Jenő Koltay-Kastner

* Magyardiószeg, February 15, 1892 – † Szeged, March 3, 1985 / literary historian, philologist, historian, corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences ; ; He completed his secondary school studies in Zsolna and Kecskemét. Between 1909 and 1913 he studied at the University of Budapest, but he only obtained his teaching certificate in Hungarian-French-Italian in 1919. In the meantime, he also spent a year (in 1913 and 1914) as a scholarship holder at the Sorbonne in Paris, and then at the outbreak of World War I. he was drafted and became an Italian prisoner of war. Between 1919 and 1923 he taught at a Budapest gymnasium, and then in 1924 he became a teacher of Italian language and literature at the Erzsébet University of Pécs. In 1935–1940 he was a visiting professor at the Sapienza University of Rome and at the same time he held the position of director of the Hungarian Academy of Rome. From 1940 until his retirement in 1968 he was a professor and head of department at the University of Szeged, and even briefly rector (1944). When Western languages were not allowed to be taught in Hungary in the first half of the 1950s, he taught Hungarian and world literature. As a scholar, he primarily dealt with Hungarian-Italian literary and historical relations, the Kossuth emigration to Italy, the role of Hungarians who participated in the Garibaldi uprising, e.g. István Türr and Lajos Tüköry, and the history of old Hungarian literature. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member in 1943, then he was deprived of his membership when the academy was reorganized and was only posthumously reinstated in 1989. ; ; His main works: ; The place of Carthusian in sentimental fiction: Eötvös and Sainte-Beuve, 1913, ; Mazzini and Kossuth: Lettere e documenti inediti (Correspondence between Mazzini and Kossuth), 1929, ; Italian–Hungarian dictionary, 1930, ; Hungarian–Italian dictionary, 1934, ; The Hungarian contribution to the war of 1859: ; History and documents, 1934, ; Papers on the history of the Kossuth emigration, 1859, 1949, ; The Kossuth emigration to Italy, ; 1960, Hungarian–Italian dictionary (p. 1520), 1963, ; The literary theory of the Italian Renaissance, 1970.