Language and Literature paper by Rajec, Elizabeth
Ferenc Molnár -- The Refugee New Yorker
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
140 years ago Ferenc Neumann, a.k.a. Ferenc Molnár, the journalist, novelist, and most famously dramatist was born in Budapest on January 12, 1878. He changed his name in 1896 as a gesture of asserted nationalism claiming that as a Hungarian writer, he felt obliged to use a Hungarian pen name. Being of Jewish origin, he had no choice but to escape as a refugee from Nazi Europe. In 1940 he joined his third wife Lili Darvas in New York who fled a year earlier. In spite of his great fame Molnár, the refugee missed Hungary, his native language, the Hungarian stage. None of his works written in the USA after 1940 could compete with Liliom or with his other well known works. He suffered from homesickness, died of cancer in New York in 1952.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Elizabeth Molnar Rajec is a retired professor emerita,Fulbright scholar, PEN member, academic librarian from City College CUNY, published author on Franz Kafka and Ferenc Molnar. The latest among her many publications is Climbing Out From Under the Shadow, New York, 2010. erajec@yahoo.com