Ödön Tersztyánszky

Ödön Tersztyánszky participated as a military officer in World War I, where he was wounded and then captured in Russia, from which he tried to escape several times. During one of his escapes, his right hand was seriously injured and he then learned to fence with his left hand. As a military officer he was an athlete of MAC. He competed in both sabre and foil and was a member of the national teams in both disciplines. He won 13 national titles. Tersztyánszky won a silver with the sabre team and a bronze with the foil team at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

In 1925 Tersztyánszky placed sixth in individual sabre at the European Championship, winning silver two years later. At the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, he won the individual sabre title and helped Hungary win the team sabre, announcing his retirement after the Olympics. In 1929 he suffered a serious motor accident at Solymár, and then died of his injuries within a few days.

Tersztyánszky was multilingual, translating poems of Heinrich Heine from German. He wrote a psychological study of one of Dostoyevsky’s heroes, and was also an excellent painter and photographer.