Kubie Collection
- Reference:GB 1220 PER.Kubie
- Dates of Creation:1870 - 2021
- Name of Creator:
- Language of Material:English Hebrew Czech Hungarian German French
- Physical Description:approx. 500 items
Scope and Content
The Kubie collection contains more than 500 items relating to the Kubie and Banyai families, including personal and family documents from Austria and Czechoslovakia, passports, correspondence, press cuttings, photographs, school and work reports, business history, books, artefacts and paintings. In addition, it includes some records for Dr Maurus (Mor) Banyai's businesses, Banyai Knupfteppichfabrik (Knotted Carpet Factory) in Pottendorf, near Vienna, and British Replin Ltd. in Ayr.
Please note that this collection is not arranged, the following catalogue is a box list only. Related items may be found separately.
Administrative / Biographical History
This material relates to a family of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Europe: Otto Kubie (1904-1983), his wife Anna Nina Banyai (1906-1992), their three sons Bill, Tom and Robert Kubie, and Anna’s parents, Dr Maurus (Mor) Banyai (1878-1949; also known as Moritz Breuer and Morris Banyai) and Franziska Schwarcz (1880-1957).
The Kubie family had a textile manufacturing business in Lomnice, Czechoslovakia. Otto was on a business trip in Britain in 1939 when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia. He managed to rescue his family and they settled in Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, where they were joined by Otto’s older sister, Elsa Spielmann and her son, as well as Anna’s parents. The Kubie family later moved to Glasgow.
There is in addition a small amount of material relating to Otto Kubie's parents, Sigfried Kubie and Hermine Brunner, and Otto's grandfather Jacob Kubie.
Dr Banyai was a renowned textile engineer, who had invented the Banyai Knotted Carpet Loom and had a large successful carpet factory, Banyai Knupfteppichfabrik, in Pottendorff, near Vienna, where they made reproduction Persian carpets. In 1938, he and his wife fled from Vienna. In 1939, they joined the Kubie family in Broughty Ferry.
In the UK, during the war, Dr Banyai helped design a machine to weave pipe cleaners. Later he developed this method for fabric weaving. In 1945, with the help of Goldbergs warehouse and Harris tobacconists, he set up British Replin Ltd. in Ayr- manufacturing high quality industrial furnishing fabrics, Replin fabrics were used widely for aviation and transport fabrics. Otto left his job at British Luma in Glasgow to assist his father-in-law.
Access Information
Open, subject to data protection restrictions; please contact the archive in advance to arrange for access.
Corporate Names