On behalf of the admirers of historian John Lukacs who passed away on Monday and the whole of Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán offered his condolences to the mourning family, Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister’s press chief informed the Hungarian news agency MTI.

In his message Mr Orbán wrote he was shocked to learn that “the internationally renowned authority on history and owner of the Hungarian Corvin Chain Award for Merit is no longer with us”.

“While family chronicles tell stories about our personal roots, researchers of history point out universal features, the drivers of our fate which influence not only individuals, but entire nations and even the whole of humanity. With his knowledge and ability to grasp the essential, John Lukacs, or Lukács János as we knew him in Hungary, served not only his country and his chosen country, but the entire world as well,” Mr Orbán wrote.

He added that “we are grateful that even as a famous professor he was proud of his Hungarian identity, and represented the Central European worldview without which it would hardly be possible to understand the history of Europe and the West in the 20th century.”

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)