Ilona Andrássy

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Ilona Andrássy de Csíkszentkirály and Krasznahorka (born May 22, 1886 in Tőketerebes , Austria-Hungary , † August 21, 1967 in Peterborough , Canada ) was a Hungarian countess and nurse of the First World War .

Countess Ilona Andrássy at a young age

Life

Ilona Andrássy was the eldest daughter of Count Theodor (ung. Tivadar) Andrássy (* 1857, † 1905) and his wife, Countess Eleonore Maria Rudolphine Zichy (* 1867, † 1945). Ilona was the granddaughter of the famous Hungarian politician Gyula Andrássy , who held the post of Foreign Minister in Austria-Hungary. Within the family she was nicknamed "Iloncsi". She grew up in the Andrássys family castle in Tőketerebes. With the help of foreign educators, she received a proper upbringing, she was taught in foreign languages ​​(German, English and French) and received an excellent general education. However, her passion was literature. Writing has been one of her favorite pastimes all of her life. Ilona wrote a lot, letters to family and friends, short literary treatises and she kept a regular diary. Her collection of poems Adósom vagy Élet ( Eng . "The life of my debtor") was published as early as 1933 .

After the father's death, the mother married her brother-in-law Gyula Andrássy Junior , who took on the role of foster father and legal guardian for Ilona and her three younger sisters. On January 23, 1909, Ilona married Prince Paul Esterházy (* 1883, † 1915) in the Matthias Church in Budapest . It was an outspoken love marriage; Between 1909 and 1915 the couple lived in Esterhazy Castle in Pápa , as well as on an Esterházy estate in Pápáteszér in Wesprim County . The marriage did not last long, however, as Paul died on June 26, 1915 on the Russian front near Dziewietniki in Galicia . His remains were transferred to Hungary and buried in the Esterházy mausoleum in Ganna. The marriage with Paul Esterházy remained childless, as the husband was presumably impotent.

After her husband Paul Esterházy went to war, Ilona also volunteered as a Red Cross sister at the front, where she devotedly cared for wounded soldiers. Florence Nightingale served as an example . From her she also adopted many nursing practices. According to the rules of the time, women were forbidden to do service right behind the front line. She traveled to Vienna and obtained from the generals that this regulation was lifted and that women were also allowed to serve as paramedics directly at the front. Ilona was ordered to the Italian front and on the way there she learned that her husband had died.

At the beginning of 1917 she returned from the front for a vacation stay in Budapest . Despite the mourning of her first husband, she married Count Jozsef Cziráky de Dénesfalva (* 1883, † 1960) on February 17, 1917. Jozsef Cziráky was a good friend of her husband.

From this marriage three sons were born:

  • Nikolaus Gyula Ludwig Friedrich (* 1918, † 1944) ∞ Ilona Maria Countess Esterházy de Galántha (* May 17, 1921)
  • Paul Georg Béla (born August 14, 1919) ∞ Maria Erzsébet Andrássy (born October 29, 1921)
  • Béla Joseph Karl (* 1921, † March 18, 1986) ∞ 1.Jill Tweedie (* 1932, † 1993), 2. Elisabeth Riess

During the time of the Hungarian Soviet Republic , the couple was persecuted and imprisoned, and their husband faced the death penalty. Through the influence of acquaintances, a functionary of this regime, Tibor Szamuely, could be persuaded to release them again. Then the couple retired to the Czirák Castle near Dénesfa.

In 1920 József Cziráky was appointed chief provost of Eisenburg County. József was a legitimist and ardent supporter of the Danube monarchy . He was also involved in the attempted return of Emperor Karl I (as King of Hungary IV Károly ) in October 1921. After King Karl's attempt at restoration had failed, Jozsef was relieved of his post and retired entirely to private life. The Second World War reached it in Dénesfa .

After the communist seizure of power when Hungary was declared a People's Republic , the Czirákys were also expelled from their manor and all their property was expropriated. In the Cziráky Castle - which had previously been looted - a sanatorium for the mentally ill was established in 1949 . The couple was initially assigned a strange house in the village. But they were also expelled from there, and in the end they found refuge with their own former and loyal maid, who made a room in their own two-room apartment available to the now old couple. In 1951 Ilona was arrested and imprisoned for "hoarding food" (and "damaging public property"). The two younger sons Paul and Béla fled to the West before the Iron Curtain fell over Eastern Europe . They found a new home in Canada. The couple, who had grown old in the meantime, stayed in Dénesfa, where they had to spend their retirement years under the poorest of circumstances and where they were constantly subjected to reprisals by the communist state power. Ilona's husband József Graf Cziráky died on August 11, 1960, completely impoverished and destitute in Dénesfa. He was buried there in silence. After her husband's death, at the urging of her sons, Ilona moved to Canada in 1961, where she also died on August 21, 1967. Some of their descendants still live in the Montreal area today .

The Cziráky Castle in Dénesfa (aerial view)

posterity

The Cziráky Castle in Dénesfa served as an asylum from 1949. When restoration work was carried out on the castle in 1971, construction workers came across a walled-up cavity in the castle. When they opened the wall they came across four large wooden boxes. They found the family silver of the Czirákys and valuable porcelain in three boxes. The individual pieces were neatly wrapped in newsprint from Hungarian newspapers from 1948. The fourth box was full of partly moldy documents from the Czirákys, including Ilona's diary. This find caused a sensation in the professional world.

The professional world took care of the estate. Above all, the diary - which originated from the time of the Danube Monarchy and also contained entries from the time of the First World War - aroused great interest among historians. The museologist of the Florian Romer Museum in Raab (ung. Rómer Flóris), Lajos Kovács, worked on the material scientifically and presented the diary in book form in 2014. The Hungarian title of the book: Mindennek vége! (German: "Everything is over!", 264 pages, Európa Könyvkiadó Budapest).

Ilona Andrássy's estate is now in the Florian Romer Museum in Raab, which opened a special exhibition in 2014 in honor of Ilona Andrássy.

literature

  • Mindennek vége! Andrássy Ilona grófnő első világháborús naplója , Európa Könyvkiadó, Budapest 2015, ISBN 978-963-07-9932-4 (Hungarian)
  • Emese Hulej: A Andrássy lányok története ("The Story of Andrássy's Daughters") in "nők lapja" from February 27, 2019, vol. 70, no. 9, p. 62ff, HU ISSN 1419-5488 ( Hungarian )

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Ilona had three younger sisters: Barbara (ung.Borbála, * 1890, † 1968), Katinka (* 1892, † 1985) and Klára (* 1898, † 1941)
  2. ↑ Ganna is a small village near the town of Pápa in the Wesprim county with 235 inhabitants (2015). Since 1552 the place belonged to the Esterházy family.
  3. ^ Nikolaus Gyula Ludwig Friedrich died in 1944 as a soldier in World War II .
  4. ↑ Dénesfa is a small town near Kapuvár in today's Győr-Sopron-Moson County , with 362 inhabitants (2015)
  5. ↑ The plane with Karl I coming from Zurich landed on the estate of József Cziráky, right next to the Cziráky Castle in Dénesfa.
personal data
SURNAME Andrássy, Ilona
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Andrássy de Csíkszentkirály and Krasznahorka, Ilona (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian countess and nurse of the First World War
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Tőketerebes , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1967
Place of death Peterborough , Canada