Whilst at university in Budapest, Lukács was part of socialist intellectual circles through which he met Ervin Szabó, an anarcho-syndicalist who introduced him to the works of Georges Sorel (1847-1922), the French proponent of revolutionary syndicalism.
Lukács spent much time in Germany, and studied in Berlin from 1906 to 1910, during which time he made the acquaintance of the philosopher Georg Simmel.