Jeweller who headed the Commune’s Labour and Exchange Commission and later founded Hungary’s workers’ party
Born to a Jewish family in Óbuda, he trained as a jeweller, came to Paris via Germany in 1867 and worked in the International’s German-speaking section, being convicted in the International trial of 1870. The only foreigner elected to the Commune, he headed its Labour and Exchange Commission, pressed the ban on night work in bakeries and the abandoned-workshops decree, and sided with the minority against the Committee of Public Safety. Wounded in Bloody Week, he escaped to London and joined the General Council. Returning to Hungary in 1876, he founded the General Workers’ Party of Hungary in 1880 and spent his last years in Paris.