Gyula Peidl (4 April 1873 – 22 January 1943) was a Hungarian trade union leader and social democrat politician who served as prime minister and acting head of state of Hungary for 6 days in August 1919. His tenure coincided with a period of political instability in Hungary immediately after World War I, during which several successive governments ruled the country.
Biography
Early life and career
Gyula Peidl was born on 4 April 1873 in Ravazd, Győr County. His father, a butcher, died early, thus Peidl was raised by his mother. During his apprentice years from 1886 to 1890, he became a typesetter at the printing facility of the Franklin Company. Following this he participated in study tours to Austria, Switzerland and Germany, where came in contact with Social Democratic movements and also learnt German. He was one of the founding members of the General Consumer Cooperative (ÁFOSZ) in 1904. He was elected secretary of the organisation in 1908. As a journalist, he edited the weekly newspapers Typographia and Szövetkezeti Értesítő. He also served as a Board Member of the National Workers' Insurance Fund (). On 1 August 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic ended and a government formed by Social Democrats and controlled by union leaders replaced it; the leader of the former government, Béla Kun, left the country the next day. after the Romanian invasion of the capital and, subsequently, the end of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
His government
The cabinet, which contained four of Kun's former government commissioners (including Garbai himself), quickly transformed into Social Democrats, who retained important ministerial portfolios (including Defence and Foreign Affairs). At its first meeting on 2 August 1919, it officially dissolved the Hungarian Soviet Republic and declared again the Hungarian People's Republic; the people's courts were disbanded and former political prisoners were released from prisons. The release of the opponents reinforced the counter-revolutionaries.
thumb|300px|left|The short-lived Peidl Cabinet in August 1919
Former private owners were given nationalised former properties. Peidl's government tried to demonstrate to the Allies its break with the previous government and its willingness to pursue a policy of moderation. The new government, however, had no real control over any armed force, and the battalions of the workers had been dissolved.
Overthrow
At the same time, the counterrevolutionary forces conspired to overthrow the government and put the Hungarian prince (and Austrian archduke) Joseph August in power. Peidl received a communication from Vienna announcing that the Allies would support the government if it included bourgeois elements, which encouraged the counterrevolutionaries to accelerate their plans, backed by Traian Moșoiu, the Romanian military governor of Budapest, but rejected by the Allied representative. and some officers. On the same day, Prince Joseph August
After the government
After the coup, Peidl became chair of the printer's trade union again. Representing the working class, he participated in the grand coalition talks intermediated by Allied representative George Clerk in early November. Peidl went into exile in Austria on 18 November 1919, after receiving an increasing number of death threats from far-right paramilitary groups.