Heat Index: The Role of Paprika in Anglophone Tourism to Interwar Hungary

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
American and British tourists played an oversized part in the imaginations of interwar Hungarian tourism promoters. Despite their relatively far-off geographical origins, despite having been enemies only a few years before, and despite arriving in comparatively low numbers, they fell into a circle of “close” and privileged foreigners whose prominence in the promoters’ minds overshadowed their actual presence. When it came to tallying successes in attracting visitors from abroad, Anglophone tourists were, in the words of one booster, aranyfácánok (golden pheasants): rich, glamorous, and willing to part with their dollars and pounds – as long as they were courted in the right way.
One of those ways, it seems, was to manage Anglo-American expectations when it came to Hungarian cuisine. Paprika – the sine qua non of cookery in modern Hungary – was a particular cause for concern. With a reputation for intense spiciness, some tourism promoters seemed to worry that paprika would be off-putting to the mild Anglophone palate, and attempted to reassure potential guests that the country would (literally) be to their taste. On the other hand, paprika had grown into a powerful metaphor for Hungarianness itself – but especially for an exoticized, eroticized fascination of Anglo-Americans for Hungarian women.
This paper is an early investigation into the role of paprika in promoting tourism to Hungary in the interwar period. Drawing on guidebooks, travelogues, advertisements, periodical sources, and films, it will explore the complicated way that paprika was emphasized or suppressed in the never-ending quest to attract big-ticket guests.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Andrew Behrendt is Assistant Teaching Professor of History at the Missouri University of Science & Technology. His main research areas include the history of tourism and interwar cinema in Austria and Hungary. A portion of this research is expected to be forthcoming soon in the Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918 series of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In addition to transforming his dissertation into a monograph, Andrew is in the early stages of a project on the relationship between tourism and cuisine in Habsburg and post-Habsburg East-Central Europe.