Tivadar Soros

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Tivadar Soros , also Theodore Schwartz , Theodor Soros , Teodoro Svarc or Teo Melas (* 7. April 1893 in Nyírbakta , Austria-Hungary , † February 1968 in New York ) was a Hungarian lawyer and Esperanto - writer . He is the father of US hedge fund manager and multi-billionaire George Soros .

Live and act

Tivadar Schwartz was the eldest son and the second of eight children of the Orthodox Jewish family Schwartz. He was born in the small town of Nyírbakta (now Baktalórántháza near the Hungarian border with Ukraine ), where his father ran a general store and sold agricultural machinery. While Schwartz was still young, the family moved to the much larger town of Nyíregyháza in northeast Hungary. His father realized early on the intellectual abilities and talents of his son and gave him an education at a private Christian boarding school in Sárospatak . From there, Schwartz went to Kolozsvár to at the local university law study. He traveled through Central Europe and, among other things, took courses in Heidelberg .

The outbreak of World War I initially thwarted his ambitious plans to pursue a career as a lawyer. During his captivity in Siberia, Schwartz learned the world auxiliary language Esperanto . He was able to escape from the prisoner-of-war camp in Khabarovsk and return home in several stages. On the way back to Hungary he also came to Moscow , where he helped to establish the Soveta Esperanto-Asocio (Soviet Esperanto Association). In 1922 he founded the magazine Literatura Mondo (World of Literature), which became the focal point of the so-called Hungara Skolo (Hungarian School) of Esperanto literature , and edited it until 1924. Literatura Mondo became the literary forum on which Esperanto writers like Kálmán Kalocsay and Julio Baghy published their first literary successes.

In 1923 Schwartz wrote the novel Modernaj Robinzonoj (Modern Robinsons), which describes his adventurous escape from a Siberian prisoner-of-war camp in the turmoil of civil war after the Russian Revolution and his return to Hungary in 1920.

Schwartz married Elisabeth (Hungarian Erzsébet) Szűcs in Budapest in 1924 , the older of the two daughters of the Jewish cloth merchant Mor Szűcs . In 1926 son Paul Schwartz (later Paul Soros ) was born and in 1930 the second son György (Georg) Schwartz , who is now internationally known as George Soros as a US investment banker and multi-billionaire. His wife's younger sister, Klára Szűcs , married the Hungarian architect and designer György Farkas and, after the couple emigrated to the USA, became a successful photographer there under her married name Klara Farkas .

Schwartz ran a law firm in Budapest. He took care of the financial affairs of his sick father-in-law and also took over the management of the family's real estate in Budapest, Vienna and Berlin . Through his work for the Esperanto magazine, he came into contact with writers and artists who also provided him with solvent customers. His income enabled him to live in an upscale district of Budapest and ensured a high standard of living for the family. When Schwartz traveled to Esperanto conferences with his wife Elisabeth, he often combined this with skiing and hiking trips.

The Magyarization of the original family name from Schwartz to Soros took place in 1936 at the instigation of Schwartz, who wanted to protect his family from persecution and stigmatization as Jews and to prevent the association with their Jewish origins.

The greatest test of his life for Tivadar Soros was the time between March 18, 1944 and February 12, 1945, when the Germans occupied Hungary and the Eichmann Command, with the support of the Horthy regime and the Hungarian gendarmerie, over 400,000 Jews from the Hungarian province in the concentration camp Auschwitz deported. After the coup d'état of the Arrow Crossers initiated by the Germans in October 1944, the Budapest Jews were also exposed to terrorism and partly driven on death marches towards Austria .

In his book Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto [Masquerade around death] Soros describes how he manages to evade mass murder and in doing so not only save his wife Elisabeth, his sons Paul and Georg and his mother-in-law, but also many acquaintances . After the novel first appeared in Esperanto, it was later translated into English , French , Russian , German , Turkish and Hungarian .

After the suppression of the Hungarian uprising , Soros emigrated to the USA in 1956 and lived with his family in New York under the name Theodor Soros . In 1963, he became a US citizen.

Tivadar Soros aka Theodor Soros died in New York in February 1968. In his memory, his son donated the “Soros-életműdíj” prize, which was awarded to various Hungarian artists .

Works

  • Modernaj Robinzonoj en la Siberia Praarbaro . Budapest: Globus Presartinstituto Akcia Societo, 1923 (autobiographical story).
  • Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto: Nazimondo en Hungarujo . La Laguna de Tenerife: J. Régulo Eldonisto, 1965 (autobiographical story).

literature

  • Enciklopedio de Esperanto, 1934, p. 483.
  • Marinko Ĝivoje: Panorama rigardo super la Esperanta literaturo . 1979.
  • István Deák : Tivadar Soros: Masquerade: Dancing around Death in Nazi-Occupied Hungary edited and translated from the Esperanto , Rezension, in: The New York Review of Books , No. 18, 2001, p. 47.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Biographical data about Tivadar Soros in: Michael T. Kaufman: Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire . Paperback, 2003, ISBN 037570549X , pp.
  2. ^ Ancestry.com. New York naturalization applications [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2007. Original data: Soundex Index to Petitions for Naturalization filed in Federal, State, and Local Courts located in New York City, 1792–1989. New York, NY, USA: The National Archives at New York City.
  3. ^ Ancestry.com. USA, Social Security Death Index, 1935–2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2011. Original data: Social Security Administration. Social Security Death Index, Master File. Social Security Administration.
  4. ↑ Soros életműdíj , award in 2002, when nonprofit.hu
personal data
SURNAME Soros, Tivadar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwartz, Theodor; Soros, Theodor; Ŝvarc, Teodoro; Melas, Teo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian lawyer and Esperanto writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Baktalórántháza , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH February 1968
Place of death new York