Imre Pozsgay

Pozsgay [ imrɛ poʒɡɒi ] (* November 26, 1933 in Kóny, Hungary) is a Hungarian politician.

During his studies of philosophy and history, he joined in 1950 the Communist " Party of the Hungarian Workers ' (since 1956 USAP = Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party ). In the years 1976 to 1990, he held several ministerial posts and was from 1980 to 1989 Member of the Central Committee, 1988-1989 Member of the Political Bureau of the USAP. He went for the reorganization of Hungary a on a democratic basis.

Importance in the collapse of the Eastern Bloc

Pozsgay is considered one of the pioneers of change in the former Eastern Bloc states: In May 1989 he was seen in a Spiegel article in the center of the radical reformers in Hungary. Walter Mayr, long-time Russia correspondent for the mirror, Pozsgay called 20 years later, even the "handlebars and patron saint of all Magyar pre-and lateral thinker " and points out that Pozsgay had always been ahead of its time. So he had in 1968 his thesis on the " possibilities of democracy in socialism " written. As a member of the Central Committee, he warned in 1981 against Hungary's ' way into the debt trap " and 1988, the border fortifications obsolete referred to as" technical, moral, historical. " He had also called the Berlin Wall in May 1989 a shame. Dieter Segert Pozsgay is even on a par with the two much better-known politicians Jaruzelski and Gorbachev, all three "heroes of retreat " for him.

Together with Otto Habsburg-Lothringen Pozsgay was patron of the opening of the border leading to the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 at the border near Sopron, which took many East Germans to flee to Austria.