Miksa Fenyo - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Miksa Fenyő was a Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

and intellectual

Intellectual

An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

, served as a Member of Parliament (elected 1931) in the early 1930s, and was appointed Minister of Trade and Commerce under the short-lived (24 hours) government cabinet of Prime Minister János Hadik

János Hadik

János Count Hadik de Futak was a Hungarian politician who served as prime minister for 17 hours starting 30 October 1918, at the end of World War I....

in 1918.

He was also mentor and friend to Hungary's second most important poet laureate

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

(Endre Ady

Endre Ady

Endre Ady was a Hungarian poet.-Biography:Ady was born in Érmindszent, Szilágy county . He belonged to an impoverished Calvinist noble family...

), co-founded the most important periodical in Hungarian literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

(Nyugat
Nyugat
Nyugat , was the most influential Hungarian literary journal in the first half of the 20th century. Writers and poets from that era are referred to as "1st/2nd/3rd generation of the NYUGAT"....

: "West"), and was an instrumental figure in the Hungarian Federation of Industrialists (GYOSZ) prior to World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

and its last Managing Director during the brief interlude between 1945 and 1947, whereafter he was forced to flee into exile out of concerns for his personal safety after being informed that Stalin wanted him and other petit-bourgeoise sent to Siberia.

Biography

Fenyő was one of eight children born in Mélykút

Mélykút

Mélykút is a town in Bács-Kiskun county, in the Southern Great Plain region of southern Hungary in Bacska [Page of Bacska]-Geography:It covers an area of and has a population of 5180 people ....

("Deepwell"), Hungary

Hungary

into a hard-working Jewish tailoring family that produced quality attire and other fine clothing. Because of his exceptional abilities in composition and the Hungarian language in general he was awarded a scholarship to attend the then-prominent Lutheran Evangelical Gymnazium of Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

. After graduating from high school with exceptional honors in Hungarian writing, he earned his Law Diploma from the Budapest University of Law (now part of the Eötvös Loránd University).

After a brief and failed attempt at working as a private attorney

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

, he found an opportunity to work for the then two-year-old Hungarian Federation of Industrialists (GYOSZ), an organization which became key to the development of Hungary's primarily rural agricultural economic base, into an increasingly industrial one. In 1908 Fenyő, whose first and foremost love was writing, and two other writers, Hugo Ignotus and Ernõ Osvát, founded the literary and social journal Nyugat (Eng. "West"). The "West" soon became the most controversial and high caliber periodical review for Hungarian intellectuals, including some who later became Nobel Prize-winning scientists and researchers, and its content and history are part of the government high school level curricula today ever since the end of World War II.

Fenyő was active in the Hungarian government during the period between World War I and II. As an independent member of the Hungarian Parliament Miksa wrote a critical and cautionary study on Hitler and the dictator's dangerous plans for Europe. He was virtually the only Member of Parliament to dare criticize the Nazi regime. This essay lead to Miksa being placed on Adolf Hitler's personal "Most Wanted List."

Fenyő was forced into hiding during WWII. During this time he kept a diary, which was published in 1946 and was a best-seller that same year.

In the post-war years Miksa was invited to become a Minister in the new Jewish State of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

by David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion

' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...

, but he refused because of concerns about violence following the creation of the new state and his personal religious affiliation, since he had converted to Catholicism more than 30 years earlier. His conversion out of Judaism into Catholicism was more out of a social and socioeconomic consideration (something clearly depicted to in the movie Sunshine (1999 film)

Sunshine (1999 film)

Sunshine is a 1999 historical film written by Israel Horovitz and István Szabó, directed and produced by István Szabó. It follows three generations of a Jewish family during the changes in Hungary from the beginning of the 20th century to the...

, starring Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor and film director. He has appeared in such films as The English Patient, In Bruges, The Constant Gardener, Strange Days, The Duchess and Schindler's List....

and Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz

Rachel Hannah Weisz born 7 March 1970)is an English-American film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues...

, directed by István Szabó

István Szabó

István Szabó is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director.Szabó is the most internationally famous Hungarian filmmaker since the late 1960s. Working in the tradition of European, auteurist art cinema, he has made films that represent many of the psychological and political...

, who also wrote the screenplay, released by Paramount Pictures in 1999). In general Miksa Fenyõ was an agnostic who cherished some of his original Jewish cultural traditions and many non-Jewish Hungarian and Italian cultural traditions.

Fenyő became a US citizen in the early 1950s and lived in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

until moving to Vienna with his second wife Ria in 1969. During much of his adult life he traveled regularly to his favorite country, Italy. In 1964 he was awarded the prestigious Italian Rome Award for his travel journal and diary Ami Kimaradt Az Odysseaböl (English trans.: That Which The Odyssey Forgot To Mention).

On 4 April 1972 Miksa Fenyő died in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

at the age of 95, at his last residence on Seilerstätte Strasse. Miksa Fenyő had one son Mario D. Fenyo (DOB 19 September 1935) who immigrated to the US with his father in 1950. Mario D. Fenyo (PhD) is currently a Professor of History and lives with his wife in Annapolis, MD.

Miksa Fenyő is a major figure in Hungarian Literature, as he was one of the three founding editors of the "NYUGAT" (Eng. "WEST") Literary Review; which is a major topic of required study for Hungarian high-school students and for University students studying Hungarian Literature.

Books Authored

Casanova, a study on Giacomo Giuseppe Casanova de Seingalt, in Hungarian, published via his own publishing firm, the NYUGAT Kiadó, Budapest 1912.
Hitler; Egy Tanulmány, a study warning Hungary on the nature of and policies of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, in Hungarian, published via his own publishing firm, the NYUGAT Kiadó, Budapest 1934. Note: it is for writing this particular book that Miksa Fenyõ, who as an independent M.P. in the Hungarian Parliament gave out free copies to other prominent and influential M.P.s, was placed on Hitler's personal most wanted "dead or alive" list.
Az Elsodort Ország (English trans.: A Country Adrift), a diary written by Miksa Fenyõ, while in hiding from the Nazis and Arrow Cross, published by Révai Kiadó, Budapest 1946.
Följegyzések A "NYUGAT" Folyóiratról És Környékrõl (English trans.: Notes on The West periodical review and its circumstances), published by Pátria Könyvkiadó, Canada 1960.
Ami Kimaradt Az Odysseából (English trans.: That Which The Odyssey Forgot To Mention), travel journal and diary reflections on Italy, published by Griff Kiadó, Munich 1963.
Önéletrajzom (English trans.: My Autobiography), published posthumously by Argumentum Kiadó, Budapest 1994.
Jézus is D.P. Volt (English trans.; Jesus was also a Displaced Person), the author's only full fictional novel about a Hungarian intellectual escaping from the Rakosi Stalinist Hungarian dictatorship sometime prior to 1956, published posthumously under the auspices of The Fenyõ Family Trust, with the consent of Mario D. Fenyõ, by Argumentum Kiadó, Budapest 2006.

External links

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