Lajos Gyure

* March 20, 1931, Mokcsakerész † February 15, 2018, Košice / poet, writer, literary historian, teacher ; ; Born in Mokcsakerész in 1931. As a boy from the Ung-vidék region, according to tradition, he should have been a farmer, but he started his life as a boilermaker in the Poledniak ironworks in Košice, after which he graduated from the Košice Higher Industrial Technical School. The first big challenge in his life occurred when he had to choose whether to go to Egypt to work as a factory technician or to give in to the attraction that pulled him towards a teaching career. He gave in to the latter. He obtained a teaching certificate in Hungarian history at the Bratislava Pedagogical College. It is important to highlight that as a Hungarian teacher candidate, he was very actively involved in the cultural activities of Hungarian students in Bratislava. He was a founding member of the Hungarian College Students' Artistic Group and the Young Hearts that emerged from it. He also got closer to poetry here. His first poems were published in 1955 in Új Ifjúság and Szabad Földműves. He owes a lot to the literary organizing activities of Lajos Turczel, who was then in Bratislava, as a result of which Lajos Gyüre became one of the poetic group that later became known as Nyolcak, whose members did a lot against schematism. As a group, they appeared before their readers in the anthology Young Slovak Hungarian Poets in 1958, which was selected and edited by Lajos Turczel. ; Lajos Gyüre's first independent poetry collection Meditation in the Rain had to wait a decade for its publication. Of course, a lot happened to him in the meantime. At that time, after obtaining a teaching certificate, employment was centrally controlled. He was assigned to Bős, a town with a population of six thousand. This village was also decisive in his life because it was there that he met his future wife, his faithful life partner – who was also placed there as a novice teacher. After a short time, Gyüré was redirected to Nagymegyer, where a two-year retraining course was held for both the cooperative presidents and agronomists. A delegation from the Košice-Koninék district once came to see the more advanced agricultural institutions there. When they learned that he came from the east, they asked him to resign and go home, because the Hungarian section of the district national committee was being established and he was needed there. He seized the opportunity. The hot August of 1968 was already here for him. Few people know that, following the example of the station broadcasting under the name Gabona Város on Slovak radio, Gyüré Lajos Béres and József Béres organized a similar radio station in Košice under the name Bodrogköz. They acquired an off-road vehicle from the Air Force Officers' College, which they equipped with the transmitter. This was necessary because the building of the Košice radio station had already been occupied by Russian soldiers. The off-road vehicle was needed so that the Bodrogköz Secret Transmitter Station could not be detected, as they were constantly changing their location. ; In 1968, Lajos Gyüre, as the Hungarian expert lecturer in the cultural department of the Eastern Slovakian District National Committee, organized the first Hungarian intellectuals' meeting in Košice at the Bankó Hotel. At this meeting, the more than 120 participants first formulated the demand that the Csemadok should not only be a cultural organization, but also an organization to protect the interests of the local Hungarians. This and their further demands were then sent to the Csemadok Central Committee by the Košice district presidency, in 12 points. This was the letter from Košice, which later became famous under the title Ősinte ső, which the people of Košice began with: “Let’s pour clean water into the glass, but into a clean glass and with clean hands!” For these initiatives, the socialist government almost made it impossible for Lajos Gyüre, József Béres and István Mede to be dismissed during the so-called “normalization” years. Lajos Gyüre went back to teaching, but before that he helped establish the Thália Stage in Košice, and he also allocated financial support for them in the budget of the district national committee. For a short time he taught in the industrial school, but then until his retirement he taught at the Hungarian grammar school in Košice. In the meantime, his poetry collections, storybooks and prose writings were published. He wrote the monograph for the Košice Diary, received his doctorate, published studies and fiction in the Irodalmi Szemle and in Hungarian newspapers. He wrote story plays. More than twenty volumes were published. In 1986-1990 he was the artistic director and dramaturge of the Thália Theatre in Košice. He loved Košice, but he was very hurt by the fact that the number of Hungarians here was decreasing. With his own means: his written and spoken words, he always worked to reverse this process. That is why he undertook the tour guide, the presentation of the city's monuments, palaces, and houses, and to keep the memory of the old famous people of Košice alive. That is why he gave lectures and took on the debates. ; Lajos Gyüre's work and aspirations were also highly appreciated by Hungary, as in 2012 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit. ; ;

György Szaszák

Works ; - 1958 Young Hungarian poets of Slovakia (poems, co-author) ; - 1968 Meditation in the Rain (poems); - 50 Years of Hungarian Culture in Eastern Slovakia, ed. Gyüre Lajos, Krajské osvetové stredisko, Košice, 1968; - 1975 Glass Bell (poems); - The Lean Miller's Boy. Fairy Tale, Lita, Bratislava, 1984; - Košice Diary, 1918–1929, Bratislava–Bp., Madách–Szépirodalmi, Bp., 1986; - 1998 The Doghouse Boy (fairy tales); - 1999 May Day (children's poems); - Szarkabál, Madách-Posonium, Pozsony, 1999; - To Be a Boy. Selected Poems, Lilium Aurum, Dunaszerdahely, 2001; - 2001 Rose and Violet (three fairy tales); - 2004 Sándor Márai in the Košice Diary; - The Skylark. New poems, Madách-Posonium, Bratislava, 2004; - 2004 The Skylark (poems); - Where does the Sun rise?, Lilium Aurum, Dunaszerdahely, 2006; - Three plays, Madách-Posonium, Bratislava, 2007; - 2008 The Twilight of the Petticoat. Writers and Poets in the Košice Diary. Text Collection and Bibliography, Madách-Posonium, Bratislava (Hungarian Antaeus Books); - Forty Years of the Thalia Theatre in Košice, ed. Lajos Gyüre, Hernád, Košice, 2009; - 2010 The Strange Adventures of Guszti Chestnut. Poems and Tales, Madách-Posonium, Bratislava; - 2012 My Wonders, AB-art, Bratislava; - 2011 I Came Home, Lilium Aurum, Dunaszerdahely; - 2014 Cirmos Goes to Town, Bratislava [Bratislava], AB-art; - 2015 The Strange Adventures of Guszti Chestnut, Kráter, Pomáz (Fairytale Shelf); - 2016 Remains, Vámbéry Civic Association, Dunaszerdahely; ;