Erik Molnár

(literary pseudonyms, Erik Jeszenszki, István Pálfai, Lájos Szentmiklóssy). Born Dec. 16, 1894, in Novi Sad; died Aug. 8, 1966, in Budapest. Hungarian governmental figure, historian, philosopher, and economist. Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1949); member of the Communist Party from 1928.

Molnár graduated from the law faculty of the University of Budapest. He served as minister of social welfare (1944-47), minister of foreign affairs (1947-48; 1952–53), ambassador to the Soviet Union (1948-49), minister of justice (1950-52; 1954–56), and chairman of the Supreme Court (1953-54). Molnár was a deputy to the Provisional National Assembly during 1944—45, a deputy to parliament from 1945, and from 1948 a member of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers Party (since 1956, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party).

Molnár was director of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1949 and became chairman of the Hungarian Historical Society in 1958. His scholarly works are devoted primarily to ancient and medieval Hungarian his-tory and to problems of historical materialism and the economics of modern capitalism. He was a recipient of the Kossuth Prize in 1948 and 1963.