Gyorgy Gyurkovits

* Ivánháza, July 12, 1780 – † Bazin, June 25, 1848 / judge, legal historian, geographical writer, one of the forerunners of Hungarian ethnography, corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences ; ; He completed his school studies in Vágújhely, Trenčín, Modor and from 1796 in Bratislava. In order to learn the Hungarian language, he studied Hungarian history and diplomas at the Reformed College in Nagykőrös from 1798, and from 1800 he studied philosophy and law again in Bratislava. In 1802 he went to his uncle in Pusztafödémes, where he trained as a farm official. A year later, however, he met András Lehoczky (Bratislava, September 15, 1741 – Bratislava, April 23, 1813), a lawyer and genealogist, and on his advice he began to write. He worked as a steward and then as a treasurer in the Count Zichy manor, and became involved in public life in Bratislava when he was elected a city councilor in 1818. After that, he was the ambassador of the city of Bratislava to the national assemblies of 1825, 1830, 1832 and 1839. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected him as its corresponding member in 1832. From 1840 until his death, he was a judge of the probate court in Bratislava. His works on regional and local studies in Hungarian were mostly published in the Scientific Collection, where he published regularly for more than twenty years. He had a significant collection of books and manuscripts, from which György Fejér also drew heavily for his Codex diplomaticus. He left behind a large quantity of manuscripts, about 33 folio volumes, including a geographical and historical description of Árva, Baranya, Trenčín, Moson County and the city of Pápa, which were already ready for printing, and which remained in manuscript. He wrote the biography of Faustus Verancsics (1551–1617), a Croatian-Hungarian historian, high priest, diplomat, and nephew of the Archbishop of Esztergom, Antal Verancsics48. He suffered a stroke at the Bazin horse-drawn railway station and died there. His best-known work is De situ et ambitu Slavoniae et Croatiae I-II., 1844, which discusses the legal status of Slavonia and Croatia. Its continuation (volume III. of the tkp.) is the Illustratio Critica situs et ambitus Slavoniae et Croatiae, published in 1847.