REMEMBER JÓZSEF MOLNÁR

On November 30, 2009, a man leaves
his house to run some small errands.
He will never return from his last walk.
He will never return to his books,
that were his life. Now there is
irrevocable calm and eternal silence.
Now the letters start to talk and
the pictures will tell of this man’s life.

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József Molnár was an author, editor, publisher and printer. The language of his work and creation was Hungarian. He was born on August 27, 1918. Like many children of that disrupted century, he grew up without a father. He bore his mother‘s maiden name and was called József Lagler until he was adopted at the age of 14. His mother worked as a cook, and young József grew up with some relatives in Csepreg. He was highly talented and eager to learn. At a very early age, he understood the value of education. But the financial means for university studies, which he would have liked to take up after secondary school, were missing.

As a young man, he made his first political contacts with the Social Democratic Party of Hungary. He joined the National Peasant Party and was elected to their executive committee. In 1947 he resigned from the party and left Hungary in 1948. The escape to the West becomes a part of his autobiography. Just like his time in Zurich, New York and Munich, where he spent several years working as a political commentator at Radio Free Europe, until 1956 the events in Hungary shook the world.

In Munich, he got to know Olga, his great love. He married, stayed in Munich and founded a book-printing office. Until his old age he kept working without rest and until the limits of his power, for Hungarian literature and language. Four centuries were to pass until he could travel to Hungary again for the first time in 1988.

In old age, he often and gladly remembered his utterly happy years in Italy, and he remained enamoured of that country. There, in Monte Compatri, he spent what probably was the most beautiful time of his life.