Miklós Bánffy was born Count Miklós Bánffy de Losoncz in Hungary in 1873. Over the course of his life, he studied law and wrote plays, novels, and short stories, and he became a groundbreaking set designer, an accomplished cartoonist, a politician, and a diplomat. 

A leading figure in the Transylvanian Hungarian community, in 1943, he urged the Romanian government to cut ties with Germany in the Second World War; two years later, a retreating German army looted his estate. He remained in Transylvania after it was invaded by the Soviet Red Army, and, emaciated and penniless, he reunited with his family in Budapest in 1949. He died a year later.