Count János Esterházy (1901–1957) – short political portrait of leading figure of Czechoslovak Hungarian minority in the Thirtieths of the 20th Century

Abstract

The study presents a brief political survey of one of the most significant personalities of the Hungarian minority in interwar Czechoslovakia of the 1930's, Count János Esterházy. The article summarizes Esterházy's political career and political attitudes not only in interwar Czechoslovakia where in 1932 he, as a politically completely unknown personality, became leader of the Hungarian Provincial Christian-Socialist Party, assuming later, in 1936, as one of the best known figures of the Czechoslovak Hungarian minority political scene already, the position of executive president of the sole central party of the Hungarian minority in the Czechoslovak state, the United Hungarian Party. The article summarizes also his second period of political career in the separated Slovak Republic (1939–1945) when he led the only permitted political party in the Slovak State, the Slovak Hungarian Party, being at the same time the sole representative of the Slovak Hungarian minority in the Slovak parliament. Attention is paid also to his tragic fate after World War II when he was first carted off to GULAG work camps in the Soviet Union and subsequently sentenced in his absence in Czechoslovakia to death by hanging.