Gusztáv Gratz

Gusztáv Gratz (30 March 1875 in Gölnicbánya – 21 November 1946 in Budapest) was a Hungarian politician, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1921.

From 1896 he was an employee of the Pester Lloyd, a correspondent of the Cologne Gazette from 1898, while Budapest Rapporteur of the Vienna newspaper Die Zeit in 1906, he joined the Neue Freie Presse.

The journal and the society set themselves the goal of eliminating the backward social conditions in Hungary and to advocate for agricultural reform and to the spread of the franchise.

In 1906 he acquired the parliamentary seat of the constituency Újegyház in Transylvania, and was until the collapse in 1918, worked in the group of deputies of the Transylvanian Saxons.

From 1912 he held the post of executive director of the National Association of Hungarian Industrialists (Országos Gyáriparosok Szövetsége).

As a liberal economist, he sat down firmly committed to the idea of an economic alliance between the German Reich and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

From June to September 1917 he held the office of the Hungarian Finance Minister, in turn, he served as section chief of the monarchy from the trade negotiations at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, which won him great political prestige.

Although it was after ten weeks in prison again set free, and it was brought against the participants in the restoration trial process for the crime of rebellion never came to a verdict, the unfortunate outcome of the second return attempt of King Charles disruption meant in his political career.

Connection to the political and public life he had not lost even after that, he regularly wrote editorials for the Pester Lloyd and took part in the work of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Executive Vice President of the UDV was Jakab Bleyer, the real guiding spirit of the Germans in Hungary, but did not have the confidence of the Hungarian government.