József Antall

József Antall (born April 8, 1932, Budapest, Hung.—died Dec. 12, 1993, Budapest) was a politician and the prime minister of Hungary from 1990 until his death in 1993.

Antall was the son of a government official who aided Polish refugees and Jews during World War II. Trained as a history teacher, archivist, librarian, and museologist, Antall taught for a time in a Budapest grammar school. For the active role he played in the Hungarian uprising of 1956, he was barred from teaching and publishing. After the latter ban was lifted in 1963, he published hundreds of studies and articles. From 1964 to 1990 he worked at the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum, Library, and Archives, becoming its general director.

In the late 1980s, as democratic organizations began to re-emerge in Hungary, he first made contact with the Independent Smallholders’ Party, the leading noncommunist party of the postwar period. He then joined the Hungarian Democratic Forum (Magyar Demokrata Fórum; MDF), a newly organized movement that soon became the most influential independent political force outside the ruling communist party. Antall led the MDF delegation at the talks preparing the country for the transition to democracy, and on October 21, 1989, he was voted president of the MDF. He strove to turn the movement into a centre-right party patterned after those of western Europe.

When the MDF won the free parliamentary elections of 1990, Antall became prime minister at the head of a coalition with the Smallholders and the Christian Democrats. His goal was to create a democratic state that acknowledged and incorporated Hungary’s distinctive characteristics. He placed primary importance on political stability, the revival of the historical continuity that the communist era had interrupted, the improvement of relations with Hungarians living outside Hungary, and party unity. In 1990 he was awarded the Robert Schuman Prize for his work in promoting European unity.