Koloman Brenner

Koloman Brenner (born 28 May 1968 in Sopron, Hungary) is a hungarian politician, linguist, university lecturer and deputy speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary.

He was the deputy headmaster at the Department of Germanic Linguistics of Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest. He specializes in Standard German Phonology and Dialectology. Member of National Assembly since 2018. Member of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He is the deputy speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary since 2020.

Early life

He was born into a German family in Sopron. He completed his primary school and secondary school studies in his hometown, and graduated in 1986 from the Széchenyi István Secondary School. He began his university studies in 1987 at the József Attila University of Szeged, Faculty of Arts, Department of History and German, where he obtained a secondary school teacher's degree in 1992. After graduating, he taught ethnic studies at the Benedek Elek College in Sopron for three years, and between 1995 and 1997 he worked at the Department of German Language and Literature at the Berzsenyi Dániel College in Szombathely as an assistant professor. In 1997 he joined the University of Veszprém, where he also taught at the Department of German Language and Literature as an assistant professor. He left Veszprém in 1999 and began his doctoral studies at the Doctoral School of German Studies of Eötvös Loránd University and in this time he worked as an assisntant professor at the Institute of German Studies of Eötvös Loránd University. In 2007 he was appointed an associate professor, in 2010 he was habilitated. From 2011 to 2015, he was the Strategic Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and from 2012 to 2016, he was also a member of the University Senate. Between 2014 and 2017, he held the position of Deputy Director of the Institute of Germanistics of the Faculty of Arts of Eötvös Loránd University. He was a visiting lecturer and visiting researcher at several German and Austrian universities (Greifswald, Bonn, Vienna, Tübingen, Marburg, Regensburg).

He defended his PhD dissertation in 2002. He became a member of the Linguistics Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of several scientific associations: the Association of Hungarian Germanists, the Internationale Gesellschaft für Dialektologie des Deutschen, the Association of Central European Germanists (Mitteleuropäischer Germanistenverband), the Scientific Council of the German Research Center for Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Regensburg University. He publishes his scientific publications in Hungarian, German and English.

Political career

After the end of communism in Hungary, he became an active participant in German national life in Hungary, between 1992 and 1994 he was the head of the Sopron office of the Hungarian Germans' Association. then he became a member of National Self-Government of Germans in Hungary. From 1996 to 2017, he represented the MNOÖ (the National Self-Government of German in Hungary) in the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN). In 1998 he also became a member of the Association of German Writers and Artists in Hungary (VudAK). In 2015, he also became active in national politics, became an education and foreign affairs expert of the Jobbik, and then in 2017 it was announced that the party would be a Sopron candidate in the 2018 parliamentary elections, which led to his resignation from MNOÖ. He was behind the Fidesz candidate (Attila Barcza) in the election, but won a seat on the national list. In addition to his foreign affairs committee in the Parliament, he will be a member of the national cohesion committee until 2020, and a member of the legislative committee from April 2020. Since the end of 2018, he has held the position of deputy leader of Parlamentary Group of Jobbik. He is a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where his foreign policy focuses on the protection of national minorities and education policy. Member of the Committee on Culture, Education and the Media, rapporteur on academic freedom and university autonomy.

For the third run, Koloman Brenner was elected Vice-President of Parliament. The Parliament elected Koloman Brenner as Vice-President by 109 votes to 1, with 1 abstention.