The S_zekula Family of Stamp Dealers

Eugen Szekula was born in Szeged on March 9, 1888. On August 19, 1912, he married Elisabeth Zenner in Budapest. First ads for buying stamps appeared in Swiss newspapers as early as 1915, and in January 1917 he opened his own “Briefmarken-Import und -Export” (= stamp import and export) business “Eugen Szekula” in Lucerne. On July 5, 1919 he became a naturalized Swiss citizen of Geuensee. 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. Like the rest of the family he changed the spelling of his name to Sekula in March 1923. Apparently his business went well for the next ten years, but in 1933 he was facing bankruptcy. As a result, in August of that year Eugen’s stamp import and export firm was converted into a corporation, “Eugen Sekula A.G.,” with him as director. In August 1934 the Eugen Sekula A.G. changed its name to “Atlas Briefmarken A.G. in Luzern (Atlas Stamp Ltd. Lucerne).” In February 1935 the board of the Atlas Briefmarken A.G. in Luzern decided to leave Lucerne and move to Lugano; the corporation was renamed to “Atlas Briefmarken A.G. in Lugano (Atlas Stamp Ltd. Lugano).” After less than three years, In November 1937 the Atlas Briefmarken A.G. in Lugano moved again, this time to Zurich, and became “Atlas Briefmarken A.G. in Zurich (Atlas Stamp Ltd. Zurich).” Director at that time was still Eugen Sekula. However, he probably turned his back on the stamp business many years before the Atlas Briefmarken A.G. in Zurich went bankrupt in April 1950.
Although he was much less of a traveler, Eugen Sekula’s “business qualities” probably came close to those of Béla. A failed attempt to establish his own stamp-like 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.