János Szemere

János Szemere won his first prize as a pole vaulter in 1909 at a youth competition in Bratislava. During his active career he was a member of MAC in Budapest. He was entered for the pole vault at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics but did not start. The following two years were the most successful of his career. Szemere won silver at the 1913 Hungarian Championships and gold one year later. He was also a member of the Hungarian national team competing against Austria in September 1913. World War I terminated his active career.

Szemere became an engineer and earned a doctorate degree. He was an internationally recognized expert in rail welding and chief technical advisor of the BHÉV, the suburban railway network of the Hungarian capital, for two decades. After World War II, he served as the CEO of BSZKÁRT (Budapest Municipal Transport Company) during the post-war reconstruction period leading the capital’s transport company starting in 1945. During this time, he was also appointed as a private lecturer at the Technical University and acted as president of the Előre Sports Club of the Hungarian Transport Employees’ Independent Union.

In the lead-up to the Communist takeover of state power, Szemere and others were imprisoned for bribery in connection with the purchase of new buses for the BSZKÁRT in 1947. After a few weeks, he was released for health reasons: he had diabetes, heart disease, and atherosclerosis. Eventually, the defendants were pardoned by the president in 1948 but did not return to their former positions. However, because Szemere’s expertise and professional prestige may have been needed by the emerging Communist rule, he was able to publish several studies in the 1950s.