Ferenc Deák, Hungarian statesman, a prominent figure of the 19th century national liberal political life was born at Söjtör on October 17, 1803, in the county of Zala, where his father had an estate. After studying the law he became a member of parliament, one of the leaders of the reform movement, and the head of the moderate opposition in 1839-40 in the diet.

He became a honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the minister of justice in the first independent Hungarian government in 1848. In 1849 he intervened for peace with Austria, after the fall of the fight for freedom he retired to his estates in Kehida. From 1854 he became the leader of passive resistance, returned in the diet in 1861, fighting for the laws of 1848 to be implemented again. His name is attached to the ’Compromise’ of 1867 between Austria and Hungary, the process was started by his famous Easter article in the daily Pesti Napló. It was Lajos Kossuth who first called him ’the Sage of the Nation’ – Ferenc Deák has truly merited this epithet. The Medgyessy-cabinet today holds its session in Deák’s birthplace at Söjtör, renovated to honour the great statesman’s bicentenary of birth who died in 1876.