Béni Kállay

[1] Stephan von Kállay, Benjamin's father, a superior official of the Hungarian government, died in 1845, and his widow, who survived until 1902, devoted herself to the education of her five-year-old son.

[2] She engaged an excellent teacher in the person of Mihály Táncsics, a well-known populist tribune and revolutionary writer of Serb and Slovak descent, who was once imprisoned by the Austrians for seditious writings in 1847–48 and again in 1860 (the same Buda jail that Lajos Kossuth was incarcerated from 1837–40).

[1] In 1867 he entered the Diet of Hungary as Conservative deputy for Mühlbach (Szászsebes); in 1869 he was appointed consul-general at Belgrade, and in 1872 he visited the Vilayet of Bosnia for the first time.

Leaving Belgrade in 1875, he resumed his seat in the Diet, and shortly afterward founded the journal Kelet Népe, or People of the East, in which he defended the vigorous policy of Andrássy.

On 4 June 1882, he was appointed Austro-Hungarian minister of finance and administrator of the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the distinction with which he filled this office, for a period of 21 years, is his chief title of fame.