Margit Slachta and the Sisters of Social Service in America in the 1920s

Type of Abstract (select): Individual Presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Margit Slachta, the first woman MP in the Hungarian Parliament, social worker and Christian feminist activist founded the community of the Sisters of Social Service in 1923. At the crossroad of innovative modern social work and Catholic spirituality, the “social sisters” were involved in manyfold and significant activities: they reconsidered charity work, struggled for women’s rights, urged social legislation, and many more initiatives can be associated with their names. Right after the foundation of the congregation, the Social Sisters also strove to expand internationally: some went to the United States and Canada, and Margit Slachta, as the prioress of the community, visited the overseas foundations three times in the interwar period.
In my presentation, I would like to introduce two recently published sources about their first American experiences (published in: Járatlan utakon Amerikában – Szociális testvérek az Egyesült Államokban és Kanadában az 1920-as években. (Eds.) Éva Petrás – Boglárka Lilla Schlachta, 2025). One of them, the “American letters”, reflected the initial challenges and the social sisters’ first impressions of America through their correspondence. In the second source, I would like to present Margit Slachta’s essays on America, which she wrote after her visit in 1925: in the “Captured Rays”, as a woman traveler, Sister Slachta describes the everyday life of the American people, and in the small snapshots and anecdotes she introduces the “spirit of America” to Hungarian readers.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Éva Petrás (PhD) studied at Pécs University with double majors in history and English and subsequently received her second M.A. degree in modern history at Central European University in Budapest. Between 1995 and 2000 she was a PhD researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, where she obtained her PhD in the department of History and Civilization in 2003. Until 2008 she was a researcher at the European Comparative Minority Research Institute (EÖKIK). Between 2009 and 2020 she worked in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL) and currently she is a senior research fellow at the Committee of National Remembrance (NEB) in Budapest.