The native form of this personal name is Teleki Pál. This article uses the Western name order.
Pál Count Teleki de Szék (November 1, 1879 – April 3, 1941) was prime minister of Hungary from 1920 till 1921 and from 1939 till 1941. He was also a famous expert in geography, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a prominent leader of the Scouting movement.
Born in Budapest, Teleki is a very controversial person in Hungarian history, which was reflected in a long dispute in the Hungarian media in spring 2004 over a statue of him to be displayed in Budapest.
Some claim he was a moral hero, who tried his best to avoid Hungary's involvement in World War II, and sent Tibor Eckhard, a high ranking Smallholders Party politician to the United States, with money to prepare the government in exile, for when he and regent Horthy would have to leave the country. According to supporters of this view, his object was to save what could be saved, under political and military pressure from Nazi Germany, and, like the Polish government in exile to try to survive somehow during the war years to come.
According to the above view, he tried to avoid tension with neighbouring countries; and made a non-aggression agreement with Yugoslavia, at that time led by its Serbian king. But as Hungary was about to take part in the German attack on Yugoslavia (April 6, 1941) Pál Teleki as prime minister of Hungary committed suicide with a pistol on April 3, 1941 to show his disagreement, and not wanting to lose face.
Opponents, however, point out that he issued 12 anti-Jewish laws: first of all, the numerus clausus in 1920, he wrote the preamble of the Second Anti-Jewish Law (1939) and he prepared the Third Anti-Jewish Law (1940). He also signed 52 anti-Semitic decrees during his rule, and members of his government issued 56 further decrees against Jews. Later he denied his writing of the preamble of the Second Anti-Jewish Law, and said that if he had had the chance to word it, he would have presented a stricter one. Ferenc Szálasi, Hungarian Nazi leader (see: Arrow Cross Party) was given amnesty in 1940, during Teleki's second rule, and the Nazi movement became stronger under Teleki's rule. In October 1940, he allowed German tank groups to pass through Hungary's territory into Romania. He proposed an "everlasting friendship treaty" to Germany, and tried to convince its leader on November 20, 1940 to deport all the Jews from Europe . On the same day, the Hungarian government joined the Trilateral Convention, admitting the European hegemony of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under the terms of which, if a state not yet at war should attack the Axis Powers, Hungary would declare solidarity with the attacked party.
Nevertheless, he was an outstanding expert on geography and socio-economic affairs in pre-WWI Hungary, and a well-respected educator as well. His maps were an excellent composition of social and geographic data, even by today's well-developed GIS point of view.
He is well-known even today for his role promoting the Scouting movement between the two World Wars. Count Teleki served on the World Scout Committee of the World Organization of the Scout Movement from 1929 until 1939 and was Camp Chief of the 4th World Scout Jamboree.