In the past few years, Gáspár Miklós Tamás has received a fine envelope, delivered by courier service. It contained the manuscript of a speech by Viktor Orbán, together with a friendly cover letter from his cabinet. Sometimes Hungarian Prime Minister quotes Tamás in his speeches. And after long years of silence, he has invited his former idol, who is now his harshest critic, to coffee. It was a political issue in Hungary. He didn't go there, says Gáspár Miklós Tamás. It sounds pretty even-tempered.
The 71-year-old philosopher sits in the study of his small apartment in downtown Budapest, surrounded by overflowing bookshelves and dozens of books. He blows smoke from his cigar into the air. "I considered whether or not to accept the invitation," he says. "Finally I thought: He knows what I think about him. And just chatting with the sole ruler of Hungary? No."
Tamás has been one of the most outstanding figures in Hungarian public life for decades: philosopher, former anti-Communist opponent of the regime and liberal-conservative politician, now a radical leftist and Marxist. A man of encyclopedic education who enjoys legendary status in Hungary. Who still participates in demonstrations and talks off the cuff like a tribune.
Tamás is a publicist who polarizes like no one else in his home country. He writes vehemently, relentlessly and tirelessly against Orbán's "ethnonationalist-reactionary-right-wing extremist one-man state". However, he also writes just as critically about the misconduct by the opposition or independent media. However, he does it consistently without hitting the belt.
Yves Herman / REUTERS
Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán: "Ask him something privately? Of course not!"
This is probably why he is respected in all political camps in Hungary, a country whose public climate has been hateful and deeply poisoned for decades. He is considered brave and incorruptible, someone who does not throw dirt around. And who, if appropriate, shows solidarity with political opponents. It's called TGM in Hungary.
"What do you write to praise Ceausescu?" - "Nothing"
Gáspár Miklós Tamás was born in the Transylvanian Cluj (Romanian Cluj, Hungarian Kolozsvár) in 1948 and comes from a Hungarian-Jewish family. His parents - the father a journalist, the mother a nurse - were in activists of the banned Communist Party and spent a long time in prison. His Jewish mother saved a prison sentence from being deported to Auschwitz.
After the war and the seizure of power by the communists, the parents could have had a career in the party, but decided not to. "They quickly found the new system immoral and rejected it," says Tamás. "Even as a teenager I myself had no illusions and knew that it was not an authentic socialism."
Tamás studied philosophy and then worked for a culture and literature magazine in Cluj. It was there that his path as an opponent of the regime began in February 1974. When his editor asked him during an editorial meeting what he would write in the upcoming issue in praise of Romanian dictator Ceausescu, he replied: "Nothing." He didn't think too much, says Tamás, that it was an instinctive answer. The next morning, the secret police, Securitate, arrested him.
From then on, he had to appear for questioning for months. He was banned from writing and was only allowed to work as a proofreader. Four years later, he left Romania in the face of imprisonment. Because he did not want to go to a western country, he moved to Hungary.
In Budapest, Tamás got a job at the Eötvös-Loránd University - and after two years here too he was banned from working, now because of his texts in underground magazines, among other things in "Beszélö" (speaker), the most important opposition publication he co-founded in Hungary at the time , From then on he made his living as a translator and guest lecturer at western universities, including in Great Britain and the USA.
Dark view of Hungary and Europe
In Hungary, Tamás was one of the most important opponents of the regime from the mid-eighties. Many of his texts played a pioneering role or became manifestos. At an illegal demonstration, he publicly called for free elections and in 1988 co-founded the liberal "Bund Freier Democrats" (SZDSZ), the leading opposition party of the Hungarian turnaround. At that time the young Viktor Orbán also admired him deeply - so much that he later named his only son after him: Gáspár.
In 1990, Tamás became a member of parliament and SZDSZ managing director. But he soon doubted the way the system would change and his own liberal-conservative worldview. Because while the old functional elite shamelessly enriched themselves in an often fraudulent privatization process, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people became unemployed. many areas of Hungary are impoverished. When his party was coalitioned with the communists from 1994, he withdrew from active party politics.
SZILARD KOSZTICSAK / EPA-EFE / REX
Autocrats Erdogan, Orbán: close friendship
Under the impression of a failed transformation, but also of globalization, Tamás wrote "Post-fascism" in 2000 - a theoretical treatise on how modern democratic societies break with universalist principles of the Enlightenment. In it, he was one of the first intellectuals to predict developments that have been taking place under Orbán since 2010 - at a time when liberal democracy was still considered the undisputed model of political victory in history. What he could not have foreseen: In early 2011, he himself fell victim to one of the first purges of the Orbán regime: together with some colleagues, he was released from the Philosophical Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences.
Since then, Tamás' image of Hungary and Europe has become increasingly bleak. "Our societies today are somewhere between rootlessness, barbarism and doom," he says. "Of course, this does not mean that morally justified protests are not necessary or that there are no societies that represent a lesser evil. But we have to be prepared for systems like Putin, Erdogan or Orbán to last for years or maybe decades become."
Tamás lived in extremely poor conditions for many years after his release in 2011. An unworthy condition that nobody in Hungary bothered about and that says a lot about the country's political culture. He has been receiving his statutory pension since last year, which enables him to have a modest existence.
Tamás has never complained publicly about his poverty. But after he was released, did he ever think of asking Orbán privately for anything? For a job or a research assignment? "Of course not," he says indignantly. "I am convinced that he would have fulfilled my request. But suppose I had asked him for something - how would I be in front of myself?"
