Letter of Dr. Géza Grosschmid to the City Housing Office of Košice, 1919

On 23 June 1919, Dr. Géza Grosschmid, a lawyer and legal advisor in Kassa (Košice), wrote a letter to the Municipal Housing Committee requesting that their family house in Mészáros Street be exempted from public ownership. In his petition, he discusses in detail the history of his and his wife’s family, their financial situation, their housing conditions, and also summarises his own biography, which also reveals the little-known career of Grosschmid, who later became a politician, before 1919. The information in the document also contains valuable details about the family and their house. The letter is accompanied by a questionnaire filled in by thousands of homeowners during the Soviet Republic on the socialisation of their houses.