György Libik

György Libik was a skier of the University Athletics and Football Club (MAFC, 1939–1946), Előre SE (1946–1953), and Budapest Lokomotiv (1955), and was a skier (1956) and motorcycle racer (1949–1951) of the Budapesti Dózsa. In 1950 he won the Hungarian championship title in downhill and alpine combined. In addition, he was also a team gold medalist 15 times. Between 1947 and 1956 he was a member and captain of the Hungarian Alpine ski team. In 1948 he participated at the St. Moritz Olympics where he finished 77th in the downhill. As a sports leader, in 1945 he was appointed a member of the temporary management committee of the Hungarian Ski Association (MSSZ), and between 1956 and 1957 he was the president of the MSSZ.

In 1946 he obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from the Budapest University of Technology. He was a student at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et des Manufactures in Paris between 1946 and 1947. Between 1945 and 1956 he held leading engineering and research positions in various workplaces.

During the 1956 revolution he was the chairman of the Workers’ Revolutionary Committee of the Parliament. The Imre Nagy government appointed him as a first-class embassy counselor. He participated in the drafting of the Declaration of Neutrality as the chairman of the Revolutionary Committee and as an appointed councilor of the embassy in Vienna. After the suppression of the revolution he fled to Sweden, where he continued his professional career. He worked as a research engineer and was one of the founders of the Swedish Inventors Award on behalf of the Swedish Engineers Association.

Libik returned to Hungary in 1989 and founded a Swedish-Hungarian joint venture, and played a significant role in the appearance of several large Swedish companies in Hungary. After his resettlement in Hungary, he became involved in Hungarian professional and political public life. His first wife was Kornélia Szent-Györgyi, the daughter of Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi. In his memory, the Budapest organization of the ”Imre Nagy Society” established the ”György Libik Award” in 2013. The award is open to those who “take risks for freedom and democracy and confront the representatives of violence, racism and dictatorship.”