page_title: Ferenc Deák
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: Ferenc Deák / Political career
caption_attribution_description: Ferenc Deák (anglicised as Francis Deak) from his obituary in the Illustrated London News. Text of the obituary follows.
context_page_description: Ferenc Deák de Kehida was a Hungarian statesman and Minister of Justice. He was known as "The Wise Man of the Nation".
  He was an instrumental contributor to a number of major events in Hungarian history, including passing and support of the April laws, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the Hungarian Nationalities Law. While generally supporting reformist policies, he was well recognized for finding and negotiating reasonable middle ground compromises between various extremist political factions throughout his career.
context_section_description: In 1846, after the bloody end of the Polish uprising in Galicia the reformers gained popularity and they released the "Ellenzéki nyilatkozat" (Manifesto of Opposition) under the name of Deák, while it was in fact created by Kossuth. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 against the Austrian Empire, Deák stayed calm and opposed violence as a political tool. He accepted a position as Minister of Justice in the Batthyány Government, mostly to show his support of Lajos Batthyány.
  Once part of the revolutionary government, Deák made several trips to the court in Vienna, seeking a compromise between the Habsburg monarchy and Kossuth's Extremist Liberals. When his efforts failed, he resigned his ministerial post, but remained a Member of Parliament, defending the constitutional legitimacy of the April laws. He retired to his estate at Kehida before the end of the War of Independence, and took no further active part in events surrounding the revolution. An Austrian court martial acquitted him after Hungary's defeat.
  Deák spent most of the 1850s in semi-retirement, tacitly supporting various national causes without engaging in active politics. He, however, refused to assume any public role, office or position, thus becoming an emblem of the so-called passive resistance. He sold his estate to István Széchenyi, and moved to Buda to become the de facto leader of Hungarian public life. He steered a middle course between advocates of a second anti-Habsburg uprising aligned with Kossuth, and pro-Austrian collaborationists. The crisis attending the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859, with strong Hungarian popular support for the Italian cause, returned him to active political life, although he opposed the initial Austrian reform proposals of 1860. In 1861, he became the leader of the group calling for a petition to the Austrian crown, throwing the onus for a settlement onto the Habsburg court. In response to his prompting, Franz Joseph I dismissed his current administration and called for a new parliament to negotiate the settlement. Deák led the committee tasked with drafting a formula, working alongside Kálmán Tisza and other prominent contemporary politicians. The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 came just as they had completed their work, but Deák resisted extremist pressure to reopen the issue.
  Gradually, Deák moderated his views on Hungary's independence.  Although he maintained that the April Laws were fully valid, he began taking the line that foreign affairs, defence and finance were "common" to both Austria and Hungary under the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713.  He believed that a constitutional arrangement could be worked out to incorporate these ideas while still respecting Hungary's internal independence.  He supported the "Compromise" (Ausgleich or Kiegyezés) of 1867, which incorporated these ideas, with all his strength, leading the delegation that signed the actual accord.  Although he was the obvious choice as the first prime minister of the Hungarian half of the newly formed Austria-Hungary, he stood down in favour of Gyula Andrássy.
  After 1867 his health was weakened by continuous work and the attacks on him by disappointed radical patriots used up most of his strength. His reformist ideas were often rejected by Parliament.
  He died on 28 January 1876 and was buried with great pomp. Parliament created a law to remember his excellent service and ordered that a statue be created from national donations. Today one of the central squares of Budapest, Deák Ferenc Square is named after him, which is where three of the four lines of the Budapest Metro come together.
caption: Ferenc Deák, as illustrated in his obituary in the Illustrated London News
exif: {}