Schossberger De Torna,. Simon Wolf

Hungarian merchant and estate-owner; born 1796 at Sasvar (Sassin, Schossberg, Comitat Nyitra); died at Budapest March 25, 1874. Through his many commercial, industrial, and agricultural enterprises he attained wealth and honor; and by his promotion of the tobacco industry he solved a Hungarian economic problem.

Previous to 1861 Schossberger was twice president of the Jewish community of Pesth. He was the first Hungarian Jew elevated to the nobility by Emperor Francis Joseph I. (1862); he assumed the name "De Torna."

One of Schossberger's sons, Sigmund vonSchossberger, was in 1885 created a baron, being the first Jew thus honored in Hungary.

S. L. V.