16 Facts About Gyula Peidl

Gyula Peidl was a Hungarian trade union leader and social democrat politician who served as prime minister and acting head of state of Hungary for 6 days in August 1919.

Gyula Peidl's tenure coincided with a period of political instability in Hungary immediately after World War I, during which several successive governments ruled the country.

Gyula Peidl was born on 4 April 1873 in Ravazd, Gyor County.

Gyula Peidl was one of the founding members of the General Consumer Cooperative in 1904.

Gyula Peidl was elected secretary of the organisation in 1908.

Gyula Peidl served as a Board Member of the National Workers' Insurance Fund.

Sandor Garbai, the Chairman of the Central Executive Council summoned Peidl and communicated his request to form a government, as well as a list of ministers, which Peidl reluctantly accepted because of his closeness to the former cabinet.

Gyula Peidl's government tried to demonstrate to the Allies its break with the previous government and its willingness to pursue a policy of moderation.

Also on that day, Gyula Peidl's government ordered the withdrawal of the printed currency of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the currency of the monarchy was reinstituted into legal circulation.

Gyula Peidl received a communication from Vienna announcing that the Allies would support the government if it included bourgeois elements, which encouraged the counterrevolutionaries to accelerate their plans, backed by Traian Mosoiu, the Romanian military governor of Budapest, but rejected by the Allied representative.

Gyula Peidl demanded, with threats of arrest, the resignation of the government.

Gyula Peidl went into exile in Austria on 18 November 1919, after receiving an increasing number of death threats from far-right paramilitary groups.

Gyula Peidl resided in Vienna and Sankt Radegund bei Graz, where he worked as a proofreader, until his return to Hungary in November 1921, where he resumed his trade union activity.

Gyula Peidl actively participated in the restructuring process of the Social Democratic Party as a prominent member of the moderate and anti-communist wing.

Gyula Peidl was elected Member of Parliament for Szeged in the 1922 parliamentary election.

Gyula Peidl retired from politics just before the 1931 parliamentary election.