Getting Closer to EU Membership
An interview with Endre Juhász

Endre Juhász is Hungary's ambassador to the EU and chief negotiator for the accession process. In this interview he outlines the reasons for Hungary's bid for membership, popular opinion on it, the setting up of negotiating positions, the Roma issue, regional disparities in the economy, allocation of seats in the Parliament, free movement of labour and the prospects for membership in the near future. Full Text.

Poems
by Mónika Mesterházi

We publish for the first time in English poems by this young writer and translator of poetry, in George Szirtes's translation.

The Forint Story
by András Schweitzer

Introduced in 1946 after an unprecedented inflation had destroyed the pengő, the history of Hungary's forint mirrors that of the country. András Schweitzer's account describes these last fifty-five years and also provides a chronicle of significant dates, indicating the labyrinth Hungarian citizens had to get through if they wished to travel to the West before the forint became fully convertible earlier this year.

Sworn Statement
by Imre Kertész

One of the twists in the labyrith is described here by the internationally acclaimed novelist, recounting a journey he tried to make to Vienna in 1991, even after the political changeover.

The Landscape Visions of János Mattis Teutsch
by Krisztina Passuth

The author, who heads the Art History Department of Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University, has a particular interest in the Hungarian and Central European Avant-garde. Here she deals with one of its neglected figures, whose work has recently been rediscovered. Although Mattis Teutsch had established contact with the MA circle in Budapest, he essentially worked out his art on his own in his native Brassó (Brasov) in Transylvania. This article is accompanied by colour plates. Full Text.

Another English Connection
by Ervin Fenyő

The author is an authority on Count István Széchenyi, the great Hungarian reformer of the 19th century. In 1848 the conflict between the Viennese court and the Kossuth dominated government in Pest drove him to a nervous breakdown and brought him to the asylum where, despite a return to lucidity, he was to spend the remainder of his life. From there, in 1857, he conceived the plan of sending his son Béla to England to seek out an "English girl of 12 or 14 of a wealthy aristocratic family, whom he would eventually marry." The son promptly fell in love with Lady Anne Stafford (later Duchess of Sutherland), eight years his senior and the unhappily married mother of four. Ervin Fenyő here provides annotated letters between István Széchenyi and Lady Stafford, asking her to renounce his son and find him a wife, and a correspondence between Lady Stafford and Lord Palmerston on the subject of Hungary, to whose cause she remained devoted for the rest of her life.

Under the Holy Crown
by László Péter

Pál Engel: The Realm of St Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary 895 - 1526. London, New York, I.B. Taurus Publishers, 2001, 452 pp.

The Emeritus Professor of History at the University of London hails the publication of the recently deceased Pál Engel's book as "a red-letter day in the historiography of East Central Europe. His review itself, here published in full, provides a succint overview of Hungary in medieval times. Full Text.

Jews by Choice
by Béla Pomogáts

Géza Szávai: Székely Jeruzsálem (Székely Jerusalem). Budapest, Pont Kiadó, 2000, 442 pp., with the author's black and white photographs.

"In Transylvania ... a Hungarian community converted to the faith of the Jews at the end of the 16th century. They had no ties of blood with the Jews." Leading off with the opening passage of the book under review, Béla Pomogáts outlines the moving, and tragic, history of the Sabbatarians of Eastern Transylvania. Full Text.

Contacts, Influences, Inspirations
by Alan Crawford

Gyula Ernyey (ed): Britain and Hungary: Contacts in Architecture and Design during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Essays and Studies. Budapest, Hungarian University of Craft and Design, 1999. 291 pp.

Alan Crawford's illustrated review article traces the contacts specified in the book's subtitle, an exuberant period in Hungarian architecture and design. The author finds much to praise in the book, largely based on collaborative research by Scottish and Hungarian institutes. Full Text.

György Kurtág and the Open Work
by Alan E. Williams

Himself a composer and lecturer in music at the University of Salford, Alan E. Williams argues that Kurtág's music can be understood "more in terms of the ideas of modernism as they apply in literature". He examines the ideas of openness put forward by the Italian novelist Umberto Eco and Kurtág's closed forms, his open symbols and the notion of a "porous" work.

Making Films is My Only Pleasure
An Interview with Miklós Jancsó

In 1998 at the age of 78, Jancsó made a stunning return to feature film-making. In an interview with András Gervai, he describes his education, disillusionment with"so-called socialism", his documentaries of the 1990s, constraints to his film-making and his reaction to the post-1989 changes.