Gábor Baross

Who was Gábor Baross?

Gábor Baross, Hungarian statesman, was born at Barossháza now Pružina near Trencsén on 6 July 1848, and educated at Esztergom. He was for a time one of the professors there under Cardinal Kolos Vaszary. After acquiring considerable local reputation as chief notary of his county, he entered parliament in 1875. He at once attached himself to Kálmán Tisza and remained faithful to his chief even after the Bosnian occupation had alienated so many of the supporters of the prime minister.

It was he who drew up the reply to the malcontents on this occasion, for the first time demonstrating his many-sided ability and his genius for sustained hard work. But it was in the field of economics that he principally achieved his fame. In 1883 he was appointed secretary to the ministry of ways and communications. Baross, who had prepared himself for quite another career, and had only become acquainted with the civilized West at the time of the Compromise of 1867, mastered, in an incredibly short time, the details of this difficult department. His zeal, conscientiousness and energy were so universally recognized, that on the retirement of Gábor Kemény, in 1886, he was appointed minister of ways and communications. He devoted himself especially to the development of the national railways, and the gigantic network of the Austro-Hungarian railway system and its unification was mainly his work.