Following the 1956 Revolution forty thousand Hungarian refugees were admitted to the United States in a relatively short period of time. This immigration wave was well organized and supported by the US authorities.


After the brutal suppression of the revolution, Hungary was ruled by the Communist Kádár-regime for several decades. Travel to West was severely limited and only a couple of hundred refugees arrived to the US in this time period, spanning from the 1960s thru 1989, the collapse of Hungary’s Socialist system.


As one of those who left Hungary illegally in this period, I explore why this generation of immigrants is different. How do they see Hungary differently than the 56-ers? I call them the “Forgotten Generation” of Hungarian-American immigrants.


Although refugees of this period were generally better educated than previous immigrant groups, they received less or no US support for resettlement. Many of them felt neglected or sometimes misunderstood by the Hungarian-American community and they harbored conflicted feelings about the Kádár-regime. They had to fight various additional obstacles, among them, Socialist Hungary’s ongoing legal and political maneuvers to convince (or force) them to return to Hungary.


Little research has been done about the Hungarian immigration of this period, and although the number of refugees in this period is much smaller than after 1956, their story and struggles deserve attention.

Centered on the Dualist era (1867-1918), my work examines Hungarian elites’ appeals to perceived “Western” models in order to justify Magyar supremacy and forced assimilationist policies in the Kingdom of Hungary.
In this particular project, I develop my argument via an examination of Hungarian legal-historical discourse. In particular, I look at the ways in which elites framed their own country’s “thousand-year” constitution as the continental “brother” of the land of constitutionalism par excellence, England.
For Hungarian elites, their “ancient” constitution mattered, in large part, because it allowed them to portray themselves as the “English of the Continent.” Perhaps most famously, since the first decades of the 19th-cenutry, elites had emphasized purported links between the Hungarian Bulla Aurea of 1222 and the Magna Carta as proof of similarities between English and Hungarian constitutional development.
More than merely establishing a flattering comparison with the world’s greatest imperial power, this framework fused legal parallels with contemporary race theory to craft a broader justification for Magyar supremacy. In this telling, the Magyars, like the English, were a “natural ruling race,” the only nation in the Carpathian Basin blessed with both the constitutional history and the racial virility necessary to ‘civilize’ the various nationalities of the Hungarian Kingdom.
These discussions, centered on notions of “constitutionalism” and the “thousand-year state,” persisted throughout the Dualist era, and would even serve as a key piece of the Hungarian Delegation’s ill-fated (and ill-timed) argument in favor of territorial integrity at the Paris Peace Conference in 1920.

This study explores social and kinetic patterns built into the structure of a rural dance event and how they function/ed in the past, in current rural settings, and in the modern-day táncház or dance party. Drawing on dance and music analysis and recent studies, including Sándor Varga’s work in the Transylvanian village of Visa in the 1990’s, my own observations in Visa and the US/Canada in the past few years, and Anna Szekély’s (Janku) recent dissertation on the current táncház generation, I will show how dance rules and structure create a matrix in which social goals may be achieved. These include:
Maintaining social structure
Creating a social space for oneself
Finding a mate
Practicing negotiation with neighbors
Satisfying aesthetic needs

Analysis includes form and tempo changes, the use of space, and interaction between dancers and bands, as well as among and within couples. While it is easy to view dance rules as archaic, I suggest that they continue to function in the present for much the same purposes as in the past, on both sides of the Atlantic.

The challenge of passing on strong ethnic ties to the next generation is one that all cultures deal with in the United States. In the case of immigrant communities, the further one gets away from first generation immigrants, the weaker the ethnic ties seem to become. That is unless the family makes their ethnicity an integral part of daily life, repeatedly exposing young people to direct experiences and reinforcing these lessons time and again.

This is becoming increasingly difficult and rare as our Hungarian American community continues to shift and change. The challenge of “passing it on” is also effected by: marriage to non-Hungarians, an inability of 2nd and 3rd generation HAs to speak the language, a lack of community infrastructure to rely on - such as churches, schools or scouts - and the list goes on… In short, it is becoming more and more difficult to stay Hungarian in the U.S..



To create potential solutions to this issue, Lauer Learning created the “Pass It On...” project as a program of preservation as well as a plan for change.



The “Pass It On...” program proposes new ways to reach the youth and help families strengthen ties to their roots through activities that connect and re-connect 2nd and 3rd generation Hungarian Americans to their ethnic heritage. We do this with a variety of tools, multimedia approaches and new ideas that expose, educate and engage the “at risk” members of our community. Our goal is to have them gradually develop more and more interest in, and take pride in, their Hungarian American ancestry. 


* Czech idea of the reconstruction of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 60th : federalization of the state based on the so-called “historical nations” (Palacký: The Idea of the Austrian state), dualism can only mean the end of the monarchy
* Slovak idea of the reconstruction of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 60th : centralization: all nations under one centre in Vienna (equality of rights), dualism can only mean the end of the Slovaks
* 1867 as a result of the “divide et impera” policy
* The consequences: Slovaks without Czechs and the Emperor and under the pressure of Hungarians; Czechs tried to push for the coronation of the Austrian Emperor to the Czech King
* The Czechs refused to participate in the 1867 Slovak idea of reconstruction of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 60th : centralization: all nations under one centre in Vienna (equality of rights)
* Compromise – the making of a modern Hungary or
* The Austro-Hungarian Compromise and Dualism as an example for the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992

The Hungarian revolution of 1956 was a global event. A major uprising of the Cold War, it was on the first page of many newspapers and thousands of refugees found new home in another country. In my presentation I will introduce the 1956 Hungarian revolution’s American heritage. Thousands of offers of jobs, marriages, and scholarships were available for the almost 40,000 Hungarian refugees. Protests, charity balls, and religious services were organized to help fundraising for Hungary. All the Hungarian refugees remembered the names of Camp Kilmer. These events have their own archives, collections, statues. In my presentation I would like to introduce the major American sources of the American reception and reaction. I performed research in the Nixon, JFK, Eisenhower Presidential Libraries and at the National Archives, College Park, MD. I also visited major American Hungarian collections in Cleveland and New Brunswick, NJ. But the historical documents and collections are just a small segment of the public memory. I will discuss the effect and heritage of historical events connected to the American reaction to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Just as the visit of Richard M. Nixon to Austria in 1956, Elvis Presley’s participation at The Ed Sullivan Show, The Time Man of the Year cover. There is a memory in statues, so I also discuss the art
history heritage of the topic.

In December 1851, an American ship took Kossuth to the USA for an eight month triumphant tour. Young America was in its infancy & had only 23 million people. Kossuth addressed Congress in English & traveled to 16 states speaking to enthusiastic crowds. Over 150 years later, the legacy of Kossuth's visit includes streets, statues, at least five remaining Kossuth villages in NY, PA, OH, IN, & MS, two Kossuth townships in ME & WS, and one Kossuth County in Iowa.

I will describe how the U.S. State Department and U.S. Embassies all around the World reacted to the Hungarian revolution. The paper based on my research in the National Archives in College Park, MD. There I found the telegrams and reports of American embassies all around the World. My research focuses on multiple aspects of the United States' political reaction to the revolution.
The first few days in the communication were gathering information about the events in Budapest. The American foreign offices collected information about the reception of the events in foreign countries. These documents give new information pertaining to how countries all around the World reacted to the Hungarian revolution. From many places, like Hungary, Moscow, France, etc. the embassies sent many telegrams every day to Washington D.C.
After the American decision to not send troops to Eastern-Europe the second goal of the embassies were getting information on which country will follow the U.S.’s policy about the Hungarian question in the United Nations. After the Soviet attack, the big refugee crisis provided a third wave in communication since the U.S. was interested in who is willing to accept Hungarians. The American Embassies' inner communication shows that it was a prestige question of how many refugees can go to different countries. The United States organized it’s biggest airlift since the Berlin crisis, to transport Hungarians to New Jersey. Austria and Yugoslavia received thousands of dollars of support from the U.S. and from the United Nations.
I provide a wide view of the different reactions not just geographically, but in their topics and by the most typical reactions. I will talk more about the American Embassy in Moscow and in Budapest since these are critical places in the view of the topic. The Embassy in Moscow was responsible for getting the American decision to the Soviet leaders, but also their role in information gathering was critical in the first week of the revolution. The Hungarian Embassy’s reports and telegrams are providing a very interesting view, of what was life like in the offices and what was the official information from Hungary.
Another unique aspect of the documents is that they contain information about the reaction of the society in some countries. Protests, blood donations, donation events, and public speeches were reported from all around the World. The diplomats reported these events from the local press, but in some cases, they were participants too.
The goal of my presentation is to give a brief introduction to this topic with the use of new documents and new perspectives.

The paper presents a synthesis based on source material from the archives of the United Nations Secretariat (New York), the European Office of the UN (Geneva) and the UN High Comissioner for Refugees (Geneva), as well as from NATO, International Red Cross Committee and French foreign ministry archives (Brussels, Geneva and La Courneuve, respectively).
Following the end of the 1956 revolution, which had been violently put down by the Soviet Union, a wave of Hungarian refugees appeared, whose accommodation and integration was aided by an international aid initiative, which together form an important chapter in the history of international migration. These refugees received far more favourable treatment than earlier Hungarian expatriates or other European refugees had. The mass of refugees, totalling 200.000 persons and thus constituting a significant group even in a broad, European perspective meant that their successful transportation to host countries and their subsequent integration represented an exceptional success for international aid efforts. This success merits investigation especially in light of the fact that the institutions dealing with refugees had to face chronic shortages of funding.
How can their efficiency be explained? The humanitarian sentiment motivated by the memory of the 2nd World War and the resulting clarification and strengthening of refugee rights contributed to it just as much as did the support of the highly sympathetic West European societies. Also, the highly advantageous composition of the refugees in terms of labour market skills and competitiveness coincided favourably with the era of the „wonder years” in West European economic history. The most important component, however, was the political will of NATO governments, which – in part as a result of the ideological confrontation with the Soviets – ensured continued attention and support for the problem of the Hungarian refugees even once the waves of popular sympathy had receded in the host societies.

The purpose of this study is to describe the key factors to consider in the art and science of translation. This is a rapidly growing field. Improvement in software and technology is encouraging rapid innovation in the language service industry. There are numerous software platforms available for translation. A selected sample of available software programs will be described, with an emphasis on quality. For example, a Hungarian company, Kilgray Translation Technologies, stands at the forefront with their product, memoQ, a CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) tool with many variations that allow for compatibility with other types of translation software as well as standard computer applications for text documents. Translators, editors, proofreaders and project managers use CAT tools to work on and expedite completion of translations of all sizes. Machine Translation (MT) continues to prove ineffective in supporting the vast complexity of languages with regards to context, tone and structure. For example, “Google Translate” generally provides word-for-word translation without consideration of the nuances of context and colloquial expressions. MT, however, would be considered the hypothetical successor to CAT tools in translation technology development. Examples will illustrate the sublime to the ridiculous in the field of translation using MT. In sum, the study provides recommendations regarding best practices to preserve and assure high quality translations as the outcome of these applications.

The composer Sándor Veress, Kodály`s successor as Professor of Composition at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, left Hungary in 1949 and settled in Bern, Switzerland, where he was active for the next 40 years as a highly influential teacher and a successful composer. His closest friend in Hungary was musicologist János Demény, who was responsible for collecting and publishing Bartók`s letters. The
correspondence between these two musicians covers many subjects from travels to family matters but it mainly revolves, not surprisingly, around music. The paper will illustrate how Veress sought to communicate the new insights and experiences gained in the West to his friend in Hungary. At the same time, it will pay tribute to letter-writing as a literary genre; Veress and Demény clearly enjoyed practicing this dying art-form.

In my paper, I will elaborate on the question of the devotion of doctors to more than one discipline, and the role that art played in their lives. Different art forms are considered as a significant way of self-expression.

Since its inception in 1945, the Hungarian Scouts Association in Exteris, a youth organization active on four continents, has fostered maintenance of Hungarian identity through activities focused on the Hungarian language and culture. By the 1990’s, third generation youngsters were showing increased difficulty with the Hungarian language. The 30 yearly Language and Cultural Studies Scholarships offered by the Hungarian Government and the Balassi Institute to descendants of Hungarians living in Western countries is crucial to the maintenance of their linguistic and cultural heritage as well as to the affirmation of their Hungarian roots.

In his report on the 1876 Philadelphia World’s Fair Aurél Kecskeméthy wrote that there were 23 Hungarian exhibitors, among them the firm of András Saxlehner exhibiting their János Hunyadi bitter-water. In his book he predicts that “American hygienic practice will allow these waters to become extraordinarily popular, if their owners are not intimidated by the initial difficulties and are not daunted by the cost of unavoidable complaints (returns) in America.” But, the clashes that the company faced were not with those returning bottles, but a broader one in the media and in law suits. In the fifty plus years that Hunyadi János was present on the American market, the company advertised in various printed media to inform the public of the product. In the same period several lawsuits were also filed by the company to protect its trademark. This presentation will examine both the advertisements and the lawsuits.

The Szekler’s are a Hungarian speaking autonomous group, residing in Szeklerland, the eastern most extent of the Carpathian Basin in modern day Transylvania, Romania. The Szekler’s have occupied this area since at least 1050AD, being given special noble, non-taxed treatment from the Hungarian empire. Known as the frontier guard, the Szeklers were tasked with protecting the eastern most extent of the Hungarian empire. The following presentation outlines an ongoing excavation of an urban Szekler cemetery site located in the city centre of Székelyudvarhely, a major medieval Hungarian political seat. A multifocal approach pairing archaeological and biological anthropological methodologies seeks to
interpret and understand the Szeklers, who they are and how they lived. The St. Nicholas project is part of a larger collection of bioarchaeological projects in Székelyudvarhely which have been ongoing for over a decade. This project along with the support of the decedent community and other international collaborators has unearthed the remains of a medieval
church (circa 15 th century) and the remains of 61 individuals to date exhibiting a range of burial practices with the presence of unique artefacts. The goal of this project is to form a better understanding of the lived experiences of Szekler people, re-centring this population in Transylvanian archaeology. Giving Szekler archaeology greater academic representation, promoting their historical importance and using these projects as an avenue to train the next generation of archaeological and anthropological researchers.

The twenty-year period between the two world wars saw rapid urbanization and then economic depression; both generated great political tension and transformations, all reflected in the arts and letters of the time, from German expressionist paintings to Berthold Brecht, Thomas Mann, and other writers who tried to make sense of the dizzying changes around them. The artistic ferment had one unifying note: alienation from society on an unprecedented scale. Hungarian poetry was very much caught up in the mood of the times, and this will be illustrated here with lesser known but quite authentic examples, poems by Jenő Dsida, Lörinc Szabó, and Sandor Marai in this author’s translation.

The edition of László Kürti’s latest poems (Masses of the Body, 2012) shows that the new language of his philosophical poetry sruggles to find the borders of the always-changing self. In my paper I study the experimental borders of the identity through his poems, that are sought in sexuality, in family relations and in the relation to the transcendent.

The lifelong friendship between the violinist Zoltán Székely and Béla Bartók began in the early 1920s when Székely was a student at the Academy of Music in Budapest and Bartok was a piano instructor there. In 1937, Székely joined the Hungarian String Quartet, and it seemed inevitable that the violinist and the composer would collaborate on a quartet together.
Even though the first performance of Bartok’s Fifth String Quartet was given by the Kolisch quartet in Washington (1935), it is the Hungarian String Quartet that have been attributed with the most authentic interpretation, as they had the privilege of rehearsing with the composer himself. In 1939, Bartok finished his last quartet and he had intended for the Hungarian Quartet to première the work. However, due to communication difficulties with Székely, the plan never materialized. It was the Kolisch quartet that once again premièred the work; this time in New York in 1941.
Although the Kolisch Quartet disbanded in the 1940s and a recording of the première does not exist, Bartok worked in America with this quartet prior to performance to ensure authenticity. However, many critics have stated the performance by the Hungarian Quartet most accurately captures the spirit of the work, not due to superior ensemble or technical capabilities, but simply by virtue of their ethnicity. This paper draws on the rehearsal notes taken in collaboration with the composer prior to the Kolisch première and compares them to the recording made in 1961 by the Hungarian Quartet in order to determine whether Bartok’s wishes were fully realized.

In hope of foreign support, Francis II. Rákóczi left the country in 1711, but his remembrance has stayed in the Carpathian basin. After another fallen revolution of 1849, his role became famous again, mostly in History and Arts. His fame has reached its peak with his reburial in 1906. The figure of Rákóczi was also important in Hungarian history both in the interwar period and in the communist era as well. Studies of his remembrance opens the question of his reputation in foreign (mostly emigrant) Hungarian communities around the world, especially in the USA. Hungarian freedom fighters – like Rákóczi, Kossuth and the participants of the 1956 uprising – have become heroes for national identity abroad.
In my presentation, I would like to show the changing role of Francis II Rákóczi (II. Rákóczi Ferenc in Hungarian) through moments, stamps and other cultural products. In different political times Rákóczi and his remembrance have become vital to the Hungarian national identity both in Hungary and in different parts of the world.

The perception of the history of the Holocaust in Hungary is changing by discovery of new data and facts within and outside the country. As more and more Holocaust survivors are leaving us, new publications, as well as new types of media make the subject more widely accessible. This also leads to a wider acceptance of Holocaust research and puts the Holocaust in its proper place in Hungarian history.