EXTREMISTS from Hungary

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Hungarian Extremists of all time. This list of famous Hungarian Extremists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Elizabeth Báthory (1560 - 1614)

With an HPI of 77.32, Elizabeth Báthory is the most famous Hungarian Extremist.  Her biography has been translated into 59 different languages on wikipedia.

Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Ecsed (Hungarian: Báthori Erzsébet, pronounced [ˈbaːtɔrɪ ˈɛrʒeːbɛt]; Slovak: Alžbeta Bátoriová; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a Hungarian noblewoman and alleged serial killer from the powerful House of Báthory, who owned land in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Slovakia). Báthory and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and women from 1590 to 1610. She and her servants were put on trial and convicted. The servants were executed, whereas Báthory was imprisoned within the Castle of Csejte (Čachtice) until her death in 1614. The charges levelled against Báthory have been described by several historians as a witch-hunt. Other writers, such as Michael Farin in 1989, have said that the accusations against Báthory were supported by testimony from more than 300 individuals, some of whom described physical evidence and the presence of mutilated dead, dying and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest. Recent sources claim that the accusations were a spectacle to destroy her family's influence in the region, which was considered a threat to the political interests of her neighbours, including the Habsburg empire. Stories about Báthory quickly became part of national folklore. Legends describing her vampiric tendencies, such as the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth, were based on rumours and only recorded as supposedly factual over a century after her death. Although these stories were repeated by at least three historians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they are considered unreliable by modern historians. Some insist that Elizabeth's story inspired Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897), although Stoker's notes on the novel provided no direct evidence to support this hypothesis. Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.

2. Béla Kiss (1877 - 1915)

With an HPI of 54.01, Béla Kiss is the 2nd most famous Hungarian Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Béla Kiss (; Hungarian: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈkiʃ]; c. 1877 – after 4 October 1916) was a Hungarian serial killer. He is thought to have murdered at least 23 young women and one man, and attempted to pickle their bodies in large metal drums that he kept on his property.