This paper serves as an introduction to the thematic cluster “The Impact of Johnson–Reed in Hungary: Changing Trajectories and Perceptions” that includes four papers discussing various aspects of US-Hungarian relations from the mid-1920s to the 1970s. Three papers (written by Tibor Glant, Zoltán Peterecz, and Máté Gergely Balogh) were originally presented at the 2024 conference organized by the University of Debrecen and AHEA on the global impact of US restrictions introduced in the 1920s and are accompanied by a fourth article (by Soma Rédey) offering a fascinating example of post-quota Hungarian immigration. The selected articles introduce not only changes in migration patterns per se but also in mutual perceptions, individual careers, the daily work of American officers in Hungary, and the Hungarian-American community at large due to new regulations related to immigration.
The definition of a memoir is “an account of the personal experiences of an author.” This paper provides the reflections of a physical (biological) anthropologist specializing in the genetics of the Indigenous peoples of North America who was born in Hungary, raised in Canada, and served twelve years as president and vice chancellor of the University of Manitoba. This professional background may question the relevance of these reflections to Hungarian studies. However, issues raised by János Kenyeres, the keynote speaker of the 2019 American Hungarian Educators Association conference, in his examination of Hungarian identity manifest in Hungarian literature—specifically, regarding “essentialist thinking”—are related to fundamental issues about the nature of human diversity with which physical (biological) anthropologists have been grappling since the eighteenth century. In an era in which commercial genetic genealogical services promise to identify ancestors and ethnicity, and genetic studies of living peoples as well as archaeogenomic studies of skeletal remains seek to identify relationships, current perspectives on what does—or does not—constitute “the essence of an individual and the groups to which one belongs” are worth considering. Facts, wherever they occur, are subject to interpretation. It is the cultural interpretation that we give to genetic identity that imbues that concept with meaning. emoke.szathmary@umanitoba.ca
Used as a predominant covering material in Central and Eastern Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, plaster’s malleable characteristics also enabled its efficient utilization as a material for imitating decorative features traditionally made from stone and marble. Instead of looking at plaster as an imitation material, this article proposes studying it as a material archive containing unintentionally preserved traces of the past that may include fragments of advertisements, graffiti, bullet holes, or virtually any inscription in plaster that would otherwise be bound to disappear. Plaster archeology is a mode of looking at plaster less as a conduit of architectural form and more as a material surface involving depth. As a discipline, plaster archeology entails a set of practices that allows one to attend to these surfaces, although not with the intention to save traces of the past from disappearance, but rather towards reconceptualizing plaster as a material in its own right that constantly transforms at the whims of human and climatic forces. By using two buildings located in the heart of Budapest’s seventh district as case studies, I will then demonstrate how the plaster archeologist views and examines façades. Finally, through an exploration of plaster’s characteristics and history, I argue for plaster archeology as a non-interventive mode of engaging with architectural surfaces.
In this article, Christopher VanDemark explores the intersections between nationalism, fashion, and the royal figure in Hungary between 1857 and the Compromise of 1867. Focusing on aesthetics as a vehicle for feminine power at a critical junction in Hungarian history, VanDemark contextualizes Empress Elisabeth’s role in engendering a revised political schema in the Habsburg sphere. Foreseeing the power of emblematic politics, the young Empress adeptly situated herself between the Hungarians and the Austrians to recast the Hungarian martyrology narrative promulgated after the failed revolution of 1848. Eminent Hungarian newspapers such as the Pesti Napló, Pester Lloyd, and the Vasárnapi Újság form the backbone of this article, as publications such as these facilitated the dissemination of patriotic sentiment while simultaneously exulting the efficacy of symbolic fashions. The topic of study engages with contemporary works on nationalism, which emphasize gender and aesthetics, and contributes to the emerging body of scholarship on important women in Hungarian history. Seminal texts by Catherine Brice, Sara Maza, Abby Zanger, and Lynn Hunt compliment the wider objective of this brief analysis, namely, the notion that the Queen’s body can both enhance and reform monarchical power within a nineteenth-century milieu.
Béla Tarr is probably the most paradoxical figure in contemporary Hungarian cinema. His artistic trajectory shows a movement from documentary style realism (Family Nest, 1979) towards more modernist cinematic practices (Satan’s Tango, 1994, Werckmeister Harmonies, 2000, and The Man from London, 2007). A major celebrity in the global film culture that prides itself in being transnational, international, and in crossing linguistic and ethnic boundaries, Tarr has consistently found himself on the fringes of the Hungarian cultural and political establishment. In this study Tőke considers Tarr’s films and public persona as catalysts in the debates about what constitutes “Hungarian cinema” in a globalizing world from the 1970s until today.
This article aims at providing an interpretation and analysis of German literary works, especially of Stefan Zweig’s short story Burning Secret (2011), read through the lenses of recent theories on the interconnectedness of living space, identity formation and emotions. The reading here suggested moves from the analogy between literary investigations and proper Freudian suggestions. Zweig’s optimism in coming to terms with – and working through – the inner struggle of the adolescent main protagonist is here assimilated to a kind of modern folktale and becomes the “untimely” humane message that echoes classical ideals of the Weimar culture.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
Blomqvist, Anders E. B., Constantin Iordachi, Balázs Trencsényi (eds.) 2013. Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives - Comparisons and Entanglements in Nationalisms Across the Globe Vol. 10. Bern: Peter Lang. viii, 847 pp.
Reviewed by: Andrew Ludanyi, Ohio Northern University
The crisis of substance and the difficulty of making decisions are fundamental cores in Musil’s conception of the subject. In The Man Without Qualities subjectivity is the consequence of a precise ontology which deconstructs, in the manner of Mach, the very structure of reality. But Musil is not Mach, and he does not merely translate his categories into literature. There is a philosophical originality in his thought revealing a design in which the dissolution of substance and the unsaveability of the ego turn into the development of a paralysing “sense of possibility”. This essay restores an image of Musil fascinated by the theme of the undecidable, but also an acute critic of all the forms of ethical-political decisionism.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
This article discusses the emergence of the semi-clandestine efforts of a network of international Jewish philanthropies and the Israeli government to send material and financial aid to Jews in early-communist Hungary. Post Second World War Hungary was a special focus for Jewish aid organizations in the west and the Israeli government. They poured resources into Hungary, both to feed, cloth and provide medical care to hundreds of thousands of Jews, and to assist thousands of Jews migrating west through Hungary. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the dominant Jewish aid organization in the world at the time, ran its largest and most expensive program in Hungary. Working with Israeli and Hungarian authorities, it financed a network of welfare services, often through the importation of scarce consumer goods and raw materials. As the Communist Party reshaped the economy, and pushed out “undesirable elements” from Hungarian life, this aid program served a growing population of impoverished, sick, and religious Jews, some exiled in Hungary’s countryside. This program increasingly took advantage of black market networks to distribute aid. Yet, after conditions deteriorated so much that this program ceased officially, Jewish aid providers in the US and Israel adapted their earlier practices and networks to take advantage of the impoverished consumer economy in program to distribute aid clandestinely to Hungarian Jews, with the cooperation of Hungary’s communist authorities.
Exile, emigration and displacement have marked the trajectories of Hungarian filmmakers over the past century. Michael Curtiz, the Korda brothers—Alexander, Vincent and Zoltán—André de Toth, Emeric Pressburger, Vilmos Zsigmond, Miklós Rózsa, Peter Lorre, Géza von Radvány and other talented artists have crossed borders, cultures and languages, creating such classics as Casablanca, Somewhere in Europe, The Red Shoes and The Lost One. The legendary sign posted in Hollywood studios read: "It is not enough to be Hungarian, you have to have talent, too!" Accompanied by film extracts, rare footage, personal interviews, archive photographs, and documentary materials, my presentation explores the transnational odysseys of these Hungarian directors, producers, cinematographers, composers, actors and screenwriters whose artistic contributions became an indispensable part of international cinema, suggesting that the challenges of emigration may also offer opportunities for critique, self-examination and artistic creativity.
In 1920, the historic Kingdom of Hungary was dismembered according to the dictates of the Treaty of Trianon. Resulting in the loss of two-thirds of the nation’s pre-World War I territory, and one-third of its prewar population, Trianon has long stood as a symbol for Hungarian suffering and trauma in the twentieth century. Historians of modern Hungary have given much consideration to Trianon, with serious attention being paid to what some have called the Trianon syndrome, or the Trianon trauma. Arguing that interwar Hungarian culture and politics need to be understood in light of the menacing psychological shadow cast by Trianon, a number of historians have suggested that the people of Hungary were traumatized spontaneously and universally by the dismemberment of the nation and the suffering that followed. This paper argues that, though this may indeed have been the case on a raw emotional level, careful consideration needs to be given to the overlapping political and pedagogical functions of the Trianon trauma, especially as this trauma found expression in repeated public “performances” of the Trianon tragedy. Focusing on the revisionist performances of Hungarian boy scouts between the wars, and in particular on the personal papers of the Hungarian geographer and boy scout leader Ferenc Fodor, this paper draws a direct link between trauma and performance in the interwar period, and argues that, though trauma was indeed central to Hungarian cultural politics, it functioned as much as a pedagogical strategy as it did a psychological reality.
Frank, Tibor. Double Exile: Migrations of Jewish-Hungarian Professionals through Germany to the United States, 1919-1945. Exile Studies, Vol. 7. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG, 2009. 501 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Appendix. Index. Illustrations. Reviewed by Andrew Felkay, Kutztown University.