Prominent Hungarians: István Bibó was born 100 years ago
Date of issue: 5 August 2011
Magyar Posta is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of István Bibó by issuing a special stamp.
István
Bibó (Budapest, 07.07.1911 – 10,05.1979 Széchenyi award-winning
(posthumous, 1990) lawyer, politician, 1956 hero of the Hungarian
people. He graduated from the Ference József University in Szeged with
degrees in political and then legal sciences. In 1938 he was clerk of
court and then an official at the Ministry of Justice. During the German
occupation he issued safe-conduct documents until his arrest on 16
October. After a short term of imprisonment his father-in-law, bishop
László Ravasz hid him until the end of the war. Between 1945-47 he was
in charge of the public administration department of the Ministry of
Interior working on the reform of the county system, and the National
Peasant’s Party delegated him to the Legal Reform Committee. He was a
prominent participant in the preparation of the voting right act and of
the elections held on 4 November 1945. After the Second World War he was
a regular contributor to the periodical Válasz. Between 1946-50 he was a
professor at Szeged University and a member of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences. From 1951 he was chief academic staff member of the ELTE
University library.
On 30 October 1956 in the re-establishment of
the National Peasants Party and from 1 November under its new name of
the Petőfi Party. On 3 November he was appointed to the post of state
minister. The next day the military invasion started, then as the
representative of the only legal Hungarian government he called upon the
Hungarian people “to not view the invading army or any puppet
government set up by it as the legal authority, and to resist all of
their weapons passively”, he also asked the international powers and the
United Nations to make a decision in the interest of the freedom of the
suppressed Hungarian people. His position as minister was terminated on
12 November with the dissolution of the government. He worked out a new
proposal for “a compromise solution to the Hungarian question”, which
the Greater Budapest Central Workers’ Council accepted as a basis for
negotiation. At the beginning of December he negotiated with the Indian
ambassador in Budapest and handed over a document written by him and
Ferenc Farkas, István Varga, Géza Féja and Áron Tamási entitled:
Declaration on the state, social and economic system of Hungary and its
path of political development. At the beginning of 1957 he wrote a study
entitled: Hungary and the world situation, which was published in
German in the Vienna newspaper Die Presse. In 1958 he was sentenced to
life imprisonment. He was released with the amnesty of 1963, then he
worked in the Library of the Central Statistics Office until retirement.
During his years in retirement he translated, organised his works and
published shorter works. (Source: hu.wikipedia.org)
In the foreground of the stamp celebrating the centenary of his birth you can see István Bibó at work and in the background his legendary sentence: “Before everything else being a democrat means to be not afraid” can be read, there are also important dates from his life (1956, -58 and –63), you can also see a silhouette of the Houses of Parliament. The first day cover belonging to the stamp includes an excerpt from his study: The misery of the small Eastern European states (1946). Under this is a symbolic graphic composition referring to his work and the age: the tangled-up letter arms of a typewriter referring to the stormy years of his life, while the arranged letter arms – summarising his name and the years of his birth and death – symbolise his eternally valid lifework. The graphic design on the special cancellation stamp contains a stylised drawing of a portrait of István Bibó.
SO
Order code: 2011190010011 (stamp) 2011190060012 (FDC)
Date of issue: 5 August 2011
Face value: HUF 345
Number of copies: 200,000, 50 stamps/sheet
Perforation size of stamp: 30 x 40 mm
Printing process: offset
Press: Pénzjegynyomda
Design artist: György Kara