Meet the Editors

Zoltán Horváth - Székesfehérvár - Hungary

     I was born in 1968, in Siklós, in Southern Hungary, but I grew up in a very small village in Baranya county called Kásád, just next to the Croatian border (it was Yugoslavian at that time). Kásád is the southernmost settlement of Hungary.
     I am military officer (Lt. Col.) of Hungarian Defense Forces, but I graduated as a civilian surveyor (map-maker) and engineer (BSc) in 1989. Later I studied in the George C. Marshall Center, located in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in 2003. After that I earned a second degree (MSc) in Security and Defense Policy in 2007 at the National Defense University in Budapest.
     Between 1989 and 1996, I worked in various positions in the Military Mapping Service of Hungarian Defense Forces, after which I was appointed as a Staff Officer to the Defense Staff (1997-2005), and then to the Ministry of Defense (2005-2007). After November of 2007, I served as a military expert in the UNIFIL mission in South Lebanon.
     After returning to home, I was assigned to a new position again in February of 2009, as a Senior Staff Officer in the Joint Forces Command of HDF in Székesfehérvár, my current hometown. Technically, I moved here because I was assigned here. Last year I spend 6 months away in HQ KFOR in Prishtina, Kosovo.
     Because of studies and military service, I have lived in many places in Hungary. Between 1982 and 1986 in Pécs, after that in my current hometown until 1989. I had started my military career in Szentendre, but moved to Budapest in 1994, where I lived until 2007. For a couple of years, I lived in Siófok (2007-2009), except the brief period when the military allowed me to be able to enjoyed the warm sunshine of South Lebanon for a year.
     I am a father with 5 children (three sons and two daughters), but only two of them live together with me, because I am divorced. (Three of the children live with my ex-wife.) My new wife, Anna also has two sons living with us, so, we are a family of six.
     Regarding my flag interest, as I remember, in my childhood I was always drawing flags from various atlases and books that I found. I learned the term vexillology in 1992 when I purchased and read an English-language (but Czech published) book on flags in a bookstore. Two years later, I was one of the founders of Hungarian Vexillological Association, and edited our bilingual periodical "Zászlóvilág/Flagworld". Since 2000, I haven't held any active positions in the association.
     I became a member of FOTW mailing list in 2000, and ten years later, in February of 2010, I was invited to be an editor, first of the NATO pages, then gradually my areas of responsibilities increased to what they are now.
     My main vexillological interest areas include national, civil, state and naval flags and ensigns, flags of heads of state (monarchs, presidents, prime ministers, etc.), flags of subdivisions (usually, the first level administrative units), and flags of international organizations.
     I wrote a booklet entitled "Zászlók" (Flags) in 1995, and another one titled "A világ zászlói" (Flags of The World) in 2002. It was the first successful Hungarian-published flag book dealing with vexillology and enjoyed wide distribution to the public. I have also written some other minor articles on vexillology over the years. During my military mission in Lebanon in 2008, I revised and then self-published a new edition of my former book and distributed it to some of my flag-friends. This edition of my book had an enlarged format (A/4). It has been re-edited, once again, in 2010.
     Currently I have a partially flag-related job with a mapping publisher (who published my 2002 book). They publish various atlases and a booklet entitled "A világ országai" (Countries of the World). The booklet is updated every four years - normally in years of Summer Olympics - and I provide their flags, coat-of-arms, international country codes (domain, sporting, and car oval sign), but the biggest part of the project is to write and update all the country profiles. I have contributed to the 2004 and 2008 editions of the booklet, and for my efforts I have been given two pages in their atlases to promote and popularize vexillology, where I have written two-pages on flag history and usage.

Zoltán Horváth, 20 November 2011