Paul Lendvai

Paul Lendvai (94) is an Austrian journalist, TV commentator and writer of Hungarian origin, who is considered one of the foremost experts on Central and Eastern Europe. In the 1980s, he built and led the Central and Eastern Europe desk in the public television broadcaster ORF, and later he was the main editor of the World Service of Austrian Radio Service. He comes from a Jewish family in Budapest. After the Second World War, he studied law and started working for Social Democratic newspapers. In 1953, he was arrested by the Communist regime and forced to stop working for three years. After the Hungarian uprising was quashed in 1956, he managed to flee to Vienna via Prague and Warsaw. In 1959, he received Austrian citizenship, became a Financial Times correspondent and published for other periodicals. He founded and led Europäische Rundschau, a quarterly review for politics, history and the economy. For many years, he was also a moderator of the TV debate program Europastudio. He has authored many books, in some of which he critically analyzes the situation in Hungary led by Mr. Orbán. In 2001, he founded, along with his wife Zsoka Lendvai, the publishing house Nischen Verlag specializing in translation of Hungarian works.