The Sárközy family was granted nobility back in 1628. They owned land and a castle in Alattyán east of Budapest.
French politician Nicolas Sarkozy was born in Paris today. His father was a Hungarian born in Budapest under the name Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa and belonged to a Hungarian nobility. The family name Sárközy in Hungarian means approximately inter-biblical (sár = mud, köz = between). The Sárközy family was granted nobility on September 10, 1628. They owned land and a castle in Alattyán east of Budapest. The family was of Protestant denomination.
When the Soviets occupied Hungary, Sarkozy’s father fled to the West and enlisted in the Foreign Legion. When he returned from the Legion, he settled in France and married Andrée Mallah, a French woman of Jewish descent. She was the daughter of well-to-do Jew Benedict Mallah, a prominent surgeon who converted to Catholicism and married a Catholic wife, Adèle Bouvier. Grandpa cared more about little Nicholas Sarkozy than his father, so he was raised Catholic.
