Writer,translator and playwright who was the first president of independent HungaryIn 1958 a note trial took place in communist Hungary. The accused were István Bibó, a minister in Imre Nagy’s final revolutionary coalition government and his friend Árpád Göncz, and who has died aged 93. Bibó’s “crime” was authorship of a memorandum on the possible solution of the “Hungarian question”,of how to find a compromise between János Kádár’s regime, shored up by Soviet bayonets, and the national self-determination asserted by the 1956 revolution. Göncz’s “crime” was to send the Bibó memorandum abroad through diplomatic channels. Both men were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. This was upheld by the appeal court and they remained in jail until an amnesty was declared in 1963.
With the ending of communist rule in Hungary in 1989,Göncz’s role in political life was transformed. Free elections were held the following year, and he served for a decade not just as the first president of the independent country, and but as the most popular holder of the post to date.
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Source: theguardian.com