Szilárd Keresztes (1932) is a Hungarian Greek Catholic priest and retired diocesan bishop of Hajdúdorog. He led the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church for almost 20 years. From 1950 to 1955, he studied at the Greek Catholic Seminarium of Nyíregyháza. He became a priest in 1955. In 1957, he got a theological Ph.D. at the Theological Academy. From 1957 to 1960, he was an organizer priest in Kispest, and between 1960 and 1970 Keresztes was a deacon and cantor in Nyíregyháza. From 1961 to 1975, he was a theological teacher at the Theological Academy of Nyíregyháza. Between 1966 and 1969, he was a fellow at the Papal Hungarian Institute in Rome, where he got a license in the Faculty of Eastern Ecclesiastical Studies in the Papal Eastern Institute. In 1967, he became an agent of the State Security forces. He submitted reports under the codenames “Nyíri” and “Keleti.” He became a cathedral canon in 1970. In 1971–1976, Keresztes was an administrator parson in Nyíregyháza. From 1975 to 1988, he was a suffragan bishop of Hajdúdorog, and in 1987–1988 he served as the rector of the Papal Hungarian Institute. From 1988 to 2007, he was the diocesan bishop of Hajdúdorog.

Ort:
- Nyíregyháza, Hungary

Kertész, Imre

Imre Kertész (1929–2016), Hungarian Nobel Prize-winning writer and translator

Imre Kertész was born in Budapest in late 1929. As an assimilated Hungarian Jew, in June 1944 at the age of fourteen he was deported to Auschwitz and from there to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945. On his return to Hungary, he worked for a Budapest newspaper, Világosság, but he was dismissed in 1951 when it adopted the Communist Party line. After doing two years of military service, he began supporting himself as an independent writer and translator of works by German-language authors, such as Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Roth, Wittgenstein, and Canetti, who all had a significant influence on his writing.

Kertész's first novel, Sorstalanság (Eng. Fateless, 1992; see WLT 67:4, p. 863), a work based on his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was published in 1975. “When I am thinking about a new novel, I always think of Auschwitz,” Kertész said. This does not mean, however, that Sorstalanság is autobiographical in any simple sense. Kertész himself said that he used the form of the autobiographical novel, but that his novel is not autobiography. Sorstalanság was initially rejected for publication. When published eventually in 1975, it was received with compact silence. Kertész has written about this experience in A kudarc (1988; Fiasco). This novel is normally regarded as the second volume in a trilogy which begins with Sorstalanság and concludes with Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért (1990; Eng. Kaddish for a Child Not Born, 1997; see WLT 74:1, p. 205), a title which refers to the Jewish prayer for the dead. In Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért, György Köves, the protagonist of Sorstalanság and A kudarc, reappears. His Kaddish is said for the child he refuses to have in a world that permitted the existence of Auschwitz. Other prose works by Kertész include A nyomkereső (1977; The Pathfinder) and Az angol lobogó (1991; The English Flag; see WLT 67:2, p. 412).

Gályanapló (Galley diary; see WLT 67:2, p. 412), a diary in fictional form which covers the years between 1961 and 1991, was published in 1992. Valaki más: A változás krónikája (1997; I - Another: Chronicle of a Metamorphosis), continues this inner monologue in the form of notes made during in 1991–95. After the political upheavals of 1989, Kertész was able to make more public appearances. His lectures and essays have been collected in A holocaust mint kultúra (1993; The Holocaust as Culture), A gondolatnyi csend, amíg kivegzőoztag újratölt (1998; Moments of Silence While the Execution Squad Reloads), and A száműzött nyelv (2001; The Exiled Language).

After 1989, Kertész’s works were published in translation in several languages, including German, Spanish, French, English, Czech, Russian, Swedish, and Hebrew. His books were received as a shocking revelation by both critics and the public. This series of international successes eventually paved the way to Stockholm in 2002, where he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature by the Royal Swedish Academy.

Kertész lived for roughly fifteen years in the last two decades of his life in Berlin, and he gave most of his manuscripts and documents to archives in Germany. He died at the age of 86 in Budapest in the spring of 2016.

Ort:
- Budapest, Hungary

Keserü, Ilona

Painter. Graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Arts in 1958. She considers Ferenc Martyn her real master, who gave her lessons privately beginning in 1945. She made book illustrations (beginning in 1960) and designed sets and costumes for theatre plays (1967–1976). In 1968 and 1969, she exhibited at the Iparterv exhibitions, where she was the only female artist in the show. In the 1970s, she became a member of the Budapest Studio. Beginning in 1983, she taught drawing and painting at the University of Pécs (1991 professor, 2003 professor emerita). Her oeuvre is characterized by an instinctive propensity for colour and the conscious analysis of colour usage. Her painterly world built on free gestures and on the power of colours, and it has a certain sensual radiation. This may have been one reason why György Aczél, the leading cultural functionary, called her works “abstract pornography.” Since the 2000s, she has been researching effects of Cangiante, one of the four modes of Renaissance painting (shifts in colour made necessary by the limits of the original colour to be made darker or brighter).

Ort:
- Budapest, Hungary
- Pécs, Hungary

Keszi, Péter Kovács

Péter Keszi Kovács was born in Örvényszög-Polgár, in 1912. He studied in Balmazújváros and Debrecen. After his final exams he joined the army, but was seriously injured and had to leave. He continued his studies at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Geography and Ethnography. He worked with Pál Teleki (prime minister of the Kingdom of Hungary from 19 July 1920–14 April 1921 and 16 February 1939–3 April 1941), and actively took part in the life of the Institute of Researching Ethnics and Regions [Táj-és Népkutató Központ]. In 1938 he organised an exhibition which emphasized the problems of peasant life in Hungary. His career was interrupted by World War II, during which he was a prisioner of war in the Soviet Union. Upon his return to Hungary he wrote his dissertation about the economic life of Northern Tiszántúl. When the Institute of Researching Ethnics and Regions was abolished, he began work at the Museum of Ethnography with his previous colleagues: Péter Morvay and Ágnes Kovács. His duties at the museum included organising the social collecting system of the museum, and he later elaborated the concept of the Ethnological Archives. He continued working there until his retirement in 1973.
His brother, László Keszi Kovács, also became an ethnographer.

Ort:
- Budapest Kossuth Lajos tér 12, Hungary 1055

Keçmezi - Basha, Sabile

Sabile Keçmezi-Basha was born in 1954 in Koretin, a village of Dardana (Kamenica/Kosovska Kamenica). She was the first woman from Kosovo to graduate from the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Belgrade in 1977. She continued her postgraduate studies at the University of Pristina in the History Department, where she received her master's degree in 1980, and in 1984 she completed her doctorate studies. Sabile published a number of books, articles, reviews, and other manuscripts. She has attended various scientific gatherings in Kosovo and abroad. From 1978 until 2018, Keçmezi-Basha worked at the Kosovo History Institute. She is a member of the Presidency of the Association of Kosovo Writers.
From November 2001 until November 2004 Keçmezi-Basha was a member of parliament as part of the Democratic Party of Kosovo. Currently, Keçmezi-Basha studies Kosovo's contemporary history. She lives in Pristina and is a member of the European Academy of Arts, founded in 2002, in Luxembourg.

Ort:
- Prishtina