The writer and journalist Paul Goldmann (1865-1935) was one of Arthur Schnitzler’s closest friends. At the same time, he represents the greatest friendship break in Schnitzler’s life. The correspondence between Goldmann and Schnitzler from 1888 to 1931 provides a better understanding not only of Goldmann’s biography, but also of his difficult relationship with Schnitzler.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
This article takes a comparative approach and deals with the issue of the death penalty in Austria and Czechoslovakia after the First World War. Whereas both successor states strived for progressive reforms that would delimit them from the discredited old regime, each of them found a different response to the experience of extreme violence and massive use of the death penalty during the First World War. While Austria abolished the death penalty by law in 1919 and anchored this abolition into its constitution in 1920, Czechoslovakia, despite expectations to the contrary, gradually embedded this punishment within the process of national state consolidation in the post-war chaos. This article argues that this difference was not only a result of an actual dominance of retentionists or abolitionists, but it had its deeper roots in the relation of the new states to the vanquished empire and the values of the regime change. Austrian Social Democrats, alongside other politicians, saw a way out of the state collapse and the post-war legal nihilism through laying down the state's new foundations and by the abolishing the death penalty, which they regarded as unjustifiable. In Czechoslovakia the death penalty was dismissed as a means of national repression under the Habsburgs but it proved useful in maintaining military discipline in the Czechoslovak Army and managing its peripheral regions where the state had little representation. It also served as a penal instrument to control the skyrocketing criminality that occurred amidst the post-war chaos. While the misery of defeat called for a fresh start in Austria, the death penalty turned out to be irreplaceable for securing the national independence and future prospects in victorious Czechoslovakia.
Although Zsigmond Kemény (1814-1875) and Miklós Jósika (1794-1865) inevitably figure among the most significant writers of nineteenth-century Hungarian literature, the interpretation of their novels is embedded within international historical contexts that are often inaccessible to the present-day reader. This study examines the physiognomic meanings of parent-child similarity in nineteenth-century novels and thus situates the examined works within the context of European literary and intellectual history. Such an interpretation of the novels reveals the diverse and strong current in the history of European ideas with which the analyzed texts engage in a lively dialogue.
This article focuses on the comics of the Austrian artist Nicolas Mahler. Selected comics from Franz Kafkas nonstop Lachmaschine (2014) will be analysed as ‘minimalistic form’ and inter-spatial phenomena. In Mahler’s so-called ‘graphic anecdotes’, inter- and transmediality become evident in a variety of ways: in the form and organization of anthology, the construction of pseudo-epigraphs, and the accentuation of ‘transition’ and ‘in-between’. As they address and reflect on the position of comics in the literary field, they also contribute to the current discussion about graphic narrative
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
A Hungarian travel journal written by Rózsa G. Hajnóczy (1892-1944) in either the late 1930s or early 1940s, Bengáli tűz is a work that has gained acclaim among readers in both India and Bangladesh. In 1928, the author travelled to India while accompanying her husband, the famous Orientalist, Gyula Germanus (1884-1979), and she stayed there for three years while recording her personal experiences in journal entries which eventually provided the raw material for Bengáli tűz. In spite of having a very wide fan base of mainly female readers, Bengáli tűz is still not mentioned in the History of Hungarian Literature Lexicon, which raises the issue of why this work has not been included in the canon of Hungarian literature. Since some questions surround whether Hajnóczy actually wrote Bengáli tűz, I aim to explore the issues connected to the authorship of this work while examining it from a comparative cultural perspective via textual analysis. Hajnóczy's journal has an abundance of instances of interculturalism which make it relevant to current readers as well.
Feichtinger, Johannes and Gary B. Cohen, eds. 2014. Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. 246 pp.
This article focuses on the character of Clytemnestra in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s drama «Electra» and tries to answer two main questions. Which time-specific and ideological traits emerge from his interpretation of the character? How does the author deal with one of the most popular ancient figures and which aims does he link to his elaboration? It will be argued that Clytemnestra’s presentation and declamations make her a “modern child” of antiquity and that Hofmannsthal presents contemporary questions by having recourse to the ancient Greek tradition.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
Swanson, John C. 2017. Tangible Belonging: Negotiating Germanness in Twentieth-Century Hungary - Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. Pittsburgh, PA: U of Pittsburgh P. 456 pp. Illus.
In this study Ferdinand and Komlosi analyze the use of Hungarian and Serbian in the city of Szabadka/Subotica, which is located in the Serbian region of Northern Vajdaság/Vojvodina. A mostly Hungarian speaking city for centuries, Szabadka/Subotica suffered the strong pro-Serbian language policy implemented by the Yugoslavian government from the end of the First World War until the dismantlement of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which gave Hungarian and other local minority languages a second chance to survive. Nowadays, Szabadka/Subotica is home to two main language groups, southern Slavic languages such a Serbian and Croatian (over sixty per cent) and Hungarian (thirty three per cent). Although Ferdinand and Komlosi employed official figures from the Serbian censuses to determine the size of each group, the situation of each language was mapped through empirical observation of language use in informal conversations, in official signage, and in permanent as well as temporary commercial signage. The results show that the role of Serbian (mostly written in Latin script) is dominant in almost all spheres of public life and as a lingua franca among various groups. Nevertheless, Hungarian maintains a strong presence in the city, especially in the center and in its northwestern districts. In this paper, Ferdinand and Komlosi aim to contribute to a better general understanding of group dynamics in bilingual settings and, specifically, to provide a clearer view of the language situation in one of the Hungarian-speaking regions lost by the historic Kingdom of Hungary after World War I.
Dani, Erzsébet. Identitásgyarmatosítás Erdélyben: Identitásdrámák és interkulturális stratégiák a Trianon utáni székelymagyar irodalomban ('Identity Colonization in Transylvania: The Presence of Identity Narratives and Intercultural Strategies in the Literature of the Székely Magyars After Trianon'). Csíkszereda: Pro-Print Publishers, 2016. 287 pp.
In contrast to its immediate neighbors, for over a century Hungary has had a seriously declining birth rate. This paper aims to provide an overview of this anomaly through a historical perspective by considering the major findings of a series of demographic studies that identify the key factors behind falling levels of fertility. It does so by focusing on four major periods. The first period covers the era prior to the demographic transition that commenced before 1880, when the demography was characterized by high birth rates and high death rates. The second period is one of demographic transition, between 1880 and 1960 coinciding with modernization, and is the period when death rates fell, while at the same time being accompanied by a decrease in birth rates. The third period is the post-transitional era of 1960-1980. The fourth covers the post-socialist change of 1990-2010. Hungary was the first country in Europe after the Second World War in which the level of fertility declined below a level of simple replacement of the population, which is less than 2.1 births per woman. Since 1981 the population has been declining by
about 0.15 – 0.20 percent per year, and currently fertility in Hungary is one of the lowest in Europe. The Hungarian age structure will become increasingly problematic as the fertile age group of the population continues to shrink.
Only in 1989, after forty-five years of Soviet domination, could the Holocaust in Hungary begin to be discussed openly and honestly. One scholar in particular, the author – editor of this mammoth geographical encyclopedia, Randolph L. Braham, has devoted his life and career to uncovering the truth about what happened within the borders of Hungary and the annexed territories. Since 1961 he has written or edited, co-authored or co-edited more than fifty books on the Holocaust. The masterful two-volume Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (1994) appeared to be his definitive statement. But now, with a team of Hungarian Holocaust scholars and journalists, he uncovers, with maps and photos, how the Holocaust was implemented within each and every city, town, and village of every one of the forty-one counties in wartime Hungary.
In their novels Radetzkymarsch and Die Standarte Joseph Roth and Alexander Lernet-Holenia worked out the elements of military codes, myths and pictures in a critical perspective. They also developed a very melancholy view on past literary and historical imaginations of officers in the final decade of the k.u.k.-monarchy. Both authors interpret the role and the function of the imperial officer as a way of resistance against the change of paradigms, thought and discourse at the beginning of the First World War. Because of this strategy of compensation, it is possible to recognize the different metaphorical acts to create the officer’s identity as a fiction.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia