Ferenc Fejtő

François Fejtő ( born August 31, 1909 in Nagykanizsa Ferenc Fejtő, † June 2, 2008 in Paris) was a French historian, journalist and publicist of Hungarian origin who lived in France since 1938 and enjoy international attention.

Life

Fejtő grew up in a wealthy Hungarian Jewish family of booksellers and publishers. After the collapse of Austria -Hungary, he had to experience that members of his family were suddenly as Yugoslav, Italian, Czechoslovakian or Romanian nationals.

In Pécs ( Pécs ) and Budapest, he studied humanities. Because he had organized a Marxist study group at the age of 22 years at the university, he was sentenced in 1932 to one year in prison. After his release from prison, he joined the Social Democratic Party and worked for the daily Népszava. A year later he founded with the poet Attila József and the publicist Pál Ignotus the legendary anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist literary magazine Szép Szó, the forum of the young intellectual elite of Hungary.

When he was sentenced to six months in jail again because of an article against fascist tendencies in the policy of the Hungarian government, he left Hungary and emigrated to France in 1938. During the Second World War, he took part in the Resistance.

1945 led François Fejtő the press office of the Hungarian Embassy in Paris. When in 1949 his childhood friend, the Hungarian Interior Minister László Rajk, was convicted in a political show trial to death, he resigned in protest of this office and broke off all contact with Hungary. It was not until more than forty years later, after rehabilitation of Imre Nagy, one of the heroes of the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he returned for the first time in his home country.

From 1944 to 1979 he worked as a journalist and commentator on the events in Eastern Europe for the Agence France-Presse ( AFP) operates. From 1972 to 1984 he taught in Paris at the Institute of Political Studies. In the center of his scientific interest was the historical and current development in Central and Eastern Europe. His published in 1952 in France, history of the people's democracies, translated into 17 languages ​​, became a much-publicized and controversial foundational work that has been felt by many members of the political left as uncomfortable. Until his death, he wrote for Le Monde, Le Figaro, La Croix, Il Giornale, Corriere della Sera and many other editors.

His grandson is the actor and director Raphaël Fejtö.

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Érzelmes utazás (1935, new edition Magvető 1989)
  • Voyage sentimental ( Éditions the Syrtes 2001)
  • Heinrich Heine, biography ( Maréchal 1946)
  • 1848 dans le monde. Le Printemps des peuples ( Ed. de Minuit 1948)
  • Histoire des démocraties populaires ( Seuil 1952)
  • Un Habsburg Révolutionaire, Joseph II, portrait d'un despote éclairé ( Plon 1954 edition quai Voltaire 1994)
  • La Tragédie hungroise (Pierre Horay 1956, 1996)
  • Les Juifs et l' antisémitisme dans les pays communistes ( Plon 1960)
  • Dieu et son Juif ( Grasset 1960, new edition Pierre Horay 1997)
  • Chine - URSS Volume 1: La Fin d'une hegemony ( Plon 1964)
  • Chine - URSS Volume 2: Le Conflit ( Plon, 1966)
  • Budapest 1956 ( Julliard 1966)
  • Histoire des démocraties populaires. L' être de Staline, 1945-1952 (new edition, Le Seuil, 1969)
  • Histoire des démocraties populaires. Après Staline, 1953-1968 (Le Seuil, 1969)
  • L' Héritage de Lénine ( Casterman 1973)
  • Le Coup de Prague 1948 ( Seuil 1976)
  • La social démocratie quand même (Robert Laffont, 1980)
  • Requiem pour un empire défunt ( Balland 1988)
  • La Fin of démocraties populaires (Le Seuil, 1992)
  • Le passager du siècle ( with Maurizio Serra, Hachette Littératures 1999)
  • Dieu, l' homme et son diable ( Buchet Chastel 2005)
  • 1956, Budapest, l' insurrection: La première révolution anti- totalitaire ( Paris 2006 )

In German language have been published:

  • History of the People's Democracies ( Styria Pichler 1972 Eichborn Verlag 1988)
  • Joseph II Portrait of an enlightened despot ( Matthes & Seitz, 1987)
  • Judaism and Communism ( Europe -Verlag, 1967)
  • Budapest 1956. Hungarian Revolution ( Styria Pichler 1977)
  • Requiem for a monarchy. The destruction of Austria -Hungary ( Federal Verlag 1991, Deuticke 1993)
  • Trip to Yesterday ( Matthes & Seitz Berlin 2012 )

Swell

  • François Fejtő, Maurizio Serra: Le Passager du Siècle. Guerre Revolutions, Europes. Littératures Hachette, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-01-235383-5.
  • François Fejto: Dieu, l' homme et son diable. Méditation sur le mal et le cours de l' histoire. Essai. Buchet / Chastel, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-283-01922-2.
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