Ferenc Pulszky

Ferenc Aurél Pulszky de Cselfalva et Lubócz (17 September 1814 – 9 September 1897) was a Hungarian politician and writer.

He was born at Eperjes, now Prešov in Slovakia. After studying law and philosophy at the high schools of his native town and Miskolc, he travelled abroad. England particularly attracted him, and his book, Aus dem Tagebuch eines in Grossbritannien reisenden Ungarns (From the Diary of a Hungarian Travelling in Britain) (Pesth, 1837) gained for him the membership of the Hungarian Academy.

Elected to the Diet of Hungary of 1840, he was in 1848 appointed to a financial post in the Hungarian government, and was transferred in a similar capacity to Vienna under Esterházy. However, he was suspected of intriguing with the revolutionists of that year and fled to Budapest, where he became an active member of the Committee of National Defence. When obliged to flee after Hungary's defeat in the 1848–49 war of independence, he joined Lajos Kossuth in England and with him made a tour in the United States. In collaboration with his wife he wrote a narrative of this voyage entitled White, Red, Black (2 vols., London, 1853). He also wrote a historical introduction to his wife's Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady (by Theresa Pulszky, London, 1850).

Pulszky was condemned to death in contumaciam (in contempt of court, Pulszky having not attended) by a council of war in his home country in 1852. In 1860 he went to Italy, took part in Giuseppe Garibaldi's ill-fated expedition to Rome (1862), and was interned as a prisoner of war in Naples. Pulszky's salon in a villa in S. Margherita a Montici, Florence, was the liveliest in town. He financed the newspaper "Il Progresso." His son, Giulio Francesco Pulszky died on November 19, 1863, age 14, and is buried at English Cemetery, Florence. His surviving children were Augustus, Charles, Polixena, and Garibaldi.

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