Károly Kiss (soldier)

Károly Kiss, 1866

Károly Kiss (born August 12, 1793 in Buda , † February 17, 1866 in Pest ) was an Austro-Hungarian officer, military scientist, military historian and poet. He was a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .

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His father was a bath owner in Buda and later the mayor and chief judge of Szeged . Károly Kiss spent his childhood in Algyő and went to school in Buda and Szeged. His role model was the general and poet Miklós Zrínyi , whose portrait he had received from his teacher for excellent performance in the subject of history.

Military career

Károly Kiss also pursued the career of a soldier. Since 1809 he was a cadet of the 37th Hungarian Infantry Regiment. As a soldier of Austria-Hungary he took part in the Napoleonic Wars . He was involved in the Battle of Dresden , Kulm and the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig .

In 1815 he fought against King Joachim Murat and Napoleon in Italy and France . Then he was promoted to first lieutenant. Since 1816 he was garrisoned with his regiment in Galicia . From 1824 to 1831 he served as a captain in the army in several cities. In 1831 he became the director of a military educational institution in Oradea . He was then transferred to Lviv , where he continued to do military service. Since he always agreed with the reform idea, he got into conflict with his conservative superiors and therefore applied for his retirement.

Politics, science and literature

Then he moved to Pest and took part in the city's cultural and scientific life, and made friends with the great personalities of the Hungarian reform period, such as Ferenc Deák , István Széchenyi , Lajos Kossuth , etc. He took part in the social life of the city, was a member of various social associations and was accepted into the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He also followed the political disputes in the Hungarian parliament . In 1848 he helped organize the National Guard .

After the crackdown on the Hungarian Revolution in 1848/1849 he was imprisoned and sentenced to ten years imprisonment in November 1849. After eight months he was released from the Arad prison as part of an amnesty . He was militarily demoted and no longer received a pension. He lived in Pest until his death and devoted himself to military history and military science research.

In addition to his work in the military, he dealt with literature from an early age. He knew the most important representatives of contemporary literary life. Károly Kiss mainly wrote poems and articles that appeared in well-known Hungarian magazines. He worked on the renowned Aurora paperback series published by Károly Kisfaludy . He also wrote a number of military-scientific and military-historical treatises. He dealt extensively with the campaign of János Hunyadi , especially with the siege of Belgrade (old Hungarian: Nándorfehérvár), the battle of Varna and the battle on the Blackbird Field (Hungarian: Rigómező). He was also interested in the battles of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. His inaugural address at the Academy was about the French Revolution .

He was a pioneer in the development of a Hungarian "military art language", i. H. military terminology . The technical terms he created are still used in military terminology today. In 1843 he published his “Military Art Dictionary ”, it was the first Hungarian specialized military dictionary . These terms have also found their way into other dictionaries.

Works

• Hadi muszotA¡r. MagyarNemetul es NemetMagyarul. Hungarian-German and German-Hungarian military art dictionary . 1843. Book on Demand 2016.

literature

• Ács Tibor: Tudós és Katona, Zrínyi Katonai Kiadó, Budapest, 1982.

Web links

• Short biography, bibliography in Hungarian