Töhötöm Nagy was a Hungarian Jesuit (1908-1979), who lived an extraordinary life that included several stages first in the Jesuit order, later as an emigrant freemason in South America, and finally in Hungary again as a secret agent of the communist political police. The paper would focus on each stages of his life, thus contributing to understand his decisions and motifs.
After intensive Jesuit studies, which included theology, philosophy and sociology, Nagy started his clerical career as one of the leaders of the most successful Catholic youth movement in interwar Hungary, KALOT (Catholic Society for Agrarian Youth). As he dealt with social problems, he was involved in the struggles for an agrarian reform policy. In 1945-1946 Nagy travelled six times between Budapest and Rome and became a chief negotiator between the Vatican, the Hungarian Catholic church and the Soviets. Since he could not agree with Cardinal Mindszenty and his policy, Mindszenty saw to it that Nagy should leave Hungary: he was “sentenced” to exile in South America. Because of his disappointments, however, Nagy left the Jesuit order in 1948. Later he became a member of the Hungarian freemason community in Argentina, but after the Hungarian political police offered him a chance to return to Hungary, in 1968 he moved to Budapest. Until his death he was used by the state security as a secret agent.

Töhötöm Nagy was a Hungarian Jesuit (1908-1979), who lived an extraordinary life that included several stages first in the Jesuit order, later as an emigrant freemason in South America, and finally in Hungary again as a secret agent of the communist political police. The paper would focus on each stages of his life, thus contributing to understand his decisions and motifs. After intensive Jesuit studies, which included theology, philosophy and sociology, Nagy started his clerical career as one of the leaders of the most successful Catholic youth movement in interwar Hungary, KALOT (Catholic Society for Agrarian Youth). As he dealt with social problems, he was involved in the struggles for an agrarian reform policy. In 1945-1946 Nagy travelled six times between Budapest and Rome and became a chief negotiator between the Vatican, the Hungarian Catholic church and the Soviets. Since he could not agree with Cardinal Mindszenty and his policy, Mindszenty saw to it that Nagy should leave Hungary: he was “sentenced” to exile in South America. Because of his disappointments, however, Nagy left the Jesuit order in 1948. Later he became a member of the Hungarian freemason community in Argentina, but after the Hungarian political police offered him a chance to return to Hungary, in 1968 he moved to Budapest. Until his death he was used by the state security as a secret agent.

In recent decades, the Israeli scene of literary, artistic and cultural creation is laden with the memory of the by-gone world of (or of the parents of) the contemporary generation of approximately middle-aged people who have reached prominent posts in Israeli intellectual, cultural, and artistic circles. A forceful example of this phenomenon is the work of people of Oriental or mizrahi origin, which is greatly inspired by African and Indian post-colonial doctrines. Another, just as prolific yet not that sounded in political terms, is the work of children of immigrants of European origin, mostly Holocaust survivors, depicting the early period of their families in the young, centralist and socialist State of Israel of the 1950s and 1960s. Interestingly, quite a few of these writers have Austro-Hungarian roots, whether as Hungarian- or Romanian- or Slovakian- or Carpatho-Rusyn-born, or as offspring to people coming from these places. In the proposed presentation, I will introduce the following writers and their central works: Judith Rotem, Yoel Hoffmann, Suzanne Adam, Esti G. Haim, Yael Neeman, and others. My presentation will strive to create a group portrait of these Israeli writers of Hungarian origin through their biography, identity and ideology (e.g., as Orthodox people or kibbutz dwellers, though mostly formerly), familial setting, Holocaust memory or legacy, literary devises with stress on language(s) issues, and last - their clinging to literary creation as an alternative, virtual space for entrusting their complex worlds.

Required equipment: over-head projector.

Paul A. Samuelson (1915-2009), was the first American Nobel laureate in economics and one of the foremost academic economists of the 20th century. He is quoted as saying” "I don't care who writes a nation's laws, or crafts its treatises, if I can write its economics textbooks," and he did. Paul Samuelson’s Economics is one of the most successful textbooks ever published in the field. The first edition was published in the USA in 1948. It immediately became a bestseller with sales of more than 120,000 copies in the first year. While this text, in various editions, was used in the majority of American colleges’ introductory economics courses, students in Hungary remained cut off from the concepts and theories described in the book. This presentation will look at two interrelated issues; the long road the book had to travel before it reached Hungarian college students in 1976, by then the 10th edition of the American textbook hit the US market; and the discrepancies between the English text and the Hungarian translation. The paper will also look at the Hungarian reception of the textbook.

In the period that can now be called the long twentieth-century, meaning between the 1860s and the 1990s, the Jews of Hungary have lived through periods of acceptance and rejection by Hungarian society and leadership, going through Emancipation and assimilation, two World Wars, anti-Semitism culminating in genocide, Soviet-imposed communism and finally the present regime. Hungarian Jews of the modern era were far from a monolithic group, but since the 1867 Emancipation they became divided between the Orthodox, who largely rejected modernization, and the Neologs, who embraced it (in between them was a small group called Status Quo Ante). In the decades leading from the 1860s to the 1940s the Orthodox communities decreased, whereas the Neolog ones increased and this tendency became perpetuated after the Holocaust and under communism (little is known of Jews who converted to Christianity or became atheist or otherwise lost contact with Judaism). This presentation offers a close comparison between two editions of a major text of Neolog Hungarian Jews, namely their bi-lingual Hebrew-Hungarian prayer book or siddur. The first was created in the late nineteenth-century and used throughout most of the twentieth-century, and the second appeared in the 1990s and since then replaced the older edition. This comparison will focus on parts of the prayer book that refer to the life of Jews in their host countries including Hungary of the long twentieth-century.

Any Hungarian who experienced World War I, the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the trauma of the Trianon peace treaty was deeply affected by these seminal events. Hungarian politics during the subsequent inter-war period was dominated by politicians who lived through these turbulent and unsettling times, which had a profound and lasting influence on them as individuals and on their political views.

In Tibor Eckhardt, one of the co-founders of the Smallholders Party and the head of the opposition in Hungarian parliament during the interwar period, we have just such a politician. Born in 1888, he came of age and was educated in Hungary and abroad during the fin de siècle period when the Hungarian economy and culture were in flower under the Dual Monarchy. This paper will explore how his background in a family rooted in the Hungarian gentry and the events of World War I and its immediate aftermath shaped his political views and influenced his actions during the interwar period and throughout his life.

The Vörösmarty scout troop, founded in 1924, was officially banned from the Hungarian Scouting Association in 1941 along with all Jewish troops. Despite the ban the troop continued its activities - weekly meetings, Sunday hikes, a winter camp and summer camp, under the auspices of the Buda Jewish Community. Its leaders, mainly young Jewish intellectuals, strove to 'toughen' their charges. Scouts learned not only such skills as first aid and orientation but also literature and philosophy. On March 19, 1944, as the scouts were returning from their usual Sunday hike, they were quickly dispersed. The Germans had arrived.

Ten months later, in January 1945, the Vörösmarty came back to life. Several leaders, returning from forced labor, revived the troop which gained new vigor under the auspices of the Trade Unions. The troop now included girls - the first and only co-ed scout troop in Hungary. In 1948, the Vörösmarty was again dissolved, this time by the communists.

Fifty-two years later in 2000, former Vörösmarty members reached out to still surviving fellow scouts. The troop was revived and carries on activities in Budapest, including an annual meeting in April, when former members arrive from far-flung sites. This April the members celebrated the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Vörösmarty troop. The first of its many lives.

Éva Petrás: The Many Lives of a Jesuit, Freemason, and Philantropist. The Story of Töhötöm Nagy.
CEU Press, Budapest-Vienna-New York, 2023.
The life of Töhötöm Nagy, Jesuit, Mason, and secret service agent, offers fascinating insights into interwar Hungary, the Catholic Church and Vatican diplomacy, Freemasonry, and the activities of communist state security service. As a young Jesuit Nagy was one the leaders of a successful Catholic youth movement in interwar Hungary. After World War II he played an important role acting as an intermediary between the Vatican, the Red Army, and the Hungarian Catholic Church. After being sent to South America, he was attracted by liberation theology, but left the Society of Jesus, joined the Freemasons, and did social and philanthropist work in the slums of Buenos Aires. However, in the late 1960s he agreed to work for the Hungarian state security service in return for his repatriation. His biography traces the twists and turns of his life and at the same time gives insight into the 20th century history of Hungary, the Hungarian Catholic Church, Freemasonry, South America, and communism.

In the focus of this presentation is the development of modern capitalist market relations and how these appeared in different forms and levels in Debrecen’s traditional yet changing economy during the first half of the long nineteenth century. The spatial aspects of these processes will also be examined. There will be an analysis of the shift from the traditional structures of mercantile privileges given to royal camarilla, to landlords, and royal free cities over to capitalist competition. The spatial evolution with their impact on fairs, the rise and decline of peddler trade, the varieties of trade over a distance, crafts, the bifurcation of retail and wholesale trade, and the increase of urban commercial practices represented by stores and facilities such as restaurants and hotels will be examined.

Piac és tere – a kapitalizálódás térszerkezeti reprezentációi Debrecenben
Az előadás fókuszában az áll, hogy a kapitalizáció (a modern tőkés piaci viszonyok kialakulása) hogyan, milyen szinteken és formákban jelent meg Debrecen tradicionális gazdálkodásának gyakorlatában és térbeli reprezentációiban a 19. század „hosszú első felében”, 1870-ig.
A kiváltságrendszerre (királyi-kamarai, földesúri és szabad királyi városi) valamint a tradicionális árutermelés logikája épült városi térszerkezet konkrét ( geográfiai) értelmezése mögött a városi tér használatában és reprezentációjában a kiváltságrendszer és a hagyományos gazdálkodás intézményesüléseként létrejött telekszervezet mint deriváló és meghatározó struktúra működött. A telekszervezet hatását a városi tér szerkezetének értelmezésére és gyakorlati használatára merevségében a 19. század elejétől folyamatosan oldotta a piaci viszonyok átalakulása, az áruforgalom, hitelviszonyok fejlődése, a kiváltságrendszer keretei között is egyre jobban érvényesülő verseny a többszintű (interregionális, regionális, kistérségi, lokális) piacközponti szerepet is betöltő város gazdálkodásában. A kapitalizálódás a város gazdasági életében, a térhasználat gyakorlatában változó alakzatokban jelent meg: vásárok átalakulása, házaló kereskedelem felfutása és hanyatlása, a távolsági közvetítő kereskedelem differenciálódása, a kézműves termelés és árusítás illetve a kiskereskedelem és nagykereskedés szétválása, az urbánus kereskedelmi formák - bolt, üzlet, vendéglátás - gyarapodása.
Mindezek a városi térhasználat gyakorlatában és reprezentációjában a tradicionális alakzatok lassú átalakulását és marginalizálódását, az új formák megjelenését és elterjedését hozták magukkal. Ezt a folyamatot vázolja az előadás Debrecen esetében, különös figyelmet fordítva a folyamat eredményének egy időpontban (1870) rögzült térbeli rögzülésének elemzésére.

The present paper is based on documents from the archives of the UN itself (New York, Geneva), the Dag Hammarskjöld Collection of the Swedish National Library (Stockholm), the UNHCR Archives, the archives of International Committee of the Red Cross, (Geneva) and of the NATO (Brussels), and from those of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Paris, Nantes. We could regard as a rather new phenomenon the active and powerful participation of the Department of Public Information (DPI) of the UN Secretariat and the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the support of the fundraising efforts of the world organization UN. The press campaign developing in November-December 1956 extended to both the printed and the audiovisual media, placing the emphasis on the latter. I intend to present the versatile efforts described in a huge number of press announcements and the dramatic photos spreading all over the world press about the escaping and Austria receiving the Hungarian refugees.

My presentation sets out to examine the life and work of Theresa Pulszky, the wife of Kossuth’s diplomatic envoy Ferenc Pulszky, whose authorial persona came to be remembered as a‘Hungarian lady,’ as she fashioned herself in her memoir of 1849. Although their books were signed as co-written by Ferenc and Theresa, her person and work deserves particular attention for her important role in serving the cause of the 1848-49 revolution with her pen: her memoir and the three-volume publications Tales and Traditions of Hungary and Red, White, Black in the early 1850s make a significant contribution spreading knowledge about Hungary but also about the New World. Her role as the female émigré writer was instrumental in establishing a number of interconnected phenomena including the role of the female literary author and transmitter of knowledge between Central Europe and the Anglophone world.

TThe fate of about 700 thousand Hungarian prisoners who spent years in Soviet forced labor camps during the decades of the Communism was an absolute taboo. But the repressed memories of Soviet camp survivors suddenly surfaced after the fall of Communism. Dozens of memoirs were published, reports and documentary films were published to tell of their sufferings. Organizations were created to preserve the memory of the victims of forced labor. Parallel to the boom of memoir books, historians began to uncover how civilians were rounded up and transported to the Soviet Union and what happened to them in the camps. These "early" works did not receive much publicity in the 1990s and 2000s, and the subject of Hungarian prisoners did not enter the mainstream of Hungarian historiography. The government declared 2016 and 2017 as Gulag Memorial Years, and this decision gave new impetus to research in the field. New works appeared on the general history of prisoners, as well as on the fate of special groups of prisoners, namely clergymen, women, and those who were sentenced to 20-25 years of imprisonment by Soviet military tribunals. On the other hand, the government has incorporated the prisoners’ stories into its anti-Western memory policy, claiming that the USA was responsible for the tragic fate of prisoners. This presentation will not only give a detailed account of the historiography of the prisoners' fate, but also of how the politics of memory exploits their fate to support the "official" rhetoric about World War II.

My proposed paper intends to examine the role and significance of female literary translators in 19th century Hungarian literature. Whilst literary histories unequivocally acknowledge the importance of translation from English, French and Italian in building the Hungarian-language national literary canon, the gender, agency and sociological conditions of translation are rarely emphasized. Despite the general silence about female translators in these historical narratives, women played an active role in familiarizing the 19th century readership with foreign literature, but their work was not so much a contribution to the construction of the national canon by adding the translations of Shakespeare, Dante and Moliere. Rather, they focused on contemporary writing, with a predominance of fiction and plays. This paper intends to sketch the field for female translators in general, and then examines the contribution of the Wohl-sisters and Emilia Kánya, the first female periodical editor of Austria-Hungary in greater detail. Kánya’s weekly Családi kör/Family Circle ran from 1860 to 1880 under her editorship, and, by its commitment to publishing foreign literature in translation, played a significant role in familiarizing the female and family readership with contemporary writing beyond the borders of Austria. This paper is part of a larger-scale research project aiming at identifying the role of Hungarian literary women in the European literary cross-currents of the 19th century.

The unsuccessful 1848 revolution left many theories of the causes of its fall. One of them was not being able to mitigate and solve the discrepancy between what the Hungarian nobility was ready to give to satisfy the need of the nationalities. The recognition of this failure made the majority of Hungarian statesmen to deal with the problem and try to find solution. Whether to treat the nationalities on an equal basis, or from the position of power by satisfying minimal rights divided the political arena.

Critical thinking is defined as “the ability to apply higher-order cognitive skills and the disposition to be deliberate about thinking that leads to action that is logical and appropriate.” Knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors are foundational to critical thinking and are required to assess, diagnose, and solve problems in any discipline. It encompasses the entire range of actions and decisions that are not automatic and innate but rather require thought and mental processing. The absence of critical thinking can result in delayed or missed diagnoses, errors, and mismanagement. More specifically, critical thinking includes all conscious thought that goes into establishing a diagnosis and deciding on a plan of action specific to a problem or circumstances. It is a skill that is assumed to develop and grow as a consequence of education and experience. It is also assumed that everyone sooner or later becomes an expert in his/her field. But this is not necessarily so; studies distinguish between routine experts and adaptive experts. Using examples from the medical field, this talk will present three divergent lines of research in the critical thinking literature, 1) case studies illustrating diagnostic acumen, 2) representational theories of the mind, and 3) studies of decisions gone awry. We will consider research findings on the relationship between critical thinking and language instruction. These studies may inform Hungarian language instruction to help students more effectively learn the language. Using this framework, teachers can guide learners to improve their expertise, cognitive growth and development.

His son Joe became a famous Hollywood screenwriter, but less is known about István Eszterhás, a prolific writer who lived in Cleveland and edited a famous Hungarian-American newspaper. Leaving his homeland because of the Second World War, he arrived in Cleveland in 1950 and wrote realistic fiction, at least 13 novels as well as a memoir and some poetry, up until 1998. He had an uncanny sense of the ideological language of Cold War Hungary, coupled with insightful observations about diaspora communities. His works deal with themes of language, identity and emigration, as well as politics and religion, and they do so with empathy, mostly historical accuracy, and a deep respect for the human condition, hallmarks of great literature. Novels addressed will include A bíboros és a rendőr [the Cardinal and the Cop], his novel about Mindszenty, and A hézag [the Rift], his novel about Hungarian-American language, a really funny yet thought-provoking story with loads of ideological baggage and multiple levels of irony. Although not in the Hungarian literary canon, István Eszterhás should be, and this paper will explain why.

According to the Constitution of Romania the only official language of the country is the Romanian language. Yet, according to the legislation in force, in the public administration of those settlements in which the minority represents at least 20% of the population, the language of that minority may be used. Thus in some areas of the country Hungarian may also be used in the public administration. The problem is that the official register of Hungarian language in Romania is underdeveloped and thus the users encounter many problems which they try to solve by translating laws, acts and documents from Romanian to Hungarian. Unfortunately these translations are sometimes incorrect and unusable. The aim of the paper is to present the linguistic phenomena occurring in the administrative and official register of the Hungarian language used in Transylvania due to the translation of the above mentioned text types the source language of which was the Romanian language. The research is based on the data base elaborated as a result of an extended monitoring of the Hungarian electronic media in Transylvania. The project was realized in 2010 and 2011 by the researchers from Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in cooperation with the researchers from Babeș‒Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. My analysis will focus on the specificities of the Hungarian language used in the official, administrative and political discourse of the monitored electronic media.

Composed in 1861 by Ferenc Erkel, Bánk bán is widely considered the greatest example of nineteenth-century Hungarian national opera. In this syncretic work, Erkel amalgamated Western operatic topoi with indelible national musical elements. Based on the once-banned play by Jozsef Katona, Bánk bán had powerful political implications with its heavy allegorical representation of Hapsburg domination. The fact that Hungary’s position had shifted from colonial subject to duel monarchy in the mid nineteenth century made performance of such politicized content possible. In the early twentieth century, however, its standing as the opera of the people was challenged in the wake of the polemics surrounding Hungarian music in general and Erkel’s music in particular. Ideas of national identity were strengthened and rearticulated during the brief period of interwar independence, and Bánk bán became mired in a position of being an established Hungarian national symbol that was not considered Hungarian enough. In response, dramaturge Kálmán Nádasdy and composer Nándor Rékai drastically revised the work in 1940. Their version usurped the place of the original in the repertoire. With a goal of making Bánk bán the ultimate expression of Magyarság (Hungarianess), they brought opera’s libretto closer to the original play. The revision also undermined the putatively colonial “intrusions” of Western operatic norms, as well as anything antithetical to Magyarság. Bánk bán emerges as an example of what scholar Christopher Balme has identified as the triadic progression from imperialism to colonization and ultimately to decolonization, highlighting what was a troublesome search for an autochthonous artistic voice.

Throughout centuries of subjugation, Hungary retained a fierce pride in its national identity, a pride that was often bolstered by the arts. In 19th-century opera, composers transcended borders to amalgamate the normative forms and models of the West with indelible Hungarian features. They extracted subjects from Hungary’s autonomous past, employed musical monikers of the style hongrois, and—perhaps most importantly—set Hungarian-language librettos to music.
Ferenc Erkel’s 1861 opera Bánk Bán, based on the Katona play, manifests this fusion. The opera has become arguably the most influential work in the Hungarian operatic canon. It was pivotal in developing Hungarian music and was a powerful expression of Herder's notion of the Volkgeist. As ideas of national identity strengthened during the early 20th century, Kálmán Nádasdy and Nándor Rékai subjected it to large-scale revisions in 1940. These revisions followed Bartók’s polemics toward 19th-century Hungarian music, and responded to the ideals of Hegelian nationalist historiography that influenced the development and preservation of other marginalized musical repertories. The goal was to make Bánk Bán the ultimate expression of Magyarság (Hungarianess).
As was the case in the original composition, the revisionists sought models from beyond Hungary’s borders, even while they purged many of the Western formal elements they felt were antithetical to Magyarság. This endeavor thus brought the opera’s libretto closer to the original play and exemplifies the troublesome search for an autochthonous artistic voice during the turbulent interwar period. It stands as an example of opera’s social efficaciousness, as well as its capacity for cultural preservation in the face of domineering influences.

Cultural or non-territorial autonomy appears as a less invasive, less confrontative way of addressing the wants of national minorities. This legal construct addresses a large number of the main worries minorities have regarding the preservation and evolution of their language and culture, which is why the paper argues that its introduction in Romania would solve a number of current challenges in areas such as mother tongue education, the functioning of cultural institutions, from press and literature to theatres and other artistic institutions.
The lack of such a framework in Romania is baffling, especially in view of the fact that a number of its neighbors have adopted cultural autonomy (Serbia and Hungary), or have at least tried to (Ukraine). In wider East Central Europe, we see that cultural autonomy has a history going back at least a century, so there has been sufficient experimentation with the idea to shape it in accordance with local specificities.
The paper presents some of the main lessons today’s cultural autonomy frameworks provide, and proceeds to present the legislative proposal submitted almost two decades ago by the Hungarian political representation in front of the Romanian Parliament. In a comparative view, it will address the strengths and deficiencies of the proposal, as well as the reasons behind decision-makers’ reluctance to address the proposal on its merits.