Elemér Hankiss

Elemér Hankiss (4 May 1928 – 10 January 2015) was a Hungarian sociologist. His first wife was MEP Ágnes Hankiss.

He was born in the town of Debrecen in eastern Hungary, where his father, János Hankiss was a professor of literature.

He received his university degree in French and English languages from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where he later obtained a PhD.

Following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution he spent 10 months in pretrial detention but was eventually acquitted.

He was the president of the Hungarian Television from 1990 to 1993. It was a state-owned monopoly at the time, which he tried to turn into a modern, production- and viewer-oriented, competition-ready media company. In 1993, he was controversially forced to resign in connection with the so-called Media War (Médiaháború) between the government and the media in the early 1990s.[1]

He has written extensively on values system in Hungary and Central Europe, as well as on global civilization. His concept of Second Society has been much cited in East European Studies.[2]

He has been a professor at Stanford University, the Bruges and Florence University Institutes as well as the Central European University.

He died in Budapest after a short illness on 10 January 2015.[3]