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Alfred Szego

Austrian historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ4723496 ↗
Source-derived summary

Alfred Szego (April 9, 1914 – September 1, 1991) was a numismatic historian, who specialized in 14th-17th-century Italian coinage, coinage of ancient Rome, Greece, Carthage, Judea, Spain, medieval Austria, and 19th-century Europe.

Born in New York to Oscar and Rose Szego, Jewish immigrants who emigrated from Budapest in 1912. Oldest of four children. Married Augusta, June 1940. Two children, Phillip and Carol.

Szego originally became interested in numismatics in 1955, while he was a television repairman. One of his customers offered a cache of old coins to settle a repair bill; Szego accepted the coins towards payment after studying the potential values in numismatic reference books. After this, he and his wife began to learn more about numismatics. Together, they created a thriving specialty business, concentrating on coinage of Ancient Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, and Medieval Austria. Szego authored and hand-illustrated "The Coinage of Medieval Austria," which he completed in October 1970.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Alfred Szego” as austrian historian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alfred, Szego and Austrian.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1914, 1991, 1912, 1940—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1914-04-09. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Alfred, Szego and Austrian providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Alfred Szego”, the useful work is to connect “austrian historian” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4723496. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1991, 1912 and 1940.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Alfred Szego”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Alfred Szego primary sources, Alfred Szego archive and Alfred research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Alfred Szego” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.