Livia Teleki's father, Ignjat Kornveis

My father Ignjat Kornveis. He was born in Veliki Varadin, which was in that time part of Hungary, in 1882. He was born in the same place where I was born. I went to visit my birth place many years later with my husband. At that time it was already in Romania (Oradea in Romanian, Nagyvarad in Hungarian, Gross Wardein in German). It is a very nice and interesting small town with many monuments and parks. I do not know what kind of school he finished, I only know that he was a merchant and that he sold things and that he also worked in freight forwarding. He also traded abroad. He was a very handsome man, my father. My parents met in 1921. My father came to Belgrade as Hungarian soldier, and he was shot in the arm during some kind of fight. He went to the hospital, and when he was released from the hospital he went on a walk with a friend of his, Hungarian, through a park near the place where my mother used to live. My mother was sitting there in the park, sewing with her friends, they were talking in Hungarian. My father came to her, introduced himself, they started talking, and soon became very good friends. My father was already married at that time, but he fell in love with my mother, he proposed her, and went back to Veliki Varadin to divorce her wife with whom he had two sons. My mother went to live in Veliki Varadin with my father, and then they moved to Belgrade. My father began working. I was five years old then, it was 1927. As far as I can remember it did not go well and then he took ill with heart problems. He died shortly after that. I was young when he died, it was 1929.