Antal Ullein-Reviczky (1894-1955), Hungarian scholar, diplomat and anti-Nazi politician. He also was Hungarian Minister in Stockholm during the period 1943-1945.
Antal Ullein-Reviczky is a fundamental character in the novel The Wallenberg Dossier, not only inspiring and determining Wallenberg’s rescue actions aimed at the Jewish population in Hungary but also driving the reconstruction plan that Allied forces would enact in Hungary once Nazi Germany was defeated.
The author of the novel The Wallenberg Dossier has a particular sympathy for the character of Ullein-Reviczky, to the point of making him originate from a noble family and grant him the title of count. Throughout the novel Antal Ullein-Reviczky will have great influence, with his sensibility, on Raoul Wallenberg.
Ullein-Reviczky was opposed Nazism and was a key figure in the Hungarian resistance movement. In 1943 he was appointed Hungarian Minister to Sweden, in a desperate attempt to develop relations with the Allied forces, through Sweden, and oppose the invasion of Nazi Germany.
In the role Hungarian Minister Ullein-Reviczky participated to confidential meetings with American and British intelligence representatives in Stockholm, aimed at planning a resistance force to Nazi Germany, facilitating Allied intervention in Hungary, aiding the Jewish population of Hungary and outlining the reconstruction of Hungary after the end of the war. Hitler called him the “evil genius of the Hungarian government”.
Wallenberg and Ullein-Reviczky had an extraordinarily close connection, the latter being fundamental to the success of Wallenberg’s life-risking rescue actions. Ullein-Reviczky was appointed Professor of International law at Debrecen University in 1931.
“After World War II, Ullein-Reviczky moved to Istanbul with his family – his wife Lovice Louisa Grace Cumberbatch, was the daughter of the former British consul there – and then to Geneva, where, in 1947, he published his memoirs Guerre allemande-paix russe in French – in 1993 the work was published in Hungarian, Német háború-orosz béke, and in 2014 published in English, German War-Russian Peace. In 1950 the family moved to London where Ullein-Reviczky was the official representative for the Hungarian government in exile Free Hungary.
Antal Ullein-Reviczky never gave up his work to better Hungary’s future and did his best to affect change even when he was far away from his beloved homeland. This remarkable visionary and servant of Hungary divined the one most important and necessary ingredient for the Hungarian soul’s survival – liberty; and wore his red, white and green pro libertate lapel pin, along with the crimson ribbon of the Légion d’honneur every day, until he passed away in London on June 13, 1955.
His outstanding services have been acknowledged with numerous awards and recognitions, these precious documents and objects are available for study even today, as his only child Lovice Mária Ullein-Reviczky preserved them conscientiously over the past decades and returned them to Hungary following the political changes. It is important to emphasize this fact, as very few artefacts have been preserved in this way, and are hence rarely available for historical research.” Source The Antal Ullein-Reviczky Foundation https://ura-hungary.com
