Hungarian historian Andras Gerö died today at the age of 70. He succumbed to a serious illness, the state news agency MTI reported, citing the family of the deceased. Gerö founded the Habsburg Institute in Budapest in 2002, which he headed until his death.
From 1991 to 2020 he held a professorship at the US-led Central European University (CEU), which had to relocate from Budapest to Vienna in 2019 under pressure from the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Guest professorships have taken Gerö to the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University in New York.
His main research areas were the history of Hungary from the mid-19th century to the end of the First World War, the history of Hungarian Jewry, the roots and flowering of Hungarian liberalism, and the history of the city of Budapest. Under his leadership, the Habsburg Institute endeavored to present the history of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy in a milder light than that achieved by national Hungarian historiography, which was often critical of the Habsburgs.
