author
László Ottlik
1895–1945
A major voice in Hungarian political thought between the world wars, his work ranged across political science, sociology, aesthetics, and legal philosophy. Though less widely known today, he wrote with unusual breadth and a strong interest in the meaning of politics, democracy, and public life.
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About the author
Born in Budapest on October 17, 1895, László Ottlik was a Hungarian philosopher, political scientist, and university teacher. Sources on his life describe him as an important figure in interwar Hungarian thought, with interests that reached beyond politics into sociology, aesthetics, jurisprudence, and journalism.
After earning degrees in both state sciences and the humanities, he began publishing in the early 1920s. Later studies of his work present him as a conservative social thinker who explored questions such as the nature of politics, the role of majority and minority, parliamentary government, dictatorship, and the relationship between mass society and leadership.
Ottlik died in Budapest in 1945. His name is not as familiar to general readers as some of his contemporaries, but modern scholars and editors continue to revisit his writing as part of the history of Hungarian political and intellectual life.