The Horthy-Archive: Unpublished Documents of the Horthy-Family from 1956

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
It has been part of the Hungarian cultural memory for several decades, that the indirect cause of Miklós Horthy’s death in January, 1957 was the depression he fell into when the Hungarian revolution was overpowered and defeated by the Soviet invasion. According the memoir of his daughter-in-law, Ilona Edelsheim Gyulai, “he did everything mechanically” since November 1956. “He neither read the papers nor listened to the radio any more.”

Ilona Edesheim-Gyulay passed away in South England three years ago, at the age of 93. Since that time I have been sorting, digitalizing, researching and publishing her papers. The collection contains several volumes of diaries, from different periods of the 20th century, written by various members of the family. Most of the papers are still unknown in Hungary. According to plans they will be published in the forthcoming years, edited by me. First part of this series: Diary of Magda Horthy (spouse of the regent), was published in Hungary by Libri in my edition in November 2015.

In my lecture I intend to analyze the contemporary entries of Ilona Edelsheim Gyulai’s diary. Besides the narrative text of the diary I will demonstrate and analyze contemporary correspondences of the former regent with relevant actors of the Hungarian emigrant community, like Miklós Kállay, Ferenc Chorin, and Pongrácz Sommsich. These documents are also part of the archives of Ilona Edelsheim-Gyulai; none of them have been published or even researched before.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Andrea Bern is a PhD student at the Department of Modern and Recent Hungarian History of ELTE and researcher, archivist, and editor of the Descendants of Admiral Nicholas Horthy papers in Lewes, United Kingdom. She is also editor at Libri Publishing, Budapest.