Peter Gosztony

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Peter Gosztonyi (1994)

Péter Gosztonyi (in foreign publications mostly as Gosztony ; * December 2, 1931 in Budapest , † March 30, 1999 in Bern ) was a Hungarian - Swiss military historian . He was director of the Swiss Library for Eastern Europe in Bern.

Life

Peter Gosztony, of middle-class origin, was born in Budapest. After graduating from high school, he studied economics at the University of Budapest , where he received a diploma in 1952. A little later he was fired as a so-called " class enemy ". He then worked in a food company until he got a job in 1954 with the magazine of the Hungarian People's Army ( Néphadsereg ).

In 1954 he received the reserve officer license of the Hungarian People's Army . In 1956 Gosztony was drafted into the Hungarian armed forces for military service. He served as a sub-lieutenant and was deputy company commander in a technical labor battalion. Gosztony took part in the defensive battles against the Soviet occupying forces in the Budapest Kilián barracks , which was commanded by Colonel Pál Maléter . After the suppression of the Hungarian popular uprising , Gosztony had to leave his home country in December 1956 for fear of the expected retaliation and ended up as a refugee in Switzerland.

He later began studying history and political science at the University of Zurich . 1963 Gosztony at Max Silberschmidt with the dissertation The German-Russian war in Hungary in 1944/45 with special reference to fighting around Budapest to Dr. phil. PhD . The work was also published in the Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau and appeared in an expanded form in 1969 under the title Endkampf an der Donau 1944/45 .

After completing his studies, Gosztony moved to Bern and in 1963 took over the management of the Swiss Eastern European Library Foundation (SOEB), which he set up and expanded until 1996 as a documentation center for research on communism and Eastern Europe. The focus of his military history research was the Second World War in relation to Hungary's role and that of the other allies of the German Reich, as well as the Hungarian popular uprising in 1956. He was a member of the Swiss Association for Military History and Military Science and the German Society for Eastern European Studies .

After the political turning point in Eastern Europe in 1989/90, he was rehabilitated in Hungary and received several honors, such as the Great Order of Merit , combined with his promotion to Colonel of the Reserve of the Hungarian Armed Forces in 1993 , and an honorary doctorate from the Budapest University of Economics in 1997 .

Contributions from him appeared in military journals and national daily newspapers and magazines; since the 1960s he has published in German, Hungarian and French. From 1992 to 1994 he traveled to Moscow several times for research purposes.

He was married and had one child.

Fonts (selection)

  • The battle for Budapest 1944/45 (= Studia Hungarica . 2). Schnell and Steiner, Munich a. a. 1964.
  • (Ed.): The Hungarian People's Uprising in Eyewitness Reports . With a foreword by Walther Hofer , Rauch, Düsseldorf 1966. (Licensed edition, dtv, 1981)
  • Final battle on the Danube. 1944/1945. With 39 documentary images and 12 maps . Molden, Vienna a. a. 1969. (2nd edition, Molden, 1970)
  • (Ed.): The fight for Berlin 1945 in eyewitness reports . With a foreword by Heinrich Grüber , Rauch, Düsseldorf 1970. (Licensed edition, dtv, 1975; Motorbuch, 2012)
  • Miklós of Horthy. Admiral and Reichsverweser (= personality and history . Vol. 76/77). Musterschmidt, Göttingen a. a. 1973, ISBN 3-7881-0076-1 .
  • (Ed.): On the history of the European people's armies . Hohwacht, Bonn u. a. 1976, ISBN 3-87353-048-1 .
  • Hitler's foreign armies. The fate of the non-German armies in the Eastern campaign . Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf u. a. 1976, ISBN 3-430-13352-1 . (Revised licensed edition, Lübbe, 1980)
  • (Ed.): Paramilitary organizations in the Soviet bloc . Hohwacht, Bonn u. a. 1977, ISBN 3-87353-060-0 .
  • (Ed.): Riots under the red star . Hohwacht, Bonn 1979, ISBN 3-87353-072-4 . (Licensed edition, Lübbe, 1982)
  • The Red Army. History and structure of the Soviet armed forces since 1917 . Molden, Vienna a. a. 1980, ISBN 3-217-00666-6 . (Approved paperback edition, Goldmann, 1983)
  • Germany's comrades-in-arms on the Eastern Front, 1941–1945. [Dedicated to Béla K. Király on the occasion of his 70th birthday ] . Motorbuch, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-87943-762-9 .
  • Stalin's foreign armies. The fate of the non-Soviet troops in the Red Army 1941–1945 . Edited by the Working Group for Defense Research , Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-7637-5889-5 .

literature

  • Anton Czettler: Peter Gosztony (December 2, 1931– March 30, 1999). In: Hungary Yearbook. ISSN  0082-755X , Vol. 24 (1998/99), Verlag Ungarisches Institut, Munich 2000, pp. 436-442 ( PDF; 681 kB ).
  • George Gomori: Obituary: Peter Gosztonyi . In: The Independent , April 28, 1999, p. 6.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ History of soeb ( Memento of 23 August 2007 at the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Gosztony, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gosztonyi, Péter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-Swiss historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1999
Place of death Bern