László Dienes (27 March 1889 – 5 April 1953) was a Hungarian sociologist, essayist, librarian and university professor.

Biography

He was born in Tokaj in a Reformed noble family. He completed his secondary school studies at the reformed college in Debrecen and enrolled at the Faculty of Law at the

University of Budapest A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

, and studied in Paris for two years. At a young age, he joined the socialist left-wing organization of the

Galileo Circle The Galileo Circle (''Galilei Kör'') was an atheist-materialist student organization that functioned in Budapest between 1908 and 1919. Their center was located at the Anker Palace#Anker Köz, Anker Köz in Terézváros, Budapest. The circle had ...

and was a student of

Ervin Szabó Ervin Szabó (; born as Samuel Armin Schlesinger; 23 August 1877 – 29 September 1918) was a Hungarian social scientist, librarian and anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary. Life Born Ármin Sámuel Schlesinger in Szlanica, Kingdom of Hungary, Au ...

the head of the Capital Library in Budapest. His works on library science and literary criticism were published from 1914, his anti-war articles were published in Huszadik Század. In the fall of 1918 he became a founding member of the

Hungarian Communist Party The Hungarian Communist Party (, , abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary (, , abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar period and briefly after World War II. It was founded on Novem ...

and became a city people's commissar of Budapest during the

Hungarian Soviet Republic The Hungarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Socialist Federative Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived communist state that existed from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919 (133 days), succeeding the First Hungarian Republic. The Hungari ...

. In the fall of 1919, together with his friend György Bölöni, he settled in Romania as a political emigrant, and together they started the Bucharest Newspaper. He also worked for magazines such as Napkelet and Nyugati szemle where he regularly reported on Western avant-garde currents in his column, and he himself appeared in the columns of the paper with surrealist short stories. He settled in Cluj-Napoca in 1922 and was an editorial member of Keleti Újság until 1925. In 1926 Dienes founded the Korunk magazine. After

Iron Guard The Iron Guard () was a Romanian militant revolutionary nationalism, revolutionary Clerical fascism, religious fascist Political movement, movement and political party founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as the Legion of the Archangel M ...

students almost beat him to death because of his radical works he sought refuge in Berlin with his wife, university professor of chemistry Júlia Götz, and their children in 1928. It was then that he handed over the editorship of Korunk to

Gábor Gaál Gábor Gaál (8 March 1891 – 13 August 1954) was a Hungarian sociologist, literary critic and aesthetician active in Romania. Biography Gaál was born in to the family of a military officer of the Hussar Regiment in Budapest. He studied Latin ...

. As a co-editor, his name appeared at the head of Korunk until August 1931, when he moved to Moscow where he worked as a language teacher and bibliographer until 1945. Dienes returned to Hungary in late 1945, where until his death he was the director of the Ervin Szabó Library in Fővárosi and the head teacher of the economics department at the law faculty of the university.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dienes, László 1889 births 1953 deaths Hungarian sociologists Hungarian literary critics Hungarian art critics 20th-century Hungarian journalists Hungarian editors Hungarian essayists Hungarian librarians Hungarian bibliographers Hungarian Communist Party politicians Members of the Hungarian Working People's Party Hungarian Marxist writers Hungarian expatriates in the Soviet Union Hungarian emigrants to Romania Burials at Farkasréti Cemetery