The S_zekula Family of Stamp Dealers

Eugen Sekula (1888–1950) was born as Jenő Szekula in Szeged on March 9, 1888. When he was old enough, he joined Géza as an employee at Béla’s Internationale Philatelisten. In April 1910, Eugen took over as responsible editor of Béla’s Händler-Zeitung (newsletter for stamp dealers), and by 1911 he was also office manager at Internationale Philatelisten. On August 19, 1912, he married Elisabeth (Erzsébet) Zenner (born 1893) in Budapest. Advertisements placed in the Hungarian Stamp Collector that same year show that he also was already trading in stamps on his own account at that time. Like his brothers he then moved to Lucerne, initially still working for Béla. In October 1913, Eugen traveled to the United States representing Béla’s company at New York’s first stamp exhibition, the New York Philatelic Exhibition. First philatelic ads with the address Zürichstr. 62 appeared in Swiss newspapers in 1915, including those offering unused Belgian stamps confiscated by Germany during the occupation. In September 1916 he moved to Grendelstr. 19, where he opened his own Briefmarken-Import und -Export (= stamp import and export) business Eugen Szekula in January 1917. On July 5, 1919 he became a naturalized Swiss citizen of Geuensee. Four weeks later, Eugen had to go through the same bitter experience as his two older brothers before him: On August 3, 1919, his daughter Erika Dorottya died at the age of just seven months. In September 1919, Eugen closed his business at Grendelstrasse 19 and reopened it as Briefmarken-Import und -Exporthaus (= stamp import and export house) at the new address Hertensteinstrasse 56. Around July 1922, Eugen moved into the extravagant Villa Heimeli at Steigerweg 15. Like the rest of the family he changed the spelling of his name to Sekula in March 1923. In 1924, his daughter Susy Susanna Eva was born, and two years later his second daughter Maja. Apparently his business went well for many years, but in early 1933, in the wake of the global economic crisis and increasing German hostilities towards all stamp dealers bearing the name Sekula he was facing bankruptcy. As a result, in August of that year Eugen converted his stamp import and export firm into the corporation Eugen Sekula AG at Dreilindenstr. 47, with himself as director. In August 1934 the Eugen Sekula AG changed its name to Atlas Briefmarken AG in Luzern (Atlas Stamp Ltd. Lucerne). In February 1935 the board of the Atlas Briefmarken AG in Luzern decided to leave Lucerne and move to Lugano; the corporation was renamed to Atlas Briefmarken AG in Lugano (Atlas Stamp Ltd. Lugano). After less than three years, in November 1937 the Atlas Briefmarken AG in Lugano moved again, this time to Zurich, and became Atlas Briefmarken AG in Zurich (Atlas Stamp Ltd. Zurich) – first at Titlisstr. 14, from October 1940 onwards at Bahnhofstrasse. 74. The company continued to sell stamps for another decade, but in its final years the business apparently no longer made enough profit. In September 1946, Eugen joined his son-in-law Hans Bollmann and his daughter Susy with a limited partnership share of CHF 10,000 in founding the import and export company Hans Bollmann & Co. – possibly not least in order to have a second source of business outside the stamp trade. Nevertheless, a few years later he was finally facing financial ruin, not only in his business but also in his personal life – with dire consequences. On Sunday the 29th of January, 1950, the police was called to Sekula’s home at Rigistr. 18 where they found the lifeless bodies of Eugen Sekula, his wife Elisabeth and their disabled daughter Maja. Both parents were already dead when the police arrived; Maja was hospizalized but died one day later without regaining consciousness. All three had taken an overdose of sedative drugs, presumably due to their desperate financial situation. Already on February 15, bankruptcy proceedings against Atlas Briefmarken AG in Zurich were opened, and three months later, in April 1950, the company was dissolved.

Although he was much less of a traveler, Eugen Sekula’s business acumen probably came close to that of Béla. A failed attempt to establish his own postage paid labels in the Swiss postal system in 1930 shows that he was similarly creative, but he also employed the same sale tactics as Béla sending out unwanted stamp selections and then aggressively demanding payment – eventually with the same result: In 1934 the U.S. Post imposed a short-lived embargo on both of them, even marking postal money orders as fraudulent and returning them to the sender.