Ferenc Békássy

Who was Ferenc Békássy?

Ferenc Istvan Dénes Gyula Békássy was a Hungarian poet killed in World War I.

He was born in the family mansion at Zsennye in Vas County, western Hungary. He and his five siblings were sent to Bedales School for a progressive English education.

After six years at Bedales, he entered King’s College, Cambridge University in 1911 to read History. At Cambridge his friends included James Strachey, E. L. Grant Watson and especially John Maynard Keynes, who went to stay with him in Hungary during the summer. He was elected a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the semi-secret debating club. He and Rupert Brooke courted the same woman, Noël Olivier, whom Békássy had known from Bedales.

He wrote poetry in both Hungarian and in English. Some of his English poems appeared in a Cambridge anthology in 1913. The Hungarian poems were only published posthumously.

When war was imminent, with the assistance of Keynes, he returned to Austro-Hungary to enlist. He served in a Hussar unit. Four days after arriving on the Eastern Front, he was killed in action against the Russians at Dobrovouc in Bukovina on 22 June 1915. His body was brought back to the family estate for burial.