Fejtő was born Ferenc Fischl in the city of Nagykanizsa in 1909. His mother died when he was five and he was taken in by relatives in Zagreb. He attended a Piarist secondary school and was set to attend a college in Budapest, but numerus clausus laws - Fejtő was a Jew - kept him from being admitted. He decided to study at the University of Pécs, where he took Hungarian, French and German. Fejtő converted to Catholicism during his first year at university and attended the Pázmány University, a Catholic school, from 1929.
In 1932, Fejtő was sentenced to a year in prison for organising a Marxist study group. Another member of the movement Fejtő was part of - and a talent Fejtő recognised early on - was Attila József, who is today considered among Hungary's greatest poets. Fejtő parted ways with the communists because of their sect-like leadership, but he remained a committed, though critical, social democrat for his entire life.
Fejtő established the literary and social journal Szép Szó with Attila József and Pál Ignotus in 1935.
Ferenc Fejtő (right) speaking with the writer György Konrád during thepresentation of the Széchenyi Prize in Parliament on March 15, 2003.Photo: Lajos Soós (MTI)
In 1938, Fejtő wrote a scathing criticism of the Hungarian government's friendly relationship with the Nazis in the newspaper Népszava. The Hungarian "proletariat are more opposed to the Nazi demagogues than the middle class," he wrote - a statement which quickly resulted in a prison sentence for him for "inciting a class war". He fled after the verdict, making his way to Paris via Croatia, Italy and Switzerland.
In Ferenc Fejtő's home in Paris. Photo: Katalin Sándor (MTI)
Fejtő was the Paris correspondent for the left-wing Hungarian newspaper Népszava for seven years. He was also a member of the French Resistance during WWII.
After the war, he did not return home, but was made press chief at the Hungarian Embassy in France. He left the post in 1949 in protest against the Stalinist show trial of the Hungarian Communist László Rajk.
Fejtő became a French citizen in 1955. Until 1974, he was the French Press Agency's (AFP) expert on the East Bloc. From 1972 until 1982, he taught political science in Paris.
Fejtő returned to Hungary in 1989, for the first time since he fled, to attend the reburial of Imre Nagy, who was deposed and executed after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Fejtő was the recipient of many Hungarian and foreign prizes, including the French Legion of Honour, the Pulitzer Prize and the Széchenyi Prize.
