The Unitarian church historiography is going through a paradigm shift. In the light of
these changes the recent paper tries to break down the conventional rhetoric that took shape
around the topic of the forced conversion of the Unitarian congregations in the 17 th century in
Háromszék. At the beginning of the reign of Gábor Bethlen the Protestants in Háromszék seat
(Unitarians and Calvinists) were living together in a distinctive symbiosis. The congregations
were allowed to freely elect their ministers and teachers. It was not unusual that a
congregation had a Unitarian minister and a Calvinist teacher, or vice versa. The members of
these villages were living in an apparent peace. The elimination of this integrated Protestant
institution and the denominational segregation arose in 1619 during the visit of the Calvinist
bishop János Keserűi Dajka. The Unitarian church historiography held for centuries that
60–72 Unitarian congregations were converted to Calvinist confession in Háromszék seat.
The audience will see that in reality there were altogether 70–71 Protestant congregations in
Háromszék. Analyzing the minutes of the investigations ordered by Katalin Brandenburgi in
1630 it is evident from the testimonies of the witnesses that only 14 congregations had a
Unitarian past. Due to these outcomes we must reconsider the conventional rhetoric that the
notorious Calvinist bishop János Keserűi Dajka converted the Unitarian Háromszék to
Calvinism.

Centered on the Dualist era, my paper examine Hungarian elites’ appeals to what they perceived to be valuable “Western” models in debates over what direction their country should take in the decades following the 1867 Compromise. In my broader dissertation, I show the ways in which Anglocentric political and developmental thought existed across the political spectrum, influencing both nationalist elites, and their more progressive opponents. In this paper, however, I examine another potential model, one which held great influence for a time, only to fade drastically—that of France. If England was an outstanding model for Hungary’s Dualist elite, the image of France burned brighter for others—those who held fast to the memory of 1848. Focusing on the Kossuthist politician Dénes Pázmándy, I examine how French models became a point of reference for those who remained irreconcilably opposed to Habsburg rule. If, for many pro-Compromise elites, England’s parliamentary tradition, constitutionalism, and gentry-led stability served as a model to follow, those who remained loyal to the politics of Kossuth saw France as the homeland of liberty, fraternity, and equality—the birthplace of the French Revolution, rational government, and modern nationalism. I examine prominent moments of Francocentric Hungarian political expression, culminating at the 1889 Paris Exhibition. Finally, I argue that, despite its apparent strength, this link between Francocentric thought and Kossuthist elites was ultimately shattered by France’s growing friendliness toward Russia, which culminated in the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894. Ultimately, Hungarian elites’ deep-seated Russophobia would leave France, and French models, unpalatable.

There has always been a connection between the rural and urban musical culture. The verbunkos music of the 19th century, as an amalgam of urban and rural traditions can nowadays be collected from Transdanubian rural bands as pieces of an archaic folk repertory. The urban Hungarian song (magyar nóta) started to spread from popular theatre pieces, later through the elementary school education, and for the first half of the 20th century in several Hungarian villages it has became the dominant part of the song repertory of the peasants. In a village in Tolna country where I do my fieldwork, the generation over sixty years of age lives in the culture of the magyar nótas and to smaller extent in the new style folk songs. This material has an organic connection to the world of the melodious Hungarian hits (slágers). The big shift has been ensued by the rock music’s rising that had started to change the active singing to mere listening of the music since the 1960s. The rural youth went to the towns to study in secondary schools, where they encountered the new and fashionable musical styles. The generation over forty years of age, as teenagers came under the spell of the rock music, because among others they could find valid messages for themselves in the texts of the rock songs. The 1970’s Hungarian rock has been serving them as an etalon and they try to transmit it to their children with the help of music listening, just like their parents did it with the folkloristic songs for them. They accept the interest of the young generation in the contemporary popular music, but they react to them with a similar lack of comprehension like their parents did to the rock music that meant a big change of musical styles. In my paper on the basis of participant observations and interviews I examine in what categories local people think of music, music listening, the music of the different contexts and the harmonic coexistence of the different genres.

It is one of the supposedly unquestionable verities of studies addressing the reputation of contemporary Hungarian literature abroad that it is created in two different language environments: aesthetic reputations are created by the German literary environment, while commercial success is initiated and maintained by publishing in English. Most recently it was suggested by Adam Levy that ‘[m]any of the writers still active – Nádas, Esterházy, Krasznahorkai, Kertész and Konrád – have close ties to Germany, the region’s seat of literary consecration, which has given momentum to their popular rise in English.’ This brief description presents a rather convincing model, but does it have general applicability to any kind of literature irrespective of genre, and does it still reflect the state of affairs? And what contributes to the rise of reputations? Generalisations of this nature often simplify our perception of Hungarian literature’s circulation, in the company of complaints that Hungarian literature is largely unknown on the international circuit, and if it is, it is simply due the emergence of new, post-2000 understandings of ‘world literature.’ My proposal sets out to investigate the avenues and methods of literary consecration through the examination of the literary reputation of the immensely popular, widely translated and prizewinning author Magda Szabó. Through the examination of contemporary reviews, interviews and other reception and life-writing documents, my presentation will suggest that chance encounters and carefully nurtured personal networks play an important and perceptible role in shaping the authors’ presence and reputation in the international book market.

Today’s town of Gödöllő, an easy 30km suburban train ride away from Budapest, is notable for its university, its industries, and above all its stately Royal Palace. During the Comprise Era (1867-1918), however, it was also a flourishing vacation spot for monarchs and commoners alike. Queen Elisabeth made it her Hungarian retreat, helping cement her popularity as a Magyarophile. Its shady woodlands and adequate distance from Budapest—not to mention the presence of the Habsburg court—made it a handy (if underdeveloped) destination for bourgeoises fleeing the choked environs of the industrializing metropolis. But the war and regime change extinguished a seemingly brighter future for Gödöllő’s tourist trade, leaving it, in that regard at least, another casualty of 1918. This paper explores the interwar effort waged by a handful of local personalities to restore Gödöllő’s place in the sun. Led—or at least most loudly proclaimed—by the lawyer Eghia Hovhannesian, the campaign sheds light on the intersection of tourism and post-imperial politics. For Hovhannesian and his cohorts, the revival of their town went hand-in-hand with the “resurrection” of Hungary, their fates entwined in the same vision of combat of Good against Evil. The prevailing forces that drove the national tourism industry, though, did not feel likewise about Gödöllő as a site of salvation.

Role models are essential in the socialization of adolescents. Do the examples and values of parents count for the teenagers? What are the important values for high school students? Who are their role models?
My research answer these questions. This research was conducted in Szent Margit High School, Budapest in 2011, with more than 330 student participants between the ages of 12 and 18. Results are interesting and valuable for both educators and parents.
This research generates further studies in Hungary as well as in the U.S. My presentation’s goal is to discuss results that are also useful in a cross cultural context especially for American educators.

This presentation is an immersion into the poetry of the people. Collectively crafted and shared across generations, these rich and evocative song texts provide insight into older ways of thinking and the values and behaviors of those who sang them. Drawing on hundreds of traditional village folk songs as well as interviews with culture bearers in dozens of villages across the Carpathian Basin, the interpretations of the texts are informed by long-term relationships and lived experiences. These songs may reflect the value systems that generations of Hungarian immigrants brought with them to the United States, or may conversely help explain why others chose to stay in Hungary, or have recently repatriated from the United States to the “motherland.” The range of topics — including courtship and partner selection, love and loyalty, the natural and emotional worlds, wealth and poverty, and stages of life — cover the full spectrum of the human experience.

The Hungarian translation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel of 2002, Everything Is Illuminated misses the original text at two crucial points. First, the title in Dezsényi Katalin’s Hungarian version is translated by introducing a neologism “vilángol”, evoking concepts of radiance and worldliness as an active verb, in sharp contrast to Foer’s insistence on the passive in the original. The other, to my mind, even graver mistake in the translation is how it reverses the very meaning of the concept of illumination in the grandfather’s tormented soliloquy. These two pertinent mistakes are all the more significant in reading the Hungarian translation. The grandfather’s inarticulate rant is the only attempt to render events of the Holocaust, whose crucial absence (in his own narrative as well as in his grandson’s self-definition) not only defines the plot but also divides time in Everything Is Illuminated into two radically different planes. This historically significant historical absence, in turn, reinforces and displaces the central role the Holocaust plays in defining third-generation Jewish identity in its variations in the United States and Central-Eastern Europe, represented by the fictional author figure hiding behind his historical manuscript and his Eastern-European guide in the text, respectively. Thus, my comparative analysis of the two texts, the original and the Hungarian translation will focus on conceptual differences between Jewish identities as featured in Foer’s text and its misconceived Hungarian translation, possibly rooted in historically different experience and perceptions of the Holocaust.

Kutatásomban Várkonyi Nándor (1896-1975) életútját és munkásságát vizsgáltam, különös tekintettel Péccsel való kapcsolatára. Várkonyi 1924-től haláláig élt és alkotott a városban. Ez idő alatt az Egyetemi Könyvtárban dolgozott főállásban nyugdíjba vonulásáig (1956), emellett egy évtizeden át óraadóként tevékenykedett az Erzsébet Tudományegyetemen (1935-45), alapító tagja volt a Janus Pannonius Irodalmi Társaságnak (1931-1945; a társaság 1945-48 között Batsányi nevét vette fel), és szerkesztette az egyesület folyóiratát (Sorsunk, 1941-48).
Élete során szerteágazó kapcsolati rendszert tudott kiépíteni, tanítványai, barátai közé olyan jeles személyeket sorolhatunk, mint például Weöres Sándor, Hamvas Béla vagy gróf Révay József.
Várkonyi súlyos testi fogyatékossága (siketség) ellenére tudott létrehozni egy olyan értelmiségi kört, amely a fővárostól való távolsága ellenére sem vált provinciálissá, és hatása bőven túlnyúlt a régió határain. Kutatásomban megpróbáltam feltárni azokat az okokat és tényezőket, melyek hozzásegítették sikeres működéséhez. A második világháború utáni rendszerben ugyan háttérbe szorult (szorították), így emléke mára megkopott, de érdemei így is vitathatatlanok a hazai, különösen a pécsi művelődés történetében.
Kutatási módszerem a személyes- és publikus források tartalmi elemzésén, valamint az egyetemi hivatalos dokumentumok és a szakirodalmi források összevetésén és feldolgozásán alapult.
Felhasznált forrásaim a teljesség igénye nélkül: Bertók László: Várkonyi Nándor bibliográfia; Kende Kata (szerk.): Várkonyi Nándor élete képekben; Miklóssy Endre: Várkonyi Nándor olvasókönyv; Nagy Imre: Várkonyi Nándor – Portré és tabló; Várkonyi Nándor: Pergő évek; Várkonyi Péter: Várkonyi Nándor öröksége.

My presentation will be based on a book I published in April 2015 with the above title. In the early 1900s my grandparents and many others from Kompolt and Hevesmegye came to a neighborhood in Granite City, Illinois--then called Hungary Hollow, now known as Lincoln Place--to work in newly established factories there. Three of my father’s siblings were born in Hungary; he and five others were born in the United States. For more than two generations there was a vibrant Hungarian-American community in Lincoln Place. Its Magyarhaz, constructed in 1926 and still used by the Mexican Honorary Commission, was a center for many cultural events: dances, plays, weddings, and performances by the Hungarian-American Band. It was also used by the other ethnic communities in the neighborhood: Armenians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Mexicans.
I spent a good deal of my childhood listening to stories about the community from my father, who was in 1937 the first ethnic citizen elected to the city’s Board of Aldermen. The first section of the book is a memoir of my father’s family and an account of the early years of the community based on my father’s stories, interviews of Lincoln Place residents conducted by members of an oral history class from SIU-Edwardsville, and wide-ranging research.
The second section of the book recounts my three visits to Kompolt--from 2003 when I found several relatives with whom I have stayed in contact, to 2014 when I studied Hungarian at the Balassi Institute in Budapest for a month before returning to the village. Each visit yielded more information about those who emigrated, those who remained in Kompolt, and those who returned to Kompolt from Granite City. In September the last two years, I have set up a booth at the Lincoln Place Heritage Festival where I share my research with descendants of the original families from Kompolt and others.

It is well-known that Viennese-Hungarian operetta was one of the most popular musical-dramatic productions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its musical structure had included different types of dance music. Furthermore, the music could reflect on the ethnical and cultural variety of the Empire. That type of reflection had represented the ideological contrast between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary. Although in the history of the genre, the connection between dance music and politics had started when the structure and the functions of French operetta have been inventing by composer Jacques Offenbach and his contemporaries in the 1850s, and the Viennese-Hungarian composers had followed that pattern. The presentation tries to investigate the roles of the dance music in a historical perspective among the structure of Viennese-Hungarian operettas.

Far from the death of the nation-state predicted by the end of the 20th century, Central Europe has seen not the withering away, but rather spectacular rebirth of the nation-state and the national idea with social and political upheaval continuing to rock governments and society. Recent years have seen great changes in both political ideology and national identity in Hungary. Rioting, the sudden resignation of a prime minister and the meteoric rise of the far right are raising the question of what it means to be Hungarian. Folk Dance represents a powerful and pervasive embodiment of national identity in Hungary. This paper examines the relationship of contemporary folk choreography and the changing political climate through exploration of nationalism and national identity in a 21st century context. Through reflexive ethnology this project explores ideas of the ever changing process of embodying the nation through creation of modern folk dance work. Vision and Division examines the experience of making work for a national holiday, based on a piece of lesser known national history and the process of engaging national identity through choreography. This is a work in progress based on five years field experience in Budapest including the creation of a full length performance I set on a Hungarian amateur company and presented on March 15, 2008, for the 160th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution. Acknowledging that understanding of both identity and the nation are actively created, it questions the role of the modern folk choreography in the mutually transformative process of making “national” dance and realizing the nation through dance in current day Hungary.

Visual materials – drawings, pictures, photos, short films, videos – count undoubtedly as a significant support in facilitating the teaching-learning process of a foreign language. The present paper aims to examine the use of such visuals in the Hungarian as a Foreign Language class, starting from materials in coursebooks and exercise books to those available on separate sheets, flashcards, online etc. At the same time, it also intends to give some specific examples from HFL classes of how these materials work and can effectively help the teaching-learning process (e.g. vocabulary expansion, the introduction of new grammar items, the presentation of cultural information) in the classroom and possibly even beyond.

This qualitative study explores the key issues cited by Hungarian heritage language speakers who grew up immersed in majority cultures and languages other than Hungarian. The challenge of acquisition, retention, development and enhancement of the minority language in the face of continuous demands of the dominant language are explicated from the inner vantage point of lived experience. Data from extensive retrospective interviews with adults who grew up in households where the desire of both Hungarian parents was that their children maintain their heritage language will be discussed. The data show a complex mix of children’s evolving needs, interests and abilities as they are impacted by shifting demands and priorities, parental commitments and limitations and the changing valuation of the heritage language over time.

Recently, the first steps of preparation have been made for the Centenary of World War I (2014-2018) on both international and Hungarian grounds. There has been a government committee founded to address the various duties in respect to the centenary.

Since until 2013 even the number of wartime burial places had not been cleared, the Hungarian Ministry of Defense initiated a national wartime burial place and War Memorial Survey Program. With the participation of the Ministry of Domestic Affairs all the local governments were contacted to collect the relevant data and the processing of the collected information is in progress. It is planned that by the end of the centennial of World War I in 2018 the data pool containing the Hungarian military losses will be completed.
With its specific GIS representation experience a development team based in the city of Debrecen contributed greatly to the works significant from the points of view of collective remembrance and identity.

The Cemetery of Hungarian Soldiers, or as many of the local civilians call it, the Cemetery of Heroes is one of the most respected eternal treasures and memorials of the city. The first dead buried here were the fallen soldiers of the battle at Debrecen on August 02, 1849 during Hungarian Revolution and Freedom Fight 1848-1849.
The cemeteries were re-opened again at the time of WW I and WW II to bury the heroes who died on the battlefield and in local hospitals.
Under the trees of the Cemetery of Hungarian Soldiers and the Cemetery of Heroes rest the 112 soldiers of the 1849 War of Independence, 634 soldiers of the Tsar Army and other Hungarian and German soldiers who fell at the time of WW I and WW II.
Roughly, an estimated 4,000 people lie here in peace.

The 5. István Bocskai Marksmen Brigades of the Hungarian Army and the Debrecen Organization of the Army & Society Friends’ Circle (HTBK DSZ) are renowned for their outstanding tradition-bound works to pay tribute to the deceased. Besides, in communion with the above organizations, upon civil initiation a program was started entitled “The resting heritage of the City of Debrecen” that primarily addresses the processing and accessing the data of the Cemetery of Hungarian Soldiers and the Cemetery of Heroes by up-to-date information technology.
Our presentation is aimed at the description of this GIS representation project aimed at the continuous rekindling of the collective remembrance concentrating to the burial places of World War I.

(Access in Hungarian: http://gis.erda.hu/erda/html/projects/temeto_debrecen_hosok/honvedtemeto/)

Ágoston Haraszthy played a very important role in Hungarian-American relations in the middle of the 19th century. He published the second travelogue about the United States in Hungary, and his activities in Wisconsin and California contributed to a great extent to the early development of these states. Despite his active role, and despite the fact that several works has been published about his life, some aspects of his career are still unclear and the object of heated scholarly discussion. Haraszthy was a charismatic, flamboyant person who was also the master of self-propaganda. All this and the unclear particularities of his life contributed to the development of some myths and legends regarding his career. Some authors simply accepted some of these myths and mythologies inherited from Haraszthy, his family members or earlier writers, and they did not make real efforts to clarify them. There are several websites for example, on which we can still find as facts false or unproven information (e.g. he was the member or the royal body guard in Hungary, he was the member of the Hungarian Diet and the friend of Lajos Kossuth, he was a count and colonel etc.) about his career and life. But definitely the most influential, popular and widspread legend about Haraszthy is that he was the "founder of viticulture in California", or the "father of California wine industry". No doubt that he largely contributed to the development of vine growing and wine making in California, but according to the latest "revisionist" literature on the topic his role has been exaggerated to a great extent by some former writers. After the strict investigation of archival sources in Hungary and California, such authors as Thomas Pinney, Brian McGinty, and Charles Lewis Sullivan came to the conclusion that
- he was definitely not the first person who started to grow and make wine in California;
- he was not the first person who started to grow vine on a large scale in California;
- his importation of European grape varieties did not play such an important role in the devlopment of Californian wine industry as it was argued by his son and by some former authors;
- he was not the person who first imported the famous zinfandel grape into North America and California.
The aim of the author is not to destroy or to deny the role of Haraszthy as an important pioneer of wine making in California. He simply wants to contribute to the establishment of a balanced view about the career of this very important figure of Hungarian-American relations based on the results of the latest American literature on his activities in California..

The period of soaring economic prosperity after 1867 brought about the birth of modern women's literature in the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy too.

Female descendants of impoverished noble or middle-class families that had been unable to adapt to capitalism, young girls who were resolute to earn a living by writing moved to the Hungarian capital city even from the remotest regions.

Almost two-thirds of these future intellectuals arrived from the provinces, among them Anna Tutsek, who quitting her Transylvanian birthplace, Kolozsvár (Cluj), settled down in Budapest in the 1890s, or Margit Kaffka who moved to the capital from a region located to the west of Transylvania in 1902.

For many, it was the dissolution of the Monarchy that led to their emigration: one of the most popular writers of the interwar period, Lola Réz Kosáryné left her native land, the Selmecbánya (Banska Stiavnica) region in the West Carpathians to emigrate from the new state of Czechoslovakia to Hungary in 1919.

By analysing the writings of these women writers, the aim of this paper on Hungarian - Eastern-European women's social history is to examine how these immigrant writers reacted to the loss of cultural and social norms that had inevitably occurred to them, to investigate whether they identified this loss of identity as deprivation or having been convinced of the existence of an indivisible unitary Hungarian nation and culture they avoided/rejected self-reflexion.

The summary of Krisztina Olah's 2012 master paper helps to better understand the trends and patterns of the Hungarian-American communication.
Since when has there been Hungarian-American communication at all? How do the different Hungarian communities and organizations throughout the United States organize (or not organize) their communication? Why is communication so important for the ethnic minorities? Ms. Olah’s creative project looked for answers for these questions.
The speaker conducted a qualitative research in the Cleveland Hungarian community during the years of 2011 and 2012. Analyzing the past and finding the communication patterns of the present helped to create a more effective and well-based communication strategy for the future. The multiple interviews with individuals, families, leaders of Hungarian organizations, businesses and churches, local journalists and minority organizations provided interesting findings not only about the Cleveland region but also about other regions and cities where Hungarians live. The paper gives direct suggestions and the best examples of practices for the Hungarian communities and organizations who want to improve the communication and information sharing among their members.

Hungarian universities are struggling with declining student numbers (due to demographic factors), and the educational challenges of the 21st century have a significant impact on higher education. As a Hungarian university professor and leader, I also used my Fulbright scholarship in the United States to gain a thorough understanding of how American universities operate and the secrets of their success. To gain a better understanding and a more comprehensive picture of US universities, I conducted research in 2025. I interviewed more than 10 successful university professionals, professors, students, diplomats, and businesspeople with some Hungarian background or connections, with the intention of bringing back to Hungary the essence of their life experiences, the secret of their success, and what they think about a successful university system and their suggestions, ideas as well. The research seeks to answer and investigate the following main questions and topics.
-What is the main mission, core values, advantages/disadvantages of the US Universities?
-What can we learn from the US High Ed system? What are the best practices, methods, and
solutions of American universities that lead to success?
- What are the Hungarian values and breakout points from US academic perspective and how can we improve the cooperation between US and Hungarian Universities?
I hope that the essence and results of these interviews can initiate positive changes in Hungarian higher education, especially at Ludovika, where 200 years of tradition meet the future.

The anti-American and anti-Western tendencies of the current Hungarian politics is having an impact even in historical research. One of the strangest accusations against the Western powers, especially the United States, is that they are responsible for the tragic fate of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian prisoners of war and civilian internees who were deported to Soviet labor camps after the Second World War. It is alleged that Western governments consented to the deportations and then failed to intervene to repatriate prisoners of war. My presentation will summarize US policy on the POW problem. It will explore how, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the US government made pressure on the Soviet leadership to repatriate POWs, regardless of their nationality. The fate of prisoners of war in the Soviet Union became an important issue at the sessions of the United Nations between 1950 and 1953. As the Soviet Union refused to provide relevant information on the prisoners held in the camps even in the early 1950s, two ad hoc committees were set up to investigate what had happened to the missing prisoners. Finally, the paper will show how Hungarian émigré groups joined the efforts of the United States and the United Nations to free Hungarian prisoners in Soviet camps.