Background
Károlyi was born on March 4, 1875 in Fót, Hungary. The Károlyi family were an illustrious, extremely wealthy, Roman Catholic aristocratic family who had played an important role in Hungarian life since the 17th century.
Károlyi was born on March 4, 1875 in Fót, Hungary. The Károlyi family were an illustrious, extremely wealthy, Roman Catholic aristocratic family who had played an important role in Hungarian life since the 17th century.
Károlyi entered Parliament in 1910 and soon became the leader of a faction of the Party of Independence. During the ensuing years he developed the extreme doctrines that Hungary should reduce its ties with Austria to a minimum, follow a policy of reconciliation with its neighbors, gain the national support of its non-Magyar inhabitants by cultural concessions, and introduce democratic reforms, including land distribution. When the official policy, which was the opposite of this in every respect, was clearly about to result in military defeat in 1918, Károlyi's theses found widespread support, and popular pressure forced the King-Emperor Charles I to appoint Károlyi minister president. He took office on October 31, 1918, at the head of a government composed of "Independence" politicians, radicals, and Social Democrats. On November 16 Hungary proclaimed itself a republic and elected Károlyi president. Most of his assumptions had already been disproved. France and England had refused to change their attitude toward his regenerate Hungary, the country's neighbors had pressed territorial claims, and the non-Magyars had rejected his concessions as inadequate. Internal conditions were so chaotic that Károlyi was unable to carry out any but a few of his projected reforms. On March 20, 1919, his government resigned on receipt of a harsh Allied note. The government's Socialist members then accepted the leadership of Béla Kun. Soon afterward, Károlyi left Hungary; he thereafter spent many years in exile and poverty, the counterrevolutionary government having confiscated his estates. In May 1946 he returned to Hungary, where he was welcomed as an ex-president and subsequently sent to Paris as ambassador to France, but in 1949 he resigned this post in protest against what seemed to him a flagrant miscarriage of justice, the spectacular purge trials in Budapest. He died at Vence, France, on March 20, 1955.
During the First World War, Károlyi had started out as supporter of the war, but as the war continued, Károlyi had become the war's most notable critic in Parliament.
Parliament (1910), member of the National Assembly of Hungary (1945-1947)
On 7 November 1914 in Budapest, Károlyi married Countess Katalin Andrássy de Csíkszentkirály et Krasznahorka, with whom he had three children. Károlyi's wife was a member of one of Hungary's most powerful families, and this marriage won Károlyi the protection of his influential father-in-law.
