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Illes Pap is in the photo. [He magyarized his name from Kohn in the 1910s.] He was my grandfather on my father's side, he wasn't religious at all. He needed no father, no religion, nothing. As a teenager he was sick and tired of the environment at home [in Dunafoldvar, later in Bekescsaba] and he went to Budapest, and from that time on actually, he was completely non-religious. He graduated from high school there, and then he also finished university in Budapest. He attended the Hungarian-German major, but he studied something at the Faculty of Philosophy too. The family believes that he gained two doctorates: one in linguistics and one in philosophy. Later he was a teacher of linguistics and literature, until the end.
As a student in Budapest, he became a member of a literary group, which was called the Kisfaludy Company at that time. He dealt with the works of Arany Janos [one of the most famous romantic poets in Hungarian literature], and with Lessing from German literature. He wrote a book [his literary studies were published]. Besides this there was an old series, sort of like 'Everyman's Library', which was probably much cheaper, and my grandfather's book about Ferenc Rakoczi [Prince of Transylvania, leader of the insurrection in 1703-1711] was published as part of this series.
This picture was taken at the turn of the century in Budapest. I could not say whether at that time, he was still a student there, or a young teacher in Kassa and [he had his photograph taken] on the occasion of a visit to Budapest. He was born in 1875, so he was 25 years old in 1900.
