Steven Béla Várdy

Images, Perceptions, Individuals

Tibor Frank: Ethnicity, Propaganda, Myth-Making. Studies in Hungarian Connections to Britain and America, 1848-1945. Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1999. 391 pp., name index.

 

Tibor Frank is one of Hungary's premier scholars in the field of emigration/im-migration studies. Director of the Institute of English and American Studies at Eötvös University in Budapest since 1994, in earlier years he spent time as a visiting professor at several American and European universities, in the course of which he conducted research in some fifty different archives. He has published the results of his research in three major books and about two dozen articles, twenty-one of which are reprinted in the current volume, along with another that was written specifically for this work.
Two-thirds of these articles appeared during the 1990s, following the collapse of Communism, while the remainder one-third were published in the course of the preceding decade and a half. Of these twenty-two articles, sixteen were written in English, five in Hungarian, and one in German; although one of the Hungarian articles also appeared seven years later in an English version.
The twenty-two articles are organised topically in three separate categories: "Cultivation of Nativism" (eight articles), "The Politics of Propaganda" (nine articles), and "Demythologisation of a Canon: Marx and Kossuth" (five articles). The last section contains most of the older articles, originally published between 1979 and 1984. They are obviously the by-products of the author's two simultaneously published monographs: Marx és Kossuth (Marx and Kossuth, 1985), and Egy emigráns alakváltásai. Zerffi Gusztáv pályaképe (The Metamorphosis of an Emigrant. The Career of Gustav Zerffi, 1985) - the latter subsequently also appeared in English. The remaining three of the pre-1991 articles are scattered among the studies in the other two categories, and they are related to some of the author's subsequent topics.
While most of the enclosed articles/ chapters deserve comment, limitations of space force my commentary to be selective. In the section on the Cultivation of Nativism, the most useful chapters to an average reader are those that deal with the evolution of the process of American immigration and the development of U.S. immigration policy during the period of the "great economic immigration" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here the author summarises and gives his own interpretation on the nature of this mass emigration from Austria-Hungary, on emigrants' reception in America, as well as on the various forms of anti-immigration feelings and movements that manifested themselves in turn-of-the-century America. They stretch from Franz Boas's (1858-1942) physical anthropological research to diverse manifestations of Social Darwinism. Boas actually drew some pro-immigrant conclusions by emphasising the positive impact of American society upon the physical features of the immigrants, and in particular upon their American-born offspring. But these conclusions were ferociously attacked by Madison Grant (1865-1937) in his notorious The Passing of the Great Race (1916), which proclaimed that without the leadership of the genetically superior Anglo-Saxon "race", the world would descend into a new form of barbarism. In his study of Social Darwinism and related issues, Tibor Frank mentions some of these issues and retraces the steps outlined by Richard Hofstadter in his outstanding work, Social Darwinism in American Thought (1955), which the noted social historian soon complemented by his equally thought-arousing and challenging Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963).
To this reviewer the most interesting part of the book is the section on The Politics of Propaganda, that contains a number of scarcely known revelations. As an example, Tibor Frank examines the source of Lajos Kossuth's use of the English language, which the noted statesman openly attributed to the influence of Shakespeare's plays on his mind. But, as Tibor Frank points out, this reference to Shakespeare's alleged role in Kossuth's sophisticated use of English was really only a political ploy, whereby the Hungarian statesman tried to maximise his chances for Anglo-American support by his repeated reference to the alleged influence of the bard upon his life. In actuality Kossuth had learned his English like everyone else, by studying diligently. And his English was not Shakespearean English. Rather, it was Victorian English, spoken by all educated Englishmen in the nineteenth century.
Similarly interesting and revealing are the author's studies on the changing American image and perception of interwar Hungary's regent, Admiral Nicholas Horthy (r. 1920-1944) through the instrumentality of such prominent Americans as General Harry H. Bandholtz (1864-1925), Nicholas Roosevelt (1893-1982), and John F. Montgomery (1878-1954). The first of these was the head of the American Military Mission in Hungary in 1919-1920, while the latter two were U.S. Ministers to Hungary between 1930-1933 and 1933- 1941, respectively. And like many Americans who stayed for a protracted time in Hungary, they too fell under the spell of the charms of the "courtly" Magyar gentlemen.
Likewise enlightening and informative are Tibor Frank's essays on Hungary's scholarly propaganda efforts carried out through the newly established La Nouvelle Revue de Hongrie (1932-1944), The Hungarian Quarterly (1936-1944) - the predecessor of the current periodical - and the projected but never completed English-language synthesis of Hungarian history. Apparently, the latter failed not so much because of the lack of talent or lack of funds, but simply because personality conflicts between Hungary's great interwar historian, Professor Gyula Szekfuý (1883- 1955), and József Balogh (1893-1944), the learned and sophisticated Secretary General of the Magyar Szemle Társaság (Hungarian Review Society) and subsequently also of The Society of The Hungarian Quarterly. Apparently the two men simply did not click, and consequently (disregarding the original national goal) they sabotaged each other's efforts.
As a sad afterthought to this whole affair, Balogh, who was a baptised Jew and an enthusiastic Hungarian, died in 1944. Following the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, he went underground, but he was soon found and deported. Not even Regent Horthy was able to save him, even though the latter had sent his aide-de-camp to find the editor of The Hungarian Quarterly. As related by the author,

"Lt. Colonel Tost was said to have motored all the way through Western Hungary in a desperate attempt to try to save his life with an alleged draft to the air force he had served so willingly during World War I, but to no avail. The editor died at the hands of the Germans whom he had fought against so courageously through the entire decade before." (p. 275).

The articles in the third and final section of the book discuss the somewhat hazy and obtuse relationship between Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Lajos Kossuth, as well as the operation of the Habsburg Secret Service in the period between the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The latter topic is particularly interesting and revealing, but it has been dealt with much more extensively by Tibor Frank himself in his book on the Hungarian-born and unusually gifted international soldier-of-fortune-cum-scholar, Gustav Zerffi (1820-1893). Zerffi's life demonstrates the best and the worst that Hungary has produced in the course of the past several centuries. The land of the Magyars has given birth to many persons of outstanding abilities. After going abroad, they achieved great things, but at times they also misused their abilities for petty personal gains.
All in all Tibor Frank's Ethnicity, Propaganda, Myth-Making is a high-quality scholarly work and exciting reading that deserves the attention of all scholars of modern European and American history. The scholarship that went into the making of these articles is first rate, the English language and style are excellent, and the quality of printing and binding fully up to modern standards. It is a handsome volume and a valuable scholarly work that should be in every major academic library. It is our hope that this book is but a precursor to a new synthesis of the history of Hungarian emigration and of Hungarian American life in general by a scholar who is already in the front rank among Hungary's emigration historians.

 

Steven Béla Várdy
is McAnulty Distinguished Professor of European History at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Director of the Duquesne University's History Forum, and President of the Pittsburgh-based Institute for German-American Relations. A specialist in East Central European history, he has published eighteen books and many articles on the subject.