Aristocratic statesman who led Hungary’s delegation to the Paris peace talks in 1920 and pleaded for revising Trianon at the League
A count born in Vienna, he entered parliament in 1877 and was a leading orator for half a century. As education minister in 1906–1910 he drafted the Apponyi laws of 1907, which imposed Hungarian-language teaching on non-Hungarian schools. He led the Hungarian delegation at the Paris peace talks in January 1920 and spoke on 16 January, without changing the terms, and in March lost the regency vote to Horthy. Thereafter, as a legitimist opposition deputy and Hungary’s representative at the League of Nations, he denounced the injustice of the Trianon borders. He died in Geneva in 1933, where he had come for the Disarmament Conference.
Career timeline
- 1877Enters parliament
- 1906–1910Education minister; Apponyi laws of 1907
- 1920Heads the peace delegation in Paris
- 1920Loses the regency vote to Horthy
- 1923–1933Representative at the League of Nations
Conservative aristocrat who set up the counter-revolutionary government in Szeged in 1919 and was prime minister of Hungary in 1931–1932
Born into an old aristocratic family in Nyírbakta, he was a first cousin of Mihály Károlyi. He entered the House of Magnates and was ispán of Arad County from 1906 to 1910. In May 1919 he formed a counter-revolutionary government against the Soviet Republic in Arad but was interned by the Romanians; after his release he reorganised it on 30 May in French-occupied Szeged, asking Miklós Horthy to set up the National Army as war minister, and the two became lifelong friends. After serving as foreign minister in Bethlen’s government in 1930–1931 he became prime minister in August 1931, and after the Biatorbágy viaduct bombing he imposed martial law and imprisoned Communists. He resigned in September 1932, and in 1939 he gave up all his posts in protest against the second Jewish law. He died in Budapest in 1947.
Career timeline
- 1906–1910Ispán of Arad County
- 1919Prime minister of the counter-revolutionary government in Arad and Szeged
- 1930–1931Foreign minister in the Bethlen government
- 1931–1932Prime minister of Hungary
Liberal aristocrat who came to power in the Aster Revolution and was president of the First Hungarian Republic
Born into an extremely wealthy Catholic aristocratic family, he led the small anti-war faction in parliament that demanded an immediate peace during the First World War. The Aster Revolution of October 1918 made him prime minister; when the People’s Republic was proclaimed on 16 November he also became provisional head of state, and in January 1919 he was recognised as president. As an example for land reform he gave his family estates to his tenants. After his government fell over the Vix note in March 1919 the Soviet Republic was proclaimed, and in July he went into exile. He returned in 1946 and was ambassador to France from 1947 to 1949, resigning in protest at the Rajk trial, and died in Vence, France, in 1955.
Career timeline
- 1910Member of parliament for the Party of Independence
- 1918Formed the Hungarian National Council; prime minister after the Aster Revolution
- 1918–1919Provisional head of state and president of the People’s Republic
- 1919–1946Exile in France and Britain
- 1947–1949Hungarian ambassador to France
Social Democratic leader who was defence commissar and Red Army commander-in-chief of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
Born to a middle-class Jewish family, he trained as a mechanic and rose through the iron and metal workers’ union to the Social Democratic leadership. He became war minister in the Berinkey government in January 1919 and took part in the merger talks with the Communists. In the Soviet Republic he was defence commissar and commander-in-chief of the Red Army, and in July, as envoy in Vienna, he agreed with the Entente missions, on behalf of the Social Democratic leadership, on removing the council government. In exile he lived in Vienna, Czechoslovakia and Sweden; he headed the Hungarian legation in Sweden from 1946 to 1948 and resigned when the Social Democrats were merged into the Communist Party. He died in Stockholm in 1949.
Career timeline
- 1911Member of the Trade Union Council
- 1919War minister in the Berinkey government
- 1919Defence commissar and Red Army commander-in-chief
- 1919Envoy in Vienna
- 1946–1948Head of the Hungarian legation in Sweden
Soldier-diplomat who pushed for the German alliance in Berlin and, as prime minister under occupation, sped up the Jewish deportations
Born Dimitrije Stojaković into a Serb family in Versec (Vršac), he served in the First World War as an intelligence officer of the Austro-Hungarian general staff. After the war he specialised in counter-espionage in Horthy’s counter-revolutionary army, was military attaché in Berlin from 1927 to 1933 and, from 1935 to 1944, Hungary’s minister in Berlin, where he pressed for alliance with Germany. Prime minister and foreign minister after the German occupation of March 1944, he legalised the Arrow Cross, dissolved the trade unions, jailed opponents and sharply accelerated the deportation of Jews. Forced out by Horthy’s pressure in August, he was captured by American troops after the war, handed over to Hungary, sentenced to death by a People’s Tribunal and shot in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1917–1918Intelligence officer, Austro-Hungarian general staff
- 1919–1925Intelligence and counter-espionage officer, National Army
- 1927–1933Military attaché in Berlin
- 1935–1944Minister in Berlin
- 1944Prime minister and foreign minister
- 1946Sentenced by a People’s Tribunal and executed
Hungarian communist who backed Soviet intervention with Kádár in 1956 and became prime minister after the revolution was crushed
Born into a German Catholic family in Seregélyes, he studied law and was taken prisoner on the Eastern Front in 1915 and sent to Tomsk. There he joined the Bolsheviks and commanded an international POW unit; back in Hungary in 1918 he helped found the Hungarian Communist Party and was war commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1936 and, under the name Otto Flatter, commanded the XI International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. After the war he was Budapest’s chief of police and then a diplomat. In the 1956 revolution he was interior minister under Imre Nagy, but in November he went to Moscow with János Kádár and openly backed Soviet armed intervention. As minister of the armed forces and public security in Kádár’s government he helped organise the security regiments and the Workers’ Militia, and he was prime minister from 1958 to 1961.
Career timeline
- 1915Captured by the Russians; held in Tomsk
- 1918Co-founder of the Hungarian Communist Party
- 1919War commissar of the Slovak Soviet Republic
- 1936–1939Commander of the XI International Brigade in Spain
- 1946–1949Budapest chief of police
- 1956Interior minister under Nagy; minister of the armed forces and public security under Kádár
- 1958–1961Prime minister of Hungary
Wartime prime minister who declared war on the Soviet Union over the Kassa bombing and approved the deportation of Jews
A lawyer and diplomat from Szombathely, he moved to the foreign ministry in 1922 and headed its press department. He became foreign minister in January 1941 and, after Teleki’s suicide in April, prime minister as well. Seeking to regain lands lost at Trianon, he followed a pro-German line, joined the invasion of Yugoslavia, declared a state of war with the Soviet Union without parliament’s consent after the Kassa bombing in June, and took Hungary into war with Britain and the United States. He pushed through the deportation of “alien” Jews and the Third Jewish Law, and Horthy forced him out in March 1942. Sentenced to death by a People’s Court after the war, he was shot in January 1946.
Career timeline
- 1913–1922Official, Ministry of Culture and Education
- 1922–1941Press chief and diplomat, foreign ministry
- 1941Foreign minister
- 1941–1942Prime minister and foreign minister; war on the USSR
- 1945–1946Sentenced by a People’s Court and executed
General who as prime minister in August–October 1944 halted the Jewish deportations and prepared an armistice until the Arrow Cross coup
Born in Budapest, he graduated from the Ludovika Academy in 1910 and in 1919 served at the Hungarian Red Army’s headquarters before joining Horthy’s National Army. Military attaché in Prague from 1928 to 1934, he commanded the Second Army from 1943 and the First Army from April 1944. Recommended by István Bethlen, he succeeded Sztójay as prime minister on 29 August 1944 with a secret mandate to prepare an armistice; his government stopped the deportation of Jews and replaced the state secretaries responsible. When Operation Panzerfaust and the Arrow Cross coup thwarted the armistice on 15 October, he negotiated through the night with Veesenmayer, then urged Horthy to surrender; forced to resign, he was imprisoned by the Germans. Never prosecuted, he lost his pension and lands, and in 1965 joined his daughter in Adelaide, where he died in 1967.
Career timeline
- 1910Graduated from the Ludovika Academy
- 1915–1918Staff officer, Austro-Hungarian army
- 1928–1934Military attaché in Prague
- 1943–1944Commander, Second Army
- 1944Commander, First Army
- 1944Prime minister (29 August – 15 October)
- 1965–1967Lived and died in Adelaide, Australia
Hungarian foreign minister who cut the Iron Curtain, and reform prime minister
On 27 June 1989, Horn and Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock took bolt cutters to the barbed-wire fence on the Hungarian-Austrian border, cutting the first hole in the Iron Curtain before the cameras of the world.
A Hungarian reform-communist diplomat who became prime minister after democratization, Horn as foreign minister in June 1989 took bolt cutters to the barbed-wire border fence with Austria alongside Alois Mock, staging the iconic image of the Iron Curtain's demise. He drove the decision to open Hungary's border to East German refugees seeking passage to West Germany, a breach that helped trigger the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification. Leading the Hungarian Socialist Party to a landslide in 1994, he served as prime minister and imposed the Bokros austerity package, laying the framework for Hungary's market-economy transition. His political life embodied the contradictions of 20th-century Hungarian socialism, suspended between his service in the armed militia that crushed the 1956 revolution and his historic 1989 opening of the border.
Career timeline
- 1954–1959Ministry of Finance official
- 1959–1969Diplomat, Foreign Ministry (Bulgaria, Yugoslavia)
- 1969–1983MSZMP Central Committee foreign affairs dept., head from 1983
- 1985–1989State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- 1989–1990Foreign Minister: opened Iron Curtain, signed Soviet troop withdrawal
- 1990–1994Chairman, Hungarian Socialist Party; Chair, Foreign Affairs Cttee
- 1994–1998Prime Minister: Bokros austerity package
A historian who carried the memory of 1956 into diplomacy
At fifteen, he took part in the 1956 Revolution without a weapon.
Géza Jeszenszky is a historian who experienced the 1956 Revolution and a statesman who helped shape Hungary’s diplomacy during the transition from state socialism. He estimated that about 350 people were executed after the revolution, contributing to public memory of the repression’s scale. As a scholar he wrote on international-relations history and Hungary’s image abroad, while as a founding member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum he pursued new relations with the West.
Career timeline
- 1941Born in Budapest
- 1961–1966Studied history and English at Eötvös Loránd University
- 1976–2011Taught international-relations history at the Budapest University of Economics and Corvinus University
- 1987–1988Took part in Lakitelek and helped found the Hungarian Democratic Forum
- 1990–1994Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1998–2002Hungarian Ambassador to the United States
- 2011–2014Hungarian Ambassador to Norway and Iceland
