The S_zekula Family of Stamp Dealers

Géza Sekula (1886–1946), born on February 17, 1886 in Szeged, is probably the least known of the four. From 1903 to 1904 he lived at Béla’s place, the Villa Philatélie, in Geneva. Initially, the main reason for his stay in the French speaking city was probably to learn the languange, and not the stamp business – on one occasion a newspaper article referred to him as a journalist. However, when his elder brother left Geneva he went back with him to Budapest where he followed in his footsteps, as an employee in Béla’s company and as publisher of the philatelic advertising magazine Philatelistisches Offertenblatt. From May 1907 the address book of Budapest listed him as a stamp agent. In March 1911 his son Tibor László was born – out of marriage and at first without Géza acknowledging paternity. The mother, Géza's future wife Elisabet Rudolfine Gusenbauer, later moved in with him and gave birth to another boy in July 1912, but Gábor István died aged only two months. At the beginning of 1913, Géza and Elisabet joined Béla on his second move to Switzerland, and in May of the same year Géza founded his own Briefmarken-Grosshandlung (= stamp wholesale business) Géza Szekula in Lucerne at Alpenstrasse 3. In September 1913, Géza's third son Gabor István was born in Lucerne, named after the boy who had died twelve months earlier. On March 2, 1914, Géza and Elisabet married in Lucerne. Between 1914 and 1917, the family grew by three more members: the only daughter Véron Györgyi (=Vera Georgina) in December 1914, and the sons György (=Georges) Andor in March 1916 and Rudolf Miklos in August 1917. On August 26, 1918, Géza became a naturalized Swiss citizen of Geuensee. In October 1919 he closed his Briefmarkengrosshandlung at Alpenstrasse 3 and reopened at Dreilindenstrasse 17. Like Béla and Eugen he changed the spelling of his name to Sekula in March 1923. During the next ten years Géza’s business address changed three more times: Sälihügel 7 (January 4, 1927), Brunnhalde 14 (January 15, 1932) and Werchlaubengasse 2 (September 26, 1934). His stamp business was certainly smaller and less lucrative than Eugen’s (let alone Béla’s), but he made ends meet and, like his brothers, he sold worldwide. However, unlike the other stamp dealers of the Sekula family, who one by one turned their backs on Lucerne in the 1930s, he showed no intention of leaving the city that had been his home for so many years, despite the increasingly hostile climate. In 1937, he paid the price for his stubbornness. His downfall was the sale of forged Turkish 25-piaster stamps from 1884 and 1888, whereupon he and his eldest son Tibor were sued by the Verband der Schweizerischen Philatelisten-Vereine (Federation of Philatelic Societies of Switzerland). It is entirely possible that Géza had bought the stamps in good faith himself, but, only relying on his own (limited) expertise, he made the mistake of selling them as guaranteed genuine. While his son was acquitted of the charges, Géza was found guilty and sentenced to 14 months in prison and loss of honor. He filed an appeal to contest the ruling, only to see the prison sentence raised to 18 months. On September 2, 1937, the stamp wholesale business Géza Sekula was deleted from the company register. After having served two thirds of his sentence, Géza was released early for good conduct on July 19, 1938. He joined his wife and sons Tibor and Gabor, who had opened their own stamp business Capitol Stamp Ltd. in Lausanne. Géza Sekula apparently never really recovered from this experience and died in Lausanne after a severe and long illness on April 13, 1946, at age 60.