Tracing Economic Blight: The Case of the Black Castle

 by George de Poor Handlery  

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The collectivism practiced by the goverments of Eastern Europe following World War II is best described as an effort to bring about "the greatest damage to the greatest number."

Admittedly, this writing represents a shocked reaction to what the picture in the text tells. The presentation of the case is intended to be more than a customary funeral oration. With the personal story’s public aspect the piece wishes to lead the reader to an insight that is supported by the depicted scene.

The story could have evolved in many places, as it is a typical consequence of the radical collectivism of our age. The concrete venue is in a place called Ederics. It is located on the scenic northwestern shore of Hungary’s Lake Balaton. Here the rise, bloom and wrecking of what the natives called the “Black Castle” is retraced. It is done to illustrate a general rule. That law is the moving force behind the personalized events traced by the narrative part of the text.

The Black Castle in 1946

The building’s construction began after the revolutions of 1848 when a Mr. Nedetzky decided to build. Since he often forced travelers passing on the old Roman road on his perimeter to work for him, the interior turned out to be chaotic. Unexpectedly, this became an advantage. The Nazis, Arrow Cross and Communists raiding us tended to become confused by the maze and so missed “stuff.”

In the 1860s, Nedetzky headed a conspiracy against the Habsburg autocracy. Betrayal followed and Nedetzky was condemned to death. Romantically embellished by a hanged man, the building became the "Black Castle." The term "castle" benefits from a tendency to exaggerate as the house only had twenty-six rooms. However, as a child that sufficed as at night ghosts lurked around that devoured kids. The same ghosts were the reason why local servants disliked residing on the premises. Below you will discover why this is more than story-telling for its own sake.

Following World War I, my maternal grandfather (my father was a physician) purchased the place for his ethnically mixed family. Previously Grandfather Marich used to be a high-ranking civil servant. Reluctant to serve the post-war system, he went into what is nowadays called "agribusiness." At the very outset he made a major mistake. A neighbor, a typical decadent gentry, lacked cash and asked my grandfather for an interest-free loan. Much later, Grandfather felt it was time to return the money he gave and said so. He was told that the debt had already been repaid. Grandfather questioned the accuracy of this recollection. The implied doubts regarding his word as a gentleman insulted the neighbor. Therefore, he became an enemy. No great loss, one might think. However, decades later, in 1944, Germany occupied Hungary and gave power to the local national socialists. Thereafter our neighbor became important in the Arrow Cross party.

Grandfather Marich’s rise to influence is unusual. In traditional societies, "class" tends to be "caste." Social mobility by merit, the most elementary of all "dreams," is not common to all societies. Nevertheless, at a time and in a place where it was not customary, the son of a farmer earned a doctorate involving competence in the new discipline of economics. In his later years, he added proficiency as an agronomist. Additionally he was diligent; as an old villager put it, "he worked harder than the hired hands." His fruits were noted for their size and taste. some of them went into the jam manufactured by my Grandmother, who produced the country's leading luxury-class product.

It seems that as a commoner Marich had climbed the career ladder without the help of connections. In doing so, he overcame the exclusionary efforts of the incompetent inheritors of privilege. "Closing the club" to newcomers who aspire to rise is natural. All elites attempt to perpetuate themselves. However, in progressive societies the privileged do not seek "protection" from competition. They merely use their position to provide their own with an access to opportunity. While they absorb new candidates, such elites limit themselves to participation in the success that elevates everybody. In traditional societies, decadent and non-competitive privileged groups concentrate on keeping newcomers down and out.

His economic success doomed my grandfather. Besides the destruction of an able person's work, the picture, if generalized, also serves to illustrate the rot that befell the societies of an entire region. A lesson to be born out below is that, those who dare to become successful among the failing do so at their peril.

Typically, "work" had little value to landowning gentlemen because those having to labor were of inferior status. (Later the Communists adapted the tradition. The higher in the Party the lower the required performance.) The neighboring "gentlemen" did not work and managed their large estates extensively. Production based on cheap, exploited and reluctant labor was to compensate for inadequate management and an output that was blind to market demands. Furthermore, this system meant non-capital-intensive production, low returns, misused resources and corresponding productivity. From this, you can draw inferences regarding cash incomes.

Alas, the mystery shrouding the house found an amplifier. It consisted of the locals' inability to understand the rational economic basis buoying its inhabitants who could travel and even had cars. Nowadays too, societies that remain destitute tend to hold that wealth comes from luck or crookedness. Misfortune does not come from "above." Like poverty, wealth also is the result of human action. Socialism, in its Red (Communist) and Brown (National Socialist) versions, capitalizes on the inclination of the failing, the misinformed, the insecure and the lazy, to be predisposed to accept this self-amputating economic theory. Locally, my grandfather's success, although probably self-evident from your vantage point, could not be comprehended. Things might have been made worse by Grandfather's policy to pay more than the going wage. Unfortunately, "public opinion" agreed on an insane explanation that seemed logical to it. There was a gold mine under the mysterious Black Castle! Good for a laugh now, but one more endangering prejudice then. Once the scum of the earth came to power, the klieg-lights of suspicion were on us.

A complementary idiocy also arose. Once Italy fell, hundreds of bombers on their way to Germany flew over us daily. These raids had the exactitude of clockwork. Some moron decided that Marich was doing it. From the park, he signaled the "Liberators" with a lamp. All this under the blue skies of the summer!

My grandfather's end came early in 1945. One day the Gestapo fetched him and my grandmother. He was given several choices and one of these was suicide in exchange for closing the case that was triggered by numerous denunciations. To save the rest of his family he took that option. Thus ended an episode that tells how applied anti-Semitism can function even without Jews.

We did not know it at the time, but my grandfather’s demise also meant the beginning of the end of the undertaking and of the Black Castle. Following the outbreak of peace, we had a new occupier. By exploiting its excellent location, the Black Castle was successfully operated as a hotel for diplomats and local entrepreneurs. The total consolidation of Communist power took longer in Hungary than elsewhere in the region. Even so, by 1949, regardless of their devastating electoral defeats, the Communists had, thanks to the Red Army, the country in their grip. Now, unhindered, Socialism could be built. The program of decapitating society by depriving it of everybody daring to think and able to get things done could be implemented. At that point, my family was forced to petition that the state accept the property. The request was granted. With only a few momentoes, my parents walked out. I was not to see the place again until after the collapse of Communism.

By then, collectivism had worked — it wrecked everything. Slowly, the neglected and mostly unused Black Castle was allowed to crumble. The windows were shattered or plastic sheets were stapled into the frames to replace them. The remainder of the facade's paint is still the one we left behind six decades ago. My grandfather's fruit trees and other enterprises required too much elbow grease to pursue them and so they also disappeared.

The Black Castle in 2007

Driven by emotion, after 1989 I would have liked to get my home turf back. Although not inhabited and in danger of reverting to nature, I could not have it. Only the purchase of the Black Castle was a possibility. Regardless of the prize that I never asked for, this was no option. It is demeaning to buy what is yours.

My stomach churns at the sight and the senselessness of the devastation caused by a mistaken economic theory and its complementary political orders. I resent this decay far more than I regret the original confiscation. What hurts so terribly is not the financial loss but that the original legalized theft had no beneficiary. Indeed, the situation is best described by a reversal of Jeremy Bentham's "the greatest good for the greatest number." In this case, the leveling collectivist principle's political application achieved "the greatest damage to the greatest number." At least this one result rates as an unqualified success.

Nowadays, whenever I visit Hungary, I avoid the Black Castle.

Econ. & Public Policy, Science, Technology, Energy

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