Széchenyi, István, Count

Széchenyi, István, Count

(born Sept. 21, 1791, Vienna, Austrian Empire—died April 8, 1860, Döbling, near Vienna) Hungarian reformer and writer. Born to an aristocratic Hungarian family, he fought against Napoleon and then traveled extensively in Europe. He returned to Budapest to found the Hungarian National Academy of Sciences (1825) and wrote several works that called for economic reforms and urged the nobility to pay taxes to modernize Hungary. He led projects that improved roads, made the Danube River navigable to the Black Sea, and built the first suspension bridge at Budapest. In the 1840s he lost his following to the more radical Lajos Kossuth. Entering the cabinet in 1848, Széchenyi lost his sanity when conflict with Vienna erupted; he was removed to an asylum near Vienna and later committed suicide.