Lorenz Gyömörey

Lorenz Gyömörey , born Laurentius Maria Anton Georg Otto Constantin Maximilian Gyömerey (born January 22, 1931 in Graz ; died December 24, 1989 in Chalandri , Athens ) was a Hungarian priest , translator and author.

Life

His mother Georgine Adalberta Helene Eduarda geb. Almasy (born September 25, 1894 in Graz, St. Leonhard) came from the Hungarian nobility. Her brother Laszló Almasy was a pilot and went down in recent literary and film history as a template for the novel The English Patient . The father Anton Gyömerey (born on May 1, 1881 in Mährisch Weißkirchen) was an officer, the family lived temporarily on Gut Bernstein in Burgenland . Lorenz Gyömörey spent part of his childhood in a side building of Bernstein Castle. Since the noble family was known for their loyalty to the imperial family and their adherence to Catholicism, they had to flee to Kőszeg in Hungary after the " Anschluss " in 1938 , where Lorenz Gyömörey attended a Benedictine grammar school. The family returned to Austria immediately after the end of the war . He passed his Matura on February 18, 1949 at the Federal High School in Mattersburg . In the period after that, the first articles appeared in St. Martins-Boten in Burgenland. On October 18, 1949, he was enrolled in the subject of theology. Ten years later I enrolled in philosophy.

He was ordained a priest on June 29, 1954 by Cardinal Theodor Innitzer . From September 1, 1954, he worked as a chaplain in the parish Wildendürnbach, Lower Austria. 1957/58 he was the chief editor of the hectographed monthly magazine Fiatalok Foruma in Hungarian, which was published by the Hungarian youth welfare of the Austrian Federal Youth Association.

At the end of January 1958, an employment relationship began in the “Intellectual Aid” of Caritas in the Archdiocese of Vienna.

In the course of the Hungarian Revolution , he made many trips to Budapest and other places to organize relief operations and to report on the situation as a journalist. Several articles appeared in the magazine Wir at the end of 1956 . Austria's young movement. From 1954 to 1974 worked in the pastoral care of the Archdiocese of Vienna, secretary of the International Cultural Center at Annagasse 20 (Palais Erzherzog Carl, today House of Music), in 1956 pastoral care of secondary school pupils and students who fled from Hungary, also in 1968 together with Leopold Ungar for the pupils and students who have fled the CSSR.

During his time in Vienna he lived in the Sacre Coeur at Rennweg 3, where he organized roundtables and debates, with Prelate Leopold Ungar, Friedrich Heer, György Sebestyen, Anton Pelinka, Alfred Payerleitner and Ursula Pasterk among his guests. A lifelong friendship developed with Michael Guttenbrunner and his wife Winnetou.

Lorenz Gyömörey wrote scripts for four ORF documentaries.

He traveled to Greece since the early 1960s and in 1966 bought a small farmhouse on the Cycladic island of Amorgos near the port of Katapola . During the time of the Greek military junta, he had good contacts with the Greek resistance around Giorgios Mavros. He is likely to have also sent aid from the SPÖ under Bruno Pittermann . Lorenz Gyömörey helped numerous people in distress, he traveled to Cyprus in 1974 in the course of the political crisis there and wrote a human rights report on behalf of the Catholic Church in Austria. In Athens he saw the end of the junta in 1974. This coincided with a reprimand by Cardinal Franz König due to the ORF documentation about the church tax. Thereupon Lorenz Gyömörey finally moved to Greece and from then on lived in Athens and Amorgos. Here he continued his studies of the country, its people and its literature. After the book Greece published in 1970 . A European case with a foreword by Friedrich Heer followed In the footsteps of the mothers . Lorenz Gyömörey translated poems of Giorgos Seferis , Odysseas Elytis and Constantine Cavafy into German, as well as the confessions of General Makryjannis entitled We, not me . Among other things, he translated the memoirs of Andràs Hegedüs from Hungarian into Greek. He also worked as a consultant on the translation of Hölderlin's Hyperion into Greek.

Lorenz Gyömörey found his final resting place in the priestly crypt of the Catholic cemetery Hieraklion in Athens.

Works

literature

Cultural history studies

• Greece. A European case. (Foreword by Friedrich Heer). Paul Zsolnay, Vienna, Hamburg 1970.
• In the footsteps of mothers. Improvisations on the subjective factor, the Greeks, matriarchy and the fall of the West. Paul Zsolnay, Vienna, Hamburg 1977.

Others

• Α. Ε. Mαργαρίτης: "Έφυγε" ο πατήρ Λαυρέντιος. In: Τα Νεα , December 27, 1989.
• Νίκος Άντονατος: … και ο συνγραφέας Λαυρέντιος Γκεμερέι. Τέχνες , December 27, 1989.
• Heribert Holzer: He went to Athens 25 years ago. In: Wiener Kirchenzeitung , January 21, 1990.
• On the death of Lorenz Gyömörey. In: Christ in the Present , January 21, 1990.

Film (scripts)

• Awakening in the Church 1969 (ORF; directed by Imre Lazar )
• Being old in Austria (ORF; Director: Robert Dornhelm )
• Klosterschulenreport 1970 (ORF; Director: Robert Dornhelm)
• Church tax report 1970 (ORF; director: Robert Dornhelm)