Jenö Arányi

Jenő (Eugen) Arányi was born on May 29, 1883 in Svetozar Miletić, then located in the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today a city in the province of Vojvodina, in Serbia. He studied law, but ended up becoming a journalist and writer. With the end of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which lasted from 1867 to 1918) was dismembered and the long-lived Habsburg Empire in Europe that came to occupy many territories ended up giving rise to new countries or returning territories to others. Vojvodina, where Jenő Arányi was born and lived, was integrated into Serbia, the country that won the war and was the basis for the formation of Yugoslavia. The official language of the new country was Serbian-Croat. As a multiethnic and multireligious country, ethnolinguistic minorities had the right to have schooling, publication of newspapers and books in their languages. Although he knew a dozen languages, he became a Hungarian-speaking writer. All of his books, children's stories and the newspaper itself were written in that language.

Based in Subotica, he directed the Bácsmegyei napló (Bács County Diary). He became well known when he directed the newspaper's children's supplement Habostorta (Cake with cream). He wrote all the stories himself under the pseudonym of Balázs bácsi (Uncle Balázs). He published the short story book Ilyeneket Álmodunk (These are the things we dream of. Fischer & Krausz: Subotica, 1923). He also wrote the novel A Szentendrei biró (The judge of Szentendre. Jugoszláviai magyar könyvtár: Subotica, without publication date ) a work awarded in 1933 as the best literary work.

Jenő Arányi figure as an entry in the Magyar irodalmi léxicon (Hungarian literary encyclopedia, edited by Benedek Marcell. Akadémiai kiadó: Budapest, 1963, 3 vol.).

He died in 1944 in Subotica.