Menyhért Lakatos

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Menyhért Lakatos (born April 11, 1926 in Vésztő , † August 21, 2007 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian writer .

Life

Menyhért Lakatos grew up in a Hungarian Roma settlement. His family settled down in the mid-19th century. It was thanks to the help and rigor of his mother that he finished primary school and learned the Hungarian language . Because of the persecution of the Roma, which also began in Hungary , Menyhért Lakatos had to leave the grammar school and was only able to go to school after 1945. After graduating from high school and a longer stay in Vésztö, he studied at the Technical University in Budapest . In 1961 he obtained his diploma and worked as an engineer in a company. Since then he has been committed to better education for the Roma. When a brick factory was built for the Roma to work, he tried to give them further training.

plant

Bitterer Rauch , his best-known work, depicts everyday life in a gypsy settlement in northeast Hungary, from around 1940 until the German occupation of the country in 1944 and the deportation of people to concentration camps; poverty and the joys of life are viewed from an adolescent perspective. It is an adolescence novel , especially sexual initiation is shown, plus other experiences; the increasing humiliation of the good pupil by the classmates in the district town ultimately leads to the protagonist leaving school. The novel also has clear elements of a robber novel, as he occasionally commits robberies with a friend. The book had a great success in Hungary at the time and was translated into several languages. The status of the Roma as a minority in Hungary and their permanent disadvantage become clear, the novel shows that this thinking, which is still effective today, goes far back into the past. He mainly describes things that Lakatos experienced himself as a child and as a teenager and offers an overview of Roma life in those years. The novel shows the problems on both sides, the Rome and the non-Rome, which make coexistence difficult, even if the integration of the Roma into the surrounding, strange society is desired. Lakatos considers it desirable, despite all the plea for more adaptation, that this minority should retain some of its peculiarities on a permanent basis.

Honor

  • The primary school (followed by a grammar school) Lakatos Menyhért Általános Iskola és Gimnázium in Budapest bears his name in his honor.

Works

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lakatos, Menyhért
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Vésztö
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 2007
Place of death Budapest