Name Jacob Muschong | Died December 13, 1923 | |
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Jacob Muschong or Iacob Muschong (born 1868, Nagykikinda, Austria-Hungary - died December 13, 1923, Lugoj, Romania) was an ethnic German industrialist who made a fortune producing bricks. He was born in Nagykikinda (Serbian: Velika Kikinda, now Kikinda, Serbia), a town in the Banat, in a family with a long tradition in the production of bricks. His grandparents and great-grandparents han produced bricks in workshops located at the edge of Lugoj. At the age of 20 years he married Margaret Bohn the daughter of a famous German industrialist specialized in the production of tiles and bricks that built the brick factory at Zsombolya (now Jimbolia, Romania) and Gyertyámos (Cărpiniş) and had other several factories in Europe.
At the age of 20, Muschong and his wife founded the M. Bohn & Comp. company which in 1888 built a brick factory in Lugoj. After several years he builds a new plant in Lugoj and bought several factories from his competitors. In 1908 the company changed its name to J. Muschong & Comp. Muschong brick and tile products were of high quality and were sold throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then in Greater Romania. Muschong built more factories in Banat but he also built one at the outskirts of Budapest. He was also the founder of the Buziaş Spa. After the Great Union from 1918 the Romanian authorities began the persecution of Jacob Muschong, considering that he opposes Romanian capital development. He is teased and persecuted by a broad campaign of denigration by the media. Many financial controls from the authorities followed which discovered accounting irregularities alleged in the statements of income, considering the amounts invested by Muschong as profit and forcing him to pay tax on them. Soon after, Muschong dies after a heart attack on December 13, 1923 at his residence in Lugoj.
After his death no one in the family could raise to the level of driving experience and ability that Jacob had. His wealth re-evaluated in today's money would probably amounts to over three billion dollars. All his factories were nationalized by the communists in 1948 and largely demolished. Instead of his largest brick factory located on Timişorii street in Lugoj the communists built the Tiles and Sanitary Equipment Factory Mondial that still exists today.
