Sándor Szathmári

Szathmári Sándor (Satma’ri Sa’ndor; 19 June 1897, Gyula – 16 July 1974) was a Hungarian writer, mechanical engineer, Esperantist, one of the leading figures in Esperanto literature.

Szathmári was born in Gyula. His father – also called Sándor – studied law, later became a state official, and, besides his work, wrote lawbooks, in his leisure played the violin and painted. His father, the first intellectual in the family, and his ancestors spelled the family name with a y (Szathmáry).

Szathmári's grandfather was a woodworker, who in his time gave 100 forints for the founding of a local music school.

Szathmári's mother (Losonczy-Szíjjártó Margit) came from a pharmacist family in the city of Szeghalom, where she was the sole daughter of the family and lived well. She bore 11 children, of whom only seven grew to adulthood.

Since the father was an official of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the family had to move often (places they lived during the early years included: Gyula, Szombathely, Alsókubin, Sepsiszentgyörgy, Lugos).

The young Szathmári was sickly with a weak body and a sensitive nervous system up through his fifteenth year, He hated wrestling, wild games and punching. The youth suffered almost continually from angina; he was also tormented with other diseases like typhus, measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, sinusitis.

According to a fragment of an unpublished biography (manuscript: Hogy is volt hát? ~So how did it happen?): his grandfather wanted to train and educate him in patriotism and nationalism, but was unsuccessful. „..my grandfather told me the anecdote in which the gypsy asked to be shown the enemy before a battle, because he wanted to make peace with them. At that time I thought the anecdote true, and considered the gypsys more advanced, being they were only ones able to think right.”

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