.
Her visit was the occasion for me to tell about a discovery.
The castle in Beočin has always been known as Spitzer Castle, the palace of one of the three families that founded the Redlich-Orenstein-Spitzer cement factory. However, Spitzer's castle is not theirs. Namely, from the moment of construction until nationalization, this building belonged to the Orenstein family - controversial, influential and without a doubt, the most powerful in the aforementioned triad of founders of the cement factory.
How exactly it happened that the castle of the Orenstein family was attributed to the Spitzers is of course unknown, but the most likely possibility could be the following:
When Anna Orenstein, the daughter of Baron Heinrich Orenstein, one of the owner's triad, married Edward Spitzer, the son of the other owner, people, probably following the awareness that everything that is a woman's is also her husband's, started to call the castle of the Orenstein family - Spitzer's . By the way, the young Spitzer couple, Edward and Anna, never lived in that castle. They had their own residence, which everyone now calls the Old Post Office.
A lot has been written about Spitzer's castle, even on the pages of this weekly. It was built for the Orenstein family in 1898 by the famous Hungarian architect Imre Steindl, famous as the author of the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest.
The Spitzer Jewish family originated from Visegrad in northern Hungary, where they also owned factories. Edward Spitzer was born in 1845 as the fourth of five children and lived in Vienna, Budapest and Beochin. Anna Orenstein married after the company "Redlich, Orenstein und Spitzer" bought in 1887 the cement factory in Beochin, where she taught the children of the cement factory workers. He built a luxury house for his family right next to a highly profitable cement plant to oversee the entire work process. It is the house known as the Old Post Office.
The Spitzer and Orenstein families left Beočin before the beginning of the Second World War, and the Orenstein family castle was then used as a building for the German military command, and after the liberation the building was nationalized. After that, it housed the city library, the center of culture, the headquarters of the handball club, a radio station, a home for military invalids and, finally, an exclusive restaurant with overnight accommodation. After the privatization of the company "Podunavlje" in which it functioned, the building was abandoned and from then on it began to deteriorate rapidly. Our famous poet Miroslav Mika Antić used a part of the castle as his painting studio. His frequent guest was Pero Zubac. The footbridge for transporting stone to the cement plant, which is located in the immediate vicinity of the castle, contributed to the deterioration.
Many films were shot here, let's mention Boiling city Veljko Bulajić, Holy sand Miroslav Antic, Early works Želimir Žilnik, Warriors Brian Hutton starring Clint Eastwood, Boy and violin Jovan Rančić, Black cat, white cat Emira Kusturica, and a Hollywood production Blum Brothers. The building was declared a cultural monument on June 18, 1997. And yet, today almost all of its windows are broken, and due to heavy rainfall during the winter of 2011, part of the entrance porch collapsed. From its roof, we are still watched by a sculpture of the Turul, a mythical bird that, according to tradition, led the Hungarians when they came to the Pannonian Plain. A few years ago, the roof was repaired to prevent it from collapsing and leading to the demolition of the entire castle. The environment is full of garbage. It is often called the House of Ghosts. At one time, Emir Kusturica, amazed by its beauty, offered to buy the castle and to renovate it at his own expense and put it into operation, but his request was not granted.
Katarina Mendiondo and her son visited the castle and the cement factory and the residence of Edward and Anna Spitzer, actually what remained of them, and the building of the Municipality of Beočin, which was also built in 1910 on the initiative of her ancestors.
A few years ago, I entered the Old Post Office building in Beocin, the former residence of the Spitzers. In it, the inventory of the Post Office left behind after its relocation remained scattered on the floor. There was still a price list of postal services on the wall, as well as a box with compartments in which there were a few, never delivered letters. I remembered then a surreal scene: a tree growing on a massive stone balcony above the main entrance to the mansion.
photo: private archiveNATURE WON CONCRETE: The tree that brought down the balcony of the Old Post Office
Earlier this month, a friend from Beochin sent me a photo showing that nature had triumphed over architecture – a tree's roots had spread so far that it toppled a balcony and collapsed onto the front lawn.
Katarina, the great-granddaughter of Edward and Anna Spitzer, will take that scene to Brazil in her mind's eye, who in some better times watched some beautiful Beočin on that balcony.
Advice to filmmakers
Since I was engaged in the project "Castles of Serbia - protection of cultural heritage", I have become a kind of expert for film locations on the territory of the Province - so I often had the opportunity to advise production companies where they could shoot certain scenes:
"Need a castle for a movie? If it is a romantic historical drama, there are few in good condition, but it could, for example, be Dunđerski Castle in Kulpin, where they were filmed Strawberries. If you want a contemporary series with a preserved castle - it's Schulhof Castle in Padej, where the scenes of the second season were filmed. Wetlands with Goran Bogdan. If you need an object that will act as the mafia boss of the criminal played by Milan Marić in the series Besa - Bissingen Castle in Vlajkovac is ideal for that. However, if you need a location for some horror - the movie Spitzer's (actually Orenstein's) Castle is made for it!”
