Soma Visontai

Soma Visontai, Hungarian lawyer and deputy; born at Gyöngyös 9 November 1854; educated at Budapest, where he became an attorney in 1882. While still a student he attracted much attention by his papers on political economy in the scientific journals of Hungary, and he also edited the Vasút. He became widely known as a pleader in 1890, when he successfully defended the editor of the Zasztava, the leader of the radical wing of the Serbians in Hungary, in a trial for political murder. As a mark of gratitude, the people of Neusatz, being Serbian sympathizers, elected Visontai in 1892 to the Hungarian Parliament as a supporter of Kossuth; and since 1899 he represented his native town, Gyöngyös, in Parliament. He was an eminent authority on criminal law and a member of the board of examiners for admission to the bar; and he prepared a large portion of the preliminary drafts for the criminal code.