Adolf Ágai (; March 31, 1836 – September 16, 1916) was a Hungarian-Jewish writer and journalist.

Biography

Adolf Rosenzweig was born to a

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

-speaking

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family in

Jánoshalma Jánoshalma () is a town in Bács-Kiskun county in southern Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northe ...

, Hungary. His father, Joseph Rosenzweig, at the age of thirteen, had emigrated from Galicia to Hungary, where he studied medicine, became a physician, and wrote a book on asphyxia, which was ultimately published with the financial aid of the Hungarian politician Gábor Klauzál. He also translated

Hungarian literature Hungarian literature is the body of written works primarily produced in Hungarian,

and poetry into Hebrew, including the ''

Szózat The Szózat (; in English: "The Appeal") is a Hungarian patriotic song. De facto, it is regarded as "the second national anthem" of Hungary, beside the Himnusz, which is a constitutionally defined state symbol. The lyrics were written in 1836 ...

'' and works by

Sándor Petőfi Sándor Petőfi ( []; né Petrovics; ; ; 1 January 1823 – most likely 31 July 1849) was a Hungarian poet and Classical Liberalism, liberal revolutionary. He is considered Hungary's national poet, and was one of the key figures of the Hungari ...

. The family adopted the Hungarian name Ágai in 1848. Ágai was trained as a physician in

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, and afterwards worked at a hospital in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

. His first literary production—a novel entitled ''Antoinette''—was published in the columns of the ' in 1854. For this journal and for ' he wrote letters from Vienna (1854–81), and occasionally contributed to the ''Wanderer'', ''Gartenlaube'', and ''Fliegende Blätter''. In 1865, under the pseudonym "Porzó," he wrote a series of spirited

feuilleton A ''feuilleton'' (; a diminutive of , the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle ...

s, remarkable for their pathos and humour. He abandoned medicine in 1868 to focus on writing and editing. From 1870 to 1879 he edited the ' ('Hungary and the World'), and in 1871 founded a comic weekly, ' ('Tom Thumb), of which he was editor in 1900. The humorous characters he created were well known in Hungary, especially the Jewish caricature "Seifensteiner Salamon." In 1871 Ágai undertook the editorship of the ' ('Little Magazine'), which he had founded for the youth of his country. In that journal he wrote under the pseudonym "Forgó Bácsi." His annual calendars, published under the names of the various humorous characters in his ''Borsszem Jankó'', were widely read. Ágai was a successful lecturer, and has translated German and French books into Hungarian. He was a member of the

Kisfaludy Society The Kisfaludy Society (Hungarian: ''Kisfaludy Társaság'') was a literary society in Pest, founded in 1836 and named after Károly Kisfaludy, who had died in 1830. It held monthly meetings and was a major force in Hungarian literary life, giving ...

and also of the Hungarian-Jewish Literary Society.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Agai, Adolf 1836 births 1916 deaths 19th-century Hungarian Jews 19th-century Hungarian novelists 20th-century Hungarian Jews 20th-century Hungarian novelists Hungarian editors Hungarian male journalists Hungarian male novelists Jewish Hungarian writers Jewish Hungarian-language writers Jewish journalists Journalists from Austria-Hungary