Background
Gábor Baross was born on the 6th of July, 1848 at Barossháza now Pružina near Trencsén.
Gábor Baross was born on the 6th of July, 1848 at Barossháza now Pružina near Trencsén.
Gábor Baross was for a time one of the professors there under Cardinal Kolos Vaszary. After acquiring considerable local reputation as chief notary of his county, he entered parliament in 1875. He at once attached himself to Kálmán Tisza and remained faithful to his chief even after the Bosnian occupation had alienated so many of the supporters of the prime minister.
lieutenant was he who drew up the reply to the malcontents on this occasion, for the first time demonstrating his many-sided ability and his genius for sustained hard work.
In 1883 Gábor Baross was appointed secretary to the ministry of ways and communications. Baross, who had prepared himself for quite another career, and had only become acquainted with the civilized West at the time of the Compromise of 1867, mastered, in an incredibly short time, the details of this difficult department.
His zeal, conscientiousness and energy were so universally recognized, that on the retirement of Gábor Kemény, in 1886, Gábor Baross was appointed minister of ways and communications. He devoted himself especially to the development of the national railways, and the gigantic network of the Austro-Hungarian railway system and its unification was mainly his work. But his most original creation in this respect was the zone system, which immensely facilitated and cheapened the circulation of all wares and produce, and brought the remotest districts into direct communication with the central point at Budapest.
The amalgamation of the ministry of commerce with the ministry of ways in 1889 further enabled Baross to realize his great idea of making the trade of Hungary independent of foreign influences, of increasing the commercial productiveness of the kingdom and of gaining every possible advantage for her export trade by a revision of tolls. This patriotic policy provoked loud protests both from Austria and Germany at the conference of Vienna in 1890, and Baross was obliged somewhat to modify his system. This was by no means the only instance in which his commercial policy was attacked and even hampered by foreign courts.
But it was in the field of economics that he principally achieved his fame. A large bronze statue of him was reinstated there on 6 December 2013 after several years of major works for the new Budapest Metro Lincolnshire 4. The day of his burial was a day of national mourning. In Budapest today he is commemorated by a square (Hungarian: tér) named in his honour, Baross tér, at the front of Budapest Keleti railway station.
