Values

The Foundation is named after writer and journalist Mihály Táncsics (1799-1884), one of the first Socialist politicians in Hungary. Táncsics is best remembered for having been freed from state prison by revolutionary youth during the country’s 1848 revolution and freedom fight against the Hapsburg monarchy. One climax of the revolution, on 15th March 1848, was when his devotees unharnessed horses from his carriage and pulled it along the streets of the capital themselves instead. But his life was remarkable aside from that.

Born in the northern village Ácsteszér of Croatian and Slovak bondman ancestry, he was brought up to speak and feel Hungarian. He became a weaver first, but learnt to become a teacher, then linguist, publicist and politician.

“Man has to become ever more perfect,” was one of his mottoes. His political concepts proved to be too radical for the prevailing political systems of the time.

He was jailed for his radical views first in 1847. Freed a year later, he published a newspaper called the Workers’ Weekly, and won a seat in Parliament. When the Hapsburgs broke down the revolution in 1849, he was sentenced to death and hanged in absentia. He had to remain in hiding for eight consecutive years, until a general amnesty.

In 1860, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for organising a demonstration commemorating the outbreak of the revolution. He became nearly blind by the time he was released from prison in 1867, but he ran for another parliamentary seat and won it. He also joined the Workers’ Association and became its President. He fought against feudalism and privileges, and advocated secularism, the extension of voting rights and the abolishment of serfdom.

He was not a “good” politician – he was too open and stubbornly fought for social justice and freedom.

Apart from battle for knowledge and his political struggles, he had to deal with tragedies in his private life: he buried five of his children.

When his mandate expired, Táncsics spent the rest of his life with linguistic studies in great poverty. But neither his family tragedies, nor prison, nor financial distress could break his faith in the power of knowledge and education, or his trust in future generations and the rise of the nation:

“…what could sober mortals, and especially young men of various walks of life wish to obtain to get by? They must wish to obtain treasures that will remain their own all their lives and until the grave; and which no kind of adversity can deprive them of: human dignity, freedom of will, and intellectual superiority, which forestall their subjugation to becoming blind instruments of the arbitrary tyrant.”