MOSAICS FROM THE HERITAGE OF ELTE – MAY 2024

Object of the month – Memorial plaque of the ELTE Radnóti Miklós Teacher Training School

Miklós Radnóti was born 115 years ago, on the 5th of May 1909, in Budapest, in an assimilated Jewish family. He attended the University of Szeged from 1930, obtained a Hungarian–French secondary school teacher qualification in 1936, but did not get a job.

The school took his name in 1959, and at the naming ceremony on the 9th of May, literary historian Gábor Tolnai (1910–1990), Radnóti’s former university student, gave a speech:

„He wanted to be a teacher. He considered education and teaching to be the most beautiful task of man. Education for the truth. He was already a teacher when he was a university student. He raised us, his friends, primarily with his human behavior, honesty, and love of justice. Miklós Radnóti spoke the truth until the moment of his death.[…] Dear girls and boys, be proud that your school is named after him, and try to be worthy of the poet and unusually pure and unwavering man, Miklós Radnóti.”

The commemorative plaque depicts the facing portrait of the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti (1909–1944), with the inscription: „RADNÓTI”. The current version of the ELTE Radnóti Miklós Teacher Training School commemorative plaque is the school's award, it was founded by the school in 1983. It is awarded to the most deserving 12th grade student for excellent academic work and for the school community.

Written by Hedvig Kocsis, Georgina Schlay

Source/author of illustration: ELTE Radnóti Miklós Gyakorlóiskola / ELTE Egyetemi Könyvtár és Levéltár