page_title: Artúr Görgei
section_title: Görgei's family life
hierarchical_section_title: Artúr Görgei / After the defeat of the Revolution / Görgei's family life
caption_attribution_description: English: Görgei Artúr's wife, Adéle and their daughter Berta
context_page_description: Artúr Görgei de Görgő et Toporc was a Hungarian military leader renowned for being one of the greatest generals of the Hungarian Revolutionary Army.
  In his youth Görgei was a talented chemist, with his work in the field of chemistry being recognized by many renowned Hungarian and European chemists; however, he is more widely known for his role in the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1849, as the most successful general and greatest military genius of the Hungarian army, the leader of the victorious Spring Campaign, which liberated almost all Western Hungary from the Austrian occupation. As a recognition of his military successes, he was decorated by the Hungarian Government, and given him also political positions: he became Minister of War, and in the last few days of the revolution, he was appointed the dictator of Hungary, which meant that he gathered in his hands all military and political powers of Hungary. Seeing that he could not withstand the numerically and technologically 4–5 times superior Austrian and Russian armies, on 13 August 1849 he surrendered his troops to the Russians at Világos, thus ending the Hungarian revolution.
context_section_description: As mentioned above, in 1848 Artúr Görgei married with a French girl, named Adéle d'Aubouin. She was born in 1822 in Alsace in an impoverished family, and remained orphan very early. She became lady companion of the daughter Josef Redtenbacher. In her memoirs she remembered Görgei's modesty in his behavior, but when he talked, he quickly became the leader of the discussion with his mild warm, but in the same time cutting look with sarcastic and sharply critic remarks, which showed, in her opinion, very peculiar and extraordinary personality. Before their marriage Görgei didn't courted her, but when he was preparing to go back to Hungary, out of the blue he proposed her to marry him, right when she was preparing to go back to her country. She accepted. They made the wedding in Prague in March 1848, then they went to Toporc, to the domains of the Görgei family.
  Görgei instead of Adéle, called her in the Hungarian name of Etelka.
  From June 1848, when Görgei started his career in the Hungarian revolutionary army, she lived the usual life of the soldiers wives, waiting for news, writing letters to him, and time to time having the occasion to meet him for short periods. After a while she decided to go to Pest, where they had more occasions to meet than in Toporc. Starting with the Winter Campaign, she followed her husband and the Hungarian army in its retreat through the mountains of Northern Hungary, and she even participated in a ball in Lőcse, made by the towns council in the honor of the Hungarian army, which just arrived there. In May 1849, when Görgei liberated Central and Western Hungary, with the capitals, she was with her husband on the peak of his glory, when the people cheered his husband everywhere he went. In this period Görgei repeatedly told her to dress modestly.
  After the Hungarian surrender from 13 August 1849, they were sent to Klagenfurt, then in Viktring, in exile. In 1850 their daughter, and in 1855 their son Kornél had born. The harsh conditions of life, their poverty and the continuous police supervision, slowly deteriorated the relations between the two. Although, in 1867, Adéle played an important role in the convincing of Ferenc Deák and Gyula Andrássy to grant them the right to return to Hungary, their relation didn't improved. From 1876, when Görgei started to work in the building of railways in Transylvania, Adéle moved to Toporc, on the dominions of the Görgei family, and they never lived together ever after. In the beginning they exchanged some letters, but after a while they stopped the conversations. When, in 1900, Adéle died, Görgei didn't went to her funeral. In 1912, when the writer Zsigmond Móricz made an interview with Görgei, and asked about his wife, he shouted with tears in his eyes: That didn't counted... I don't want to talk about that! That was nothing!
  Róbert Hermann claims that the main cause of the worsening of their relations were their children. Görgei was angry because Adéle every time defended their children when he complained to them because of their weaknesses and failures in their studies, lives and careers. Artúr Görgei called the result of his wranglings with his wife and children one of his greatest defeats, comparable only with his military defeat at Hodrusbánya in the winter of 1849. Because of these, Görgei didn't helped his children, which both ended their lives in misery. In the last years of her life, his daughter, Berta, accused Görgei of helping his illegitimate daughter from the years spent in Klagenfurt, Klára Gambelli, whom he later adopted, more than his legitimate children. Berta accused her father even that he had a relation with the wife of his younger brother, István.
caption: Görgei Artúr's wife, Adéle and their daughter Berta
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