Ottó Binder

After completing his schooling, Ottó Binder began a military career. He graduated as a lieutenant at the Military Academy in Vienna, and started his military service in 1910. He fought on the Eastern Front during World War I, but fell into Russian captivity and did not return from there until 1921.

During his career, especially in the 1920s, he was a distinguished figure in Hungarian equestrian sport. He won the Hungarian Championships in dressage in 1924, 1929 and 1930, eventing in 1925, and show jumping in 1927 and 1930. In addition, he won the Grand Prix of the Dortmund International Equestrian Competition in show jumping in 1927. In 1928 he participated at the Amsterdam Olympics in the individual and team competition in three-day event. Despite his success in the military field and in Hungarian equestrian sport, however, fate was not gracious to Binder. He spent 30 months after the First World War and 40 months after the Second World War in Soviet captivity. When he returned home in July 1948, he and his partner, under the conditions of the proletarian dictatorship, suffered the fate of being named as “class enemies” and were expelled from Budapest in 1951. He arrived from Budapest with his partner and many others in Kunszentmárton at the end of August 1951, where he worked as an auxiliary worker in a brick factory.