Mihaly, Count Karolyi
(born March 4, 1875, Fot, Hung.,
Austria-Hungary
[now in Hungary]?died March 20, 1955, Vence, France)
was a
Hungarian
statesman who before
World War I
desired a reorientation of Austro-Hungarian
foreign policy
toward friendship with states other than Germany. He also advocated
concessions
to
Hungary’s
non-Magyar subjects. After the war, as
president
of the Hungarian Democratic Republic in 1919, Karolyi was nevertheless unable to hold the lands of the former kingdom together and was soon forced into exile.
Karolyi was a member of one of the wealthiest and most famous families of the Hungarian
aristocracy
. Entering the Hungarian parliament as a
conservative
in 1910, he soon drifted to the left. His policies?the breakup of large estates, universal suffrage, equality of nationalities, and a maximum of freedom in the joint institutions of Austria-Hungary?were radical positions in conservative prewar Hungary; he had little actual power and almost no following. When, however, the military situation turned against the
Central Powers
toward the end of World War I, Karolyi emerged as an influential figure, and on Oct. 25, 1918, he formed a national council composed of his followers, bourgeois radicals, and social democrats. King Charles IV (Emperor
Charles I
of Austria) appointed him Hungarian
prime minister
on October 31 and recognized Hungary as a separate state with a separate army. Karolyi hoped to gain a favourable peace settlement from the Allies but was disappointed.
Czechoslovakia
, Romania, and Yugoslavia seized
extensive
stretches of Hungary, and when the Allies demanded yet further territorial concessions, he resigned (March 20, 1919) the presidency that he had held since January 11. He was replaced by
Bela Kun
and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. After fleeing abroad in July 1919, Karolyi became a left-wing socialist, returning to Hungary in 1946. While
ambassador
to Paris (1947?49), he resigned after the arrest of Laszlo Rajk and protested, from Paris, against Rajk’s death sentence.