Miklós Radnóti
Miklós Radnóti (born Miklós Glatter, surname variants: Radnói, Radnóczi; 5 May 1909 – 4 or 9 November 1944) was a Hungarian poet, an outstanding representative of modern Hungarian lyric poetry as well as a certified secondary school teacher of Hungarian and French. He is characterised by his striving for pure genre and his revival of traditional, tried and tested genres.
Also recorded as Miklos Radnoti
Miklós Radnóti

Public domain
- Name
- Miklós Radnóti
- Birth Name
- Miklós Glatter
- Born
- 5 May 1909
- Birthplace
- Budapest, Austria-Hungary
- Died
- November 1944 (aged 35)
- Place of death
- near Abda, Hungary
- Full name
- Glatter Miklós.
- Nationality
- Hungary
- Occupation
- poet · writer · translator · teacher
- Fields
- Hungarian poetry · translation from French
- Education
- University of Szeged
- Honours
- Baumgarten Prize · Hungarian Heritage Award
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Documentary summary
Miklós Radnóti (born Miklós Glatter, surname variants: Radnói, Radnóczi; 5 May 1909 – 4 or 9 November 1944) was a Hungarian poet, an outstanding representative of modern Hungarian lyric poetry as well as a certified secondary school teacher of Hungarian and French. He is characterised by his striving for pure genre and his revival of traditional, tried and tested genres.
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wikidata · Q442801 · wikipedia · Miklós Radnóti
In this article
Biography
Biography
Miklós Radnóti studied at University of Szeged. The recorded working language is Hungarian and French. The field of work recorded is Hungarian poetry and translation from French. Employment is recorded with Nyugat. Distinctions recorded are Baumgarten Prize and Hungarian Heritage Award.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Miklós Radnóti • Birth Name — Miklós Glatter • Born — 5 May 1909 • Birthplace — Budapest, Austria-Hungary • Died — November 1944 (aged 35) • Place of death — near Abda, Hungary • Occupation — Poet Miklós Radnóti (born Miklós Glatter, surname variants: Radnói, Radnóczi; 5 May 1909 – 4 or 9 November 1944) was a Hungarian poet, an outstanding representative of modern Hungarian lyric poetry as well as a certified secondary school teacher of Hungarian and French. He is characterised by his striving for pure genre and his revival of traditional, tried and tested genres.
Biography
Biography
Miklós Radnóti, born as Miklós Glatter, descended from a long line of Hungarian Jewish village merchants, peddlers, and pub keepers in Radnót, in what is now Slovakia.[1] At the time of his birth, Miklós Glatter's father, Jakab Glatter, worked as a travelling salesman for the Brück & Grosz textile company, which was owned by his brother in law.[2] He was born in the 13th district (Újlipótváros quarter) of Budapest, the capital city of the Kingdom of Hungary. At birth, his twin brother was born dead and his mother, Ilona Grosz, died soon after childbirth. His father remarried in 1911 with Ilona Molnár (1885–1944). In 1921 his father died of stroke, his guardian became his aunt's husband, Dezső Grosz, who was one of the owners of the textile company his father worked for until his death. Radnóti attended primary and secondary school in his place of birth and continued his education at the high school for textile industry in Liberec from 1927–28 on his uncle's advice. Then he worked as commercial correspondent in the familiar textile business company until 1930. Ultimately, Radnóti was able to prevail with desire for another education and began studying philosophy, Hungarian and French at the University of Szeged. In 1934, he finished his studies with the philosophical doctoral thesis The artistic development of Margit Kaffka. After graduation, he Magyarised his surname to Radnóti, after the native village of his paternal ancestors. In August 1935, he married his long-standing love Fanny Gyarmati (1912–2014), daughter of the owner of the respected Gyarmati printing house. The very happy marriage was unfortunately childless until his deportation. He gained his first professional experiences as secondary school teacher in the 1935-36 academic year at the Zsigmond Kemény Gymnasium in Budapest. In September 1940, he was conscripted to a labor battalion (a kind of unarmed military service, initially for those unfit for armed service, but increasingly, as the world war progressed, a punishment for citizens considered untrustworthy like leftists, dissidents, Jews) of the Royal Hungarian Army until December of that year, then from July 1942 to April 1943 for the second time. On 2 May 1943, he converted together with his wife from Judaism to the Roman Catholic faith. In May 1944, Radnóti's third military labor service started and his battalion was deployed to the copper mines of Bor in Serbia. After 1943, Hungarian Jewish forced laborers working in Bor's copper mines contributed to 50 percent of the copper used by the German war industry. The overseers of the forced laborers of Bor were particularly notorious for their cruelty. On 17 September 1944, the battalion was commanded to leave the camp on foot in two groups in a forced march to flee the advancing Allied armies. Radnóti was in the first group (about 3600 forced laborers), around half of the group perished. The overseers of the second group were ambushed by Yugoslav partisans before departure and all forced laborers survived. Radnóti endured inhuman conditions while being forced to walk from Bor to Szentkirályszabadja, where he wrote his last poem on 31 October.
Murder and its aftermath
Murder and its aftermath
In November 1944, because of their total physical and mental exhaustion, Radnóti and twenty other prisoners were fatally shot and buried in a mass grave near the dam at Abda, by a guard squad of a commander and four soldiers of the Royal Hungarian Army. Different dates of this mass murder have been given. Some publications specify a day in the period from 6 to 10 November. In the detailed and scientific exhibition of 2009 by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 4 November was claimed to be the date of death.[3] On 19 June 1946, the mass grave in Abda was exhumed, and personal documents, letters and photographs were found. On 25 June 1946, Radnóti was reburied in the Jewish cemetery of Győr, together with twenty-one other victims. On 12 August 1946, his widow, Fanni Gyarmati went to Győr with Gyula Ortutay, Gábor Tolnai and Dezső Baróti to identify the body of her husband that was exhumed for the second time. In his work titled Ecce homo (Canadian Hungarian Newspaper, 2011), Tamás Szemenyei-Kiss describes how at the time of the second exhumation in Győr, Fanni Gyarmati had not seen her husband and was shown several objects that had never belonged to Radnóti. Therefore, at the time of the third burial, she was no longer sure that the closed coffin really contained her husband's remains. Miklós Radnóti's third funeral service in Budapest was held in public on 14 August 1946. The Tridentine Requiem Mass was offered by Radnóti's former spiritual director, Fr. Sándor Sík. Gyula Ortutay gave a eulogy on behalf of his friends. Radnóti was laid to rest in the Fiume Road Graveyard in Budapest, in plot 41, grave number 41. The commander of the guards involved in the mass murder, Sgt. András Tálas, immediately joined the Communist Party of Hungary after the end of the Second World War, but he was arrested as part of a Stalinist political purge on 7 August 1945. He was tried and convicted by a post-war People's Court for his cruelty towards the slave labourers at the Bor concentration camp, and executed in 27 February 1947. Neither Radnóti's name nor the mass murder of Jewish prisoners near Abda, however, were mentioned in the voluminous prosecution file or during the trial. The other murderers' names remained unknown to the Hungarian people until 2006. There was a strictly confidential investigation conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs III during the communist era between 1967–1977, which identified four Royal Hungarian Army soldiers under of the command of Sgt. Tálas who were involved in the murder: Sándor Bodor, István Reszegi (or Reszegh; who both became long-time members in good standing of the ruling Hungarian Communist Party), as well as Sándor Kunos and János Malakuczi. No one else was ever indicted or prosecuted by the Communist single-party state. Sándor Kunos and János Malakuczi, however, who were not Party members, remained under covert surveillance by the Hungarian secret police (ÁVO).[11]
Reviews
Reviews
• Findlay, Bill (1980), review of Forced March, in Cencrastus No. 2, Spring 1980, pp. 45 & 46,
Image Gallery
Image Gallery
• Illustration — Statue in Budapest by Imre Varga • Illustration — Statue in Mohács by Imre Varga • Illustration — Bust in Mosonmagyaróvár • Illustration — Bust on Margaret Island • Illustration — Miklós Radnóti—ELTE School in Budapest—Zugló • Illustration — Stolperstein in Budapest • Illustration — Memorial plaque
Articles
Articles
• History of the Jews in Hungary • Hungary during World War II • The Holocaust
Identity
Identity
Miklós Radnóti is recorded as having received Baumgarten Prize and Hungarian Heritage Award. Recorded at birth as Glatter Miklós. Identity and origins. The authorities additionally record the heading Miklos Radnoti. His recorded languages were Hungarian and French. He married Fanni Gyarmati.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1909
Miklós Radnóti born at Budapest.
1944
Miklós Radnóti died at Abda.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Budapest.
Birth place
Abda.
Death place
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q442801: Miklós Radnóti
Reputable secondary · Wikimedia Foundation
- “Miklós Radnóti”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
scholarly publication
- Miklós Radnóti: The Complete Poetry, World Literature Today, 1981
Scholarly · Crossref registry · 1981
Bibliography (selection)
• Pogány köszöntő (Pagan Greeting), Kortárs, Budapest 1930. • Újmódi pásztorok éneke (Songs of Modern Shepherds), Fiatal Magyarország, Budapest 1931. • Lábadozó szél (Convalescent Wind), Fiatalok Művészeti Kollégiumának kiadása, Szeged 1933. • Újhold (New Moon), Fiatalok Művészeti Kollégiumának kiadása, Szeged 1935. • Járkálj csak, halálraítélt! (Just Walk Around, Condemned!), Nyugat Kiadása, Budapest 1936. • Meredek út (Steep Road), Cserépfalvi, Budapest 1938. • Naptár (Calendar), Hungária, Budapest 1942. • Orpheus nyomában: műfordítások kétezer év költőiből (In the Footsteps of Orpheus: Translations of Poetry of Two Thousand Year Old Poets), Pharos, Budapest 1943. • Tajtékos ég (Foamy Sky), Révai, Budapest 1946. • Radnóti Miklós művei (Works of Miklós Radnóti), Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, Budapest 1978, biography by Pál Réz • Miklós Radnóti, The Complete Poetry in Hungarian and English, McFarland & Company, Jefferson 2014,[12] Miklós Radnóti was Hungarian translator of works by Jean de La Fontaine and Guillaume Apollinaire. His works were translated into English by Edward G. Emery and Frederick Turner, into Serbo-Croatian by Danilo Kiš, into German by Franz Fühmann and into French by[13] Jean-Luc Moreau.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Zsuzsanna Ozsváth (2000), In the Footsteps of Orpheus: The Life and Times of Miklós Radnóti, University of Indiana Press. Page 2.
- 2.Zsuzsanna Ozsváth (2000), In the Footsteps of Orpheus: The Life and Times of Miklós Radnóti, University of Indiana Press. Page 1.
- 3.Online catalogue of the Exhibition, Hungarian Academy of Sciences; retrieved 17 January 2018.
- 4.Zsuzsanna Ozsváth , In the footsteps of Orpheus: the life and times of Miklós RadnótiIndiana University Press, Bloomington 2000; .
- 5.Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, Taylor & Francis, New York 2015; , Miklos Radnóti on Google Books, retrieved on 2018-01-17.
- 6.Death Blows Overhead: The Last Transports from Hungary, November 1944, European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI); retrieved 17 January 2018.
- 7.Article on Miklos Radnóti on the Website by the Poetry Foundation; retrieved 17 January 2018.
- 8.Final Poem,Translation 1 on the Website The HyperTexts, Translation 2 on the Website by Hungarian Academy of Sciences; retrieved 17 January 2018.
- 9.Grave of the spouses; retrieved 17 January 2018.
- 10., report on the Website Hungarian Spectrum, retrieved on 2018-01-19.
- 11.Tamás Csapody: Abdai gyilkosok (The Abda Killers) in: Aetas 25:1 (2010)
- 12.Online edition on Google Books.
- 13.WorldCat by OCLC, retrieved on 2018-01-18.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
scholarly publication
Miklós Radnóti: The Complete Poetry, World Literature Today, 1981Crossref registry
Verifiedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q442801: Miklós RadnótiWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
People, houses and institutions
Knowledge graph
People, houses and institutions
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Studied at
1- University of SzegedOrganisation
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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