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György (George) Konrád (2 April 1933 – 13 September 2019) was a Hungarian novelist, pundit, essayist and sociologist known as an advocate of
individual freedom Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-relianc ...
.


Life

George Konrad was born in Berettyóújfalu, near
Debrecen Debrecen ( , is Hungary's second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the largest Hungarian city in the 18th century and i ...
, into a wealthy
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family. His father, József Konrád, ran a hardware business; his mother was Róza Klein, a member of a Nagyvárad Jewish middle-class family. His older sister Éva was born in 1930. Konrad's parents were arrested and deported to Austria after the German invasion of Hungary, and the two children and two cousins travelled to relatives in Budapest, a day before all Jewish inhabitants of Berettyóújfalu were sent to the ghetto in
Nagyvárad Oradea (, , ; german: Großwardein ; hu, Nagyvárad ) is a city in Romania, located in Crișana, a sub-region of Transylvania. The seat of Bihor County, Oradea is one of the most important economic, social and cultural centers in the western part ...
, and on to
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It co ...
. Most of Konrád's classmates died in Birkenau. In February 1945, George and his sister went back to Berettyóújfalu, and in June their parents were released from Strasshof
concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...
The Konrád family were the only family among the Jewish inhabitants of Berettyóújfalu to survive intact. Konrad started school in 1946 at the Main Reformed Gimnázium in Debrecen, moving on the following year to 1951, he attended the Madách Gimnázium in Budapest. He left in 1951 to study literature, sociology and psychology at the Lenin Institute of
Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University ( hu, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, ELTE) is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in Hun ...
. In 1950, his father's business and their house at Berettyóújfalu were appropriated by the government. Konrad completed his university education in the Department of Hungarian literature and language at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. In 1956 he was involved in the Hungarian Uprising, and served in the National Guard, made up mostly of university students. Most of his family left for the west, but Konrád decided to remain in Hungary. The story of Konrád's survival as a child is told in his autobiographical novel ''Departure and Return''. He made his living through ad hoc jobs: he was a tutor, wrote reader reports, translated, and worked as a factory hand. Beginning in the summer of 1959, he secured steady employment as a children's welfare supervisor in Budapest's seventh District. He remained there for seven years, during which time he amassed the experiences that would serve as the basis for his novel ''The Case Worker'' (1969). The book drew a vigorous and mixed response: the official criticism was negative, but the book quickly became very popular and sold out in days. Between 1960 and 1965 Konrad was employed as a reader at the Magyar Helikon publishing house, where he was chief editor of works by
Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, ...
,
Turgenev Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (; rus, links=no, Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́невIn Turgenev's day, his name was written ., p=ɪˈvan sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tʊrˈɡʲenʲɪf; 9 November 1818 – 3 September 1883 ( Old Style da ...
,
Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
,
Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
, Babel, and Balzac. In 1965, he joined the Urban Science and Planning Institute, there undertaking research in urban sociology with the sociological research group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was working closely with urban sociologist Iván Szelényi with whom he wrote a book, ''On the Sociological Problems of the New Housing Developments'' (1969), and two extensive works on the management of the country's regional zones, as well as on urbanistic and ecological trends in Hungary. His experiences as an urbanist provided material for his next novel, ''The City Builder'', in which he radically extended the experiments in language and form that marked ''The Case Worker''. ''The City Builder'' was allowed to appear in Hungarian only in censored form from Magvető Publishers in 1977. It was published abroad by Suhrkamp, Seuil, Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, and Philip Roth's Penguin Series, with a foreword by Carlos Fuentes. Konrád lost his job by order of the political police in July 1973. For half a year he worked as a nurse's aide at the work-therapy-based mental institution at Doba. Together with Iván Szelényi, Konrád published ''The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power'' in 1974. Shortly after the completion of ''The Intellectuals'' (intended for foreign publication), the political police bugged and searched Szelényi's and Konrád's apartments. A significant part of Konrád's diaries were confiscated and the authors were arrested for incitement against the state. They were placed on probation and informed that they would be permitted to emigrate with their families. Szelényi accepted the offer, while Konrád remained in Hungary, choosing internal emigration and all that it entailed. A smuggled manuscript of ''The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power'' was published abroad and it remains on university reading lists. He was published in Hungarian
samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documen ...
and by publishers in the West. Virtually from this period until 1989, Konrád was a forbidden author in Hungary, deprived of all legal income. He made a living from honoraria abroad. His works were placed in restricted sections in libraries. Naturally he was also forbidden to speak on radio or television. When the restriction of travel expired in 1976, Konrád spent a year in Berlin on a DAAD fellowship, and another year in the U.S., on a stipend from his American publisher. During this period, he wrote his novel ''The Loser''. Between 1977 and 1982, two volumes of Konrád's essays appeared: ''The Temptation of Autonomy'' (not translated into English) and ''Antipolitics''. These works called into question the European political status quo. ''Antipolitics'' portrayed the
Yalta Agreement The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the post ...
and the spheres of influence system as the potential cause of a possible Third World War. The book's subtitle was Central-European Meditations, and it was to become one of the voices demanding that region's secession from the Soviet bloc as a requisite for peace in Europe. Konrád was one of the first to predict the imminent disappearance of the Iron Curtain. In 1984, he read his essay ''Does the Dream of Central Europe Still Exist?'' in the Schwarzenberg Palace as he received the Herder Prize from the University of Vienna. Critics have compared his essays to the writings of Adam Michnik, Milan Kundera, Václav Havel, Czeslaw Milos and Danilo Kiš. The years between 1973 and 1989 witnessed the evolution of a dissident political and artistic subculture, independent of official culture. Konrád was one of the determining voices in the democratic opposition. His works appeared in the underground so-called samizdat journals of the opposition. In interviews given to
Radio Free Europe Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government funded organization that broadcasts and reports news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East where it says t ...
, Konrad's ideas reached a wider Hungarian audience. Beginning in September 1982, he was a year-long guest at the Wissenschaft-skolleg zu Berlin; the following year he received a fellowship at the New York Institute for the Humanities. Over the four years that followed, Konrád wrote ''A Feast in the Garden'' (Hungarian version 1985). Now released from the official prohibition against publication, he sent the manuscript to the Magvető publishing house in Hungary. In 1986 Konrad received an invitation from the Jerusalem Literary Fund, spending a month in that city. This was the period when Konrád primarily penned those essays and diary entries that would be collected for the volume ''The Invisible Voice'' (Hungarian version 1997). Konrád returned to Israel in 1992 and 1996. During his first visit he gave a long biographical interview for the University of Jerusalem, while on the second, he gave a lecture entitled "Judaism’s Three Paths" at the Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva. In 1988 he taught world literature at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. In the first years after the fall of the old regime, beginning in 1989, Konrád took an active part in public life in Hungary, and was one of the thinkers who paved the way for the transition to democracy. He was a founding member of the
Alliance of Free Democrats The Alliance of Free Democrats – Hungarian Liberal Party ( hu, Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége – a Magyar Liberális Párt, SZDSZ) was a liberal political party in Hungary. The SZDSZ was a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats ...
(SZDSZ), and one of the founders and spokespeople for the Democratic Charter. He made frequent appearances in both the print and electronic media. In the spring of 1990 Konrád was elected President of
PEN International PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internationa ...
, holding this office for the full term until 1993. He made strenuous efforts on behalf of imprisoned and persecuted writers and called the writers of disintegrating nations together to roundtable conferences in the interest of peace. Between 1997 and 2003, Konrád was twice elected President of the
Academy of Arts, Berlin The Academy of Arts (german: Akademie der Künste) is a state arts institution in Berlin, Germany. The task of the Academy is to promote art, as well as to advise and support the states of Germany. The Academy's predecessor organization was ...
. As the first foreigner to hold that post, Konrád was an effective contributor to the intellectual rapprochement between the East and West of Europe, and did much to introduce writers and other creative figures from Central Europe, and particularly from Hungary, to the West. His efforts were greeted by an appreciative German public. During his presidency, he received the Internationale Karlspreis zu Aachen (2001) and the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2003). Though Konrád frequently portrayed his Berettyóúfalu childhood in his novels, and particularly in ''The Feast in the Garden'', he attempted to present this period in a more precise documentary form in two books, ''Departure and Return'' (2001) and ''Up on the Hill During a Solar Eclipse'' (2003). The first of these books treats a single year – 1944–45 – while the second covers fifty, after beginning with a reflection on the final years of the twentieth century, more precisely the morning solar eclipse of 1999, experienced from the peak of St. György Hill. These books were published separately in Europe, and together in New York as ''A Guest in My Own Country'' (2007). The year 2006 saw the publication of his volume ''Figures of Wonder'', subtitled "Portraits and Snapshots". These portraits are modeled primarily on friends, some still living – descriptions that constitute a continuation of the series presented by Konrád in his book ''The Writer and the City'' (2004) together with longer essays. His books ''The Rooster’s Sorrow'' (2005), ''Pendulum'' (2008), ''The Chimes'' (2009), and ''The Visitor’s Book'' (2013) present his philosophy of life with a near-poetic density. Konrád was married three times. In 1955 he married Vera Varsa, with whom he lived until 1963, then married Júlia Lángh, with whom he had two children, Anna Dóra in 1965, and Miklós István in 1967. From 1979, Konrád lived with Judith Lakner, his third wife, and together they had three children, Áron (1986), József (1987), and Zsuzsanna (1994).


Death

György Konrád died at his home in Budapest. His family stated that he had been gravely ill.


Awards and honors

*
Herder Prize The Herder Prize (german: Gottfried-von-Herder-Preis), named after the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), was a prestigious international prize awarded every year from 1964 to 2006 to scholars and artists from Central and Sou ...
(1983) * Charles Veillon Prize (1985) * Manes-Sperber Prize (1990) *
Kossuth Prize The Kossuth Prize ( hu, Kossuth-díj) is a state-sponsored award in Hungary, named after the Hungarian politician and revolutionist Lajos Kossuth. The Prize was established in 1948 (on occasion of the centenary of the March 15th revolution, the d ...
(1990) * Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (1991) *
Goethe Medal The Goethe Medal, also known as the Goethe-Medaille, is a yearly prize given by the Goethe-Institut honoring non-Germans "who have performed outstanding service for the German language and for international cultural relations". It is an offici ...
(2000) * Internationaler Karlspreis zu Aachen (2001) * Franz Werfel Human Rights Award (2007) *
National Jewish Book Award The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.Ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur (1996); the Hungarian Republic Legion of Honor Middle Cross with Star (2003); Das Grosse Verdienstkreuz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (2003). He held honorary doctorates from the
University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp ( nl, Universiteit Antwerpen) is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UA'', but ''UAntwerpen'' is more recently used. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 stud ...
(1990) and the
University of Novi Sad The University of Novi Sad ( sr, Универзитет у Новом Саду, Univerzitet u Novom Sadu; hu, Újvidéki Egyetem) is a public university in Novi Sad, Serbia. Alongside nationally prestigious University of Belgrade, University o ...
(2003). He was an honorary citizen of Berettyóújfalu (2003) and of Budapest (2004).


Partial list of works


Fiction

* ''The Case Worker'' * ''The City Builder'' * ''The Loser'' * ''A Feast in the Garden'' * ''The Stone Dial''


Non-fiction

* ''The Intellectual on the Road to Class Power'' (1978), with Iván Szelényi * ''Antipolitics'' (1999) * ''The Melancholy of Rebirth'' (1995) * ''The Invisible Voice: Meditations on Jewish Themes'' * ''A jugoszláviai háború (és ami utána jöhet)'' (1999) * ''Jugoslovenski rat (i ono što posle može da usledi) '' (2000) * ''A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life'' (2003) * '' Departure and Return'' (2011)


Articles

* “The Intelligentsia and Social Structure”. ''Telos''Telospress.com
/ref> 38 (Winter 1978–79). New York: Telos Press.


References


External links


Homepage

Biography

"Chance Wanderings". an essay by Konrad on the 'revolutions' of 1989
*
PEN International
{{DEFAULTSORT:Konrad, Gyorgy 1933 births 2019 deaths Hungarian essayists Male essayists 20th-century Hungarian male writers 20th-century Hungarian novelists 21st-century Hungarian male writers 21st-century Hungarian novelists Jewish novelists Hungarian Ashkenazi Jews Members of the Academy of Arts, Berlin Hungarian male novelists Herder Prize recipients Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Alliance of Free Democrats politicians Members of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts