Gyula János Horn (5 July 1932 – 19 June 2013) was a Hungarian politician who was the Prime Minister of Hungary from 1994 to 1998.
Horn was the last Communist Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary. He played a major role in demolishing the "Iron Curtain" for East Germans in 1989, contributing to the later unification of Germany. During his premiership, he launched the Bokros package, the biggest fiscal austerity programme in post-communist Hungary, in 1995.
Early life and education
Horn was born in Budapest in 1932 as the third child of transport worker Géza Horn who was of Jewish background and factory worker Anna Csörnyei. He was brought up in a Lutheran household. They lived in conditions of poverty at the so-called "Barrack" estate between Nagyicce and Sashalom. There were seven brothers in the family: filmmaker Géza (1925–1956), Károly (1930–1946), Tibor (1935), Sándor (1939), Tamás (1942) and Dénes (1944).
After the German occupation of Hungary, his father was kidnapped by the Gestapo due to communist activities in 1944 and never returned. Gyula Horn's niece is Szófia Havas (b. Szófia Horn, 1955), Member of Parliament between 2006 and 2010, whose father Géza, Jr. was killed under unclear circumstances during the 1956 revolution.
He first studied in a lower technicians' school in Hungary. He graduated from the Rostov-on-Don College of Economics and Finance in 1954. He finished the political academy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSZMP) in 1970. He received Candidate of Economic Sciences in 1977.
He married statistician Anna Király in February 1956 and had two children: Anna (1956) and Gyula, Jr. (1969).
Horn worked in the Ministry of Finance from 1954 to 1959. He got a job in the Foreign Ministry in 1959, first as an official in the independent Soviet department. In the 1960s he was a diplomat in the Hungarian embassies in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.
thumb|right|Gyula Horn in 2005
In 1995, Horn's government enacted the "Bokros package", a major austerity program. This was a difficult decision for a social democratic party, and Horn had to expend considerable effort to get most of his party to agree to it.
According to a survey in 2011, Viktor Orbán was found to be Hungary's best prime minister since the transition to democracy, József Antall, the head of the first democratically elected government between 1990 and 1993, came second while Horn and Gordon Bajnai (2009–10) tied for the third place.
Role in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
Although the fiscal austerity package under his rule eroded his popularity heavily, the most controversial part of his life is his role after the 1956 revolution, which started on 23 October and was crushed in the days following 4 November.
At the end of October he joined the National Guard, the armed body of the revolution consisting of soldiers, policemen, and civic freedom fighters. In December he joined the "pufajkás" brigades (in German Steppjackenbrigade), a communist paramilitary body set up to help the invading Soviet troops restore the communist regime, and he served there until June 1957. His alleged role is controversial in some circles because such squads were accused of involvement in torturing, harassing and even executing civilians during and after the uprising.
According to him, his elder brother was killed by the revolutionists during the uprising. However, his brother's death certificate states that he died in a traffic accident in the countryside. His daughter was born on 30 October. "The conditions were bad. The uprising released many criminals who endangered public safety. In the pufajkás squad, I defended the legal order," he told German paper Die Welt 50 years later. "First, I would like to make it clear that 1956 was not a fight against communism. Even the rebels did not want to wipe it out. This is incorrectly depicted today."
Horn's precise role in crushing the revolution is unclear as the reports of his brigade have gaps; however, in 1957 he received the award "For the Worker-Peasant Power", which was only granted to those whose services earned satisfaction. After becoming prime minister, when questioned and criticized over this part of his life, he only said: "I was a pufajkás. So what?"
Illness and death
In August 2007, Horn was taken to hospital with severe disease. Reportedly he was treated at Honvéd Hospital of Budapest for a sleeping disorder, but other sources told he had a serious brain malformation. Later reported his condition worsened so much that he could not leave the hospital, and thus missed the World Political Forum which was held in Budapest, where former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev also participated.
On 9 October 2007, Hungarian daily newspaper Népszabadságs online version reported mistakenly that Horn had died.
By 2008, Horn was no longer able to recognise his family members and friends as he suffered from an illness similar to Alzheimer's disease. There were also reports that Horn was in good physical condition despite the fact that he had lost significant weight. Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány was one of the last senior party officials, who visited him then. On 5 July 2011, Horn's 79th birthday Népszava reported his health condition had not deteriorated but also not improved, remained stable. During this time influential MSZP leaders gave a toast to Horn on the occasion of his birthday.
On his 80th birthday on 5 July 2012, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán greeted him in a letter. He wrote, "first of all we are Hungarians and we work towards prosperity of the nation based on our faith and the best of our knowledge. Therefore there are more links than divisions between us". The Hungarian Socialist Party also celebrated his round birthday.
After years of struggling with his illness, he died on 19 June 2013. Reuters called Horn, whose picture taking a wire-cutter to the fence separating Hungary and Austria was iconic, the "man who tore the iron curtain".
The government party Fidesz expressed condolences to Horn's family and leadership of the Hungarian Socialist party. Politics Can Be Different's co-chair András Schiffer told MTI that "Horn was one of the most important personalities of the post-communist Hungary and is one of the few politicians whose names are likely to go down in Hungarian history." Schiffer said that "he could not identify with Horn's politics and political relations before the transition to democracy in Hungary, but it must be acknowledged that Horn had shown real humanity towards ordinary people."
Funeral
thumb|right|Funeral of Gyula Horn
Horn received a state funeral with military honors and was buried at Fiume Road National Graveyard on 8 July 2013. Thousands of people attended the funeral, many of whom laid red carnations beside the grave. European Parliament President Martin Schulz, former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Hungarian President János Áder, former head of states László Sólyom and Pál Schmitt, Archbishop Péter Erdő and former house speaker Katalin Szili were also among the attendance, as well as representatives of the main parliamentary parties.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, former prime ministers Péter Boross, Péter Medgyessy, Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bajnai, as well as party chairman Attila Mesterházy paid tribute to Horn.
Béla Katona, who served as Speaker of the National Assembly from 2009 to 2010, said the "life of Gyula Horn itself encompassed the history of the twentieth century" and he shaped the "fate of both Hungary and Europe as a whole." Katona told "Horn as a prime minister and a statesman remained an ordinary man nevertheless. He was not perfect, he made some bad decisions, but the good decisions outnumbered the bad ones. He was a successful man and a true statesman".