August Greguss

* Prešov, 27 April 1825 – † Budapest, 13 December 1882 / aesthete, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences ; ; son of the historian Mihály Greguss (1793–1838). He began his schooling in his hometown and continued in Bratislava from the age of eight. When his father died in 1838, the family moved to Rožsnyó and Ágost Greguss continued his studies there, which he completed in Prešov in 1841–1843. He began his medical studies in Vienna, but his interest increasingly turned towards literature, so in 1846 he dropped out of university and took a job as a grammar school teacher in Szarvas. He wrote poems and aesthetic studies and actively participated in the events of 1848/49, for which reason he first went into hiding after the suppression of the War of Independence, then voluntarily reported to the authorities and was sentenced to 11 months in prison. He could no longer work as a teacher, so he worked as a newspaper editor and article writer. He was one of the first prominent representatives of the dissemination of scientific knowledge in Hungary, and in recognition of this and his work entitled The Basic Principles of Beauty, published in 1849, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member in 1858 and a full member in 1863. He was one of the founders and vice-president of the Kisfaludy Society for many years. His aesthetic writings, portraits of writers, and his book On the Ballad (1865) had a great influence on his contemporaries. He also did important work as a newspaper and publishing editor, and he also translated several Shakespeare plays. From 1870 he taught aesthetics as a professor at the University of Pest. The last decade of his life was bitterly affected by a serious illness (stomach cancer) and prevented him from regular creative work. In 1878 he published the volume entitled The Tales of Greguss Ágost, and in 1880 one of his major works, Shakespeare's Career, was published. Many of his writings remained in manuscript, and his students compiled volumes of them after his death. His younger brother, Gyula Greguss (Eperjes, December 3, 1829 - Pest, September 5, 1869) also dealt with literary translation (he translated, for example, Camões's epic Luziada and Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons), and he also wrote articles on natural science topics for contemporary magazines and was the author of several high school textbooks. He initially studied law, but dropped out due to the events of 1848/49, and then studied physics at the Vienna Polytechnic from 1850 to 1856. From 1857 until his death, he was a teacher and then director of the Lutheran Gymnasium in Pest. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member in 1864.