BANFFY, DEZSO (DESIDERIus), BARON (1843-191I) , Hungarian statesman, was born at Klausenburg on Oct. 28, and died in Budapest on May 24, 1911. As lord lieutenant of the county of Belso-Szolnok, chief captain of Koval- and curator of the Calvinistic church of Transylvania, Banffy exercised in fluence outside parliament from 1875 onwards; but his public ca reer may be said to have begun in 1892 when he became speaker of the house of deputies. As speaker he continued, however, to be a party-man (he had always been a member of the left-centre or government party) and materially assisted the government by his rulings. He was a stringent adversary of the radicals, and absented himself from the capital on the occasion of Kossuth's funeral on April I, 1894. On Jan. 14, 1895, the king, after the fall of the Szell ministry, entrusted him with the formation of a cabinet. His programme, in brief, was the carrying through of the church reform laws with all due regard to clerical suscepti bilities, and the maintenance of the Composition of 1867, whilst fully guaranteeing the predominance of Hungary. He succeeded in carrying the remaining ecclesiastical bills through the Upper House, a triumph which brought about the fall of Kalnoky, the minister for foreign affairs. In the ensuing elections of 1896 the government won a gigantic majority. The corrupt practices at this election were the pretext for the fierce opposition in the House which he henceforth had to encounter, though the meas ures which he now introduced (the Honved Officers' Schools Bill) would, in normal circumstances, have been received with general enthusiasm. Banffy weathered these storms, and his subsequent negotiations with Austria as to the quota and commercial treaties, to the considerable political advantage of Hungary, even enabled him for a time to live at peace with the opposition. But in 1898 the opposition secured the dismissal of Banffy, and passion ran so high that on Jan. 3, 1899, Banffy fought a duel with his most bitter opponent, Horanszky. On Feb. 26 Banffy resigned, to save the country from its "ex-lex," or unconstitutional situation ; sub sequently he contributed to overthrow the Stephen Tisza ad ministration, and in May 1905 joined the Kossuth ministry.
See article, "Banffy," by H. Marczali, in Pallas Nagy Lexikona, KU 17.