Erik Molnár was a Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 politician, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs twice: between 1947-1948 and between 1952-1953.

Biography

During the First World War he fought at the Eastern Front

Eastern Front (World War I)

The Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other...

 where captured by the Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

s. As prisoner of war Molnár met with the communist ideas in a prisoner-of-war camp

Prisoner-of-war camp

A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of combatants captured by their enemy in time of war, and is similar to an internment camp which is used for civilian populations. A prisoner of war is generally a soldier, sailor, or airman who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or...

 in Far East Asia. Later he returned to home and finished his legal studies. After that he joined to the illegal Hungarian Communist Party

Hungarian Communist Party

The Communist Party of Hungary , renamed Hungarian Communist Party in 1945, was founded on November 24, 1918, and was in power in Hungary briefly from March to August 1919 under Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The communist government was overthrown by the Romanian Army and driven...

's working along with his younger brother, René. He published lot of articles for the illegal communist newspapers (Gondolat, Társadalmi Szemle, Korunk).

In the Interim National Government he served as Minister of Welfare (1944-1945). Later he was appointed Minister of Information and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1947-1948). Then he was the Hungarian ambassador to the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 (1948-1949), later he worked as Minister of Justice (1950-1952). He was Minister of Foreign Affairs again between 1952 and 1953. He was the President of the Supreme Court of Hungary between 1953 and 1954, later he was appointed as Minister of Justice again (1954-1956).

He was member of the assembly from 1944 until his death, and also member of the communist party's Central Committee. Molnár played a big role in the management of the history research as member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...

's history institute and as chairman of the Hungarian Historical Society. He dealt with the problems of the Hungarian social development thoroughly, first of all with the land question, the Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

-Leninism

Leninism

In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...

 applied his teachings to the Hungarian relations. During the Second World War bigger studies appeared about the Árpád era's society. After 1945 Molnár dealt with the Hungarian prehistory

Hungarian prehistory

Hungarian prehistory refers to the prehistoric Magyars, from the time when they separated from Common Ugric until their invasion of the Carpathian basin in the late 9th century...

 and the feudalism

Feudalism

Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...

 with the questions of age social history

Social history

Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...

, the ideological antecedents of the historical materialism and with his philosophical basis problems, the questions of the contemporary capitalism

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

, dealt with the development of the nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 and its development furthermore.

Publications

• Dialektika (Dialect), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1941 (Erik Jeszenszky pseudonym).
• Magyar őstörténet (Hungarian prehistory), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1942 (Lajos Szentmiklósy pseudonym).
• A feudalizmus kialakulása Magyarországon (The development of the feudalism in Hungary), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1942 (Lajos Szentmiklósy pseudonym).
• Az Árpádkori társadalom 1. A gazdasági alap (The society of the Árpád Era I: The Economy), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1943 (Lajos Szentmiklósy pseudonym).
• Az Árpádkori társadalom 2. A Felépítmény (The society of the Árpád Era II: The Forecastle), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1943 (Lajos Szentmiklósy pseudonym).
• Dialektika (Dialect), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1945.
• A magyar társadalom története az őskortól az Árpádkorig (The history of the Hungarian society from the Prehistory to the Árpád Era), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1945.
• A magyar társadalom története az Árpádkortól Mohácsig (The history of the Hungarian society from the Árpád Era to the Battle of Mohács), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1949.
• A történelmi materializmus ideológiai előzményei (The ideological antecedents of the historical materialism), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1952.
• A magyar nép őstörténete (The prehistory of the Hungarian people), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1953.
• A történelmi materializmus filozófiai alapproblémái (The philosophical basis problems of the historical materialism), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1955.
• A jelenkori kapitalizmus néhány gazdasági problémája (Some economic problems of the contemporary capitalism), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1959.
• Dialektikus materializmus és társadalomtudomány (Dialectic materialism and social science), Budapest
  Budapest
  Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
  
  , 1962.