WHO WAS HOUDINI'S FATHER? SWORDSMAN OF BUDAPEST

Hungarian cavalier with saber (Valtertorjay via Flickr)

In our last post we discredited the so-called “definitive biographies” which portray Houdini’s father, Dr. M.S. Weisz, as a timid loser. These same bios blast the family story that he fled Budapest after killing a nobleman in a duel.

The well-known biographer Ruth Brandon, for example, sets the tone loudly and crudely: 

“The notion that any nobleman of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, let alone a prince, would sully his sword by duelling with a lowly Jew is only slightly less implausible than that (as Weiss family legend had it) a timid student of the Torah might react to an insult by challenging the prince and then killing him.”

Devoid of both thought and research, this slovenly synopsis reflects nothing but Brandon’s ignorance of the world she was writing about. For the true background, read on.

Budapest 1873

When Erich Weiss, the future Houdini, was born in Budapest it was the fastest-growing city in Europe and had the fastest-growing Jewish population of any city in the world. Budapest was such a boom town for Jews that the mayor of Vienna, a well known anti-Semite, publicly referred to it as “Judapest.”

Hungarian with dueling saber

So where does dueling fit in? It happened all the time in Budapest, and Jews were at the forefront!

"Dueling was a highly regarded act of courage," one eminent historian writes. "One of the most conspicuous manifestations of the irrepressible desire of the upper-middle-class Jews to be accepted...was their insistence on fighting duels...whenever they were insulted."

In 1888, when Jews constituted about 4.5 percent of Hungary's population, no less than 13 percent of those convicted of dueling were Jews!

This Budapest newspaper from 1876 reports a duel between a young lawyer and a high ranking Duke, at the Lawyer’s Ball. The Duke challenges the lawyer because he's dancing with a woman the aristocrat fancies! The juicy story is marred by one disappointing fact: no names are included. Dueling was illegal, so even when the newspapers reported the events, they protected the guilty.

For this reason, it may be impossible to definitively establish the facts about Dr. Weisz's duel. Officials at the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs assure us, however, that the Weisz dueling story is quite plausible. 

"This kind of thing happened all the time," a Ministry official told us.

Wait a minute, we can almost hear the critics say -- maybe lawyers dueled Dukes, but how about Jews?

Enterprising historians have pierced the shield of anonymity in certain celebrated cases which show that not only were duels commonplace between Jews and noblemen, they were almost de rigeur!

Consider this extract from the authoritative historyThe Jews of Hungary by Raphael Patai:

Shots were exchanged, the Count was hit in the head and died on the spot. Rosenberg was sentenced to nine months in prison. The sentence was reduced to three months by royal clemency, on grounds of "social compulsion."

Baron Ivanka Koller, Budapest dueling hero

Duelists were among the great popular heroes of the era, something like pro football players in  the USA. One of the most popular and notorious swordsmen of Budapest was Pal Schlesinger, a wealthy Jewish grain merchant whom we believe was related to Dr. Weiss’s second wife, Houdini’s mother (more on these family connections next time). In the 1890s he fought more than one hundred duels, and was known to challenge anyone who dared so much as look at him because he was a Jew!

In 1852, around the time Samuel Weisz came to Budapest, a fellow Jew, Bernat Spitz, opened a store advertising “dueling swords, daggers, pistols” and boasting of being “the largest fencing equipment store in Hungary.”

A Spitz saber

Dueling was so popular that one entrepreneurial Budapester even developed a "drive-through" dueling school.  If you were challenged to a duel but did not know how to swing a saber, no problem. You could learn the basics overnight, and defend your honor at dawn!

Bernat Spitz's logo engraved on saber

So much for the Houdini biographers who lamely whine, “where would timid Rabbi Weiss even get the weapons or know how to use them?”

The family's story, in short, absolutely holds water. Critics will have to come up with at least one leg to stand on if they wish to continue debunking it. 

What happened after the duel? Houdini said in a 1925 newspaper interview that his father went from Budapest to London, and was helped to America by Baron Rothschild, the wealthiest man in Europe.

This explanation has also been scorned by writers who believe Harry was trying to inflate his social status. But once again, a careful study of history shows it is quite plausible, even highly likely, that the Weisz family had and used connections to the powerful Rothschild family. 

That story next time.

(Enormous thanks to Botond Kelle in Budapest for superb research assistance!)

Photo credits:  Google Images unless otherwise noted