Count Johann Nepomuk Mailáth (Pest 1786 – Munich 1855) was born as son to the government minister Count Joseph Mailáth. He was raised in German, acquiring proficiency in Hungarian during his studies in Eger/Erlau (c. 1800) and the Law Academy in Győr/Raab (1802-04). After a brief stint as a legal professional he entered government service, but a serious eye disease forced him to retire in 1813.
During his long illness he relied on his wife and daughter for reading and writing and developed a literary interest. In 1817 he edited, with Johann Paul Köffinger, an important medieval German manuscript from an ecclesiastical library (Koloczaer Codex altdeutscher Gedichte, 1817, with an important version of the Reinhart Fuchs tale). This, and his collection of old German poems (Auserlesene altdeutsche Gedichte, 1819), established his reputation among German scholars in Hungary and allowed him to establish links with prominent Romantic philologists such as Gustav Büsching.
During this time Mailáth also collaborated with Joseph von Hormayr in the context of the periodicals Archiv für Geographie, Historie und Geschichte and Taschenbuch für vaterländische Geschichte. He, Georg Gaal and Alois Mednyánszky were Hormayr’s closest Hungarian associates in Vienna, strengthening his Austrian Reichspatriotismus and the notion of a Gesamtmonarchie: separate monarchies united in their subsidiary position under the Habsburg Crown.
Through Hormayr Mailáth established contact with the pre-eminent Hungarian writer Ferenc Kazinczy; Mailáth’s own developing literary ambitions are manifest in his collection of Gedichte and his German translation of Magyarische Gedichte (both 1825), the latter also containing a historical survey of Hungarian poetry. Kazinczy introduced him into Hungarian literary circles, where his verse was translated, as were his adaptations of folktales, for the periodicals Aurora, Hébe and Muzárion. A collection of Magyarische Sagen und Mährchen appeared in 1825.
Younger Hungarian authors like Jozsef Bajza and Ferenc Toldy were less enthusiastically inclined, however, and in the later 1820s Mailáth turned to history-writing. His output around 1830 shows how he also strove to re-orient himself towards a Vienna readership: a Praktische Ungarische Sprachlehre (1830) was followed by histories, Die Krönung ungarischer Könige (1830), Der ungarische Reichstag im Jahre 1830 (1831), and a multi-volume Geschichte der Magyaren (1828-31). A theatrical interest is evinced by reviews, some plays performed with various success in Vienna and Buda/Pest (Der junge Ehemann, 1828; Die Zwillingsschwestern, 1832), and a biography of the actress Sophie Müller (1832).
Mailáth became politically active in the 1830s. He sat in the Hungarian Diet sessions, wrote extensive reports on their sessions and engaged in strenuous debates on issues like religion. During these years, his extensive Geschichte des österreichischen Kaiserstaates (1834-50) appeared, and he founded a wide-ranging periodical which appeared in Pest between 1839 and 1848 under the title Iris, drawing in prominent Austrian authors such as Franz Grillparzer, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Adalbert Stifter, and Johann Nepomuk Vogl.
In 1843-44 Mailáth was active in the conservative daily Nemzeti Újság. A faithful follower of the Conservative party line, he also overemphasized his own role, e.g. his conflict with Kossuth. In 1844 he withdrew from Nemzeti Újság and political controversialism, and returned to scholarly writing.
The revolution of 1848 forced him to leave the country. Unable to find employment in Vienna, he, like Hormayr before him, took refuge in Munich, where he remained until his death. He was made a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, completed the final volumes of his historiographical works, but lived in penurious circumstances with Henriette, his daughter and life-long assistant. He was asked to instruct the Bavarian fiancée of Emperor Franz Joseph, Elisabeth “Sissi”, on Austrian and Hungarian history. This tuition, which the ageing Mailáth (in spite of his indigence) provided free of charge, may have laid the basis of the future Empress’s Hungarian sympathies. Hopes for preferment vanished when his royal pupil left Munich for Vienna; Mailáth committed suicide, together with his daughter, on 4 January 1855.
