Ferenc Kemény (sports manager)

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Ferenc Kemény (1860–1944)

Ferenc Kemény, born Ferenc Kohn on 17 July 1860 in Nagybecskerek (now Zrenjanin, Serbia), was a Hungarian sports leader, teacher, writer and peace activist. He changed his surname after converting to Christianity.

Kemény helped found the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894 and was the first secretary-general of the Hungarian Olympic Committee. He worked with Pierre de Coubertin and helped organize the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, where Hungary won several medals.

He believed sport could promote peace. He co-founded the Hungarian Peace Society, organized peace conferences, and wrote about education and peace. His works include One Way to Solve the Peace Problem (1906) and The Philosophy of War. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902.

In Hungarian sports, internal conflicts and anti-Semitic attacks grew, leading to his resignation from his positions in 1907. He then focused on education and pedagogy. During World War II, under Nazi occupation, he and his wife Jolán Schäffer chose to end their lives to avoid deportation to a ghetto; they died in Budapest on 21 November 1944.

Kemény is remembered with statues and a stadium named after him in Eger, and he is honored in the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.