Charles Conlegner

* Érsekújvár, October 18, 1812 – † Budapest, December 21, 1892 / teacher of arithmetic and bookkeeping, university rector ; ; He completed his secondary education in Nagyszombat in 1826, then studied bookkeeping at the commercial department of the Technical University in Vienna. For a while he worked in a Viennese wholesaler, after which he returned to his hometown and ran his father's business. From 1846 he was appointed teacher of arithmetic and bookkeeping at the József Industrial School in Pest. In 1848/49 he became the chief commissioner of the production of banknotes, and when the government was forced to Debrecen he also supervised the relocation of the banknote printing presses. The six-digit unique numbers of the Kossuth banknotes were written by Conlegner himself, which was unprecedented in the history of Hungarian paper money, and indeed in the world, so museums tried to acquire at least one copy of them. Due to his participation in the events of 1848/49, he had to go into hiding for a while after the defeat of the War of Independence. He stayed at the estate of Count Lipót-Flórián Nádasdy (1802–1873), for whom he later managed his finances and raised the money to build his castle and also provided financial support for the Nádasdy Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Returning to Pest, he gave private lessons, then taught German, geography and history at the Józsefpartanodá. In 1857, he was appointed a public full-time teacher of German business administration and accounting at the Royal Joseph Technical University. Between 1865 and 1871, he was the director of the Hungarian Industrial Bank, and later its president. Between 1872 and 1877, until his retirement, he held the position of rector of the Technical University.