Remembering physicist and volunteer artillery officer Győző Zemplén in Asiago

President of Hungary Dr. Tamás Sulyok unveiled a memorial to Győző Zemplén, a volunteer artillery officer and theoretical physicist of outstanding knowledge, in Asiago, a town in northern Italy that was a theatre of war during World War I.

Born in Nagykanizsa in 1879, Győző Zemplén was one of the most promising theoretical physicists of his time, a Corresponding Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and a professor at the predecessor of the Budapest University of Technology. When World War I broke out, he volunteered as an artillery officer. In 1916, during the South Tyrolean offensive, he was wounded near Asiago and later died from his injuries.

In his speech delivered in Italian at the commemorative ceremony, the Head of State emphasised: "Events such as this highlight where war leads and reinforce the fact that peace is the only state that can keep people happy and safe."

The President of Hungary recalled that after the two world wars, Europe built its future on peace. Hungary and Central and Eastern Europe also joined this Italian-French-German peace project. According to the words of the founding fathers of the EU, Europe must first and foremost be "a cultural community in the noblest sense of the term," said Dr. Tamás Sulyok.