Paris Conservatoire, and soon began to play in public. From 1814 to 1823 he was well known as a brilliant performer and a successful teacher in London, and then settled in Paris, dying at Enghien, near there, in 1849. He became a member of the Paris piano-manufacturing firm of Pleyel & Co., and made a fortune by his business and his art combined. His numerous compositions are less remembered now than his instruction-book, with “studies,” which have had considerable vogue among pianists.
KÁLLAY, BENJAMIN VON (1839–1903), Austro-Hungarian
statesman, was born at Budapest on the 22nd of December 1839.
His family derived their name from their estates at Nágy Kallo,
in Szabolcs, and claimed descent from the Balogh Semjen
tribe, which colonized the counties of Borsod, Szabolcs, and
Szatmár, at the close of the 9th century, when the Magyars
conquered Hungary. They played a prominent part in Hungarian
history as early as the reign of Koloman (1095–1114);
and from King Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490) they received
their estates at Mezö Tur, near Kecskemét, granted to Michael
Kállay for his heroic defence of Jajce in Bosnia, and still held by
his descendants. The father of Benjamin von Kállay, a superior
official of the Hungarian Government, died in 1845, and his
widow, who survived until 1903, devoted herself to the education
of her son. At an early age Kállay manifested a deep interest
in politics, and especially in the Eastern Question. He travelled
in Russia, European Turkey and Asia Minor, gaining a thorough
knowledge of Greek, Turkish and several Slavonic languages.
He became as proficient in Servian as in his native tongue. In
1867 he entered the Hungarian Diet as Conservative deputy for
Mühlbach (Szásy-Szebes); in 1869 he was appointed consul-general
at Belgrade; and in 1872 he visited Bosnia for the first
time. His views on Balkan questions strongly influenced
Count Andrássy, the Austro-Hungarian minister for foreign
affairs. Leaving Belgrade in 1875, he resumed his seat in the
Diet, and shortly afterwards founded the journal Kélet Nepe, or
Eastern Folk, in which he defended the vigorous policy of
Andrássy. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1878 he went to
Philippopolis as Austro-Hungarian envoy extraordinary on the
International Eastern Rumelian Commission. In 1879 he became
second, and soon afterwards first, departmental chief at the
foreign office in Vienna. On the 4th of June 1882 he was
appointed Imperial minister of finance and administrator of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the distinction with which he
filled this office, for a period of 21 years, is his chief title of fame
(see Bosnia and Herzegovina). Kállay was an honorary
member of the Budapest and Vienna academies of science, and
attained some eminence as a writer. He translated J. S. Mill’s
Liberty into Hungarian, adding an introductory critique; while
his version of Galatea, a play by the Greek dramatist S. N.
Basiliades (1843–1874), proved successful on the Hungarian
stage. His monographs on Servian history (Geschichte der
Serben) and on the Oriental ambition of Russia (Die Orientpolitik
Russlands) were translated into German by J. H. Schwicker,
and published at Leipzig in 1878. But, in his own opinion, his
masterpiece was an academic oration on the political and geographical
position of Hungary as a link between East and West.
In 1873 Kállay married the countess Vilma Bethlen, who bore
him two daughters and a son. His popularity in Bosnia was
partly due to the tact and personal charm of his wife. He died
on the 13th of July 1903.
KALMAR (Calmar), a seaport of Sweden on the Baltic coast,
chief town of the district (län) of Kalmar, 250 m. S.S.W. of
Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900), 12,715. It lies opposite the
island of Öland, mainly on two small islands, but partly on the
mainland, where there is a pleasant park. The streets are
regular, and most of the houses are of wood. The principal
public edifices, however, are constructed of limestone from
Öland, including the cathedral, built by Nicodemus Tessin and
his son Nicodemus in the second half of the 17th century.
Kalmar, a town of great antiquity, was formerly strongly fortified,
and there remains the island-fortress of Kalmarnahus,
dating partly from the 12th century, but mainly from the 16th
and 17th. It contains the beautiful chamber of King Eric XIV.
(d. 1577), an historical museum, and in the courtyard a fine ornate
well-cover. This stronghold stood several sieges in the 14th,
15th and 16th centuries, and the town gives name to the treaty
(Kalmar Union) by which Sweden, Norway and Denmark were
united into one kingdom in 1397. Kalmar has an artificial
harbour admitting vessels drawing 19 ft. There are a school of
navigation, and tobacco and match factories, the produce of
which, together with timber and oats, is exported. Ship-building
is carried on.
KALMUCK, or Kalmyk Steppe, a territory or reservation
belonging to the Kalmuck or Kalmyk Tatars, in the Russian
government of Astrakhan, bounded by the Volga on the N.E.,
the Manych on the S.W., the Caspian Sea on the E., and the
territory of the Don Cossacks on the N.W. Its area is 36,900
sq. m., to which has to be added a second reservation of 3045
sq. m. on the left bank of the lower Volga. According to I. V.
Mushketov, the Kalmuck Steppe must be divided into two parts,
western and eastern. The former, occupied by the Ergeni hills,
is deeply trenched by ravines and rises 300 and occasionally
630 ft. above the sea. It is built up of Tertiary deposits,
belonging to the Sarmatian division of the Miocene period and
covered with loess and black earth, and its escarpments represent
the old shore-line of the Caspian. No Caspian deposits
are found on or within the Ergeni hills. These hills exhibit the
usual black earth flora, and they have a settled population. The
eastern part of the steppe is a plain, lying for the most part
30 to 40 ft. below the level of the sea, and sloping gently towards
the Volga. Post-Pliocene “Aral-Caspian deposits,” containing
the usual fossils (Hydrobia, Neritina, eight species of Cardium,
two of Dreissena, three of Adacna and Lithoglyphus caspius),
attain thicknesses varying from 105 ft. to 7 or 10 ft., and disappear
in places. Lacustrine and fluviatile deposits occur
intermingled with the above. Large areas of moving sands
exist near Enotayevsk, where high dunes or barkhans have been
formed. A narrow tract of land along the coast of the Caspian,
known as the “hillocks of Baer,” is covered with hillocks
elongated from west to east, perpendicularly to the coast-line,
the spaces between them being filled with water or overgrown
with thickets of reed, Salix, Ulmus campestris, almond trees,
&c. An archipelago of little islands is thus formed close to the
shore by these mounds, which are backed on the N. and N.W.
by strings of salt lakes, partly desiccated. Small streams
originate in the Ergenis, but are lost as soon as they reach the
lowlands, where water can only be obtained from wells. The
scanty vegetation is a mixture of the flora of south-east Russia
and that of the deserts of central Asia. The steppe has an
estimated population of 130,000 persons, living in over 27,700
kibitkas, or felt tents. There are over 60 Buddhist monasteries.
Part of the Kalmucks are settled (chiefly in the hilly parts), the
remainder being nomads. They breed horses, cattle and sheep,
but suffer heavy losses from murrain. Some attempts at
agriculture and tree-planting are being made. The breeding of
livestock, fishing, and some domestic trades, chiefly carried on
by the women, are the principal sources of maintenance.
See I. V. Mushketov, Geol. Researches in the Kalmyk Steppe in 1884–1885 (St Petersburg, 1894, in Russian); Kostenkov’s works (1868–1870); and other works quoted in Semenov’s Geogr. Dict. and Russ. Encycl. Dict. (P. A. K.; J. T. Be.)
KALNÓKY, GUSTAV SIEGMUND, Count (1832–1898), Austro-Hungarian statesman, was born at Lettowitz, in Moravia, on the 29th of December 1832, of an old Transylvanian family which had held countly rank in Hungary from the 17th century. After spending some years in a hussar regiment, in 1854 he entered the diplomatic service without giving up his connexion with the army, in which he reached the rank of general in 1879. He was for the ten years 1860 to 1870 secretary of embassy at London, and then, after serving at Rome and Copenhagen, was in 1880 appointed ambassador at St Petersburg. His success in Russia procured for him, on the death of Baron v. Haymerle in 1881, the appointment of minister of foreign affairs for Austria-Hungary, a post which he held for fourteen years. Essentially a diplomatist,
