HUNGARY/FILE: Hungarian village remembers French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's family.

Record ID: 721239

  • Title: HUNGARY/FILE: Hungarian village remembers French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's family.
  • Date: 22nd February 2007
  • Summary: (CEEF) SZOLNOK, HUNGARY (RECENT) (REUTERS) SARKOZY NAME ON GRAVE STONE
  • Embargoed: 9th March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,History
  • Reuters ID: LVAA74US4NTXDYKJLFBE2CXPETI0
  • Story Text: In a small Hungarian village people have a fond memories of the Sarkozy family, who were once landowners in the area. But there is some resentment that the French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy appears to be denying his Hungarian roots.
    French presidential candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, has fans far beyond France. Take Alattyan, a small Hungarian village of 2,000 people, which is rallying behind the French presidential candidate.
    Alattyan has every reason to love the Sarkozy family. The family held lands nearby and Nicholas' father, Pal and his brothers, spent summers in the village with their great uncle, Lajos Toth-Maar. The brothers enjoyed the rural life with dinners, card games, balls and hunting.
    The Sarkozy summer mansion used to stand where a water tower is today, but now all that remains of the summer house is a drawing by a local artist and old family friend.
    Both the Toth-Maar and the Sarkozy families have had reputations among the villagers for being benevolent landowners.
    "People here keep their fingers crossed for him, because people think of both the Maar and the Sarkozy families very positively. They helped people in the village a lot. They were the type of landowners who helped people. For example, they bought and built houses for their permanent workers, they paid good salaries to people, and they always paid on time," local historian Lajos Mosonyi said.
    But life was not all glamour. Although the family won noble status under the Habsburgs in 1628, its nobility remained minor and the family was far from wealthy.
    Pal's father, Nicolas' grandfather had a very respectable job as a city councillor in nearby Szolnok. But most of what the family had was inherited from Pal's grandfather and spent on providing apartments for his children.
    Their mansion in Alattyan was torn down in 1930 and from that point the Sarkozys spent their visits in the Maar mansion, which was looted and confiscated by the Communists in 1948.
    One person in the village who vividly remembers the Sarkozy brothers, is Jusztina Ivanics. Her god-mother was the housekeeper and her god-father the butler in the Maar mansion and the young Ivanics often helped them in the kitchen.
    She enjoyed being in the 'castle' and seeing the young gentlemen visiting the Maar family.
    "They were handsome, tall young men. They were so handsome young men that at the time I did not see such men anywhere else, they were real gentlemen. I remember during the summer they wore very nice sandals, knee socks, shorts and very nice shirts. Their hair was combed back, I remember that especially. Of course I only said hello to them. They went around with the boys and girls, obviously. I remember them as young men with lots of charm, but of course at the time I couldn't quite put it like that," Ivanics said about Pal and his brothers.
    The family was largely forgotten in the turmoil of post-war Hungary and the decades of communist oppression that followed. Pal fled Hungary at the end of the war, partly out of fear the police were looking for him and partly for the adventure.
    Mosonyi legend has it that Pal found a corpse by the river bank and sneaked his identification papers into the man's pockets. His journey through Austria and Germany took him to France where in 1949 he married Andree Mallah, leaving her when his son Nicolas was a small boy.
    But while most people in Alattyan support Nicolas in his presidential campaign, recent remarks he has made about not being Hungarian have caused resentment. The Hungarian press widely reported his reply in a French television programme to a question about his nationality, in which he answered "I'm not Hungarian either, just as everyone in France is French above all nationality."
    Most people in Alattyan seem to have heard about the statement and some are outraged by it.
    "His ancestors are Hungarians, so why does he deny it? He comes from this Hungarian land," villager Tibor Sandor said.
    The Sarkozy family crypt still stands in the cemetery in Szolnok. As Nicolas Sarkozy gained fame people started to look for his roots and the family crypt was found, cemetery manager, Imre Felegyhazi-Torok said.
    Felegyhazi-Torok is also disappointed by Sarkozy's efforts to distance himself from his Hungarian past.
    "We generally like him. But there's no doubt that there's been some resentment here recently, because he does not owe up to his Hungarian roots," Felegyhazi-Torok said.
    But the village historian thinks it is an understandable reaction.
    "He wants to become the French president, so obviously he has to say that he is French even if deep in his heart he may feel otherwise," Mosonyi said.
    Critics say that current immigration regulations pushed through by Sarkozy, who will run in the April/May election, would have prevented his father from becoming French.
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