17 Facts About Imre Pozsgay

Imre Pozsgay served as Minister of Culture, Minister of Education and Minister of State.

Imre Pozsgay was a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 1994.

In 1982, his calls for reform led to a falling-out with the party's leader Janos Kadar which in turn moved Imre Pozsgay to become Secretary-General of the party's mass organization, the Patriotic People's Front under President Gyula Kallai.

Imre Pozsgay was a member of the Politburo until its dissolution in 1989, and Chairman of the College of Political Communication, Political Science and Nationalities.

Jointly with Otto von Habsburg, Imre Pozsgay was the sponsor of the Pan-European Picnic of 19 August 1989, where hundreds of East Germans who were visiting Hungary were able to cross the previously impenetrable Iron Curtain into Austria.

Imre Pozsgay had donated his personal documents and records to the Hoover Institution Library and Archives in 1989, and authorized the institution to make them public after twenty years, in 2009.

Richard Sousa, director of the Institution, estimated that Imre Pozsgay will be recognized by history as a leader who helped the transition to democracy in his country.

Imre Pozsgay was the party's candidate for the position of President of Hungary in 1990.

Imre Pozsgay was elected MP from the MSZP's Bacs-Kiskun County Regional List, after defeated by Jozsef Szajer in Sopron constituency.

Imre Pozsgay served as leader of its parliamentary group from May until November 1990, when he quit the caucus and the party itself, and became an independent MP.

In May 1991, Imre Pozsgay formed a new party, which he headed himself alongside Zoltan Biro, called the National Democratic Alliance.

Imre Pozsgay was a lecturer at the Karoli Gaspar University of the Reformed Church in Hungary since 2003.

Imre Pozsgay became an adviser to the Hungarian Democratic Forum in 1997, he was the party's candidate in the 1998 parliamentary election but did not gain a mandate.

Imre Pozsgay returned to the political sphere in 2005, when he became a member of the National Consultation Body led by Viktor Orban, the President of Fidesz.

Imre Pozsgay became a member of the board advising Prime Minister Viktor Orban on the conceptual foundations of the new fundamental law.

Imre Pozsgay died on 25 March 2016, at the age of 82, his family told Magyar Tavirati Iroda.

In 2010 Imre Pozsgay received the Dr Rainer Hildebrandt Human Rights Award endowed by Alexandra Hildebrandt.