Motivational

Magyars

1996-2006

1996: Márta Sebestyén...is Hungary’s most famous folk singer and a true cultural ambassador. She has performed all over the world for the past thirty years, singing for the Japanese Emperor, the Spanish King and the English royal family. Her captivating voice evokes the past, bringing to life the centuries-old human emotions captured in folk songs.

She was born in Budapest in 1957. Her father was a disciple of Zoltán Kodály, so it’s no wonder that the life of the young Márta revoved around folk music. She had a wide range of interests, from artistic gymnastics to drawing and fine art.

Nevertheless, it was the world of folk songs which captivated her most. Her voice and unique performance skills were recognised at an early age, and she made her first recording at six! This has been followed with over seventy more. In 1996, she recorded the traditional song Szerelem, szerelem for the score of the film The English Patient, one of whose nine Oscars was awarded for best music and original dramatic score to Gabriel Yared. It opens with her lamenting, unaccompanied voice.

She performs both as a solo artist and with the group Muzsikás, among others. She not only sings regional Hungarian songs, but also songs in other European languages.

Krisztina Egerszegi & Tamás DarnyiThese two swimmers are living legends of Hungarian sport. Krisztina is the best-ever female swimmer that Hungary has produced, and the youngest Olympic champion in the country’s history. She won five Olympic gold medals, more than any other woman in the world. Between 1988 and 1996 she became the princess of the pool. Born in 1974, she began swimming aged four. Ten years later, she became Olympic champion in Seoul in the 200 metre backstroke.

Tamás Darnyi was the king of the medley, unbeaten in the 200 and 400 metre events for eight years. His spectacular career began in 1985 at the European Championships in Sofia, and ended in 1993 at the same gala in Sheffield. He was the first swimmer to go under two minutes for the 200 metre medley. Born in 1967, he began swimming aged eight and soon became a junior champion. In 1982 he lost sight in his left eye, due to an accident, but his determination got him into the team for Sofia, He won gold at both the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics, retiring at the top in 1994.

Besides being the only Hungarian to win the Nobel prize for literature, Kertész is also unique among Hungarians in winning a prize for work done wholly in his home country, not the USA, and also as the only one not to posess a university degree. He was born in Budapest in 1929 and was deported to Auschwitz at fourteen. His experiences there, and at Buchenwald, serve as the basis for his novel, Fatelessness, for which he was awarded the prize in 2002, for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.

The main character of the novel is a fourteen-year-old boy who reaches adulthood in Auschwitz but is unable to return to identify with other Jews. Although semi-autobiographical, the novel’s objective style provides a new approach to writing about the Holocaust.

2002: Imre Kertész, Nobel Laureate

1999 – 2006: Women take charge

Left: Ibolya Dávid, a member of the Hungarian government, took part in the solemn flag-hoisting ceremony in Brussels as Hungary joined NATO on March 16th, 1999. Four days earlier, in Independence, Missouri, the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, had welcomed ‘the country of King Stephen and Cardinal Mindszenty’ into the Atlantic Alliance.

In December 2000, Madeleine Albright was given an honorary degree from the University of Szeged. In December 2006, Katalin Szili opened a US exhibition of documents and photos on the 50th anniversary of the ’56 Uprising.

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Hollywood and Hungary

Andrew G Vajna.. ... is perhaps the best-

known living American-Hungarian cinematographer, the producer of Ronald Reagan’s favourite film, Rambo. He returned to Hungary to make a film giving a fictionalised account of the 1956 Uprising in Budapest, using real locations in Budapest. It was released for the fiftieth anniversary in 2006, and also tells the story of the Water Polo heroes of the Melbourne Olympics.

Did you know that The Simpsons was drawn by a Hungarian? Gábor Csupó was the chief cartoonist! George Cukor, the director of My Fair Lady was also born to Hungarian parents in New York. The actress Zsuzsa (‘Zsazsa’) Gabor is, of course, Hungarian in origin, as were/ are actors Tony Curtis (Kertész), Paul Newman and Richard Gere.

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LIBERTY LOVE

From Life magazine