József Baron Eötvös de Vásárosnamény (Buda 1813 – Pest 1871), Hungarian writer and statesman, entered into public service and drew on his European travels to introduce progressive ideas into Hungarian politics, e.g. on prison reform and Jewish emancipation. He also propounded his ideas through novels and plays. The moralistic anti-Werther The Carthusian monk, (1839-41) was among the first Hungarian-language novels, followed by the historical novel Magyarország 1514-ben (“Hungary in 1514”, 1847), which explained the catastrophic defeat of that year from the short-sightedness of the Hungarian nobility. Éljen az egyenlőség (“Long live equality”, 1840-44) was a social comedy, and his most enduring work, A falu jegyzője (“The village notary”, 1844-46), a critical study of social and political relations in rural Hungary.

His leadership came to the fore in 1848, when together with Ferenc Deák and István Széchenyi he served in the short-lived autonomous Hungarian government. After the Hungarian defeat in 1848-49, Eötvös retreated to Munich, where he set forth his ideas on the state and public life in the prestigious, though rambling, A tizenkilencedik század uralkodó eszméinek befolyása az álladalomra (“Ruling ideas of the 19th century on the State”, 1851-54). More succinct was his Über die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in Österreich, a defence of civil liberties against the nationalist reliance on popular sovereignty, which appeared in Leipzig in 1850. This line of thought he continued after his return to Budapest, in Die Garantien der Macht und Einheit Österreichs (1859), which favoured a compromise between ministerial responsibility and Austrian imperial centralization. In the 1860 he gradually regained political prominence, became president of the Hungarian Academy in 1866, and returned to ministerial office in the 1867 cabinet that was formed after the Ausgleich. He was the only active 1848 participant to be part of the post-1867 arrangement, and returned to some of his liberal ideals of the earlier decades. His greatest achievements as minister were the passing of the Bill of Emancipation for the Jews and the Elementary School Law (1868), which provided mandatory education for all children from the age of six to twelve.

Eötvös died in Pest on 2 February 1871, celebrated for his contribution both to the country’s political progress and to Hungarian literature.