Mihály Károlyi Net Worth

Background and career

Count Mihály Ádám György Miklós Károlyi de Nagykároly (Hungarian: gróf nagykárolyi Károlyi Mihály Ádám György Miklós; English: Michael Adam George Nicholas Károlyi; 4 March 1875 – 19 March 1955) was a Hungarian politician who served as a leader of the short-lived and unrecognized First Hungarian Republic from 1918 to 1919. He served as prime minister between 1 and 16 November 1918 and as president between 16 November 1918 and 21 March 1919.

Born into one of Hungary's wealthiest families, Károlyi had a prodigal youth and only became active in the Hungarian Parliament in his thirties. There, he became one of the body's foremost progressive voices and often found himself at odds with Prime Minister István Tisza and the Dual Monarchy. Károlyi was a vocal opponent of the First World War and became a proponent of the Entente, which made him extremely popular as the war began to turn against the Central Powers. After the Aster Revolution, Károlyi became the Prime Minister and President of the new Hungarian Republic. A zealous adherent of the Fourteen Points and a pacifist, Károlyi demobilized the exhausted Royal Hungarian Honvéd and pursued a progressive domestic policy of enfranchisement and redistribution. Károlyi's brief rule was ended by the ascent of the equally short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. He lived most of the rest of his life in exile, and died in France in 1955.

In the present day, Károlyi's demobilization of the Hungarian army is widely blamed for the massive territorial losses which Hungary experienced at the hands of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Serbia which were later formalized by the Treaty of Trianon. Despised by the Horthy government, he was celebrated by the Hungarian People's Republic for his committed liberalism and left-wing sympathies, but his reputation again suffered after the fall of communism.