Géza Szőcs

Kossuth and Attila József Prize-winning Transylvanian Hungarian poet, politician. His father István Szőcs (1928-2020), journalist, critic; his mother Ráchel Márton (1928), literary translator. He graduated from the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj in 1978, majoring in Hungarian and Russian. Between 1974 and 1977 he edited the trilingual student magazine Echinox. From 1977-1981 he was a literary staff member of the daily newspaper Igazság. Between 1979 and 1980 he was a Herder Fellow in Vienna for one year at the suggestion of András Sütő.

Between 1981-1982 he edited the samizdat publication Counterpoints with Károly Antal Tóth, Ilona Tóth and Attila Ara-Kovács. In 2012, it was discovered that his father was also an agent of the Securitate, and he reported on it.[5] Between 1985 and 1986, he was a researcher at the Institute of Literary History and Linguistics in Cluj-Napoca. From 1986-1989 he was a journalist in Geneva. From 1989-1990 he was the Budapest bureau chief of Radio Free Europe. In 1989 he became a staff member of Magyar Napló.

After the change of regime in Romania, he returned to Cluj-Napoca in 1990, where he worked as a journalist and editor and also took on a political role: between 1990-1991 he was the Secretary General of the Hungarian Democratic Alliance of Romania (RMDSZ), and between 1991-1993 he was its political vice-president. Since 1992, he has been the president of the Erdélyi Híradó Könyv- és Lapkiadó Kft. and a member of the editorial board of the Magyar Szemle since 1992. In 1996-1998 he became a member of the board of the Hungarian Civic Cooperation Association. Between 1996 and 2000 he was a member of the Supervisory Board of the Hungária Televízió Közalapítvány (HTVKA), the public foundation supervising Duna TV.

Since 2007 she has been a senior editor of Irodalmi Jelen. From 2008, he was a Fidesz delegate member of the Board of Trustees of the HTVKA. From 2010 to 2012, he was State Secretary for Culture in the Ministry of National Resources of the second Orbán government. President of the Hungarian PEN Club since 2011.

In February 2013, the Prime Minister appointed him Government Commissioner responsible for the preparation of Hungary’s participation in the 2015 World Expo in Milan. He triggered widespread protest in professional circles when he took a one-person decision to implement the second-place concept instead of the winning entry in the competition for the design of the Hungarian pavilion.

In October 2016, the suspension of Népszabadság was widely criticised as an “extraordinary blow” to press freedom in Hungary, especially as the archives are not accessible. “There are no economic reasons for this, nor should there be, the archive is part of Hungarian culture, part of the history of the Hungarian present,” he said.

She has five children. His daughter Petra Szőcs is a poet, film director and screenwriter.

He died on 5 November 2020 from complications caused by COVID-19. He was buried in Piliscsaba.