Government Propaganda in Interwar Hungarian Male Juvenile Travel Writing

The Trianon Treaty of 1920 forced new realities upon Hungarians living in both what was left of Hungary and in the United States, while rising anti-immigrant sentiments in the New World culminating in the passing of the Johnson–Reed Act of 1924 further complicated the situation. With hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarians resettling into smaller Hungary from the territories forcefully ceded to the successor states, Budapest was not interested in large-scale remigration from the US. At the same time, American immigration restriction drastically cut off the flow of Hungarian migrants to the New World communities established at the time of the “new immigration.” American popular culture (especially music, movies, and pulp fiction) took Hungary by storm and further strengthened the overtly positive image of the Transatlantic Promised Land. Travel writing continued to play a dominant role in shaping mutual images, and a new subgenre, juvenile male travel literature, emerged. Taking a closer look at the works of Lola Réz Kosáryné, Andor Kun, and Gedeon Mészöly I explain how tourism, romanticized images of the “Other,” and government propaganda mingled in these texts in what seems to be a concerted attempt to help young Hungarians come to terms with interwar political realities.