A polgári arisztokrata. Kánya Kálmán jellemrajza a kezdetektől a miniszteri posztig
The Bourgeois Aristocrat. Kálmán Kánya’s Character from the Start to his Becoming Foreign Minister

Summary/Abstract: The grand old man of Hungarian foreign policy in the interwar period, Kálmán Kánya graduated at the consular academy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and started his dip-lomatic career in the foreign service of the Monarchy. After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, he played a crucial role in setting up the independent ministry of foreign affairs. As chief secretary, he was the de facto leader of the ministry. Relinquishing this title in 1925, he became Hungary’s ambassador in Berlin. Kánya sought to facilitate his country’s international recognition and growth as well as the realization of the fancy of territorial re-vision through cooperating with Germany. With the consent of his prime minister, István Bethlen, he also tried to assist the cooperation of Germany with Hungary’s other potential partner in foreign policy: Italy. Even though Kánya was a very talented Hungarian diplo-mat, whose attitude was in complete harmony with how he imagined and represented the goals of Hungarian foreign policy, his activity in Berlin was controversial and fell short of the expectations. Germany did not regard Hungary as a partner, as it had become the stan-dard-bearer of European revisionism, and the difficulties hindering the cooperation with Italy could not be overcome either. The problems in foreign trade that arose as a result of the global economic crisis also took a toll on Hungarian-German relations. Kánya was not an easy man to get on with, which – together with his supposed extreme right-wing con-nections – made him unpopular among the representatives of German foreign policy, who had aversion to him. Maybe partly because of the moderate success of his policy in Berlin, Kánya looked for new fields to realize his ambitions and in 1933 he agreed to become for-eign minister in Gyula Gömbös’ government. In this capacity, he could witness the emer-gence of an Italian-German-Hungarian cooperation, but this already came about with the participation and the leadership of another Germany. This Germany was governed by that Nazi party and its leader, which and whom Kánya strongly despised.

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