Laszlo Radvanyi

Who is Laszlo Radvanyi?

László Radványi, also known as Johann Lorenz Schmidt, was born into a Jewish family in Hungary, on December 13, 1900, and died July 3, 1978.

Radványi as a boy attended a gymnasium in Budapest on Marko Street, where he also authored at age 16 a book poetry, which received a preface from Frigyes Karinthy.

Radványi studied economics and philosophy in 1918-1919 at the University of Budapest, where he became involved in radical politics and with the destruction in 1919 of the Hungarian Soviet Republic fled to Vienna, Austria. He there adopted the pseudonym Johann Lorenz Schmidt from the 18th century Protestant dissident theologian.

Radványi studied philosophy at Heidelberg University, in Germany, where he obtained his doctorate in 1923. Directed by Karl Jaspers, his thesis on Chiliasm was summa cum laude. While at Heidelberg, Radványi met the poet Anna Seghers, who was born Anna Reiling in Mainz, Germany on November 19, 1900. Radványi and Seghers married in 1925 and had two children, Pierre, and Ruth.

After finishing their studies at Heidelberg, Radvanyi and Seghers moved to Berlin, where László directed the Marxistische Arbeiterschule, from 1925 to 1933.