Sandor Petofi, hero of the War of Independence

Sandor Petofi was a Hungarian poet, revolutionary and one of the biggest heroes of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

He was born in Kiskoros, in 1823, to a Slovak family, but Petofi defined himself as a Hungarian. In his youth, he studied at several schools, played with a traveling theater, and he also enlisted as a privet soldier, but because of ill health he was dismissed.

His first poem was published in 1842, and then he became an assistant editor of the literary periodical Pesti Divatlap in 1844. In 1846, he met Júlia Szendrey in Transylvania and they married next year. She was the muse of Petofi’s love poems.

Before the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, he edited the magazine Eletkepek with Mor Jokai. Petofi supported the French Revolution, he wanted better social conditions, equality, and attacked the privileges of the nobles and the monarchy.