Elemér Hankiss (4 May 1928 – 10 January 2015) was a Hungarian sociologist. His first wife was MEP

Ágnes Hankiss Ágnes Hankiss (born Ágnes Erdős; 7 March 1950 – 17 August 2021) was a Hungarian politician and elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with Fidesz, a member of the European People's Party. She was born and died in Budapest, Hungary. ...

Career

He was born in the town of

Debrecen Debrecen ( , is Hungary's second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the largest Hungarian city in the 18th century and i ...

in eastern Hungary, where his father, János Hankiss was a professor of literature. He received his university degree in French and English languages from School of English and American Studies of the

Faculty of Humanities A faculty is a division within a university or college comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate). In American usage such divisions are generally referred to as colleges ...

of the

Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University ( hu, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, ELTE) is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in Hung ...

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

, where he later obtained a PhD. Following the

1956 Hungarian Revolution The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

he spent 10 months in pretrial detention but was eventually acquitted. He was the president of the Hungarian Television from 1990 to 1993. It was a state-owned monopoly at the time, which he tried to turn into a modern, production- and viewer-oriented, competition-ready media company. In 1993, he was controversially forced to resign in connection with the so-called Media War (''Médiaháború'') between the government and the media in the early 1990s. He has written extensively on values system in Hungary and Central Europe, as well as on global civilization. His concept of ''Second Society'' has been much cited in East European Studies. He was a professor at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, the

Bruges Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the countr ...

and

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

University Institutes, as well as the

Central European University Central European University (CEU) is a private research university accredited in Austria, Hungary, and the United States, with campuses in Vienna and Budapest. The university is known for its highly intensive programs in the social sciences and ...

. He died in Budapest after a short illness on 10 January 2015.

Works

* ''Fears and Symbols: An Introduction to the Study of Western Civilization'' (2006).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hankiss, Elemer Hungarian sociologists Hungarian philosophers People from Debrecen 2015 deaths 1928 births Central European University faculty

Career

Works

See also

References