Biography of Dr. Elemér Hantos

Elemér Hantos was a Hungarian economist and one of the principal promoters of Central European and Pan-European integration during the interwar period. He was born in Budapest on November 12, 1880. He graduated from the Lutheran High School of Sopron and studied Law and Political Sciences at the University of Budapest. After studying in Vienna, Leipzig, Paris, Cambridge and Oxford, he obtained his doctorate at the University of Budapest.

Hantos embarked on a political career in 1910 and became a member of the Hungarian Parliament representing the National Party of Work. During World War I, Dr. Hantos published several books on the Austro-Hungarian wartime public finances. His financial expertise led him to be named Secretary of State at the Hungarian Ministry of Trade in 1917. As a representative of the Hungarian government, Hantos participated in negotiations between Germany and Austria-Hungary to form a Central European customs union.

In 1918, Hantos was appointed president of the Postal Savings Bank, which served for a brief period as the Hungarian central bank. In parallel to his political career, Hantos started to teach Finance at the University of Budapest in 1917. After the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Elemér Hantos abandoned his political career in Hungary and dedicated himself to the promotion of Central European economic integration.

In 1924, as an expert at the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, Hantos addressed various economic problems in Central Europe. During the interwar period, Hantos promoted Central European integration by publishing several books and articles and by conducting conferences on the economic situation in Central Europe.

To promote his idea of Central European economic integration, Hantos organized the first Central European Economic Conference with Julius Meinl in Vienna in 1925. At the end of the 1920's, Dr. Hantos decided to create the Central European Institutes in Vienna (January 1929), Brno (September 1929) and Budapest (May 1930), as well as the Central European Study Centre in Geneva.

Dr. Hantos was also a founding member of the Hungarian section of the Paneuropean Union, created by count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. He participated in numerous Pan-European conferences, facilitating the elaboration of the economic program of the Paneuropean Union and placing Central Europe at the center of the Paneuropean debate. For Elemér Hantos, this would help create a truly Pan-European economic union—decades later this dream would be realized in the form of the European Union.

Dr. Elemér Hantos died in Budapest in 1942.