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| István Tisza | |
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| In office 3 November 1903 – 18 June 1905 |
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| Preceded by | Károly Khuen-Héderváry |
| Succeeded by | Géza Fejérváry |
| In office 10 June 1913 – 15 June 1917 |
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| Preceded by | László Lukács |
| Succeeded by | Móric Esterházy |
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| Born | April 22, 1861 Pest, Hungary |
| Died | October 31, 1918 (aged 57) Budapest, Hungary |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
Count István Tisza de Borosjenő et Szeged (22 April 1861 in Pest – 31 October 1918, Budapest) was a Hungarian politician, prime minister, and member of Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The two most important events in his life were Austria-Hungary entering into the First World War when he was prime minister for second time, and his assassination during the Chrysanthemum Revolution in 31st of October, 1918. He was a strong supporter of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary and the representative of the then so-called "liberal-conservative consent".
He had been a Member of Parliament since 1887 and had had abundant opportunities of seeing how the unyielding temper of the Emperor on one hand, and the revolutionary spirit of the extremists on the other, were leading to a complete impasse. He himself supported the Compromise of 1867. Tisza opposed any reforms that allowed universal suffrage (before 1918 10% of Hungarian population could vote and hold office). In economic affairs, Tisza was a modernizer who encouraged and supported industrialization. In particular, Tisza was an opponent of anti-Semitism, which he feared could jeopardize Hungary's economic development.
Tisza's role model was Otto von Bismarck.
István Tisza was the son of Count Kálmán Tisza de Borosjenő, prime minister of Hungary between 1875-1890 from the Liberal Party. His mother was Ilona Degenfeld-Schomburg. The Tiszas were originally a Calvinist untitled nobility (regarded as equivalent to the British gentry). Tisza took legal studies in Berlin, Heidelberg, Budapest, and received a doctorate in Oxford from political science. For five years he took care of the family land at Bihar and Geszt. He got his electorial mandate in 1886 with Liberal Party. He received the title of count in 1897. He was the president of the Hungarian Industrial and Commercial Bank (Magyar Ipar- és Kereskedelmi Bank) and was a member of board of numerous joint-stock companies.
In this period he managed to get the remains of Francis II Rákóczi to be moved to the cathedral of Kassa, today Kosice. The Parliament approved the increase of conscriptees. As the minister of Intrenal Affairs he aggressively silenced the railway workers strike in 1904. The organisers were arrested and the strikers were recruited into the army. The police crushed a Socialist gathering for peasants in Bihar leaving 33 dead and several hundred wounded.
He passed a modification of House of Parliament in 18 November 1904 to crush the obstruction of the opposition. Dezső Perczel, the President of the House has called for immediate voting on the modification. It is not clear what exactly happened, but some sources say that the Speaker of the House of Parliement waved a handkerchief, signalling for the governing party to vote "yes", anyway, later this incident was called "election with handkerchief", which became a large scandal, and as consequence, Kálmán Széll, Gyula Andrássy left the Liberal Party and the opposition unified to "Federal Opposition". The political powers polarised, and in the new election, and the 30-years of the governing of Liberal Party was ended, the party even dissolved.
After the defeat, he took part only in the operation on the House of Parlament, and stayed away of political struggles. However, the governing Independence Party was not able to withhold any positions to protect the interest of Hungary, so it resigned in 1909, 25th of April. In 19 February 1910, Tisza established the National Party of Work (Nemzeti Munkapárt), which has won in the election of 1910. he wished not to set up a government, mainly due to his conflict with Franz Ferdinand who sought to centralise the Habsburg Empire with universal suffrage. Tisza opposed this initiative, as he believed that this will lead to the weakening of the Hungarian supremacy toward the ethnic minorities in Hungary, and to add, he claimed "demagogs would manipulate peasants with the majority of the votes to put on power such groups whose aims are against the democracy supported by the urban intellectuals"[1] (i.e. Communists). Tisza was supported by Joseph Franz, but he was afraid of the faults of his first prime ministry and has called Károly Khuen-Héderváry to set up the new government.
He was Speaker of the House of Representatives of Hungary from 22 May 1912 to 12 June 1913. Tisza was supporting the reform of the common Austrian-Hungarian army, to enhance the military power of the dual monarcy. The Hungarian side was fighting for more Hungarian interests (i.e. using Hungarian language in the army). The Socialists strongly opposed his acts and organised a rebellion in 22 May 1912 (Blood-Red Thursday), calling for Tisza to resign from President of the House and calling for universal suffrage.
Tisza tried to solve the question of ethnic minorities based on clerical approach.
He was determined, that the stiff foreign situation calls for military preparation and he strongly pushed against opoosition obstruction. He did not allow the opposition to speak up regarding rules of House of Parlament. Referring to an act from 1848, he called the police force to make leave numerous the opposition congressmen. He managed to pass the Act of Protection with force, making driving out some of the opposition party.
As a result, Gyula Kovács, opposition party representative has tried to assassinate Tisza in the Parliament Building on 7 June 1912. The shots were missed, and the marks are still visible in the Hungarian Parliament Building. The last shot Mr Kovacs shot himself, but he survived it. Tisza then continued the session.
In 7 June 1913, he was elected to be a prime minister for second time. In this period, he wanted to solidify the government in the insecure international environment. He limited the rights of grouping, and passed a law on limiting the freedom of speech.
Few days before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, resulting in the World War I, he was supporting a strong stand against Kingdom of Serbia. However, after the assassination he was against to engage into war against Serbia, the only one opposing this inside Austria-Hungary. He knew about the niveau of the army and he was afraid that with the increase of more Slavic territories, the equilibrium inside the monarchy would be harmed; moreover, he was afraid that the Entente would attack Transylvania[2]. The loosing of the federal friendship of the German Empire would have meant the end of Austria-Hungarian being a high-power, so he decided to give in and support the engagement into war. He was a relentless supporter of war till the end.
Tisza has put the army of the Romanian Kingdom as enemy from the beginning. He was afraid that if Romania attacks Hungary then the Romanians in Transylvania would revolt against Hungary. At the end, troops of 40 thousand soldiers were moved to protect Transylvania.
During the war, the reformist actions were more and more powerful, but he was still opposing it. He opposed even the ideas of the new king, Karl I, and so he resigned in 23 May 1917, however, with the strong political connections behind him, he was able to set back the act on universal suffrage.
Drawing toward the end of the war, he wanted to convince the Serbs and Bosnians to achieve the autonomy inside Austria-Hungary. As a homo regius of the king, he traveled to Sarajevo but did not succeed with the plans.
It is clear, that after the outbreak of World War I, all opposing sides were pointing to the other side as the guilty of breaking out the war. Interestingly, in the British newspaper, "New Europe" wrote that the only responsible of the war is Hungary, "where Hungary's responsibility is greater than Austria" and Tisza is the militaristic politician dragging all sides to war. As a consequence, the "Small Entente" was taking this view in wider range and pushed to punish Hungary at the end of the war. Later the propaganda of these nations augmented and even invented his guilt, saying Tisza took pains to point out in a report of July 8 that there should at any rate be no question of the annihilation or annexation of Serbia, and that if Serbia gave way, Austria-Hungary must be content. According to the recent foundings, these accusations are without ground.
The accusations are rooted from the common belief that Tisza carried out a policy of forced Magyarization towards the ethnic minorities in Hungary.
On the day of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand he immediately traveled to Vienna, where he met Minister of Foreign Affairs Count Berchtold, and Army Commander Conrad von Hötzendorf. They proposed to solve the dispute with arms, attacking Serbia. Tisza proposed to give time for the government of Serbia to take a stand if they were involved in the organisation of the murder, and proposed peaceful solution. He claimed naively, that the international situation will settle soon. Returning to Budapest, he wrote to Francis Joseph he does not take any responsibility of the armed conflict, because there is no proof on Serbia being the organisor, and he felt the threatening of Romania and Bulgaria after the Balkan wars. and was afraid of Romanian attack from the east. He was also not sure about the stand of the Germans. The stand of the Germans was of ultimate importance due to the security of the state.
During a conversation between Francis Joseph and Conrad von Hötzendorf, where Conrad asked, "If Germany's reply is that they are on our side, do we engage in war with Serbia?", the emperor replied, "Then yes", "But what if they reply differently?", "Then the Monarchy will be alone".
Wilhelm II supported the war, and promised to neutralise Romanian attack, and put pressure on Sofia. After this, Tisza still sought peaceful solution, but most of all he wanted to wait for the result of the official examination of the assassination. The only proposal of Tisza, which was accepted, was that the Monarchy should not annulate completely Serbia, to avoid Russian support for Serbia. The councel finally addressed an ultimatum to the Serbian government, and immediately started the mobilisation of troops.
After texting the ultimatum, his view has changed. The ultimatum was obsoleted in 48 hours, so Tisza wrote: "it was a difficult decision to take a stand to propose war, but now I am firmly convinced on its necessity" [3] He was though still opposing to annex Serbia to the Monarchy, but failed. In 4 August 1914 already the Russian, German, British and French also entered the war enlarging it to a world war.
Tisza did not resign from Prime Ministry, as he thought this is the best way he could represent the Hungarian interests inside Austria-Hungary, as he has connections in Vienna. His resign would have meant a message of weakness for the Entente in the outbreak of war, too.
His opposition of went to public only after the end of war, in 17 October 1918, when he spoke in the Congress. From this speech, the only thing which was remembered is when he said "We (Hungarians) have lost this war!". He said, "the Monarchy and the Hungarian nation was longing for peace all the way until there were some series of proofs found which we found that the enemy was systematically trying to humuliate and destroy us as soon as possible (...) As we have found proofs that the Serbian government took part in organising the assassination, we could not do but to address an ultimatum to Serbia (...) where we fixed that the war is preventive.
For many, he was the representative of the war policy in the Monarchy, so he was an assasination target. The fourth assassination attempt against him was successful.
The first attempt was made by Gyula Kovacs, opposition congressman.
The second was made by a soldier when Tisza was returning from the front line during the war. The bullet missed him.
The third attempt was on 16 October 1918 when János Lékai, a member of the secret society Galilei-circle, and Ottó Korvin, communist revolutionary, tried to kill him while he was leaving the Hungarian Parliament, but the revolver malfunctioned and Tisza managed to flee.[4]. The assassin was sent to prison but was released after 15 days during the Chrysanthemum Revolution.
The fourth and successful attempt was on 31 October 1918, when soldiers rammed into his home, the Roheim villa in Budapest (Hermina út 35.) in front of his wife. Mihály Károlyi's government initiated an investigation but the killers were not found. In the trial that followed the fall of the Communist regime and finalized on October 6, 1921, Judge István Gadó established the guilt of the following: Pál Kéri (exchanged with the Soviet Union), József Pogány (aka John Pepper), fled to Vienna, then Moscow and USA; István Dobó; Tivadar Horváth Sanovics (fled); Sándor Hüttner (died in prison hospital in 1923); Tibor Sztanykovszky (the only one who actually served his 18 year sentence, being released in 1938).
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Károly Khuen-Héderváry |
Prime Minister of Hungary 1903 – 1905 |
Succeeded by Géza Fejérváry |
| Interior Minister 1903 – 1905 |
Succeeded by József Kristóffy |
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| Minister besides the King 1903 – 1904 |
Succeeded by Károly Khuen-Héderváry |
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| Preceded by László Lukács |
Prime Minister of Hungary 1913 – 1917 |
Succeeded by Móric Esterházy |
| Preceded by Gejza Josipović |
Minister of Croatian Affairs Acting 1913 |
Succeeded by Teodor Pejačević |
| Preceded by Teodor Pejačević |
Minister of Croatian Affairs Acting 1914 – 1916 |
Succeeded by Imre Hideghéthy |
| Preceded by István Burián |
Minister besides the King Acting 1915 |
Succeeded by Ervin Roszner |
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