The Phoenix Land (56 page)

The Hofburg
: The vast imperial palace in the centre of Vienna.

Sir Thomas Hohler
(1871–1946): English diplomat. Held posts in Constantinople, Saint Petersburg, Cairo, Tokyo, Mexico and Washington, chief commissioner in Budapest from 1919,
ambassador
from 1921 to 1924. Friendly with Admiral Horthy.

Sir Esmé Howard
(1863–1939): British diplomat and philanthropist. In 1926 he became ambassador to Washington.

Alexander Petrovich Isvolski
(1856–1919): At various times Russian ambassador to the Vatican, to Belgrade, to Munich, to Tokyo and to Paris. Russian foreign minister from 1906 to 1910.

Jassy
: Capital of the former principality of Moldavia that had been incorporated within the then principality of Romania in 1866. The inhabitants included many of Magyar origin and since becoming a province of Romania there had been several distributions of land to the peasantry. This continued after Romania was elevated into a kingdom in 1879.

King John I of Hungary
: Lost his throne after only a year to the rival claimant, Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg, who, seeing John I’s weakness in the face of the Turkish threat and the fact that he had been deserted by those Hungarians and Transylvanians who had put him on the throne, invaded Hungary in 1527 and was immediately crowned with St Stephen’s Crown, which had been used less than a year before for King John himself.

Archduke Joseph
: Cousin of the emperor who made his home in Hungary. He lived at Poszony (now Bratislava) in what was then northern Hungary and is now the Czech Republic. Countess Sophie Chotek, who was his wife’s lady-in-waiting, afterwards
morganatically
married Archduke Franz Ferdinand and was assassinated with her husband at Sarajevo in 1914.

Emperor Franz Joseph
(1830–1916): Succeeded to the thrones of Austria and Hungary at the age of seventeen in 1848 and was on the throne during the troubled times of the Hungarian revolution of 1848. For many years he was still hated by those with memories of Austrian oppression. From 1867, when the
Ausgleich
(Compromise) was promulgated, the empire of Austria-Hungary became known as the ‘Dual Monarchy’ since the monarch in his own person was
emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. From that date, the two countries had their own parliaments, prime ministers and civil
servants
, and only foreign policy, the banking systems and the armies were integrated under one banner. His only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide at Mayerling in 1889, and his wife, the beautiful but wayward Empress Elisabeth, was assassinated in Geneva in 1898. This was not the end of his tragedies: in 1914 his heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian terrorist, an event that swiftly led to the outbreak of general European war in 1914. Thereafter, the succession to the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary feel to another nephew, Archduke Karl.

Ferenc Julier
(1878–1946): Hungarian strategist, successor to
Stromfeld
as Chief of General Staff under the Communist regime.

Kálmán Kánya,
(1869–1945): Hungarian Foreign Office official, served as ambassador to Mexico before the First World War and in the 1920s and 1930s was successively chief secretary of the foreign office, ambassador to Berlin and finally foreign minister. No friend to Bánffy.

King Karl I
(1887–1922): Crowned in the first part of these memoirs, he left the country in 1918 and was the last monarch of the
Austro-Hungarian
Empire.

Jongheer van Karnebeek
: Dutch foreign minister.

Julius Károlyi
(1871–1947): Foreign minister from 1930 to 1931, and prime minister from 1931 to 1932.

Count Mihály Károlyi
(1875–1955): Hungarian politician, cousin of Miklós Bánffy, member of parliament from 1901, president of the Independent Party from 1913. Before World War I broke out he declared his support for British and French attitudes. He was against Hungary’s participation in the war and also the policies attributed to Count István Tisza. He became president of the Hungarian Republic in January 1919 and shortly afterwards, with the rise of Communism, left Hungary to live in the West and only returned in 1946. For a short time he accepted representative diplomatic posts. From 1949 until his death in 1955, he lived in Paris.

Baron Sándor Károlyi
: Commander-in-chief of the armies of Ferenc Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania, who had revolted against the Habsburgs in the last years of the seventeenth century. Rewarded for his services to the dynasty with huge grants of land and the title of Count. Rákóczi, on the other hand, was exiled. The peace of Szatmár in 1711 ended the rebellion and confirmed the Habsburg rule over Transylvania. In his memoirs Mihály Károlyi comments wryly that his family owed their immense wealth to the Habsburgs and finally lost it because of the part he played in their downfall.

Sándor (Alexander) Károlyi
: Count Károlyi Mihály’s great-uncle and second husband of his grandmother Clarisse, who had first married
Edward Károlyi, Mihály’s grandfather. She was aunt to Miklós Bánffy. They lived at the vast manor house of Föth, some nineteen kilometres northeast of Budapest (still preserved and now used as a school for orphaned children). The great library of this house, where Mihály did all his early reading (see
Memoirs of Michael Károlyi
, Jonathan Cape, London, 1956) is the setting for an important scene in
They Were Counted
, the first volume of Bánffy’s Transylvanian trilogy.

Kaszino Club
: The aristocrats’ club, now pulled down, which stood on the corner of Lajos Kossuth utca and Museum korut. Its entrance was directly in front of the former entrance to the Hotel Astoria, which still flourishes and which figures in Bánffy’s account of the October Revolution in 1918.

Count Kaunitz
(1711–1794): Distinguished statesman under Empress Maria Theresia.

Kecskemét
: Agricultural province eighty-five kilometres south of Budapest, which boasts Hungary’s largest orchards, produces thirty per cent of the country’s wine and the famous Kecskemét apricot brandy.

Count Sándor Khuen-Héderváry
(1881–1947): Hungarian politician and diplomat, held various ministerial posts and was ambassador in Paris from 1934 to 1940.

Count Kunó Klebelsberg
(1875–1932): With István Bethlen
organized
the party of National Unity in 1919. Minister of the interior from 1921 to 1922, and minister of education and religion from 1922 to 1931, he was influential in the reform of the educational system and the establishment of village schools. He created Hungarian Institutes in Vienna, Berlin and Rome.

Lajos Kossuth
(1802–1894): Hungary’s greatest revolutionary patriot, born into an old but untitled family of minor landowners in
northeastern
Hungary. He became known early as a talented and ardent political journalist with strong Liberal views for which he was imprisoned in May 1837. Soon after his release he became editor of the
Pesti Hirlap
, the most prominent Liberal newspaper, a position he used to further the aims of all those who advocated such radical reforms as abolishing all remaining traces of feudalism and the
taxation
of the nobility. This soon led to open opposition to Habsburg rule from Vienna. He became a member of parliament in 1847. By 1848 he had become the acknowledged leader of the Hungarian revolution whose aim was complete political independence from Austria. When, by 1849, the Hungarian insurrection had won many successes, he made a public declaration stating that ‘the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, perjured in the sight of God and man, had
forfeited
the Hungarian throne’ for which he earned the lifelong hatred of the young Emperor Franz Joseph. After the surrender of General Görgey at Világos, the insurrection was effectively at an end, and
Kossuth fled to Turkey. Eventually, after a period of exile in England, where he was fêted as a great patriot, he went to Italy and was to die there, in Turin. His body was taken back to Pest where he was buried amid the mourning of the whole nation.

Béla Kun
: Hungarian Communist leader whose rise to power in 1919 had brought about the flight of Mihály Károlyi. His repressive rule lasted only until the autumn of 1919.

Philip László
: Hungarian painter who made an international
reputation
principally in London during the first part of the twentieth century.

Karl Liebknecht
(1871–1919): Leader of the ‘Spartacus League’ workers revolutionary movement.

David Lloyd George
(1863–1945): Radical British politician. He became leader of the Liberal Party, a position he held until his death. He held several ministerial posts and was prime minister from 1916 to 1922. He represented England at the peace talks in Paris and in several subsequent international conferences.

Cesare Lombroso
, 1839–1909: Eminent Jewish-Italian criminologist, professor of psychiatry, forensic medicine and criminal anthropology and author of several seminal works on those and related subjects.

Louis Loucheur
(1872–1931): Industrialist, French minister for
rearmament
and reconstruction from 1917 to1920, member of French delegation to the peace conference.

Márton Lovászy
(1864–1927): Liberal Hungarian politician, member of the National Council in 1918 and one of Mihály Károlyi’s ministers. He was to become minister of war under Friedrich.

György Lukács
(1865–1950): Former editor of the review
Monarchy
. Became leader of the Revisionist Party in 1927.

Ramsay MacDonald
(1866–1937): Became England’s first Labour prime minister in 1924 and again from 1929 to 1937.

Iuliu Maniu
(1873–1951): Leader of the Romanian National Party, several times prime minister of Romania.

Friar George Martinuzzi
(1482–1551): Bishop of Várad and later governor of Transylvania, played a leading role in trying to unite Hungary in the troubled times of John I.

Professor Tomás Masaryk
(1850–1937): Founded the Czech People’s Party under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1900. He was leader of the Czech People’s Party in Paris from 1916 and later, president of Czechoslovakia from 1918 until 1935.

Count Mensdorff
(1861–1945): Cousin of King Edward VII and was immensely popular during his time as ambassador in London.

Count János Mikes
(1876–1943): Archbishop of Szombathely at the time of King Karl’s two attempts to regain his Hungarian throne. A colourful character and a lifelong monarchist, he was well known to Bánffy as a fellow Transylvanian.

Andor Miklós
: A well-known newspaper proprietor.

Miskolc
: An industrial town in north-east Hungary.

Ferenc Molnár
: Internationally renowned novelist and playwright.

Monnet-Sully
: Nineteenth-century French actor known for the
exaggerated
theatricality of his performances.

Traian Mosoiu
(1868–1932): Commander of the Romanian army of occupation and in 1920 minister of defence in Bucharest.

Field Marshal Pál Nagy
(1864–1927): Commanded the Miskolc garrison and was called to Budapest after Rezsö Willerding had refused to take up arms against King Karl during the second
putsch
.

Lord Newton
: Spoke about the Hungarian question in the House of Lords on 20 March 1920. He visited Hungary in 1921 and was the leading figure in an organization called the Oxford League for
Hungarian
Self-Determination. Friend and supporter of István Bethlen.

Parád
: Area in the Tatra hills some one hundred kilometres east of Budapest.

Nicola Pasic
(1846–1926): Serbian statesman and several times prime minister of Yugoslavia.

Ivan Fiodorovich Paskievich
(1782–1856): Duke of Warsaw, led the Russian armies that invaded Transylvania in 1848, chief of staff to the Imperial Russian army in 1849.

Gyula Peidl
(1873–1943): Hungarian politician. Joined Social-Democratic Party in 1909 and emigrated soon after his brief spell as prime minister in 1919. His government lasted six days, and on 6 August a
coup d’état
by the National-Clerical Party made István Friedrich prime minister and named Archduke Joseph as Regent of Hungary.

Raymond Poincaré
(1869–1934): After holding several ministerial posts, he became president of France from 1913 to 1920.

Caserio Princip
: Killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, thus precipitating the start of World War I.

Vilmos Pröhle
(1871–1946): Professor of linguistics and an expert on the Far East. Bánffy and István Bethlen helped finance the
publication
of his
From the East
in 1922. A National Christian Unity Party member of parliament, he resigned as a result of the party’s attitude to King Karl. Author of a Turkish grammar and editor of an
anthology
of Japanese literature.

Pál Prónay
(1875–1945): Lieutenant-colonel in the Hungarian army, was forced to retire from active service after his support for King Karl’s second
putsch
.

István Rakovszky
(1858–1931): politician in the People’s Party, active during the opposition coalition from 1906 to 1910, president of the first National Assembly from 1920. He and Gratz arrived in Sopron on Thursday 20 March, where King Karl appointed a new ‘
government
’ with Rakovszky at its head.

Walter Rathenau
(1867–1922): Industrialist, writer and politician. Appointed foreign minister in January 1922 and assassinated later the same year.

Prince René of Bourbon-Parma
: Born 1894, the twelfth child and fifth son of Robert, Duke of Parma. He was brother to the
Queen-Empress
Zita. One of Prince René’s older brothers, Prince Sixtus, born in 1886, was well known to have played a prominent part in acting as his brother-in-law’s envoy during secret talks with the Allies when the war was at its height.