BETHLEN, STEPHEN BETHLEN DE, COUNT ) , Hungarian statesman, was born Oct. 8, 1874, at Cornesti (Gernyeszag), Transylvania. His father, Count Stephen Beth len, was a member of the famous family that gave Gabriel Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania, to Hungarian history. His mother was Countess Helen Teleki. The son went to school at the Theresianium in Vienna, then studied law at the University of Budapest and also obtained the diploma of the academy of agriculture at Magyarovar. He then travelled in Europe and the United States and on his return home took charge of the manage ment of his large estates—estates which were sequestrated after the Treaty of Peace by the Rumanian Government.
In 1901 he was elected to parliament as a member of the Liberal opposition. Prior to the World War, Count Tisza offered Count Bethlen a portfolio in the cabinet, which was declined. The Emperor Francis Joseph appointed him a privy councillor, but until he became prime minister in 1921 he never held office.
After the Hungarian revolution of Nov. 1918, and during the ensuing regime of Count Michael Karolyi, Count Bethlen took a leading part in creating the counter-revolutionary organization which, when the Bolshevists came into power, took shape as the emergency Government of Szeged, and of which he was the chief representative in Vienna. (See HUNGARY.) When the Hungarian Peace Delegation went to Paris Count Bethlen was one of the principal delegates, and it was under his personal direction that the Hungarian memorandum in relation to Transylvania was drafted. Ten months after the Treaty of Trianon had been signed, and a few days after King Charles had made his first fruitless effort to regain the throne of Hungary, Count Bethlen accepted the invitation of the regent, Admiral Horthy, to form a cabinet in consequence of the resignation of Count Paul Teleki.
In Oct. 1921 he achieved a notable diplomatic success by con cluding at the Conference of Venice an amicable agreement with the Austrian Chancellor regarding western Hungary (Burgen land). For months Austria and Hungary had been on the verge of hostilities over the ownership of this territory which under the Peace Treaty had been allotted to Austria. In consequence of the Venice conference the important town of Sopron and its environs, after a plebiscite, were ceded back to Hungary. In the same month—Oct. 1921-Count Bethlen had to face an other national crisis when King Charles for the second time endeavoured to regain his throne. The firmness shown by Count Bethlen in concert with the regent undoubtedly saved Hungary from national extinction.
The elections rendered necessary by the expiration of the man dates of the existing Parliament returned Count Bethlen to power in June 1922. This second Government of Count Bethlen completed the scheme of land reform, re-established and reconsti tuted the upper house, created a new basis of suffrage, approved radically new standing orders for Parliament, ratified agreements settling outstanding political and economic difficulties with neigh bouring states, and last but most important of all achieved the financial and economic salvation of Hungary. The courage of Count Bethlen in accepting office in his country's darkest days had been rewarded.
The economic reconstruction of Hungary became possible al most solely owing to Count Bethlen's personality and to his in dividual efforts. In the spring of 1923 he appealed in Paris to the Reparation Commission so to suspend the Reparation sword of Damocles as to permit Hungary to remain alive. At that time the state was faced with bankruptcy and the people with ruin. Count Bethlen took his political fortune in his hand, and pledged his proud countrymen to accept the financial control of the League of Nations. The Reparation Commission, by the casting vote of France, refused Count Bethlen's request. He went on a desperate pilgrimage to London, Paris and Rome to get that decision reconsidered. He was a stranger to practically all the Allied Ministers, yet thanks to his transparent integrity and rea sonableness he succeeded. Within 18 months the Reparation Commission had suspended the Reparation charges, the League of Nations had arranged a plan of reconstruction, the Hungarian Parliament had agreed to all the League's demands of control, and a loan of about £Ii,000,000 was floated successfully on the money markets of the world—principally in London and mainly through British support. That would never have been achieved if Count Bethlen had been less patient or determined.
By June 1926, thanks largely to the self-sacrifice of the Hungarian people and their willingness to follow the lead of their prime minister, the success of the reconstruction scheme was achieved and the League Commissioner-General withdrew from Budapest. In December 1927 the last part of the League loan was handed over to the Hungarian Government for investment purposes. The Budget was in perfect equilibrium and the cur rency established.
The discovery at the beginning of 192 5 of a plot to forge French bank notes, organized by Prince Windisch-Gratz and M. Nadossy, Chief of the Budapest Police, with the alleged object of financing the recovery of some of Hungary's lost possessions, created widespread sensation as well as great embarrassment for Count Bethlen and his Government. Prolonged investigations and public trials resulted in the imprisonment of Windisch Gratz, Nadossy and others, with the complete vindication of Count Bethlen.
In the general election of Dec. 1926 Hungary showed its deep ened confidence in Count Bethlen by returning him once more to power by a greatly increased majority. The combined Opposi tion succeeded in obtaining only 37 seats in a house of In Jan. 1927 Count Bethlen successfully concluded Hungary's first post-war political treaty. He visited Rome and signed with Signor Mussolini a Pact of Friendship, one of the most impor tant clauses of which accorded to Hungary the use of the port of Fiume. In order to take full advantage of the facilities at Fiume it was necessary also to enter into negotiations with Yugoslavia. These were also initiated by Count Bethlen under friendly and favourable circumstances. The signing of the Italo-Hungarian Treaty was generally admitted to be a considerable political suc cess for Count Bethlen, particularly in conjunction with the con clusion of commercial treaties with Czechoslovakia and Yugo slavia.
Count Bethlen in Nov. 1927 introduced a law for the modifi cation of the Numerus Clausus Law by which greater opportuni ties were to be given in Hungarian Universities to Jewish stu dents.
Throughout 1927 the Council of the League of Nations was occupied with the question of the powers of the Mixed Arbitral Court in relation to the compensation claims against Rumania by Hungarian optants. This case attracted world-wide attention, but as Count Bethlen was himself an optant and therefore pe cuniarily interested he abstained, with characteristic scrupulous ness, from taking part in the discussions bef ore the League.
Count Bethlen's term of office ended in 1931. He had been in power longer than any prime minister in Europe. He married Countess Margit Bethlen, a talented poetess, and has three sons. He belongs, like his ancestors who raised armies for Calvinism, to the Reformed (Calvinist) Church. (W. Go.) THEOBALD VON (1856 192I ), German statesman, was born on Nov. 29, 1856, at Hohen finow, near Berlin. He was descended from the Frankfort banking family of Bethmann, which attained great prosperity in the i8th century, and a branch of which was founded by his great-grandfather Johann Jakob Hollweg, who had married a daughter of the house.
Having risen through the regular legal and official stages of promotion, in 19o5 he was appointed Prussian Minister of the Interior and in 1907 secretary of state for the Imperial Home Office, and vice-president of the Prussian Ministry. At the time of Bethmann-Hollweg's appointment to the chancellorship in 1909, internal affairs, under his predecessor, Prince Billow, had reached a deadlock in the reichstag owing to the revolt of a sec tion of the Liberal-Conservative bloc against the proposal to establish death duties as part of the reform of the finances of the empire. It was not until the general elections of 1912 had transformed the situation by bringing a great accession to the strength of the moderate National Liberals and the Left, es pecially the Social Democrats, that the Government was able to reckon upon a more amenable majority.
In the interval Bethmann-Hollweg endeavoured to conciliate the Catholic Centre by a policy of compromise in matters which had threatened to lead to a renewal of the Kulturkamp f , such as the denunciation of the Reformation in the Papal Encyclical of 191 o and the Catholic demand for the modification of the Jesuit law. He secured the final abrogation of this law under stress of war conditions in April 1917. Bethmann-Hollweg was likewise the sponsor of the new constitution for Alsace-Lorraine which in 1911 established the government of that territory of the empire upon the basis of popular representation in a terri torial assembly and of admission, though without full State rights, to the Federal Council. He was less successful with the vexed question of the Prussian franchise, which, in 191o, he at tempted to solve by proposing a direct system of election while retaining in a modified form the local division of the electorate according to income-tax assessment into three classes. His bill was ultimately rejected by the reactionary Chamber of Deputies.
He was equally unsuccessful in dealing with an outbreak of militarism in Nov. 1913 at Zabern (Saverne) in Alsace, where the population, exasperated by the truculence of a young officer, was subjected to the arbitrary exercise of martial law by the colonel in command of the garrison. Bethmann-Hollweg's treat ment of the incident satisfied neither the reactionaries nor the advanced parties, and, for the first time in the history of the reichstag, a vote of censure was passed upon the Chancellor.
In 1914 Bethmann-Hollweg became famous by his remark to Sir Edward Goschen, British ambassador in Berlin, that the Belgian guarantee was "a scrap of paper." Over unrestricted submarine warfare he divested himself of responsibility, having declared in Jan. 1917, "I can give Your Majesty neither my as sent to the unrestricted submarine warfare nor my refusal." By the middle of July 1917, Bethmann-Hollweg had lost all support in the reichstag. The Conservatives and National Lib erals were alienated by his Prussian franchise policy and his conflicts with the higher command. The Left and the Catholic Centre, in which Erzberger with his so-called Peace Resolution (adopted by the reichstag on July 19) had acquired the upper hand, were convinced that the Allied and Associated Powers would place no confidence in the overtures of men with the past of Bethmann-Hollweg and Zimmerman. Finally, on the mor row of the publication of the second Prussian Franchise Edict, on July 14, 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff came to Berlin in order to hold conferences with the chiefs of political parties re garding the terms of the "Peace Resolution." The Chancellor could not tolerate this military interference with his own depart ment, and the emperor, confronted with an ultimatum from his two indispensable military leaders, accepted the Chancellor's resignation. Bethmann-Hollweg retired to Hohenfinow and took no further part in politics beyond writing his Reflections on the World War (1919). He died at Hohenfinow on Jan. 1, 1921, after a brief illness.