ACTA JURIDICA - A MTA Jogtudományi Közleményei Tom. 25 (1983)

1983 / 1-2. sz. - KULCSÁR KÁLMÁN: Bihari Ottó 1921-1983

1 Ottó Bihari 1921-1983 To inhume somebody always means a great sorrow and grief, but it is particularly a woe when we have to bury a Colleague, a friend, a highly respected and honoured member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences whose life-span has, in fact, not yet reached its top, who was so much filled with creative activity, vitality and vigour and, was at all times, very receptive towards the new and modern developments; whose invaluable help and assistance would have yet been very much counted on in our scientific life and in solving the tasks connected with it. His walk of life — starting with his birthplace and home at Temesvár, led first to Budapest then forever to Pécs, the capital of the Pannonian world — proved to be rather varied and colourful. This many-sided life had been, however, always characterized by the undertaking of new and difficult tasks and by firmness and moral courage in crucial times. This firmness was needed especially in times following 1945 in the re-establishment of public administration in the county of Tolna, then in his capacity as the dean at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pécs — when the characteristic traits even now prevailing and surviving of this Faculty began to take shape, then in his capacity of Director of the re-organized Transdanubian Scientific Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, or by performing functions of President of the Pécs Territorial Committee of the Academy or, — as to mention his latest office — at one of the most important posts of the young Hungarian political science — as chairman of the newly established Political Science Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Professor Ottó Bihari always did his best in solving his difficult tasks with willingness and great ingenuity. Ottó Bihari had embodied such a type of man whom one has always needed and perhaps all the more needs it in our present society, the prosperity or even the existence of which depends on its ability of revival and on its active adjustment to the changing circumstances, yet preserving its former values. These were just the very abilities and inclinations which manifested themselves in the field of both scientific and organizational work of Professor Ottó Bihari. In the introductive lines of one of his books one can read the following: "In the field of the socialist social sciences we could witness such an enrichment of content in the past decade which has proved that not only the sphere of interest of the given scientists has become more ample and widened but even the want and demand of the different strata of the society have simultaneously changed towards these sciences. All that was lost Acta Juridica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 25, 1983

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