József Kármán (14 March 1769 in Losonc – 3 June 1795 in Losonc), sentimentalist Hungarian author, was born at Losonc (today Lučenec in

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

) in 1769, the son of a

Calvinist Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...

pastor. He was educated at Losonc and Pest, whence he migrated to

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. There he made the acquaintance of the beautiful and eccentric Countess Markovics, who was for a time his mistress, but she was not, as has often been supposed, the heroine of his famous novel ''Fanni hagyományai'' ("Fanny's testament"). Subsequently, he settled in Pest as a lawyer. His sensibility, social charm, liberal ideas (he was one of the earliest of the Magyar

freemason Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

s) and personal beauty opened the doors of the best houses to him. He was generally known as the Pest

Alcibiades Alcibiades (; 450–404 BC) was an Athenian statesman and general. The last of the Alcmaeonidae, he played a major role in the second half of the Peloponnesian War as a strategic advisor, military commander, and politician, but subsequently ...

, and was especially at home in the salons of the

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...

magnates. In 1792, together with Count Ráday, he founded the first theatrical society at

Buda Buda (, ) is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the western bank of the Danube. Historically, “Buda” referred only to the royal walled city on Castle Hill (), which was constructed by Béla IV between 1247 and ...

. He maintained that Pest, not

Pozsony Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...

should be the literary center of Hungary, and in 1794 founded the first Hungarian quarterly, ''Urania'', but it met with little support and ceased to exist in 1795, after three volumes had appeared. Kármán, who had long been suffering from an incurable disease, died in the same year. The most important contribution to ''Urania'' was his sentimental novel, ''Fanni hagyományai'', much in the style of ''La nouvelle Héloise'' and ''Sorrows of Young Werther'', the most exquisite product of Hungarian prose in the 18th century and one of the finest psychological romances in the literature. Kármán also wrote two

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...

s and fragments of an historical novel, while his literary program is set forth in his dissertation ''A nemzet csinosodása'' ("Beautification of the Nation").

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Karman, Jozsef Hungarian writers 1769 births 1795 deaths People from Lučenec Immigrants to the Holy Roman Empire