Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös nominatae XIX. [antikvár]

GYÖRGY LAKÓ IS 80 YEARS OLD t JÁNOS BALÁZS Department of General and Applied Linguistics, Loránd Eötvös University,Budapest According to the cold bibliographical data, György Lakó is a Professor Emeritus, Department Head and ordinary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was born in Jánoshalma on September 26, 1908, between the Danube and Tisza rivers, in Bács-Bodrog county, not far, that is, frorti Kiskőrös where Sándor Petőfi, one of the greatest Hungarian poets, was born. His father taught at the Catholic school there. His mother came from a family of Calvinist teachers. These circumstances proved to be of decisive importance in the life of György Lakó. Both on his paternal and maternal side he was influenced by the intellectual and moral world of Hungarian teachers. His pedagogical inclination and commitment to the cause of Hungarian education were surely determined by his parents. It must have been his mother and her parents, educated in the spirit of Protestant puritanism, who passed on to him their spiritual legacy, their brand of puritanism which became characteristic of his whole personality. This double attachment — both pedagogical and puritanic — determined his whole career: his activity as educator and scientific researcher, first at a grammar school, later at universities in this country and abroad as well as at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His puritanic mentality, however, only really came to the fore in Finland and Sweden, Protestant countries, instead of in Hungary which at that time was afflicted with feudal remnants and had not really reached a level of enlightened bourgeois thinking. It was György Lakó, among others, who recognized and criticized the absurdities of this thinking with deep irony and satirical fervour. It is easy to see why he has always been highly esteemed in Scandinavia — especially in Finland — and why he may be regarded as a type of scholar deeply affected by the Finnish puritanic spirit, modesty, decency, soberness and an unshakeable love of work. Among friends our colleague György Lakó frequently told us that he had three younger sisters, the eldest one being one and a half years, the youngest one five years younger than he. This, too, had influenced his later life since his first playmates were his sisters and their friends; in fact, he met girls