KELEN, IMRE

KELEN, IMRE (Emery or Emerich; 1895– ), cartoonist. Kelen, who was born in Győr and won the Hungarian Military Cross in World War I, made his name with his caricatures of the statesmen at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Not long afterward he went to live in Switzerland, where in 1922 he began his collaboration with another Hungarian Jew, Aloysius Derso (1888–1964). Together the two men attended the League of Nations and major international conferences, and the Kelen-Derso cartoons appeared in many European newspapers over the next 15 years. In 1938 they emigrated to the United States, where they continued their collaboration until 1950. Collections of their work include Guignol and Lausanne (1922), Indian Round Table Conference (1930), Le Testament de Genève (1931), Pages Glorieuses (1932), The League at Lunch (1936), and Peace in Their Time (1963). Kelen also wrote children's books. From 1948 to 1957 he was adviser to and then director of the United Nations Television Service in New York, and in 1966 published a biography of the former secretary-general of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld.