Abstract
Reviewed by: Antal Szántay, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
Since 1970, East European Monographs has been publishing scholarly works on the history, social sciences, culture and civilization of Central and Eastern Europe, reaching volume DCCXCII with this ‘Festschrift’ in honour of Steven Béla Várdy and Ágnes Huszár Várdy. The Várdys are attached to Dusquesne University of the Holy Spirit, a private Catholic university with a long tradition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Though they left Hungary as small children at the end of the Second World War, and could first return for a visit only in 1976, they both were, and are, dedicated to that country’s history and culture. They have written and edited several books, many of them together, and produced scholarly articles on the history of Hungary and Central Europe, on Hungarians in America, and on the Soviet slave labour camps of the Gulag. Steven Béla Várdy has made a large contribution to shaping American views on the history and culture of Hungary and Central Europe, having written many of the Hungary-related articles in various American encyclopaedias since the 1970s. He is also a tireless reviewer of books. Ágnes Huszár Várdy is also appreciated for her socio-historical novels Mimi (1997) and My Italian Summer (2007).
Teachers of history will be delighted to read General Michael Hayden’s foreword, in which he states that every student in history classes might ultimately benefit from studies of this type. He had himself relied on Steven Béla Várdy’s lectures decades later in delicate missions during the Yugoslav Wars and other East European conflicts. Richard P. Mulcahy, in his introduction, also underlines the great impact the Várdys have through their teaching and writing, and that ‘this volume does provide some sense of that impact’s magnitude by the sheer number of scholars who have contributed to it’ (xvii).
As Festschrifts usually do, this volume also includes contributions (altogether 31) from colleagues, friends and students, and covers a wide range of topics divided into four – two chronological and two thematic – parts, while parts V and VI contain bibliographies of the honourees, and short biographies of the authors. Part I, ‘From the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century’, has only six contributions to cover this very long time period, but also four of the seven contributions from the thematic Part IV ‘Arts and Letters’ could have been included here. Thus, besides the late Z. J. Kosztolnyik’s contribution (31–42), which deals with religious education in the Middle Ages, there are nine dealing with early modern and nineteenth-century cultural and social history. The other chronological section, Part II, dedicated to the twentieth century, contains 11 contributions, while three others from the ‘Arts and Letters’ continue with this dramatic era. Part III ‘The Hungarian Experience in America’ is a clear thematic section dealing with nineteenth- and twentieth-century issues. In total, two-thirds of the contributions focus on the history of the last century.
Being at home in different cultures, as the honourees and many of the authors are, has stimulated a comparative approach in many contributions, which gives a particular strength to this volume. Parallels in the sixteenth-century life and poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega and Bálint Balassi (K. Gyékényesi Gatto, 43–53), freemasonry in eighteenth-century Vienna and Philadelphia (R. W. Weisberger, 55–79), the transition from school to work recently in the United States and in Hungary (S. Glanz, 313–29), agrarian societies in Communist Hungary and the GDR (J. Ö. Kovács, 331–52), and all six contributions of Part III (367–463) are the most interesting examples. The essays on cultural values in eighteenth-century Hungary (G. Vermes, 497–511), and on questions, never examined before, of retribution against heads of state or government in modern Europe (I. Deák, 169–81) certainly meet the interest of a wider public, as does the chapter, published for the first time here, on the autobiography of the late Béla Király (273–85). Several other contributions deal with very specific topics, and thus give sporadic impressions of the colourful history of Hungary. Altogether, the volume, by collecting several new and some republished contributions, represents a valuable recognition of the honourees’ achievements.