Fraternity-Testvériség, 1963 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1963-05-01 / 5. szám

10

FRATERNITY

His assignment finished, Finta left Transylvania and went to Italy to study under Hildebrand. He then went to Paris to work under Rodin, who had had one of Finta’s brothers, known by the name of Zadori, as a pupil years before.4

In 1914, Finta married a distant relative, Eszter Finta, a former school teacher. She bore him a son, Sándor, who subsequently became a physician.5

With the outbreak of World War I, Finta was obliged to return home. He was drafted for military service — by the end of the war, he had taken part in over a hundred bayonet charges and been wounded seventeen times.6 He was in the battles of Lozsnica and Sabac; and when a bursting shell uncovered traces of an ancient Roman settlement on the battlefield, the Hungarian National Museum requested him to direct excavations of the site. Most of the findings, however, were shipped by the Germans to Berlin.7

After the armistice, in 1918, the County of Nyitra decided to erect a memorial in honor of the war dead. The memorial committee, headed by Bishop, and Count, Batthyányi, commissioned Finta. His work, carved from rose marble from Ruskica and rising 30 feet high, including the base, is described in an article by Karoly Lyka, the art critic. It is interesting to note that after the partition of Hungary in the Treaty of Trianon, the occupying states demolished all but one of the Hungarian war memorials on the territories they acquired. Finta’s monument in Nyitra was the only exception. As Father Bangha, a Jesuit of Eurpean fame, wrote: “This is what a war memorial should be like, compelling even the enemy to respect its spirit.” 8

4 Finta, op. cit.

5 Mrs. Catherine Finta, op. cit.

6 Potyondi, Pesti Napló, 28 February 1935, p. 8.

7 Postyeni Ujsag, 22 April 1918.

8 Potyondi, Pesti Napló, Ibid.