In the early 1700s, two smaller residential buildings once stood in the place of the former Chernal (Festetics) Palace, both of which were in the ownership of the Nádasdy family. The two buildings were joined as one in 1766 and redesigned in late Baroque and Rococo styles at the request of József Kelcz, a lawyer at the Transdanubian Regional Court and a councillor of the Royal Chancellery. Count Imre Festetics, who abandoned his military career after a major injury, purchased the building complex in 1802. Today, he is hailed as the father of genetics.
The building became the property of the Chernel family through marriage; they had been the owners until the early 1990s when the house was nationalized. The street itself was named after the historian Kálmán Chernel; his son István Chernel was a famous ornithologist who retired as the head of the Hungarian Ornithology Centre. When the building went into state ownership, Chernel’s descendants settled in Germany and the local municipality used the building as an emergency housing facility.When the house underwent an extensive refurbishment in 2018, archaeologists found valuable 18th-century murals on the ceilings.
The listed building was preserved to boost several new functions. The preservation of the listed building was completed to serve the new functions to be performed by the Institute of Advanced Studies (iASK), the new owner of the building. The house is now home to the Hankiss Archives and a library with an extensive social science collection. Imre Festetics and the significance of his work did not make it into the limelight because many of the family strong characters received more attention than him. His brother, nine years his senior, was György Festetics, the founder of the Agricultural University of Keszthely (Georgikon). His sister, Julianna Festetics, the wife of Ferenc Széchenyi, was the founder of the National Museum. His nephew was one of Hungary’s greatest political figures, István Széchenyi, hailed as the “Greatest Hungarian”.
With relatives as the ones above, it cannot have been an easy task to earn fame and recognition.
His personality – he was a quiet, reserved man – may be another reason why his scientific achievements, two hundred years later, are still known only to the narrow circle of academics. But more importantly, his works preceded his contemporaries by several decades; one more reason why his discoveries were left without reflections.
Count Imre Festetics Tolnai was born on 2 December 1764 in Simaság. His father, Count Pál Festetics Tolnai was the vice-president of the treasury; his mother was Countess Julianna Bossányi of Nagybossány. We know very little of his childhood, but we know that Piarist monk Jeromos Nagy taught him Latin, German and History. He joined the army at 18, served as a captain in the wars against the Ottoman Empire, and finished his military service when he suffered an injury. In 1791, he married Katalin Boronkay with whom he had several children. In 1812, he remarried; he lived with his new wife, Borbála Vízkelety, on his estates and in the Festetics Palace of Kőszeg. He passed away on 1 April 1847, and was buried at the cemetery of Kőszegpaty.
Imre Festetics is renowned for the observation that inheritance is strictly guided by internal factors, and that inbreeding can be used for concentrating these factors. He also discovered that these factors could predict how certain traits are inherited. He formulated his laws by way of analysing sheep and horse breeding registries, but he also conducted experiments. His law bears uncanny resemblance to Mendel’s Law of Segregation and the Principle of Free Assortment. The research Festetics carried out was significant because he had discovered segregation in the second hybrid generation – before Mendel, and simultaneously with other scientists. He also recognized the possibility of applying mathematical methods in genetics, but as he himself did not apply them, today he is not recognised as the inventor of factorial genetics.
