Albert Apponyi: nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times
“For Hungary, choosing between accepting the peace treaty or refusing to sign it would be tantamount to having to ask itself if it should rather commit suicide so as not to die.” This is how Hungary’s position at the peace talks was characterized by the leading politician and statesman, who from the turn of the century up until his death was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on five occasions, and who failed to win it most probably because of general anti-Hungarian sentiment.
The youth of an aristocrat
The origins of the Apponyi family can be traced back to the Magyar clans of the Conquest. The first renowned ancestor, Tamás of the Péc clan, appears during the reign of the Anjou kings, although the family’s true rise to prominence can be linked to the time of King Sigismund. In 1392, they received by royal decree the castle and estate of Appony or Nagyappony in Nyitra county, hence the name of the family. The Apponyis made a name for themselves from around the midway point of the Ottoman occupation. The family received the rank of baron in 1606, in 1739 Charles III bestowed the title of count on them, and by the 19th century the family belonged to the elite of the domestic aristocracy.
Count Albert György Gyula Mária Apponyi was born into this family in Vienna in 1846, the son of Count György Apponyi and Countess Júlia Sztáray. The young count received a systematic education as was typical for aristocratic families in the 19th century. He was a student at the Jesuit residential college in Kalksburg until 1863, and he completed law studies at the universities of Pest and Vienna.
Alongside his studies, at an early age he acquired an in-depth knowledge of German, French, English and Italian, to a proficiency that put even native speakers of these tongues to shame.
He used these skills to great effect throughout his career as a politician and diplomat. At the same time, and contrary to many of his fellow aristocrats, his mother tongue was Hungarian because – from the Reform Age onwards – the counts Apponyi regarded themselves as Hungarian patriots and raised their children accordingly. Being Hungarian and European fitted neatly with the family tradition, in the spirit of which and after completing his studies, the young Count Albert spent two years travelling through Europe, touring Germany, France, England and Italy. He was admitted to conservative Catholic aristocratic circles, where he became acquainted with important intellectual thinkers such as the dominant personality of French conservatism, Count Montalambert. His first public role is associated with this period, when he accompanied Ferenc Deák to Italy as an interpreter.
In the Monarchy of the happy days of peace
A political career beckoned to the young Apponyi in 1872, who throughout his life espoused conservative, Catholic ideals and a commitment to the nation, when he was elected as a member of parliament in Szentendre under the programme of the Deák party. He retained his parliamentary mandate as a delegate of Jászberény from 1881 until the end of his life, with only a brief gap.
From the 1880s until the First World War, he carried out his work within the frameworks of several party and political formations, he was one of the leading figures sometimes on the government side or with the prevailing opposition. He forced a government resignation, the cabinet of Kálmán Tisza in 1890, he was the leading figure of the National or Liberal Party in the governments of Sándor Wekerle in the 1890s, and between 1906-1910, and again in 1917, he held the education portfolio. However, he moved in international diplomatic circles as well and his name is associated with key draft legislation in Hungary. He was a participant in the armed forces debate that ruffled many feathers, he was a supporter of the adoption of laws regulating the relationship between churches and the state, and his name and ministry is since associated with Lex Apponyi, the act from 1907 promoting the teaching of the Hungarian language in minority schools, which has been much debated ever since. As a sincere believer in peace and reconciliation, he undertook several international missions and he was particularly active in the work of the Interparliamentary Union from the early 20th century. In 1914, as a cautious opponent of participation in the war, he partially withdrew from public life, but in 1917 he once again accepted a ministerial post for a short period. In 1918, during the Károlyi era, he withdrew and throughout the commune he was in hiding.
Hero of Trianon
At the end of 1919, he returned to public life when he undertook to lead the Hungarian delegation at the Trianon peace talks. In early 1920 he arrived in Paris in the company of the eminent geographer Count Pál Teleki and Count István Bethlen, the future prime minister who would work to rebuild the reduced country in the 1920s. By then, the text of the peace treaty had already been decided and the victors were unwilling to even hear the Hungarian standpoint. It was to the personal credit of Apponyi that he finally managed to speak to the delegates of the peace conference.
He gave a great speech pleading for fairmindedness and justice for the country, a speech which was recognized even by his opponents, although it changed nothing. He assessed the situation thus: “For Hungary, choosing between accepting the peace treaty or refusing to sign it would be tantamount to having to ask itself if it should rather commit suicide so as not to die.” If we consider that after 100 years, our country still lives, still exists, albeit within the boundaries of Trianon, while history has passed judgement on Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, then we can only agree with the count when he said
“you now dig Hungary’s grave but it will be in attendance at the burial of all those who now sit at the funeral feast”.
Of course, this speech did nothing to alter the peace accord, only his signature is missing. Neither Apponyi, nor Teleki, nor Bethlen were prepared to sign, they resigned their mandates and thus the Treaty of Trianon was eventually signed by two insignificant Hungarian politicians, Ágoston Bénárd and Lázár Alfréd Drasche on 4 June 1920. Apponyi was profoundly embittered by the failure and the fact of the breakup and looting of our country, but it did not persuade him to withdraw from public life.
A true politician
Even in the 1920s he continued his parliamentary work, his name was raised as a potential prime minister, and in the political arena he held royalist, legitimist views. He remained particularly active as a diplomat. Thus he continued working in the Interparliamentary Union, representing Hungary at the forums of the League of Nations. This latter setting gave him the opportunity to advance the country’s departure from the political quarantine into which the country had been locked by the victorious powers and successor states through Trianon. He was particularly active in the so-called optant case, when Hungary sought legal redress in a dispute over property confiscated from Hungarian estate owners by the Romanian state without compensation.
By that time, he was respected and esteemed both at home and abroad. During his lifetime he was elected a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, president of the St. Stephen’s Academy, and he was awarded honorary citizenship of the municipality. His trips abroad and speeches he gave there won him particular renown, especially in the USA, and were events in themselves; his eightieth and then his eighty-fifth birthday were cause for national celebration. From the turn of the century up until his death he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on five occasions, and he failed to win it most probably because of general anti-Hungarian sentiment. In the meantime, during a most productive life, the politician and diplomat Apponyi enjoyed a harmonic family life. He married late, in 1897, with his wife bearing him two daughters, Mária and Júlia, and a son, György. The two older children lived in Germany and Austria after the war and died there around 1970, while his daughter Júlia passed away in Budapest in 1986. The count, a striking figure of noble stature, lived to a good age, dying in his 87th year in Geneva in 1933, at the headquarters of the League of Nations. He lay in state in Budapest’s Basilica and was buried by Archbishop Serédi in Matthias Church. The entire country mourned his passing. Proof of his human magnitude and integrity is that the politicians of the great powers and successor states, victorious in the war, who unworthily triumphed over him and over our country, as one paid tribute to his memory, just as we remember Count Apponyi in a dignified manner in the centenary of Trianon.
Trianon Peace Treaty
