Menyhért Lengyel
Menyhért Lengyel , also Melchior Lengyel , actually Menyhért Lebovics (born January 12, 1880 in Balmazújváros , † October 23, 1974 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian playwright , journalist and critic .
Life
His career began with newspaper articles. He worked as a journalist first in Kassa (today: Košice ), later in Budapest.
His first play, A nagy fejedelem (The Great Prince) , was performed in 1907 by the Thalia Society, an independent theater company. The Hungarian National Theater played its next play in 1908, A hálás utókor (The Grateful Posterity) , which was awarded the Vojnits Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences , which is awarded annually for the best play. One of his best dramas, Typhoon , written in 1909, became world famous and is still played today; it was filmed in the US in 1914.
He published his articles mostly in the monthly Nyugat (West) , which was the best literary magazine in Hungary in the first half of the 20th century. During the First World War he was a correspondent in Switzerland for the Hungarian newspaper Az Est (The Evening) for a year . His pacifist articles and other writings from 1918 were also published in German and French magazines and later compiled in the book Egyszerű gondolatok (Simple Thoughts) .
His story The Wonderful Mandarin (original title: A csodálatos mandarin ) was published in 1916 and inspired Béla Bartók , the famous Hungarian composer, to use it as a libretto for a dance game (1924).
In 1919 he went to Berlin , Munich and Weimar , where he made friends with Ernst Lubitsch . Lengyel and his family emigrated to England in 1933 and to the USA in 1935. There he worked as a screenwriter. Lubitsch filmed some of his works: Das Verbotene Paradies , Engel , Ninotschka (the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar in 1940 ) and Poland is not yet lost (under the title To Be or Not to Be ). After the Second World War , Lengyel often traveled back to Europe and moved to Italy in 1960. After the 1956 revolution in Hungary, he often visited his native country and returned to Hungary in 1970, where he died four years later at the age of 94.
The library in his hometown Balmazújváros was named after him in 2004. A complete list of Lengyel's works and articles about him was compiled by a librarian on that occasion.
Web links
- Melchior Lengyel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Literature by and about Menyhért Lengyel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Melchior Lengyel Filmography on Fandango
Individual evidence
- ↑ Menyhért Lengyel: Életem Könyve (Book of my Life) (Editor: József Vinkó). Gondolat, Budapest 1987
- ↑ Józsefné Kun: Lengyel Menyhért. Személyi bibliográfia (1880–1974) (M. Lengyel. Bibliography from 1880 to 1974). Lengyel Menyhért City Library, Balmazújváros, 2004
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lengyel, Menyhért |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lengyel, Melchior; Lebovics, Menyhért (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Hungarian playwright, journalist and critic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 12, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Balmazújváros |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 23, 1974 |
| Place of death | Budapest |