After completing his studies, he spent a long period (1868 to 1870) abroad, as was customary at the time, mainly in Germany, England and France, where he was introduced to the royalist aristocracy.

It was at his house that he met Pierre Guillaume Frédéric Le Play, the famous conservative sociologist whose work was to have a major influence on his intellectual development.

Despite he owned a villa in London, he mostly spent time with the British royal family in the Buckingham Palace due to his close friendship to Queen Victoria and Edward VII.

[2] Beyond his talent as an orator and fluency in six languages, Albert Apponyi had wide-ranging interests outside politics, encompassing philosophy, literature, and especially music and religion, namely Roman Catholicism.

He visited the United States three times, first in 1904 and last in 1924, where he engaged in lecture tours and befriended leading public figures, including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

"[4] He considered his first political activity to be the role he once played alongside Ferenc Deák as a university student, when he was present as an Italian interpreter at a meeting with a delegation from Dalmatia.

A serious and long crisis ensued, during which Franz Joseph sought Apponyi's opinion, and which ended with the appointment of Baron Dezső Bánffy, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, as Prime Minister on 17 January 1895.

Apponyi was so taken by the idea of the upcoming millenary celebrations that on Christmas Day he proclaimed a "treuga Dei" in his party's organ, the National Newspaper.

For this reason, he did not approve of the Independence Party's obstruction of the recruitment bill, but as president he conducted the House's often stormy negotiations objectively and urged the delegations that came to see him to maintain their confidence in Parliament.

Apponyi was again the one who initiated the reconciliation of the parties, so that by breaking down the partitions, the whole public opinion would stand united behind the government in the struggle that was forced upon the country.

However, the then Foreign Minister, Baron István Burián, was so dismissive of the committee when it appeared in Vienna that all three resigned their mandates at an open session of the House of Representatives.

He lived there even after the collapse of the Communist Party and only returned home in November 1919, when his presence was indispensable in the unfolding negotiations initiated by Sir George Clark of the British Foreign Office's Oriental Department, the Entente's chief envoy in Budapest.

After World War I, Apponyi's most notable public office was his appointment in late 1919 to lead the Hungarian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference to present Hungary's case to the Allied and Associated Powers assembled there to determine the terms of the peace treaty with Hungary, which subsequently became known as the Treaty of Trianon on account of it having been signed in the Grand Hall of the Palace of Trianon.

Albert Apponyi on 16 JANUAR, 1920 "Yet, should Hungary be placed in a position when she must choose between the acceptance or refusal of this peace, then, as a matter of fact, her choice lies in the question: should she commit suicide simply in order to escape a natural death?"

[8]Apponyi's mission culminated in a speech to the negotiators at the Quai d'Orsay on 16 January 1920, which he delivered in French, simultaneously translated himself into English, and concluded in Italian.

[8]This performance was widely acclaimed but remained eventually fruitless as the Allies refused to amend the terms of the peace treaty, or even to discuss them with the Hungarian delegation.

Even so, Apponyi's reputation in Hungary was enhanced by the episode[3] and he came close to being chosen as provisional head of state, a position that however went to Miklós Horthy on 1 March 1920.

[9] After leading the Hungarian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, he remained active in politics and diplomacy, as an opposition member of Parliament, legitimist advocate of the Habsburgs as Kings of Hungary, and regular representative at the League of Nations.

This meeting, together with the tragedy that had taken place in the space of a few days, had a shattering effect on Apponyi, and there was talk in political circles at the time that he would resign his mandate and retire from public life under the impact of the events.

But this did not happen: on the contrary, he opposed the dethronement proposal with all his energy, and in his speech to the National Assembly on 3 November he vehemently protested against the King's surrender to the enemy.

On 16 February, during the last session of the National Assembly, he took the petition and its proposal to the Governor, accompanied by Baron József Szterényi and Tivadar Homonnay, who declared before the three of them that he would neither commit nor tolerate any illegality.

On another occasion (Székesfehérvár, 6 June 1926), he stressed that the legitimists were not planning any action to make their principles a reality; the time for this would come only when it would be possible without endangering the existential interests of the nation.

In this proclamation, addressed to the nation after the King's first attempt to return to power, the following basic statements were made: 'the provisions of the pragmatica sanctio concerning common possession and mutual defence have been rendered null and void, and therefore the King will never use the military and financial power of Hungary to assert his claims on other countries; if divine providence should ordain that he should rule over other countries, this circumstance will never in the least affect the independence of Hungary as a state, either from the military or from the foreign policy point of view. "

On behalf of the government, Apponyi then presented the Hungarian position in a powerful exposé, and proposed that the matter be referred to the Permanent International Tribunal in The Hague.

There was a clear perception among the members of the Conference and the international press present that Apponyi's speech was one of the most significant events of the session, yet his motion was not adopted by the relevant sub-committee to which he was referred for consideration.

He has also written extensively in foreign reviews and newspapers in the past, explaining Hungary's special position in the monarchy, arguing and promoting its rights and aspirations.

At that time, several American statesmen, teachers, businessmen and industrialists tried to keep the United States interested in Europe and remind it of its responsibility for the destiny of humanity.

Such was his stature among survivors of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy that Otto von Habsburg made a short trip from Belgium to Geneva for the sole purpose to lay a wreath on his bier.

A four-meter-diameter laurel wreath was sent by Benito Mussolini, whom Apponyi had met and admired, and the quasi-legendary Horn of Lehel (hu) was brought from his constituency in Jászberény where it was (and still is) kept in the local museum.

[16] A plaque on the Buda Castle Hill house which Apponyi inhabited from 1901 or 1902 until his death, Werbőczy (now Táncsics Mihály) street 17, honors his memory and that of his son György, a liberal politician who was arrested by the Gestapo and briefly deported to Mauthausen in March 1944 for his opposition to the persecution of Hungarian Jews.