The Romance Philology and Cultures (French Studies) at the University of Debrecen announces with deep sorrow that Dr. Sándor Kiss, retired associate professor, former head of the department for fourteen years, and recipient of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Officer), passed away on September 5, 2025, at the age of 84 after a long illness.
Sándor Kiss (1941–2025) was a distinguished figure in Hungarian and international Romance studies and comparative linguistics, a defining personality of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Debrecen, head of the French Studies, and teacher of generations. His departure is a painful loss to all who knew and loved him, leaving behind an irreplaceable void.
His life and academic career were closely connected with the history of Romance philology in Debrecen and in Hungary. He attended Földes Ferenc Secondary School in Miskolc and in 1959 was admitted to the Faculty of Humanities at Kossuth Lajos University in Debrecen, where he studied French and Latin language and literature. He graduated in 1964 and began his teaching career at the same institution.
He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1971 and was awarded the doctoral degree in 1972 at the honorary conferment ceremony. In 1988 he successfully defended his candidate’s dissertation. Between 1978 and 1990 he taught at the Department of Romance Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest while also continuing to teach at Kossuth University in Debrecen. Each week, with a briefcase filled with books and notes, he traveled tirelessly between the two cities, serving both academic communities – a dual commitment he preserved throughout his life.
From 1991, once again as a full-time faculty member in Debrecen, he served as associate professor and head of the French Studies at Kossuth Lajos University, and later its successor, the University of Debrecen, for fourteen years. His six-decade-long career significantly shaped French linguistics and literary studies in Hungary while also fostering the department’s international academic relations.
As head of department, Sándor Kiss considered it important to preserve and transmit the history and values of the French Studies and its predecessors. In one of his last publications, The French Studies at the University of Debrecen between 1957 and 2023, he paid tribute to more than six decades of the department’s history. At the same time, he always encouraged younger colleagues to introduce new directions and fresh perspectives in teaching and research. He created an open, free intellectual environment where the heritage of the past and the aspirations of the present could meet harmoniously.
Sándor Kiss was a modest colleague with gentle humor and tact, who listened with full attention and responded with natural kindness and exceptional linguistic sensitivity. As people said in Molière’s time, he was a true honnête homme – a cultivated man who never boasted of his learning. He possessed the rare ability to create his own world – one in which books, concerts, exhibitions, travels, and human encounters played a central role. Many of us will remember him in his office late into the evening, reading or writing by the light of his desk lamp with quiet classical music in the background – devoted entirely to scholarship, as the department wrote about him on social media.
His family will say their farewell in a private ceremony after cremation.
