HABSBURG INSTITUTE: FIRM IN THE SADDLE

While hundreds of young university teachers do not get any support, András Gerő’s research institute obtains a real estate.

András Gerő, spokesman of the ’Democratic Charter’ and editor of the yearbook ’Anti-Semitic Public Speech in Hungary’ is the head of the Budapest-based Habsburg Historical Institute which has a headquarters now in a 120 m2 office rented for a monthly HUF 370 000. The institute has a budget of ’only’ HUF 140 million for this year because of general restrictions and that is why the institute wants to reduce its expenses by buying a real estate. The institute has only a couple of persons on its staff.

The institute started its work in 2003 with a HUF 20 million property and a HUF 230 million support from the Ministry of Education headed by Bálint Magyar who returned the favours of his former adviser, András Gerő. Miklós Gáspár Tamás, left-wing philosopher criticized the action saying that Mr Gerő could bring that support to one of the universities, too. It is characteristic that at the same time this year 400 young university lecturers will not have a support of HUF several hundred thousand as the Ministry of Education has not written out the competition for the Békésy and Széchenyi grants because of the restrictions which affect Apáczai Public Endowment, too – this latter helps Hungarian universities beyond the borders but this year the public endowment gets only HUF 170 million instead of last year’s HUF 1 billion.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó