[Count]. Hungarian statesman, the most distinguished member of an ancient noble family, dating back to the 13th century, and son of the chancellor György Apponyi (1808–1899) and the accomplished and saintly Countess Julia Sztàray; born at Pesth on the 29th of May 1846. Educated at the Jesuit seminary at Kalksburg and at the universities of Vienna and Pesth, a long foreign tour completed his curriculum, and at Paris he made the acquaintance of Montalembert, a kindred spirit, whose influence on the young Apponyi was permanent. He entered parliament in 1872 as a liberal Catholic, attaching himself at first to the Deàk party; but the feudal and ultramontane traditions of his family circle profoundly modified, though they could never destroy, his popular ideals. On the break up of the Deàk party he attached himself to the conservative group which followed Baron Pàl Senynyey (1824–1888) and eventually became its leader. Until 1905 Count Albert was constantly in opposition, but in May of that year he consented to take office in the second Wekerle ministry. He was from 1906 to 1910 Minister of Education in the Wekerle Cabinet. In consequence of Francis Kossuth’s illness Apponyi undertook the greater part of his business as president of the party of Hungarian Independence, calling itself the party of 1848. In the message sent to the party just before his death Kossuth designated him as his most suitable successor. At the outbreak of the World War he adopted in Parliament the standpoint of a “truce of God.” Together with Count Julius Andrássy and Rakovszky, Apponyi was from July 6 to August 25, 1916 a member of the commission established by the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies to watch over the conduct of foreign policy. In internal affairs Apponyi fought for universal suffrage. After the outbreak of the October revolution of 1918 he retired for a time into private life. In 1910 he was elected as a non-party deputy to the National Assembly, and was head of the Hungarian peace delegation in Paris. He became a member of the League of Nations Union, and as a politician standing outside party was in 1921 perhaps the most influential man in Hungarian politics.
A lofty and magnetic orator, his speeches were published at Budapest in 1896; and he is the author of an interesting dissertation, Esthetics and Politics, the Artist and the Statesman (Hung.) (Budapest, 1895). His published works include the following: Recollections of a Statesman (1912); Die rechtliche Natur der Beziehungen zwischen Öesterreich und Ungarn in the Öesterreichische Rundschau (vol. xxviii.); and in Hungarian Hungary in the World’s Press (1915). See also “On the Death of Louis Kossuth.”
