János Esterházy
Count János Esterházy , alternatively in Slovak Ján Esterházi (born March 14, 1901 in Nyitraújlak ( Slov. Veľké Zálužie), Kingdom of Hungary , today Slovakia ; † March 8, 1957 in the Mírov penal institution , Czechoslovakia ), a member of the Esterházy family , was a Politicians of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia and the First Slovak Republic .
Life
János Esterházy was born in the village of Nyitraújlak / Veľké Zálužie in Neutra County as the son of the Polish Elżbieta Countess Tarnowska and the Hungarian Mihály Antal Esterházy, his father belonged to the Transylvanian branch of the Esterházys. He spent his high school years and studies at the business academy in Budapest , after which he began to run a large family estate. On October 15, 1924 he married Countess Lívia Serényi; from this marriage came the son János and the daughter Alice.
Political career
In Czechoslovakia
In 1931 Esterházy was appointed head of the League of the Hungarian National Community in Czechoslovakia (Hungarian Csehszlovákiai Magyar Népközösségi Liga ), which was active in the League of Nations . A year later, on December 11, 1932, he was elected chairman of the Christian Social Party (Krajinskej kresťanskosocialistickej strany / Országos Keresztényszocialista Párt). On the occasion of the 1935 elections, he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Kosice constituency. He called on the Czechoslovak government to respect the linguistic, cultural and economic rights of the Hungarian minority, as the Hungarians were "involuntarily annexed". At the same time he supported demands of the Slovak Hlinka Party (HSĽS) in the interests of Slovak autonomy. After Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk's resignation from the Presidential Office of Czechoslovakia, he and the HSĽS supported Edvard Beneš's presidential candidacy .
After the merger of the Hungarian parties at a party congress in Nové Zámky to form the United Hungarian Party ( Egyesluss Magyar Párt ) in 1936, Esterházy became its executive chairman. He turned down Benes' offer to take over a ministry. A primary goal throughout his political career remained the revision of Hungary's borders as set out in the Treaty of Trianon . He took part in negotiations in Poland on April 17th and 18th, 1938, where the demand of the Hungarian government for the complete reintegration of Slovakia into Hungary was put forward. After the Munich Agreement in September 1938 he wanted to take part in the negotiations for the new Slovak-Hungarian border in the mostly Hungarian-speaking town of Komárno , but Jozef Tiso's delegation refused to allow him to participate.
Autonomous Slovakia and the First Slovak Republic
After the First Vienna Arbitration Award , which awarded parts of southern Slovakia with a Hungarian majority to Hungary, he welcomed the Hungarian head of state Miklós Horthy to the annexed city as MP for Kosice . However, he himself decided to settle in smaller Slovakia, where he founded the Hungarian Party in Slovakia ( Szlovenszkói Magyar Párt ), the newspaper Új Hírek (New News) and, after it was banned in 1939, a newspaper called Magyar Hírlap (Hungarian magazine), for which he was placed under police supervision. As the only member of the Hungarian party, he demanded the rights of the 70,000 or so Hungarians who remained in Slovakia in the Slovak parliament . At the same time he stood up for the rights of the local Slovak minority in the Hungarian government. He welcomed the creation of the First Slovak Republic on March 14, 1939 in a radio speech.
He was the only member of parliament to vote against constitutional law 68/1942, which approved the deportation of Jews from Slovakia. For his position he was heavily criticized by the contemporary Slovak press.
Esterházy is said to have helped several hundred Czechs, Slovaks and Jews who fled Slovakia via Hungary in 1944. In 1944 he was arrested by the Hungarian police after the coup and the takeover of the National Socialist Arrow Crossers and was forced to give up the position of chairman of the United Hungarian Party, but after returning from this detention he was demonstratively elected chairman again. In the final months of World War II, he had to as a result of the Gestapo issued arrest warrant hide.
1945 until death
After the occupation of Bratislava by the Soviet army in April 1945, the Soviet leadership interned him, and Esterházy was released again after 12 days. Then he visited Gustáv Husák , the representative of the temporary Slovak government, to protest against the persecution and mistreatment of Hungarian citizens as a result of the Kosice government program and to negotiate a Hungarian memorandum, which also called for border revisions. Husák had him arrested and transported to the Soviet Union , where he was handed over to the NKVD (Soviet Ministry of the Interior). In the SU, he first spent a year in Moscow's Lubyanka prison, after which he was sentenced in a conceptual trial to 10 years of forced labor in the Gulag in Siberia . Meanwhile, the national court in Bratislava tried him for alleged collaboration with fascism and conspiracy against the Czechoslovak Republic. On September 16, 1947, Esterházy was sentenced to death by hanging in absentia . In 1949 the Soviet Union handed it over to the Czechoslovak authorities. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment as a result of a presidential reprieve. He was held in various Czechoslovak prisons and died on March 8, 1957 in the Mírov prison near Olomouc .
reception
The person of János Esterházy is judged differently in Slovakia (or Czechoslovakia) and Hungary.
After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, his daughter Alice Malfatti made attempts to achieve his rehabilitation, with the support of the Hungarian government, Hungarian politicians in Slovakia and the World Congress of Hungarians. In Russia, Esterházy was officially rehabilitated in 1993. In 1994 Alice submitted a request to resume rehabilitation proceedings, which the court rejected on the basis of an expert opinion by Slovak and Czech historians. Thus, the 1947 judgment remains. To mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, a commemoration was held in the Hungarian Parliament on March 11, 2001 with the participation of Hungarian President Ferenc Mádl , at which Slovakia was represented by František Mikloško .
Slovak historians do not agree on the person of Esterházy, but the prevailing view is that he should be classified as a traitor. The Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences described him in a statement as someone who paved the way for the collapse of the first Czechoslovak Republic and its democratic system and who had secretly collaborated with the Hungarian government and Nazi Germany in order to achieve his political goals. Historian Milan Zemko said that Esterházy was directly involved in the First Vienna Arbitration and could therefore not be viewed positively by Slovaks. According to Zemko, the results of the Vienna arbitrage are an important step towards the reunification of Hungary, ie all Magyars in the Carpathian Basin , a positive development for the Hungarian nation. Hungarians judge Esterházy's person and role more positively, as does István Kollai, head of the Hungarian cultural institute in Bratislava. First and foremost , he wanted to improve the situation of the Hungarians who were dispersed after the First World War and who were not satisfied with their situation in Czechoslovakia; although they had not actively supported border revisions, they advocated moving the borders after the First Vienna Arbitration.
Another controversial topic is Esterházy's supposed fascist and anti-Semitic sentiments.
A diplomatic scandal in August 2011 is symptomatic of the differences of opinion . In a letter, in response to statements by his Slovak counterpart Ivan Gašparovič, Hungarian President Pál Schmitt described Esterházy as a “true democrat and humanist” who and did not reject both fascism and communism could be considered a war criminal. Earlier, in a press conference, Gašparovič was of the opinion that Esterházy deserved no monument as a supporter of fascism, with which the Slovak President justified his criticism of the Esterházy bust in Košice. On the occasion of the unveiling of the monument on March 14, 2011, there were violent and verbal riots.
swell
- [1] Eduard Nižňanský a spol, Kto bol kto za I. ČSR (Q111 Brat. 1993).
- [2] Jozef Kamenec, Osobnosť Jánosa Esterházyho a jej kontroverzné interpretácie (Ľudia ľuďom bez hraníc, Helsinské občianske združenie v SR, Nitra 2000, p. 34).
- [3] Alice Esterházy-Malfatti, Bálint Török, Esterházy János Emlékkönyv (Pamätná kniha Jánosa Esterházyho) (Századvég Bp. 2001).
- [4] Ladislav Deák, Politický profil Jánoša Esterházyho (Ministerstvo kultúry Slovenskej republiky vo vyd. Kubko Goral 1995).
- [5] Jerguš Ferko, Vodca-zvodca János Esterházy (Maďarské sebaklamy, Matica Slovenská 2003, pp. 127–129).
- [6] Bohumil Doležal, K polemice pana Yehudy Lahava, Lidové noviny, on April 21, 2001.
- [7] Augustín Marko, Pavol Martinický, Slovensko-maďarské vzťahy. História a súčasnosť vo faktoch. Bratislav, 1995.
- [8] János Esterházy, A kissebségi kérdés / Menšinová otázka. Vybrané prejavy a state (Ister Bp. 2000).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neuzavretý prípad János Esterházy , SME, accessed on August 27, 2011 (Slovak)
- ↑ a b Esterházy: traitor or hero? , Slovak Spectator, accessed August 28, 2011
- ↑ Schmitt: Označovanie Esterházyho za vojnového zločinca je neprijateľné , Pravda, accessed on August 28, 2011 (Slovak)
- ↑ Odhaľovanie Esterházyho busty v Košiciach sa skončilo bitkou , SME, accessed on August 28, 2011 (Slovak)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Esterházy, János |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Esterházi, Ján (Slovak) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Hungarian-Slovak politician of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 14, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Veľké Zálužie |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 8, 1957 |
| Place of death | Mírov |