George Molnar: Politics and Passions of a Sydney Philosopher

George Peter Molnar was born in Budapest in Hungary in 1934 into a prosperous Jewish family. Antisemitism was on the rise and the family changed its name from Meister to Molnar and converted to the Lutheran religion in a bid to avoid the anti Jewish laws which forbade Jews from conducting business or holding property.

In 1949 George's father Imre and the rest of his family left for Australia from the Italian port of Trieste, leaving the little boy and his mother behind. Rosa and George experienced the horrors of antisemitism and occupation and only narrowly survived the holocaust, due to the intervention of Raoul Wallenberg. They arrived in Australia in 1951

Molnar was 17. He studied as a private study candidate for the Leaving Certificate and enrolled in Economics at Sydney University, but soon changed to Philosophy where he came under the influence of Professor John Anderson. He became a member of the Sydney Push, which counted Germaine Greer and Clive James among its members.

After dropping out of university Molnar joined the poker players and pub and party going libertarians and began a lifelong obsession with gambling on the horses. In the early 1960s he went back to university, graduated, and for 11 years he lectured in philosophy where he took part in the split which saw the philosophy separate into two departments, general and traditional. In 1972 Molnar tutored at Oxford University and travelled to St Petersburg with his mother Rosa. He played a prominent role in opposing conscription to the Vietnam War, joined the Green Bans protest in Victoria Street, Woolloomooloo and helped to set up a kids' co-op in Glebe

Rosa died in 1976 and Molnar resigned from his university post and went to live in the UK, where he joined a political group, called Big Flame.

While on holiday to Australia in 1979 he met Carlotta McIntosh who was to become his partner and lifelong friend. They lived in Leeds, Yorkshire from 1980 to 1982 before returning to Australia where they shared a squat in Darghan Street, Glebe. In 1983 Molnar joined the public service where he was to remain until his retirement 1999. Throughout this period he renewed his childhood fascination with philately and built up a substantial collection of maritime covers. He researched and wrote a maritime postal history of the Pacific and Orient Line and contributed articles on postal history of New South Wales to Philas publications. At the Department of Veterans Affairs he became the union rep for the the CPSU, Commonwealth Public Service Union, and wrote the manual on assessing disability claims by veterans.

By the late 1990s Molnar had returned to philosophy, teaching first year students and in 1999 he became the John Anderson fellow. He died on 30 August 1999 after suffering a massive heart attack on the steps of Fisher Library at Sydney University at the age of 65. After his death McIntosh retrieved his unfinished manuscript on metaphysics from his computer and with the help of Marnie Hanlon, one of his former lovers, and Stephen Mumford, now Professor of Metaphysics at Durham University the book, Powers: A Study in Metaphysics was published by Oxford University Press. This collection of memoirs, George Molnar: Politics and Passions of a Sydney Philosopher was published on the 20^th anniversary of his death by Carlotta McIntosh, editor and Katherine Cummings of Beaujohn Press.