COURAGE

Mbledhje koleksionesh

Tibor Szecskó was born in 1939 in the rural town of Gyöngyös, Hungary, as the third and youngest child of a working-class family. His father was a mason working for a state farm. As a second-year student of a vocational school, in the autumn of 1956 he took part enthusiastically in local events of the revolution. Together with a friend, they then hitched a ride with a lorry and travelled to Budapest, where they joined the largest group of insurgents at Corvin-köz, and took part in the battles in several parts of the city. In late November, without saying goodbye to his family, he escaped to Austria with other teenage boys. For a few weeks he stayed in the Eisenstadt refugee camp, then he was transported to France and given the status “réfugier politique.”

As soon as he arrived in Rouen, he signed up at the Legion’s recruitment office, but being only 16 years old, was rejected. For two years he shared all the misery of the tramps in Lille and Paris, sleeping in the “Draft Hotel” (Hôtel de Curant Air) under bridges, living off of aid for refugees and poorly paid, sporadic work. Hunger and misery pushed him to try his fortune again with the Legion in 1958, this time with much success. He was shipped as an 18-year-old recruit from Marseille to Oran, and soon found himself on the military training base of Saida. Another two years later, he was promoted to sergeant at the age of 20, and he soon became the training warrant of many hundreds of young Hungarian recruits arriving at that time to North Africa. Afterward, as a warrant officer of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, he took part in the offensives in Sahara and Madagascar, was injured twice, and then was commanded to the 1st Cavalry (Warship) Regiment.

After the Algerian war ended in 1962, the central base of the Legion was moved from Sidi-bel-Abbes to Aubagne, South of France, and he held his new post there at the Headquarters of the Legion. In the 1970s and 1980s he became the Director of the Museum and Central Archives of the French Foreign Legion, and the editor of its monthly magazine Képi blanc. In the meantime, he received his MA and then his PhD degree in history from the University of Montpelier. He finished his military career in 1986 after close to 29 years of service in the Legion; however, he remained active in scientific life and in organizing veterans’ circles (AALE). Tibor Szecskó published a number of articles and a good dozen books on the history of the French Foreign Legion in French, German, and English.

Iván Szelényi (1938–) is a Hungarian sociologist. He graduated from the Karl Marx Economics University in 1960 and then worked at the Library of the Central Statistical Office. He worked at the Sociological Research Institute of the Academy from 1963. He received a Ford Scholarship and studied in Berkeley between 1964 and 1965. By the early 1970s, he also began a teaching carrier at the Economics University and the Political Academy of the Party. In 1974, a transcript which he wrote with György Konrád entitled Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power was published. This writing questioned the notion of the leading role of the working class under socialism, so Szelényi lost his jobs, and in May 1975, he left Hungary. He became a visiting research professor at the University of Kent. In 1976, he was invited to the Flinders University of South Australia, where he founded sociological education. In 1981, he joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1986, he was a teacher at the City University of New York. From 1988 to 1999, he worked as Professor of Sociology at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Zsuzsa Szenes graduated from the textile department of the Academy of Applied Arts in 1955. Initially, she worked in the Komplex Textile Studio, designing curtains and fabrics. From the beginning of her career, she drew a great deal. In the early 1960s, she made drawings using ironical, sprawling forms. Later, she implemented the linear, lace-work-like designs into textile.

Her first composition with wool-stitching (a technique developed by her, based on roving wool), entitled the Tree of life, was on display at the exhibition Textile Wall Picture in 1968. This was an occasion on which a group of artists intended to renew textile art, and members of the spatial textile movement exhibited together for the first time. Szenes became one of the leading figures of this movement.

Like her contemporaries (Gábor Attalai, Aranka Hübner, Gizella Solti, Margit Szilvitzky, and others), Szenes went far beyond the limits of the genre. She had a significant role in establishing the textile biennial in Szombathely and the textile workshop in Velem, but she also played a key role in establishing conceptual thinking in domestic textile art, which earlier had been somewhat conservative.

Using wool-stitching, a technique she herself developed, Szenes created object interpretations, and she also developed installations, environments, and actions. At the end of the 1970s, she participated in the transdisciplinary exhibitions (Textile After Textile, 1979; Textile Without Textile, 1979) with photo-works. In the middle of the 1980s, she began to deal exclusively with graphic arts, creating an unparalleled series of tiny images called “Iconostasis,” which were rich in emotional and imaginative charge.

In the domestic art scene, alongside her works (the wool stitchings, drawings, textile montages, paper collages), the house in which she lived also played an important role. The famous address 6/b Virágárok street became something of a mythical locale in the second half of 20^th-century Hungarian art, as Szenes, together with her husband, artist Miklós Erdély, was the creator and shaper of its open atmosphere.

András Szennay (1921–2012) was a Hungarian Benedictine monk and archimandrite of Pannonhalma. He born József Szennay. He joined the Benedictine Order in 1939 and was made a priest in 1944. After that, he became the pastor of Prince Lónyai. He got PhD in theology in 1946 and then became the secretary to the archimandrite of Pannonhalma. In 1947, he became a teacher of divinity at the Benedictine Gymnasium in Budapest. In 1950, he began teaching in the Veres Pálné Gymnasium, and between 1950 and 1965 he was a librarian at the Academy of Theology, where he became a teacher in 1965 and dean in 1975–1976. Around 1969, he became an agent of the state security forces, and thanks to this, he became the archimandrite of Pannonhalma, against the already elected Zénó Jáki. He wrote his reports under the codenames “Szemere” and “Szénási,” but he was one of a passive group of collaborators. In 1991, he resigned from his position.