Artúr Görgei

Hungary state institutions National liberation and anti-colonial movements 1818–1916 ○ Natural causes

Chemist turned Honvéd commander who led the Spring Campaign of 1849 and surrendered to the Russians at Világos

Born in 1818 at Toporc, in today's Slovakia, into an impoverished noble family of Zipser German descent, he was trained at the sapper school at Tulln. In 1845 he left the army to study chemistry at the University of Prague, where he found decanoic and lauric acid in coconut oil. Joining the Honvéd in 1848, he forced a Croatian corps to surrender at Ozora and, in the Spring Campaign of 1849, liberated most of western Hungary and retook Buda, becoming minister of war. Opposed to the declaration of independence, he clashed repeatedly with Kossuth, and in the last days, invested as "dictator", he surrendered to the Russians at Világos on 13 August. Spared at Russia's insistence, he lived under surveillance at Klagenfurt until 1867; long branded a traitor after Kossuth's letter from Vidin, he died at Visegrád in 1916.

Also known as: Arthur Görgey