Institute of Contemporary History

The story of the entrepreneurial activities and life path of the Benies family is an illustrative example of the business elites of Jewish origin who managed an astonishing social and economic rise during the few decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Business success, accompanied by the building of a broad network of business, friendship and kinship relationships, was behind their gradual penetration into the highest echelons of society at the time. The wide range of Benies‘ businesses, from banking to railways and especially sugar mills, was later intertwined with the Mercy family, publishers of the then famous Prager Tagblatt newspaper and Kafka’s works. After 1918, the Benies-Mercy family was able to largely maintain its position in the independent Czechoslovak state until the Nazi occupation. All the sadder is the fact that the post-war Czechoslovak Republic was not very interested in its citizens of Jewish origin. Although most of the family managed to survive the war, they were unable to claim their lost property. They left Czechoslovakia forever, and with them disappeared the memory of all they had done. The history of one family is thus rather a gradual uncovering of a whole large and important part of Czech society, whose role and even very existence was completely overlaid by a monochromatic national story.

DUFEK, Pavel – MARŠÁLEK, Zdenko – NOVOTNÝ, Michal. Železnice, cukr, noviny a odvaha. Osudy Beniesů v Čechách i jinde. Praha: NLN, s.r.o.; Národní technické muzeum, 2023. 339 s. ISBN 978-80-7422-917-6 (NLN), ISBN 978-80-7037-376-7 (NTM).