Bertalan Szemere

Hungary state institutions National liberation and anti-colonial movements 1812–1869 ○ Natural causes

Prime minister of independent Hungary from May 1849, whose government passed the act granting the nationalities free use of their languages

Born in 1812 at Vatta into a poor noble family, he graduated as a jurist in 1832. His diary of a European journey, published in 1840, made him famous and won him a seat in the Academy of Sciences. He was a judge in Borsod county from 1841 to 1847 and one of the leading figures of the opposition at the Diet of 1847–1848. As interior minister in the Batthyány government in 1848 he set up the new parliament and founded the official gazette Közlöny. From 2 May 1849 he was prime minister and interior minister under Regent Kossuth, and on 29 July his government passed the act granting the nationalities free use of their languages. After the surrender at Világos he buried the Holy Crown at Orsova on 23 August 1849 and fled to Turkey and Paris; in 1851 he was sentenced to death in absentia. His support for the Compromise of 1867 estranged him from Kossuth. He died in 1869.

Also known as: Bartholomew Szemere