Ignác Acsády
His father was a wealthy landowner who served as head of the Jewish community in Hajdúszoboszló for thirty years and as a member of the board of Hajdú County.
He began working as a historian in the 1880s and, making use of unpublished archival material related to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, he stressed the historical significance of economic classes, state finances, and population problems.
Influenced early in his career by Ferenc Deák's politics and József Eötvös's liberal ideas, he opposed Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza and supported the Egyesült Ellenzék (United Opposition), which at the time was led by Albert Apponyi and Dezső Szilágyi.
In his articles and an 1883 pamphlet called Zsidó és nem zsidó magyarok az emancipáció után (Jewish and Non-Jewish Hungarians after the Emancipation), he expressed support for Jewish assimilation and opposition to the immigration of Galician Jews to Hungary.
[2] Acsády wrote, among other works, Az Általános Államjog és a Politika Története (The Common State Law and the History of Politics) from 1875 to 1876, Az Osztrák Császári Czim és Magyarország (The Austrian Imperial Title and Hungary) in 1877, Zsidó és Nem Zsidó Magyarok az Emanczipáczio után (Jewish and Non-Jewish Hungarians after the Emancipation) in 1883, Széchy Mária in 1885, Magyarország Budavár Visszafoglalása Korában (Hungary at the Time of the Reoccupation of Buda) in 1886, Magyarország Pénzugyei I. Ferdinand Alatt (The Financial Affairs of Hungary under Ferdinand I) in 1888, and Közgardaszégi á Lapotsunk XVI.
[4] Acsády wrote the novel Fridényi bankja (Fridenyi's Bank) in 1882, which criticized the role of money in the contemporary world.
[1] As a fiction writer, Acsády blended realism with romanticism, depicting the social and economic issues of his age, the relations of the Christian and Jewish bourgeoisie and the nobility, and the omnipotence of money.
His last work was a study written for the Hungarian edition of Heinrich Graetz’s History of the Jews, which was published from 1906 to 1908.
