István the Tisza

Born with Budapest in 1861, István the Tisza was Prime Minister of Hungary of 1903 to 1905 and 1913 to 1917, while playing in the interval a big role.

He was the son of the count Kálmán the Tisza, Prime Minister of Hungary of 1875 to 1890, which he had inherited the political machine, the liberal party. The Tisza family was in the beginning a calvinist family of Transylvania pertaining to the minor nobility (not titrated nobility, often considered as an equivalent of the British gentry). As their title was extremely recent, they were to undergo the scorn and the affronts of the families of nobility.

The Tisza accepted with Oxford its university education in the Années 1880, also usually spoke it the English. In 1905, the liberal party changed its name to become National Parti of Work. Hard man and without imagination, the Tisza was leading effective and it dominated the Hungarian policy during its career by largely using electoral corruption. Its capacity had beautiful being limited by the relative freedom whose the press enjoyed Magyar language and by the courts, in the cities where one voted the elections freely were pitilessly distorted by using the police intimidation. In the “rotted boroughs”, such methods were not even necessary.

The hero of the Tisza, his model, it was Bismarck. The Tisza thought that it incarnated in him all that the Hungarian life had of better and it was opposed resolutely to any widening of the electorate (before 1918 in Hungary, less than 6% of the men could vote and occupy an administrative employment). In the economic questions, the Tisza was a modernisator who encouraged and helped industrialization. Also was an adversary of the Anti-sémitisme, which could in its eyes compromise the economic development of Hungary. Most of the incipient middle-class was composed of Jews, converts or not to Christianity. The Tisza often used of its influence at the court to make give titles to the rich person Jewish families, particularly with the industrialists and the bankers. Towards the nonMagyar population, it practiced a policy of forced magyarization. Under the Tisza, the bureaucracy swelled whereas the minor nobility declined: it became of current policy to insert as much as possible of its members in the bureaucracy. The count the Tisza was a very aggressive man and fighter who disputed many duels against his political adversaries.

In July 1914, he was opposed so that the Austria-Hungary entered in war against the Serbia for the reason that double monarchy counted already too many Slavic. The Tisza was dislocated of its functions of Prime Minister by King reformist Charles IV (Charles 1 {{er}} of Austria) for his opposition to the widening of the electorate. It did not continue any less to block the reforms until the end of the war since it had with him the parliamentary group which counted the greatest number of deputies. He was assassinated with Budapest by a band of soldiers during the Révolution of the Chrysanthemums (October 1918), under the charge to be one of the persons in charge of the First World War.

Random links: