Dezső Szabó

Who was Dezső Szabó?

Dezső Szabó, was a Hungarian linguist and writer noted for his nationalist and anti-semitic views. Szabó has been considered one of the first "pioneers of Magyar populist literature".

Szabó came to live in Budapest in 1918 and started publishing short essays in the literary revue Nyugat. Initially he supported the Hungarian Revolution of 1918. Arthur Koestler, at the time a high school pupil in Budapest, recalls Szabó as one of the new teachers brought to his school by the revolutionary regime - "A shy, soft spoken, somewhat absent-minded man, he told us of a subject more faraway than the Moon: the daily life of hired agricultural workers in the countryside"

Support for the revolution was, however, a brief interlude in Szabó's life, and he soon developed into an outspoken and vehement opponent of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic proclaimed by Béla Kun.

He was quick to become a well-known and highly influential and energetic writer, gaining fame for his 1919 three-volume novel "Az elsodort falu", an expressionist work espousing the idea that hope for a Hungarian renaissance lay in the peasant class, as opposed to the middle class which Szabó believed was "corrupted by the mentalities of the assimilated Germans and Jews". This novel enjoyed a considerable influence during the period of "White Terror" following suppression of the Communist revolution. Though he published many later books, this was considered as the peak of his literary achievements.