Kánya Kálmán útja a külügyminiszteri székig
The Road of Kálmán Kánya to the Leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Summary/Abstract: Kálmán Kánya was one of the chief actors of Hungarian foreign policy in the interwar period, and its official leader between 1933 and 1938. His person and activity are given a special flavour by the fact that he gave to both his post and the tasks it involved a new interpretation. The present study follows the successive stations on the way to the leadership of the foreign ministry, and the parallel development of his personality. It was as a student of bourgeois origins that Kánya entered the Eastern Academy at Vienna, which prepared for consular service. In the foreign apparatus of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy he at first worked in the consular branch, than was transferred to the ministry, where he led the press department. Although his work was partly administrative, partly political, this latter aspect gradually became more dominant than usually. He aimed to fulfil his ambitions through a more effective direction of the press. Between 1913 and 1918 he functioned as the Monarchy’s ambassador in Mexico. These years spent in isolation further affirmed the already elitist tendency of his intellectual stance. After his return he was given a post in the Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs. Alongside his undeniably outstanding personal abilities, an important role in his rise was played by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian state and the consequent emergence of an independent Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs. As the chief secretary of the ministry, he was able to vindicate a key role for himself. At the same time, his activities and especially his personal style earned him a lot of enemies. As a sometime member of the Imperial foreign apparatus, he was even less inclined than most of his contemporaries to accept the serious loss of prestige that Hungary was forces to face after WW I. In the course of his activity in the forein service, it became increasingly clear that he was before all interested in the conceptional questions of foreign policy. This particular interest certainly played a role in his assuming the Hungarian embassy at Berlin from 1925. His chief aim was tightening the German-Hungarian relationship, but all he was able to achieve in the end was to improve somewhat the initially rather negative view of his own personality. Although he was expected to retire after his service in Berlin, eventually prime minister Gyula Gömbös offerred him the direction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to enlist his help in the execution of his own ideas of foreign policy. Since Kánya was a man of will himself, however, he soon managed to shift the balance in the traditional relationship between the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs in his own favour, which, in turn, made this relationship rather disharmonious.

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