Mária Telkes achieved outstanding results in the utilization of solar energy. Only thirteen years after her arrival in the US in 1925, she was accepted to work at MIT's Solar Energy Research Group, as the only female participant on the team. During the period she spent at MIT between 1939 and 1953, the number of female students and professors was insignificant, just below 1%. Mária Telkes never felt discriminated against; in all the hardest situations she found her way to keep on the scientific track of solar research. She achieved several patents and publications during these years and became known nationwide. The paper focuses on the circumstances: both social and technical challenges she faced. Based mostly on primary documents available at MIT Libraries' Distinctive Collections, details of her application process or her development of solar stills during the Second World War give us a sophisticated image not only of the challenges Telkes faced, but of the social characteristics of the era as well.
Focusing on the example of the so-called “Augsburger Messer” in Thomas Bernhard’s Amras, the paper explores the possibility of overcoming the barriers to a hermeneutical reading of Bernhard’s texts through the exploitation of literary things. By comprising both its material and its symbolic dimension the micro analysis of the “Augsburger Messer” suggests coupling the eclectic potential of things in literary texts with Bernhard’s additive and associative style. Eventually, this approach not only opens up a new perspective on Amras as one of Bernhard’s most remarkable texts, but also presents his writing as one that is deeply permeated with the traumatic structures of violence and (Austrian) history.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
This paper is the first part of two articles exploring whether and how Hungarian music pedagogues have influenced early childhood music education in the United States. Using less-known publications and archived materials, this study moves beyond the well-documented history of the Hungarian pedagogue, Zoltán Kodály’s influence upon American general music education to focus on Kodály’s early childhood concepts, which form the backbone of the Hungarian philosophy of music education. Through the lives and work of the Hungarian and American music educators, Katinka Dániel, Katalin Forrai, Sister Lorna Zemke and Betsy Moll, I delineate a pedigree of distinguished female Kodály protégés professing a passion for Hungarian early childhood music pedagogy that did not mainstream into US preschools. In words spoken by and about these scholar-educators, my research locates the systemic and cultural factors contributing to the challenge of implementing Hungarian musical ideas in US preschools. To round out a description of the elusive Kodály influence on US early childhood music, this analysis also draws upon my own Los Angeles experience in searching for a quality Kodály education for my young toddlers.
Glajar, Valentina, Alison Lewis and Corina L. Petrescu (eds.). 2016. Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc – Between Surveillance and Life Writing. Rochester, NY: Camden House, Boydell and Brewer. 237 pp.
In his novel Der fliegende Berg, Christoph Ransmayr plays with seemingly contradictory myths that surround the Himalayan mountain Phur-Ri, a mountain that is not marked on any maps and symbolizes a void, a figment of the imagination that serves as a foil for unfulfilled longings and desires. Using Roland Barthes and Mircea Eliade as its theoretical framework, this article analyzes the function of myths in Ransmayr’s novel and explores whether his use of myth can fill the void with meaning – or whether the void remains a vacuum that repells rather than allows for any form of signification.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
Hungarian literature on word-formation typically focuses on rule-governed descriptions of regular and typologically relevant patterns. However, there are plenty of other word-formation trends that usually go unnoticed in mainstream morphological research. The present paper will focus on two such trends: 1) rhyming and alliterating compounds such as pannon puma ‘Pannonian puma’ (a euphemism for Hungary’s economic performance, on the analogy of Asian tiger); and 2) creative prefixations such as meggugliz (‘to google’) and felhájpol (‘to hype’). Although these are seemingly two quite different patterns, in fact they share two significant traits. On the one hand, they are demonstrations of the fact that language users make full use of the creative possibilities in language and routinely play with sounds and meanings. On the other hand, they are also indications of the influential role of English in present-day Hungarian word-formation. It seems that language users are not only aware of the possibilities that this interference can result in but are also able to exploit these consciously. This crossing of language boundaries is becoming increasingly inevitable with the global spread of English.
Vörös, Boldizsár 2014: Történelemhamisítás és politikai propaganda. Illés Béla elmeszüleményei a magyar szabadságküzdelmek orosz támogatásáról ('Falsification of History and Political Propaganda - The Brainchildren of Béla Illés about the Russian Support of Hungarian Struggles for Freedom'). Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (MTA) Bölcsészetudományi Kutatóközpont. Történettudományi Intézet, 2014. 335 pp.
Reviewed by Peter Pastor, Montclair State University
The significance of the collapse of theHabsburg monarchyin 1918 is unquestionable in the context of Central European history. Small countries were formed, replacing a multinational empire. These new countries, however, had to deal with the aftermath of the downfall of the monarchy in the political, economic, and social spheres for a long time thereafter. Because so much is known about the collapse of the Danubian Monarchy today, one may wonder what else could possibly be said about the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Countless authors at home and abroad, some of them distinguished and others unreliable, as well as eyewitnesses and professional historians, have all devoted time and energy to this subject throughout the nearly one hundred years that have passed since the old monarchy fell apart.
The present paper deals with the semantic features of three Hungarian neologisms (becéloz, betámad, bevállal), and analyzes their semantic structures with the help of the Conceptual Integration Theory (Blending Theory). The words analyzed are verbs that have been used with the prefix be in recent years, although they are well-established with other prefix(es). As be is one of the oldest Hungarian prefixes, it has likely gained new function(s) in these cases. To substantiate this claim, data was gathered from two questionnaires (in 2010 and in 2014), and informants’ answers concerning meaning and style were analyzed. These data can help the survey in other fields too: firstly, they can help model the processes of understanding (or misunderstanding) of these neologisms, secondly, they can help model the semantic structures of the verbs within the framework of Blending Theory. Thirdly, these data can help indicate language use at a given point in time, from a synchronic viewpoint.
The 155 scenes of Fritz Hochwälder’s posthumous novel group around one central idea: each of the characters expects a final decision from the coming Thursday. What was read as a loosely connected series of expressionistic short scenes reveals itself as a carefully constructed whole. The narrative cement is provided by erotic relationships, by the visualization of metropolitan patterns of motion, and by a tightly woven texture of motives. Through emotional and economic treason, Hochwälder puts Schnitzler’s language of love in the mouths of characters from Horváth’s narrative worlds, and he exploits an up to now overlooked criminal plot.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
The use of personal names by minority Hungarians, both men and women, varies not only according to the circumstances of the country where they live but also from community to community and even from individual to individual. This study focuses on different forms of first (given) names and family names (surnames) characteristic of female ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia, including the usage of the Slovak feminine suffix -ová with Hungarian surnames of women. The paper also discusses the topic of relevant legislation – laws and regulations – concerning the use of personal names of members of national minorities which, to a great extent and especially for women, can influence the choice of the form of their given name and surname
Kereszty, Orsolya. Nőnevelés és nemzetépítés Magyarországon 1867-1918. Sopron: Novum Publisher, 2010. 364 pages; [Women's Education and Nation Building in Hungary in 1867-1918.], Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008. 72 pp. Reviewed by Adrienn Nagy, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pécs.
Török, Petra, ed. Sorsával tetováltan önmaga. Válogatás Lesznai Anna naplójegyzeteiből[Tattoed With Her Fate: Excerpts from Anna Lesznai’s Diary]. Budapest, Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum and Hatvany Lajos Múzeum. 2010. 536 pp., illus. + Appendix. Reviewed by Ágnes Huszár, University of Pécs.