Zoltán Maruzsa

As state secretary for public education, Zoltán Maruzsa oversaw the 2020 revision of Hungary's National Core Curriculum (NAT), which dropped Imre Kertész — Hungary's only literature Nobel laureate — and his novel Fatelessness, along with Géza Ottlik's Iskola a határon, from the mandatory literary canon, while making Albert Wass's Give Back My Mountains! and Ferenc Herczeg's Az élet kapuja required reading and elevating József Nyirő to mandatory-teaching status. Press reporting documented that Wass wrote for far-right, pro-Arrow-Cross publications after World War II and was sentenced to death in absentia, and that Nyirő had in 1942 called for removing the 'Judeo-liberal' heritage from Hungarian culture and remained a supporter of Szálasi's fascist regime until 1945. Maruzsa publicly defended the changes as 'openly patriotic, child-centered, and 21st-century' curriculum content. The episode is a documented case of central government intervention reshaping the literary canon and controlling curriculum content.