Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)
work of preparing the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, and he was also elected Member of Parliament. He was employed by the Ministry of Justice during the ministerial term of Deák’s supporter Boldizsár Horváth. Later Kozma also worked at the Royal Supreme Court. This was housed in an apartment building in Ferenciek tere until its new palatial headquarters were built by Alajos Hauszmann in Kossuth Lajos tér in 1896. (Hauszmann had had a similar commission when he raised the building to house the Royal Court of Budapest and the Court for Districts V and VI. The opening ceremony of the Palace of justice, an edifice of much larger proportions, was one of the events highlighting the Millenary Celebrations when the keystone of the building was put in place by Francis Joseph 1 himself on 6 October 1896.) Qualified by his professional skills and personal merits to fill higher positions, Kozma was appointed Supreme Public Prosecutor in 1871, commissioned with the work of organising the entire body of prosecutors. By 1 January 1872, the latter was ready to start its work. As a senior state attorney Kozma was guided by a keen sense of justice coupled with genuine human sympathy. Once he said this of himself: "I am cautious and considerate to the point of indulgence in the practice of my stern profession. I have a great regard for human rights as 1 do for personal liberties, and I even have a regard for misfortune.” The word "misfortune" is here to be read, in a criminological sense, as "offence” or "crime", and Kozma, as he said, did all he could to extend "decent protection to the most unfortunate". These few sentences might be regarded as his professional credo whose tenets he never lost sight of during his long and distinguished career as an attorney. In 1882, when the Royal Hungarian Prosecutor’s Office had been in operation for ten years, he was presented by his associates with an anniversary surprise: an ornamental album and a silver statuette of the Goddess of Justice. The album was designed by architect Albert Schickedanz, while the statue was the work of Alajos Stróbl — both of them outstanding artists of the country. The statuette personifies the cardinal virtue of justice in the shape of a Roman patrician woman enthroned atop a stepped plinth. The customary representation of Justice is somewhat modified in accordance with Sándor Kozma's well-known qualities. Wishing to see the events unfolding before its eyes, the figure is not blindfolded. Resting its sword on her lap, Justice holds 52
