An interdisciplinary study of illnesses and medical practices in the Carpathian Basin in the early centuries following the Hungarian Conquest (895 A.D.). Dr Grynaeus has gathered an impressive set of data from archaeology, anthropology and paleodemography as well as linguistics. His work sheds new light on Hungarian society in the 9th to 14th centuries.
LÁSZLÓ, Gyula:
A honfoglaló magyarok
[The conquering Magyars.]
Budapest: Corvina,
1996. 126 p.
ISBN 963-13-4215-8
A profusely-illustrated album by the doyen of Hungarian archaeologists, summarizing Hungarian prehistory up to the settlement in the Carpathian Basin. The author briefly discusses his controversial theory of the "two-wave Conquest" of the Carpathian Basin. According to this, prior to the Hungarian Conquest, at the end of the 9th century, the Onogurs settled in the region around 670, forming the first wave of the Magyars' westward drive.
A presentation of Halász's life and artistic works with studies by Géza Perneczky, Bernd Deidesheimer and others. His oeuvre extends from the geometric constructions in the late sixties through experiments with photography and light, performance and video in the seventies, to a post-geometry period in the early nineties.
HAULISCH, Lenke: Scheiber Hugó
[Hugó Scheiber.]
Budapest: Serpent, 1995. 189 p. ISBN 963-85519-09
This splendidly-illustrated volume is the first on Hugó Scheiber (1873-1950), a solitary yet powerful figure in 20th-century Hungarian painting. Although his themes are almost exclusively bound to his beloved Budapest, his art should be seen in a wider European and universal context. Today he is considered by many to have been a precursor of several fashionable trends in art.
KÔHÁTI, Zsolt:
Tovamozduló ember
tovamozduló világban:
A magyar némafilm 1896-1931 között
[Man in motion in a world in motion. Hungarian
silent movies 1896-1931.]
Budapest: Magyar Filmintézet, 1996.
412 p.
ISBN 963-7147-23-3
Following a number of important antecedents (works by István Nemeskürty, Iván Hevesy and others) this book places its subject in the context of the history of culture, as the struggle of an emerging genre vis-à-vis literature and the theater. Early in the 20th century, Hungarian cinema developed in conjunction with its western counterpart; later it lost momentum due to the emigration of legendary filmmakers (Mihály Kertész, Sándor Korda etc.). Hungarian silent film came to an end in 1931 with the success of Hyppolit a lakáj (Hyppolite the Valet), which turned into a classic and has retained its popularity to this day.
A nagybányai mûvészet
és mûvésztelep a magyar sajtóban 1896-1909
[The art and art colony of Nagybánya
as reflected in the Hungarian press 1896-1909.]
Ed. Árpád Tímár.
Miskolc: MissionArt Galéria, 1996.
495 p.
(Nagybánya Könyvek. 7.)
ISBN 963-8074-06-X
One hundred years ago the celebrated painter Simon Hollósy moved his art school from Munich to Nagybánya (Baia Mare, Romania) for the summer seasons. It was soon to become a permanent art colony, dubbed the Hungarian Barbizon, the center of plein-air painting that has exercised an enormous influence on Hungarian art in the 20th century. The present volume, the first of a series of documents related to the art colony of Nagybánya, contais material that appeared in the Hungarian press between 1896 and 1909.
PERNECZKY, Géza:
Kapituláció a szabadság
elött
[Surrender to freedom.]
Pécs: Jelenkor, 1995.
195 p. (Ars Longa.)
ISBN 963-7770-96-8
In a philosophical tract, the distinguished art critic Géza Perneczky addresses vital issues of modern art anticipated in the writings of Hegel and Kierkegaard. He discusses the threat of reflective and analytical trends (the "overkill effect") and investigates Marcel Duchamps' and John Cage's profound influence on the avant-garde movement.
Csaba explores what has been done since 1989 to transform the obsolete structures into a viable market-based system. An in-depth analysis of the Central and East-European region, it covers the theoretical background, measures taken by individual countries and international implications. The author concludes that the whole process of system change defies most conventional economic theories and a complex, multidisciplinary approach is needed to give an impetus to development. (Original English edition: The Capitalist Revolution in Eastern Europe, Cheltenham: E. Elgar Publ. Co., 1995)
TÓTH, László:
Globalizáció és regionalizáció:
hatásuk a magyar gazdaságra, különös tekintettel
a mezõgazdaságra
[Globalization and regionalization: their
impact on the Hungarian economy, with special reference to agriculture.]
Szeged, 1995. 189 p.
ISBN 963-8335-31-9
In the first part, Tóth discusses globalism as a paradigm shift in social science, the emerging need for global and regional models since the founding of the Club of Rome. In the second, he examines the interaction of globalization and regionalization focusing on Europe and in the third, he offers an analysis of Hungarian agriculture with its ramifications in global terms.
Rácz points out that since its foundation in the 16th century, the Debrecen College has been supported by many sources including the city of Debrecen, the princes of Transylvania, Protestant Churches abroad as well as the school's own agricultural and banking undertakings.
Papers given at the 5th International Conference on the Ethnography of National Minorities, Békéscsaba, October 7-9, 1993 in three languages. It was the fifth occasion that the Hungarian Ethnographic Society had arranged this unique forum since the first meeting in 1975. (The original idea of a conference to be hosted also by neighboring countries was never realized.) The volume contains some 140 papers by ethnographers from 17 countries.
Magyarok Kelet és Nyugat között.
A nemzettudat változó jelképei
[Hungarians between East and West. The
changing symbols of national consciousness.]
Ed. Tamás Hofer.
Budapest: Néprajzi Múzeum
- Balassi Kiadó, 1996. 303 p.
Papers of a conference held in 1994 with English abstracts. The contributions by historians, ethnographers, art historians and literary scholars cover myths, symbols, rites, cults, legends, heraldic representations and interpret these as part of the process of creating the national identity. Some explore the polarization of national consciousness, a peculiar feature of Hungary as well as of Central and Eastern Europe in general, manifest in the Oriental origin of the ethnos and/or the nation's location in Europe.
VERES, Péter:
The ethnogenesis and ethnic history of
the Hungarian people
Problems of ecological adaptation and cultural
change.
Budapest: Ethnographical Institute of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1996. 50 p.
(Occasional papers in anthropology. 5.)
ISBN 963-567-001-X
Drawing upon recently discovered archaeological, anthropological and linguistic data, this English-language book on Hungarian prehistory surveys the early period (9000-5000 B.C.) of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language family, the emergence of the Ugrian language commmunity (2600- 2100 B.C.) in the south of the Urals, its disintegration (1200-700 BC.) and the Hungarians on the Eurasian steppe (700 B.C. to 895 A.D.). Veres argues that the linguistic divergences from neighboring peoples engendered an early ethnic identity which may account for the Hungarian people's survival on the steppes from the first half of the 1st millennium B.C. up to their settlement in the Carpathian Basin.
Facsimile edition of the 1940 original that has since become a classic. The collection includes the following subjects: the origin of the Huns and the Hsiung-nus (Lajos Ligeti); the Huns in the history of Europe (Péter Váczy); legends of the Huns (Sándor Eckhardt); Hun-Magyar relations (Gyula Németh). In a preface written for the first facsimile edition (1986), Já-nos Harmatta surveys new findings that emerged since 1940.
BÉKÉS, Csaba: Az 1956-os magyar
forradalom a világpolitikában
[The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in world
politics.]
Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1996.
184 p. ('56.)
ISBN 963-04-5979-5
This book, based on recently declassified material in western and Soviet archives, discusses the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in the context of East-West relations. It dispels illusions held at the time of imminent Western armed intervention as well as later assumptions that the Suez crisis was the chief reason for non-interference. For all its anti-Soviet rhetoric, the American leadership regarded the Revolution as a disturbance that could jeopardize the status quo established in 1945 and the thaw that had started shortly before 1956. This determined the fate of Hungary for the next 33 years.
BONFINI, Antonio:
A magyar történelem tizedei
[Decades of Hungarian history.]
Translated by Péter
Kulcsár. Budapest: Balassi, 1995.
1094 p.
ISBN 963-506-040-8
The first full Hungarian translation of this monumental Renaissance work. Bonfini, an Italian who became a Hungarian nobleman and King Matthias' court historian, finished his Rerum Ungaricarum decades in 1497. Drawing upon János Thu-róczy's Chronicle of Hungarians (1488) but enriching it with a variety of other sources, Bonfini, in true humanistic fashion, narrates the history of Hungarians in a European context. Bonfini's Rerum was the prime source on Hungarian history abroad for some 400 years as well as an inexhaustible inspiration for works of the imagination (e.g. Hans Sachs in 1561 took the story of Bánk from it).
GERÔ, András:
Modern Hungarian society in the making.
The unfinished experience
Budapest: Central
European University Press
1995. 276 p.
ISBN 1-85866-023-8
In this English version of the original Magyar polgárosodás (Budapest: Atlantisz, 1993) Gerõ, who teaches history in two universities in Budapest (Eöt-vös Loránd and CEU) explores the emergence of a civil society in Hungary. He focuses on the 19th-century origins, the growth of the middle class, the rise of civic and national consciousness, as well as the implication for the present. Gerõ argues that the historical process toward a civil society is not yet complete.
GOLDZIHER, Ignác:
Az arabok és az iszlám
[The Arabs and Islam.]
Budapest: Magyar
Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára,
1995. (2 vols.) 1089 p. (Budapest Oriental reprints. A. 7-8.)
ISBN 963-7302-92-1
This book is part of a series Budapest Oriental Reprints which features items from the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (the preceding volume was Aurél Stein: Old Routes of Western Iran, 1994.). It is a selection of studies by Ignác Goldziher (1850-1921), a noted student of Islam.
JÁSZAY, Magda:
A kereszténység védõbástyája
- olasz szemmel: Olasz kortárs írók a XV-XVIII. századi
Magyarországról
[The bulwark of Christianity: Italian contemporary
writers on 15th-18th century Hungary.]
Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó,
1996.
334 p. (Italianistica Debreceniensis. Monográfiák.
3.)
ISBN 963-18-7339-0
The subject of this book is the period of the Turkish wars when Hungary was a bastion of Christian Europe. The events of close on three centuries, from the Battle of Varna (1444) up to the aftermath of Rákóczi's Rebellion, are presented here through descriptions, summaries, accounts and memoirs of Italian contemporaries. Giambattista Vico's writing on Carafa is of especial interest.
KISZELY, István:
A magyarság õstörténete
[The prehistory of the Magyars.]
Budapest: Püski Kiadó, 1996.
2 vols. (859 p.)
Kiszely, an anthropologist, sums up his research drawing upon many disciplines. He attempts to reconstruct the prehistory of Hungarians from the 2nd millennium and - in contrast to those relying primarily on linguistic data - he claims that the term ethnos can be defined only by the joint scrutiny of all related disciplines (music, literature, ethnography, religion, etc.) and the interpretation of all relevant sources.
KRISTÓ, Gyula:
Hungarian history in the ninth century
Szeged: Szegedi Középkorász
Mûhely, 1996. 231 p.
ISBN 963-482-113-8
This English-language work is produced by the Szeged Medievalist School. It relates the history of the Ma-gyars from their first presumed appearance in written sources (Herodotus) up to the Conquest when, driven by the Pechenegs from the east, threatened by Bulgars in the south and Slavic tribes in the north, they crossed the Carpathians in 895-896 A.D. and settled in the Carpathian Basin.
MÁRAI, Sándor:
Memoir of Hungary: 1944-1948
Budapest: Corvina - Central European University
Press, 1996. 427 p.
ISBN 963-13-3902-5
(Corvina)
ISBN 1-85866-064-5 (CEU)
Sándor Márai was a great Hungarian writer who lived in exile for forty years (he died in the U.S. in 1989). Based on the original Hungarian-language diaries published by Vörösváry Publ. Co., Toronto, the present volume features the period from the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 up to Márai's escape to the West before the Communist takeover in 1948. The English translation by Alfred Tezla succeeds in conveying Márai's intellectual power, narrative genius and superb style, qualities also evident in his fiction.
RAINER, M. János:
Nagy Imre: Politikai életrajz
[Imre Nagy: a political biography.]
Vol. 1. (1896-1953).
Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1996.
553 p. ('56.)
ISBN 963-04-6550-7
Imre Nagy's life up to his first premiership in 1953. Drawing on an impressive array of sources, many of which have only been available since the early nineties (e.g. the Archives of the Soviet Communist Party), Rainer has clarified many obscure points and has shown charges concerning Nagy's alleged role in the killing of the Czar's family and his links with the NKVD while a resident of the Soviet Union to be unfounded. Newly unearthed primary documents on the late forties confirm Nagy's moderate policy (for which he was demoted in the Party hierarchy) and staunch opposition to dictatoral measures.
RÓNAY, Jácint:
Napló
[Diary.]
Ed. György Hölvényi.
Budapest-Pannonhalma: Magyar Egyháztörténeti
Enciklopédia Munkaközössége,
1996. 400 p.
(METEM-könyvek. 13.)
ISBN 963-8472-11-1
A captivating memoir of a Hungarian exile following the defeat in the war against Austria (1848-49). A Benedictine monk, scholar and army chaplain in the Revolution, Rónay was forced into exile and settled in London. His greatest feat abroad was the printing and distribution of Széchenyi's Ein Blick, a scathing indictment of the Bach era, the years of Austrian repression in Hungary (1850- 1860). On his return after the Compromise (1867), he became a member of the Academy and was also elected member of parliament. Later on, he was a tutor of Emperor Francis Joseph's children, an apt example of his - and Hungary's - reconciliation with the erstwhile oppressor.
SZAKÁLY, Ferenc:
Mezõváros és reformáció.
Tanulmányok a korai magyar polgárosodás kérdéséhez
[Market town and the Reformation. Studies
on the subject of early Hungarian bourgeois development.]
Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 1995. 486
p. (Humanizmus és reformáció. 23.)
ISBN 963-506-042-4
In quest of premature signs of urban development and the germs of bourgeoisie in 16th-century Hungary, Szakály concludes that even against the background of Turkish occupation the market town or oppidum was highly receptive to the new ideas of the religious reformation and new kinds of trade. The peasantry in general and the oppidum's farmer burghers in particular responded to the agricultural boom of the period and played a major role in growing commercial activity.
The Paris-based historian and politologist presents here a 'sample' of his literary essays spanning some half a century. Included are portraits of Mihály Babits, Antal Szerb, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence as well as his appraisal and memories of Attila József, a great poet and Fejtõ's close friend in the 1930s.
HALÁSZ, Elõd:
Nietzsche és Ady
[Nietzsche and Ady.]
Budapest: Ictus Kiadó, 1995, 294
p.
ISBN 963-85141-9-1
A revised edition of an original published in 1942. In quest of the great Hungarian poet's sources, the author-scholar examines Nietzsche's philosophy and carries out a parallel study arranged according to major motifs, tracing Nietzsche's influence on Ady's poems.
PÉTER, Ágnes:
Roppant szivárvány
[The enormous rainbow.]
Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó,
1996. 213 p. ISBN 963-18-70-59-6
The rainbow is a major symbol of Romanticism which serves in this collection of studies by Ágnes Péter, Professor of English Literature at Eötvös Loránd University, as an analogue for the development of Romanticism from the Enlightenment to 19th-century Realism. Professor Péter points out Wordsworth's role in paving the way for Keats and Shelley, and traces the philosophical and aesthetic antecedents in Rousseau, Johann Georg Hamann, Hölderlin and Coleridge.
SÁRKÖZY, Péter:
"Kiterítenek úgyis". József
Attila kései költészete
[Attila József's late poetry.]
Budapest: Argumentum
Kiadó, 1996. 220 p.
ISBN 963-446-024-0
The Professor of Hungarian Literature at La Sapienza University in Rome presents the oeuvre and personality of the poet Attila József (1905-1937) with many hitherto overlooked details. Sárközy revises popular misconceptions about the poet's childhood, his loves and friends as well as his illness. He also offers an in-depth analysis of his last collection of poems, Nagyon fáj (It Hurts So Much).
Musicologists used to argue that vocal music was the authentic and original form of folk music. Since the upsurge of research into instrumental music in the 1970s, it has been accepted that instrumental music is also part and parcel of a people's tradition and heritage. Sárosi shows that Hungarian folk music, and especially that of Transylvania, has preserved a wealth of traditional instrumental forms.
Although the authorities' grip on the media and broadcasting gradually slackened during the four decades of socialism, Radio Free Europe was the main source of broadcast information, one that was not controlled by the Party and spoke in the nation's language to people of all kinds. It made a particular contribution to the political changes in Central Europe. Borbándi, a staff member of Radio Free Europe for four decades, combines an insider's account with a closely researched history.
Edvard Benes elnöki dekrétumai
avagy a magyarok és a németek jogfosztása
[Presidential decrees of Edvard Benesÿ
or the deprivation of civil rights of Hungarians and Germans.]
Pozsony: Pannónia
Könyvkiadó, 1996. 335 p.
ISBN 80-85500-09-4
A collection of studies and documents on a taboo theme under socialism and still a delicate issue in contemporary politics: the fate of Germans and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia. (The Years of Deprivation, a pioneering work by Kálmán Janics, was first published abroad in Ber-ne in 1979.) The declaration of these minorities' collective guilt was formulated in the Kosÿice government program in 1945 (never repealed) and put into practice by a series of decrees by President Benesÿ, which meant prolonged persecution, wide-ranging discrimination, massive and forced resettlement, and confinement in labor and concentration camps.
SZALAI, Erzsébet:
Az elitek átváltozása
[The transformation of the elites.]
Budapest: Cserépfalvi
Kiadó, 1996. 198 p.
ISBN 963-8364-74-2
This collection of studies is a critique of contemporary political processes in Hungary that can be characterized by a general disillusionment with liberal democracy, the seizure of power by technocrats of the Kádár regime, and the erosion of the traditional role of intellectuals. The last chapter of the book presents a polemicon the crisis of the cultural elite with contributions by social scientists including György Csepeli, István Elek, and Antal Örkény.
SZILÁGYI, István: Demokratikus
átmenet és konszolidáció Spanyolországban
[Democratic transition and consolidation
in Spain.]
Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó,
1996.
ISBN 963-85557-0-X
Szilágyi writes on Spain's contemporary
history, the transition from a totalitarian state between Franco's death
in 1975 and the present. Spain was a focus of interest for a group of Hungarian
social scientists in the late eighties and early nineties who were seeking
models of transition. Their interest has since subsided as most analogies
turned out to have been misleading or completely inappropriate. The unprecedented
pace of Spain's development into a full-fledged democracy, Szilágyi
points out, could rely on private property, the material basis of a civil
society which - as opposed to a Hungary under Soviet rule - had never been
destroyed.
Táborlakók, diaszpórák,
politikák
[Camp inmates, diasporas, policies.]
Ed. Endre Sík. Budapest: MTA Politikai
Tudományok Intézete, 1996. 251 p.
ISSN 1216-027X
The fifth yearbook of the Research Group of International Migration discusses three major issues: re-fugees and refugee camps in Hungary with case studies on the aftermath of the war in Bosnia; the acculturation of immigrant ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania and that of the Chinese community; the migration policy of Hungary in the context of its relations to the European Union and international relations.
A collectied edition of papers by Sándor Scheiber (1913-1985), published in separate volumes in 1974, 1977, and 1984. The first part of the monumental work of the distinguished scholar contains studies on Jewish ethnology, famous Hungarian Jews (Immá-nuel Löw, Izsák Pfeiffer etc.) and Biblical stories. The second part discusses Oriental motifs in Hungarian literature from the Protestant preachers (Pé-ter Bornemisza) to György Moldova.
VANYÓ, László:
Katekézis, költészet
és ikonográfia a 4. században
[Catechesis, poetry and iconography in
the 4th century.]
Budapest: Jel Kiadó, 1995. 273 p.
ISBN 963-8344-19-9
In tune with the current revival of interest in the early Christian era Professor Vanyó of Pázmány Péter Catholic University explores catechisis through "illustrated theology", as well as its reflection in and interaction with poetry and art. Vanyó shows that 4th-century Christian art was not a mere appendix to the art of late Antiquity but had a self-contained and legitimate aesthetic that launched new developments.
Originally a samizdat publication by the Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca, Romania)-based author-philosopher, written before the 1989 democratic turn in Romania. This book, a pioneering work in a field where sources are virtually non-existent, is a comprehensive interdisciplinary examination of the identity consciousness of Romania's Hungarian minority, drawing on a wealth of everyday experience.
HUNYADY, György:
Sztereotípiák a változó
közgondolkozásban.
[Stereotypes in changing public opinion.]
Budapest: Akadémiai
Kiadó, 1996. 553 p.
ISBN 963-057344-X
A comprehensive summary of socio-psychological research started by Hunyadi in the early 1970s. 'Stereotype' is a neutral concept without value judgment, a level of generalization which enables people to find their way in a flood of information. Hunyady's inquiry concerns three fields: stereotypes of national qualities, socio-occupational categories and historical personages. He concludes that sudden social and political changes affect the public mentality only slowly and stereotypes are deeply rooted in the individual's socio-cultural ambience.
MÉREI, Ferenc:
Közösségek rejtett hálózata
[The hidden network of communities.]
3rd ed. Budapest:
Osiris Kiadó, 1996. 351 p. (Osiris
könyvtár. Pszichológia.)
ISBN 963-379-199-5
A fundamental work of sociometry first published in 1971. Mérei, an influential psychologist whose starting point was Moreno's sociometrical research on the relations within small communities and groups, sympathy and antipathy, presents his own technique (the sociogram) for measuring the fine shades of relations, coincidences of choice and an assessment of the personality types of communities.
Values in American
Society
Ed. Tibor Frank.
Budapest: Eötvös Loránd
Tudományegyetem, 1995. 270 p. (Topics
in American studies. 2.)
ISBN 963-463-036-7
Proceedings of an international conference held April 28-29, 1994. The theme of the conference was addressed from a multidisciplinary viewpoint by 20 Hungarian contributors and 7 Americanists from abroad. Papers include: "American individualism as a way of life" (Adi Wimmer); "The hyphenated Americans: Maintenance of ethnicity in the USA" Ildikó Hortobágyi.