Distinguished Visitor,
The Széll Kálmán Foundation is a private, invitation-only, social debate group, currently with nearly 300 members. It was founded in late 2003 by five individuals with the intention of replacing the often summary and superficial debates mainly conducted for the public with in-depth socio-economic discussions of the members, facilitated by knowledgeable people and their presentations.
Our Foundation aims to provide a platform for creative people who want to make the homeland of Hungarians a success as equal partners in the region and in our wider environment. It is an honest, critical, intellectual meeting place for our members, where we share information on socio-economic, socio-philosophical, and practical political issues.
We want to provide a space for creative people who believe that work is about improving the quality of life so that our children and grandchildren can be free, that is, live in dignity and in control of their own destiny.
The life achievements of Kálmán Széll, a lifestyle conservative who lived from 1843 to 1915, is a faithful representation of our ambitions. He was an extraordinary man. Politician, finance minister, prime minister. He was an economist who founded and managed banks and established an agricultural model farm. All the while, he did not forget his place of birth, and founded a secondary school in Szentgotthárd. To improve the region's living conditions, he succeeded in building the Győr-Szombathely-Graz railway, which was already in operation in 1873. His motto as Prime Minister, and also in life was "Law, justice and rights", which is also the motto of our Foundation. It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of his career it was Ferenc Deák who wisely advised him to study economics beside law, as this was the key to his future.
The words of Albert Berzeviczy, in his eulogy at the 1928 commemorative meeting of the National Council for Public Education, faithfully describe the eponym of the Foundation: "he was assigned a difficult task as Minister of Finance, which he solved with purposeful confidence. He had to restore the disturbed balance of the public finances choosing means that did not prejudice the vital interests of the State and in a way that would ensure the maintenance of the restored balance.
130 years later, the words above have lost none of their relevance. The success of a country simply depends on good organisation, on a predictable and effective institutional system for the freedom, prosperity, and security of its people. The basic institutions that promote prosperity include the protection of property and the enabling of free enterprise. Both require that bureaucratic red tape and corruption that drain creative energy and discourage creativity be reduced to a minimum. Politics is not just about forcibly making groups of people happy for selfish or idealistic ends, but - to paraphrase Max Weber - about being a broker house for interests in which good causes are well managed.
Our Foundation is not a public organisation and therefore we do not wish to participate in public debates. The Board of Trustees of the Széll Kálmán Foundation has 6 members, and its chairman since autumn 2019 has been Zoltán Kovács, a businessman.
Zoltán Kovács
President
