The House of the "White Angel"

In the centre of Sfântu Gheorghe, an eclectic building rises in the continuation of the former bazaar row interrupted by the communist-era block of the county council. The former Fogolyán House is now home to the Government Commissioner's Office after the descendants of the family failed to recover the house built by Dr Kristóf Fogolyán, a doctor from Sfântu Gheorghe. Once known as the "white angel", Dr Fogolyán was the city's leading healthcare figure for four decades, and after the regime change the county hospital was named after him.

The Fogolyán family, of Hungarian-Armenian origin, came from Luduș to Sfântu Gheorghe. The history of the family in Covasna County began with the eldest Kristóf Fogolyán, whose son Kristóf - one of his eight children - became a merchant in the town and married the daughter of Lukács Fejér, the founder of the Rudolf Hospital in Târgu Secuiesc, Mária-Rozália Fejér. One of the couple's sons was the later Dr Kristóf Fogolyán, who also built a sanatorium for the capital of Covasna County. In the first half of the 20th century, members of the Fogolyán family not only left their mark in the field of healthcare but also played a significant role in public and cultural life. Their family house was one of the intellectual centres of the town, where such "giants" of Transylvanian public life as the architect-polyhistorian Károly Kós, the Catholic bishop Gusztáv Majláth and the composer Béla Bartók showed up frequently.

Samu Csinta