Login

Published by: Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Agrarian Productivity and Efficiency in East Central EuropeHHR 2024 3 borito 11

Special editor of the thematic bloc: Gábor Demeter

Contents

ARTICLES

Beatrix F. Romhányi
Spatial Transformations and Regional Differences in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary (1000–1500) 339

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Gábor Demeter
Differences in Quality of Life and Profitability on Small and Large Farms (1730–1930): A Statistical Approach 361

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Géza Hegyi
The Share of Tithe Paid to Parish Priests in Sixteenth-Century Transylvania 403

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Maciej Kwiatkowski
Agricultural Productivity in the Western Borderlands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Second Half of the Sixteenth Century) 431

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

András Schlett
The Export Potential of Hungarian Agriculture and the Issue of Added Value between the two World Wars 446

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Róbert Bagdi
The Incomes and Expenditures of Agrarian Family Enterprises in Interwar Hungary 471

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

BOOK REVIEWS

Full Text (PDF)

Születés és anyaság a régi Magyarországon: 16. század – 20. század [Birth and motherhood in old Hungary: From the sixteenth to the twentieth century]. Written and edited by Lilla Krász.  Reviewed Gábor Koloh 509
Full Text (PDF)

The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy. By Larry Wolff. Reviewed Imre Tarafás 514
Full Text (PDF)

Re/imaginations of Disability in State Socialism: Visions, Promises, Frustrations. Edited by Kateřina Kolářová and Martina Winkler.  Reviewed Boglárka Kőrösi 517
Full Text (PDF)

Survival Under Dictatorships. Life and Death in Nazi and Communist Regimes. By László Borhi. Reviewed Attila Pók 522
Full Text (PDF)

Notes on Contributors
Full Text (HTML)

Volume 7 Issue 4

Austria-Hungary and the Balkans – from the Perspectives of New Imperial History

Contents

ARTICLES

Krisztián Csaplár-Degovics
Austro-Hungarian Colonial Ventures: The Case of Albania 267

Abstract

Abstract

In his unpublished 1955 doctoral dissertation, Johann Wagner persuasively argued that certain members of the leading political, economic, and military circles in Austria-Hungary were very interested in the possibility of global colonization. Furthermore, as the data gathered by Evelyn Kolm clearly shows, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, joint Ministers of Foreign Affairs Gusztáv Kálnoky and Agenor Gołuchowski and joint Minister of Finance Benjámin Kállay promoted the idea of creating a competitive military fleet, and they were ready to offer political support for the economic interest groups that insisted on the necessity of colonialism. Two out of these three people initiated and played a crucial role in the 1896 Vienna Conference, where they decided to adopt and implement a new Albanian policy. This Austro-Hungarian Albanian policy was shaped in part by new colonial ambitions and was not merely the result of a one-time decision made in response to singular circumstances. The new Albanian policy harmonized with the general aspirations of the 1890s: Gustav Kálnoky and Agenor Gołuchowski, as heads of Ballhausplatz, made political and institutional attempts to include, in some form or another, the practice of global colonization as part of the foreign policy profile of Austria-Hungary. One of their allies in these efforts was Benjámin Kállay, who, as the governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was well-versed in both the theoretical and the practical issues of colonization. This study presents the context and consequences of the 1896 conference from a transnational perspective. It also draws attention to two things. First, historical research on the question of colonization should be extended to the Balkan peninsula in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Second, Austria-Hungary’s new Albanian policy was based not only on international models but also on its own experiences in Africa.

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Sven Mörsdorf
The Prochaska Affair Revisited: Towards a Revaluation of Austria-Hungary’s Balkan Consuls 305

Abstract

Abstract

Consuls and consular diplomacy in the long nineteenth century are enjoying a growing interest across various historiographies. This article explores the prominent case of the Austro-Hungarian consul Oskar Prochaska in an effort to offer insight into consular officials as actors of diplomacy and empire in a Habsburg setting. Prochaska, who famously got caught up in a major diplomatic crisis during the First Balkan War in 1912, has never been studied as a protagonist in the events that came to be known as the Prochaska Affair. This calls for an analysis of Prochaska’s diplomatic activity as consul, understood here as his social interaction with his counterparts and adversaries on the ground in Prizren, Kosovo. Adopting a local perspective on a crisis of European and global importance, the article argues for a revaluation of consuls and their bureaucracy as a promising subject for cultural and social histories of the Habsburg Empire and its foreign policy, both in the Balkans and around the world.

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Zsófia Turóczy
Hungarian Freemasons as “Builders of the Habsburg Empire” in Southeastern Europe 329

Abstract

Abstract

In the 1890s, Hungarian Freemasonry began to expand its sphere of influence in southeastern Europe. The establishment of lodges in the southeastern border areas and even outside the Kingdom of Hungary exemplifies this expansion. When devising explanations for this policy, the Hungarian Freemasons made use of colonial and imperial discourses to justify expansion into the “Orient” with reference to the alleged civilizing role they attributed to Freemasonry. They divided the world into two parts from a cultural-civilizational point of view: one where Freemasonry was already established and flourishing and another where this form of community and social practice was not yet known or established. This discourse was entangled with political, economic, and academic practices that were prevalent among the Hungarian Freemasons. Masonic activities and discourses therefore merit consideration in the cultural and social context of their time and analysis from the perspective of new imperial histories, especially since the importance of the discourses and political symbolisms used in the expansion and maintenance of imperial structures has already been pointed out by many historians and scholars of cultural studies within the framework of New Imperial History and postcolonial studies
With a view to the undertakings of Hungarian Freemasons in the Balkans, this paper asks whether Hungarian Freemasons can also be considered “Builders of the Habsburg Empire.” This question is particularly relevant given that Freemasonry was only permitted in the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy. Thus, Hungarian Freemasons acted as both national and imperial actors, and they did so independently of Vienna. As the framework for my discussion here, I focus in this article on the discourses and activities of the Symbolic Grand Lodge of Hungary and the contributions of the most relevant actors, such as the Turkologist Ignácz Kúnos and the journalist and deputy director of the Hungarian Museum of Commerce, Armin Sasváris.

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Mátyás Erdélyi
“Let These be our Colonies: Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina!” Rezső Havass and the Outlook of Hungarian Imperialism at the Turn of the Century 359

Abstract

Abstract

Hungarian imperial thought after the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy became a fantasy of past times, and thus the imperial propaganda of Rezső Havass was long irrelevant by the time of his death in 1927. In spite of this, Havass was called the “wholehearted devotee of Hungarian imperialism” in his obituary, a man who believed in further Hungarian expansion with the faith of prophets and whose goal was to resurrect the imperium of Louis I of Hungary. The present study analyzes the career trajectory of Rezső Havass and his multiple and overlapping identities in order to uncover the different faces of Hungarian imperialism before the Great War. Havass was a “bourgeois citizen,” a “Hungarian fanatic,” “a scholar,” and a “clerk and chairman of business companies,” or in other words, he had an array of identities which made him capable of using historic, legal, political, and economic arguments to aid the advancement of Hungarian imperialism. For Havass, the Hungarian Kingdom was undoubtedly a would-be-colonial empire with well-defined political goals (the colonization of Dalmatia), and his texts mixed and vulgarized elements of the sciences subordinated to political goals. For instance, it is relevant that the empire was a facilitating factor for geographical scholarship in the case of Havass, besides the obvious political leanings. My main research question concerns the modalities of imperial thought in Hungary through the case study of Rezső Havass. What did it consist of? How did it compare to other notions of imperialism and economic expansionism? And how widespread was it in the public sphere in Hungary?

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Ágnes Ordasi
Borderline Syndrome in Fiume: The Clash of Local and Imperial Interests 387

Abstract

Abstract

As the only seaport city of the Hungarian Kingdom, Fiume (present day Rijeka, Croatia) was a key area for policies implemented by the central government in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It was a multi-ethnic hub, an economic, social, political and cultural center, and a highly intensive contact zone where people from various parts of world with different interests and aims met. Fiume was a border, a filter, and a frontier. Moreover, it was an important area in the Hungarian state-defense system. Three important factors deserve particular attention. First, that Fiume was physically enclosed within the Croatian Kingdom, and very much as if it had been an enclave, it did not have common borders with Hungary. Second, due to the way the Hungarian government exercised power and devised its strategies to create a support base (and also because of a fear of efforts towards expansion by Slavs), the government created an Italian-speaking political elite that ruled over Fiume. Third, Fiume enjoyed extraordinarily wide municipal autonomy which included the right to maintain public order and security in the city. The local elites wanted to preserve these rights from the encroaching state.
My study has two purposes. First, I discuss the main reasons for the establishment of the border police. Why was it such a vital question for the Hungarian state at the national and the local level, and why did Fiume became the most problematic element in this issue? I highlight how and why the problem of the border police emerged as one of the most crucial conflicts in relations between the state and its port city.

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Jonathan Richard Parker
From Empire to Oblivion: Situating the Transformation of the Habsburg Empire in a Eurasian Context from the Eighteenth Century to the First World War 422

Abstract

Abstract

In this essay, I situate the Habsburg Monarchy in the Eurasian imperial context by bringing together a variety of recent secondary literature dealing with the Habsburgs and examples of empires in world history. In doing so, I show how the Habsburgs paralleled and diverged from other polities that have been more consistently identified as empires. I also offer a schema for thinking about polities in terms of both how uniformly they are organized internally (i.e., how unitary they are) and the extent to which they can enforce the will of the center (how much like a state they are). This schema draws inspiration from a number of works, chiefly Karen Barkey’s Empire of Difference and Valerie Kivelson’s and Ronald Suny’s Russia’s Empires.
By applying this schema, I argue that the Habsburg Monarchy certainly embodied some characteristics of empire, even as its agents sought to transform it into something more similar to but still distinct from emerging nation states elsewhere. I argue that the Habsburg Empire underwent dramatic state consolidation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that many of the transformations and challenges it experienced in this period were broadly similar to those which other empires underwent or faced. I begin by defining “empire” and showing how the Habsburgs fit into that definition in the eighteenth century. I then discuss attempts to reform the Habsburg Empire into a more unitary, less structurally imperial polity, though I also keep in mind the ways in which it retained imperial characteristics. Specifically, I examine the role of nationalism in supporting and challenging imperial rule. Finally, I examine the destabilizing challenges the Habsburg Empire faced, in particular elite consensus and international legitimacy (or lack thereof).

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Wolfgang Göderle
Materializing Imperial Rule? Nature, Environment, and the Middle Class in Habsburg Central Europe 445

Abstract

Abstract

New imperial history has fundamentally transformed our understanding of empires and questioned established certainties with regard to paths of state building and state formation. This challenge has proved fruitful for historians of Austria-Hungary, as it has led to a new perception of the Dual Monarchy as a sometimes innovative and in certain regards even progressive polity.
The observation that nature and environment became more closely entangled with imperial rule and politics in the nineteenth century and had an impact on common notions of what modern empire actually was serves as a starting point for this study. Along three representative repositories of imperial knowledge—Czoernig’s Ethnographische Karte (1857), the Hungarian Czigányösszeirás eredményei (1893), and the catalogue accompanying one part (the Austrian) of the Habsburg contribution to the 1900 exposition universelle—it shows how new spheres of the non-human became entangled with imperial polities and were transformed into resources with which to further the imperial project. These three examples, I argue, are just three minor elements against a larger discursive backdrop that slowly furthered the embodiment of a notion of modern empire, which featured the improvement of the natural environment as a constitutive aspect of its exercise of power.
Consequentially, this raises the question of a cui bono, placing the focus on a considerably large body of imperial civil service, not only in charge of this operation but also functioning as the driving force behind it. I understand the middle-class officials who made up the administration as the imperial intermediaries identified by new imperial history, and I shed light on the diversity of this increasingly important social class, a diversity which resulted from the ongoing engagement and subtle participation of middle-class civil-servants in the imperial project. I also keep a close eye on the resources they could mobilize, particularly expert knowledge.
I seek to further a more nuanced understanding of the social transformation that Austria-Hungary’s imperial project underwent in the long nineteenth century as this distinctive polity (Austria-Hungary) relied on the middle classes as central imperial intermediaries who furthered the modernization of the Dual Monarchy by fostering specific sets of values and furthering the use of resources the appropriation and exploitation of which have left lasting marks in Central European mentalities.

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

BOOK REVIEWS

Neighbours of Passage: A Microhistory of Migrants in a Paris Tenement, 1882–1932. By Fabrice Langrognet. Reviewed Kristóf Kovács 477
Full Text (PDF)

Words in Space and Time: Historical Atlas of Language Politics in Modern Central Europe. By Tomasz Kamusella. Reviewed Marija Mandić 481
Full Text (PDF)

The Rise of National Socialism in the Bavarian Highlands: A Microhistory of Murnau, 1919–1933. By Edith Raim. Reviewed András Patrik Erdős 485
Full Text (PDF)

The True Story of the Christmas Truce: British and German Eyewitness Accounts from the First World War. By Anthony Richards. Reviewed Róbert Károly Szabó 488
Full Text (PDF)

Citizens without Borders: Yugoslavia and Its Migrant Workers in Western Europe. By Brigitte Le Normand. Reviewed Rory Archer 491
Full Text (PDF)

Victim of History: Cardinal Mindszenty, a biography. By Margit Balogh. Reviewed Árpád von Klimó 495
Full Text (PDF)

The Women’s International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the Whole World? By Yulia Gradskova. Reviewed Minja Bujakovic 498
Full Text (PDF)

 

Notes on Contributors
Full Text (HTML)

 

 

Volume 7 Issue 4

Medical Authority in East Central Europe

Special editors of the thematic bloc: Janka Kovács and Viola Lászlófi

Contents

ARTICLES

Barbora Rambousková–Darina Martykánová

Social Class in the Czech Physicians’ Quest for Professional Authority and Social Acknowledgement, 1830s–1930s 363

Abstract

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, physicians in the Czech lands could claim neither elite status as a professional group nor unquestioned authority in the medical field. Despite the legal protection granted by the Habsburg Monarchy, they did not have an efficient monopoly on medical authority and practice and had to face fierce competition from lay healers, male and female, and other medical professionals. This article examines how Czech-speaking physicians navigated social dynamics in nineteenth-century society in urban and rural areas and how they strove to strengthen their authority in the medical field both through appeals to their professional credentials and through class and gender discourses. We identify individual strategies of social ascension and collective efforts to boost the standing and authority of the whole professional group. Practices such as socializing in patriotic circles and authoring medical guidebooks for laymen proved as important as publications in the professional press and the work of professional associations in this complex effort, which was eventually crowned with success in interwar Czechoslovakia.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Zsuzsa Bokor
“Separation is Required in Our Special Situation”: Minority Public Health Programs in Interwar Transylvania 395

Abstract

Abstract

This paper presents the distinctive manner in which the Hungarian public health system in Transylvania was built up, parallel to the state structures in the interwar period. In several policies and public health projects, the young medical generation of the 1930s formed the basis of the biologically based ethnic community of Hungarians in Transylvania. This process was presented by them as part of ethnic survival and made the presence of the doctor necessary. The paper discusses the foundation of minority health institutes and also the discourses around the formation of these.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Šárka Caitlín Rábová
Between Public Health and Propaganda: Tuberculosis in Czechoslovakia in the First Decades of the Communist Regime 433

Abstract

Abstract

In early postwar Czechoslovakia, medical doctors identified the fight against tuberculosis as one of their fundamental tasks, since mortality and morbidity rates from this dreaded and hardly curable disease were still high. However, the country initially struggled with a lack of special institutions and trained staff. The situation became even more complicated in 1948, when the Communist Party seized power in Czechoslovakia and transformed the organization and practice of healthcare. Focusing on the first two decades of the postwar period, this article presents the strategies used by the socialist country against tuberculosis, stressing especially the importance placed, in the development of these strategies, on having a mass impact. The most significant shifts, which concerned not only tuberculosis but healthcare in general, involved changes to the legislation. The responsibility for the health of the population was transferred to the state, which declared that it would provide free treatment and care for all citizens, regardless of their social background. During this period, the first law to prevent and control the disease was passed, and mandatory vaccination and tuberculosis treatment were introduced. As was often the case, advances in medicine were used for political propaganda, and so, in the period after 1948, tuberculosis was labelled a “capitalist disease.” This label implied that the fault for the continued presence of the disease lay at the feet of the prewar capital system. Yet as I show in the discussion below, many of these basic pillars of the fight against tuberculosis had already been established in the interwar period, and it was first and foremost the growing availability of antibiotics that helped bring this disease under control in the 1960s.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Annina Gagyiova
Every Child According to Its Pace: School Maturity between Expertise, State Policies, and Parental Eigensinn in Socialist Hungary 461

Abstract

Abstract

It is widely known that socialist states such as Hungary attempted to increase social mobility through a compulsory elementary school system. While the research on socialist education is vast, the relevance of school maturity to an egalitarian education system is still understudied. By the end of the 1950s, lack of preparedness for school among children had captured the attention of Hungarian experts in medicine, psychology, and pedagogy, who were hoping to ensure that first-year students would begin their schooling under roughly the same conditions. In response, in 1965, local initiatives started experimenting with corrective (remedial) classes. The aim of these initiatives was to overcome class differences by offering targeted support and helping children who were less prepared for institutional schooling catch up and transfer into the standard school system later. During the first half of the 1970s, the Hungarian Ministry of Education adopted this pedagogical experiment on a national level. In this article, I put two distinct methodological approaches into dialogue, the sociology of expertise on the one hand and Eigensinn on the other. By doing so, I shed light on the complex interplay of state policies, concepts of expertise, and parental agency. As I show, corrective classes reflected persisting social inequalities, thus children from the lower middle classes and the Roma minority were overrepresented in these classes. Ultimately, I explore how bottom-up initiatives had unintended consequences that were often disadvantageous for the children who were in principle the intended beneficiaries. These initiatives thus worked against rather than for the quest for social equality. In the discussion below, I show how pediatricians, psychologists, pedagogues, and parents shaped the school system, working within, taking advantage of, and thus limiting efforts for social transformation despite asymmetrical power relations.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Judit Sándor–Viola Lászlófi
Women Facing the Committee: Decision-Making on Abortion in Postwar Hungary 493

Abstract

Abstract

In this article, we examine the medical, legal, social, and political context of abortion in Hungary after the Second World War, with special attention to the decision-making process of the so-called abortion committees. These committees collected data on the social and medical status of women to support their decision on whether to permit the operation or not. In the first half of the 1950s and after 1973, the committees were given a relatively free hand in making their decision on whether to allow an abortion. Women had to appear in front of these committees in person, and the process was a performance of demonstrating compliance with the law by stating a legally acceptable reason to terminate the pregnancy. In our article we analyze how the hierarchical-paternalistic structures of healthcare were reproduced and operated in the frequently changing abortion regimes within a state socialist legal and political framework. We also explore how these phenomena affected women’s requests and the options available to doctors at the micro level of decision-making on abortion. The study shows how women and doctors were forced to make efforts to comply with the changing normative framework and how different forms of paternalism (e.g., institutional, medical) shaped this process. The main purpose of the various laws was to regulate abortion and population policy by monitoring the measurable circumstances of pregnancy. In the early 1950s, the focus was on the health of the mother, whereas in the 1970s it was more on the living conditions necessary to raise a child. Despite the detailed regulations based on the paternalist structure of the healthcare system, it was left to doctors and other members of abortion committees to implement the norms at the local level. In some cases, doctors utilized this paternalist framework and patriarchal techniques characteristic of the healthcare system to circumvent the intentions of population policy. The article demonstrates these phenomena by analyzing the medical records of Pesterzsébeti Szülő- és Nőbeteg Otthon (Gynecological and Maternity Hospital of Pesterzsébet) and the documents of the abortion committee of Pécs.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

BOOK REVIEWS

Full Text (PDF)

Buda oppugnata: Források Buda és Pest 1540–1542. évi ostromainak történetéhez [Buda oppugnata: Sources on the history of the sieges of Buda and Pest in 1540–1542]. Edited by Péter Kasza. Reviewed Emőke Rita Szilágyi 524
Full Text (PDF)

Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time. By Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger. Translated by Robert Savage. Reviewed János Nagy 527
Full Text (PDF)

The 1868 Croatian–Hungarian Settlement: Origin and Reality. Edited by Vlasta Švoger, Dénes Sokcsevits, András Cieger, and Branko Ostajmer. Reviewed Veronika Eszik 531
Full Text (PDF)

Family, Taboo and Communism in Poland, 1956–1989. Polish Studies – Transdisciplinary Perspectives 36. By Barbara Klich-Kluczewska. Reviewed Fanni Svégel 534
Full Text (PDF)

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Edited by Paul Stubbs. Reviewed Milorad Lazic 539
Full Text (PDF)

Notes on Contributors
Full Text (HTML)

 

Volume 7 Issue 4

East Central European Émigré Communities in the Low Countries:
Agency, Transfers, Impact

Kim Christaens, Luke Dodds, and Tamás Scheibner Special Editors of the Thematic Issue

Contents

Kim Christiaens, Luke Dodds, Tamás Scheibner
Civil Engagement and Cultural Transfers between Central  and Eastern European Migrants and the Low Countries (from the 1930s to the Present): Introduction 547
Full Text (PDF)

ARTICLES

Vera Hajtó
“The Past Must Be Given a Place”: Migration, Intergenerational Transfer, and Cultural Memory Practices in Belgian Families of Hungarian Descent 555

Abstract

Abstract

This article investigates the intergenerational effects of migration on the memories of Belgian families of Hungarian origin, focusing specifically on how these effects can prompt the second and third generations of migrant families to bring their private memories and identity constructions into the public sphere. Their social participation becomes a crucial element in their quest to uncover their families’ histories. While the memory of the migration experience was initially contained in the “archive” (the private sphere), it eventually transitions into the “canon” (the public sphere), becoming accessible to those outside the family circle. Using published biographies of second-generation members about their immigrant parents, photographic images, texts of a theatre play, group conversations on social media (Facebook), and interviews with members of the second and third generations, this article offers a varied source material to explore these questions. By pushing the boundaries of historical research and memory studies, it demonstrates that the memories of migration can have long-lasting effects that connect people and families with larger communities and the social sphere.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Manuel Herrera Crespo
Challenging Systematization in Romania: Human Rights, Transnationalism, and Dissidents in Campaigns by Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR), 1989–1990 576

Abstract

Abstract

Accounts of popular opposition to the systematization project in Romania have predominantly focused on organizations concerned with cultural heritage preservation and the plight of Hungarian minorities in Transylvania. As a result, the Belgian-born initiative Opérations Villages Roumains (OVR) has been largely overlooked, despite growing into the largest transnational opposition movement against systematization by 1989. Unlike other organizations, OVR primarily denounced Ceauşescu’s totalitarian grip on society, with systematization being its most significant manifestation. This article investigates OVR’s philosophy, methods, and objectives during its formative period from 1988 to 1990. OVR’s challenge to systematization reveals how human rights were strategically implemented at chosen moments, the emergence of several transnational dimensions, and the unique roles played by exiles and dissidents. Through this case study, OVR’s approach uncovers the evolving notions of human rights and transnationalism in the 1980s and highlights how these differed from other well-known Western European challenges to the practices of State Socialist regimes.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Michaela Šmidrkalová, Miroslav Michela 
Czech Anesthesiologists on Their Way to the Netherlands: Motives, Expectations, and (Dis)Engagement (1968–1970) 599

Abstract

Abstract

In 1970, the Third European Congress of Anaesthesiology was held in Prague. Paradoxically, many leading Czech and Slovak representatives of the field were absent, having emigrated to the West, predominantly to the Netherlands, following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. This emigration, however, did not result in Czechoslovak anaesthesiologists being entirely disconnected from their former colleagues or losing touch with the domestic development of medicine. Despite the Cold War and the Iron Curtain, medical knowledge continued to be exchanged between the West and the East. The congress exemplified how Western anaesthesiologists could meet their Soviet bloc counterparts. Informal contacts, crucial for Czechoslovak (future) migrants, facilitated knowledge dissemination. These contacts with Dutch anaesthesiologists, who became a ‘window to the world,’ enabled them to join European or global medical-scientific networks. The study probes why a significant number of anaesthesiologists emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the Netherlands post-1968, their integration into Dutch society, and their recognition. It questions whether they engaged with the Czechoslovak expatriate community or primarily focused on their profession and relationships with Dutch colleagues. Using anaesthesiology as a lens, the study illustrates how these doctors, having emigrated during 1968–1970, established themselves professionally in Dutch society. They shared a strong professional identity, which assumed a transnational and partly denationalized form. Their medical vocation, along with the experience of living in socialist Czechoslovakia for twenty years, led to a reluctance to partake in exile activities for the ‘homeland cause,’ a sentiment not fully understood by some of the 1948 migrants.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Luke Dodds
The Question of God in Émigré Ghent: Religious Heritage, Émigré Politics, and Dialogical Negotiation among Migrants and Hosts during the Cold War 626

Abstract

Abstract

This article explores the influence of various factors on the formation of identity among the community of World War II Polish veterans which formed in the Flemish city of Ghent after the rise of a socialist regime in their home country. Challenging popular perceptions of the term “émigré,” the article highlights the diverse ways in which the members of this community promoted their heritage within their host society. Particular attention is given to the role of religious and cultural heritage, the émigré community’s engagement with anti-communist politics, and the evolution of this political engagement over time. Interactions with the local Catholic Diocese of Ghent are examined through a framework of Polish Catholicism as a “lived religion” which facilitated the formation of a hybrid identity. In particular, the role of Carlos Bressers, a Belgian priest and chaplain on whose personal archive the research is based, is analyzed. Through his position and contacts, Bressers served as a mediating figure in the negotiation of hybrid identity and helped the community of Polish veterans carve out a place for itself in the city of Ghent.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Wim Coudenys
Migration as Mission: Alojz-Alexis Strýček SJ in Belgium (1938–1945) 650

Abstract

Abstract

This article presents a case study of Alojz-Alexis Strýček SJ, a Slovak Jesuit in Belgium during World War II, to examine the complexities of migration, identity, and religious mission within turbulent historical contexts. Strýček’s experiences challenge conventional categorizations in migration studies, demonstrating how individual narratives can intersect with and transcend national and religious boundaries. The study employs social network analysis and philological-historical methods, offering insights into the dynamic roles migrants play in the circulation of knowledge and in shaping transnational connections. Strýček’s case highlights the importance of considering non-national factors, such as religious affiliations, in understanding migration patterns and migrant identities. This research contributes to the emerging field of “migrant knowledge,” which focuses on the role of migrants in global knowledge exchange and the redefinition of identities in times of crisis, thereby enriching our understanding of the multifaceted nature of migration.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Adam Żaliński
The Evolution of Migrant Mobilization in One Polish Diaspora Community: A Case Study of the Polish Catholic Society Eindhoven 676

Abstract

Abstract

This research concerns the transformation of one migrant community. It is based on an analysis of selected documents presenting Polish migrant associations in the Netherlands from the beginning of 1950s until the 1990s. The study offers an analysis of the minority mobilization process, with a focus on migrant organizational agency. It is a case study devoted to the Polish community in Eindhoven and its association, which was a local branch of migrant organization operating at a national level. The main sources used in the study are archival records, including organizational statute, circulars, information leaflets, press releases, official and private correspondence, bulletins, protocols, organizational reports, official declarations, and minutes from meetings. In addition, interviews and biographical data are taken into account. Most of the written sources were obtained from the archive of Franciszek Łyskawa, a Polish migrant soldier who settled in Eindhoven shortly after World War II. Over the course of the following decades, he remained an active member of the diaspora while also integrating into the host society, and he became a Dutch citizen. The study shows the evolution of this Polish migrant community from the precarious situation of the early postwar years through the development of immigrants’ associations and institutions which emerged in parallel to efforts to integrate into the multicultural society in the 1960s and 1970s and eventually the gradual decline of activity among the members of this community as immigrants..
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Elżbieta Kuźma, Dorota Praszałowicz
Polish Immigrant Community Building in Brussels: The Role of the Polish Catholic Mission 700

Abstract

Abstract

This paper provides the first outline of the history of the Polish Catholic Mission (PCM) in Belgium, focusing on its role in the Polish immigrant community from 1926 to 2023. It examines the transformation of the PCM and its impact on the Polish diaspora, considering the broader context of secularization and social changes. The study utilizes primary sources, interviews, and participant observations to explore the PCM’s influence on community building, cultural preservation, and social capital formation within the Polish immigrant population in Belgium.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Full Text (PDF)

Klasszikus és modern republikanizmusok: Eszmetörténeti tanulmányok [Classical and modern republicanisms: Studies in intellectual history]. By Ágoston Nagy and Milán Pap. Reviewed Henrik Hőnich 735
Full Text (PDF)

Die Protokolle des Cisleithanischen Ministerrates 1867–1918. Vols. 1–3. Reviewed Ágnes Deák 740
Full Text (PDF)

Nationalism and Populism: Expressions of Fear or Political Strategies. Edited by Carsten Schapkow and Frank Jacob. Reviewed Oto Luthar 745
Full Text (PDF)

Experimental Cinemas in State Socialist Eastern Europe. Edited by Ksenya Gurshtein and Sonja Simonyi. Reviewed Dina Iordanova 751
Full Text (PDF)

Notes on Contributors
Full Text (HTML)

 

 

HHR 2024 1 borito 11

Relations

Contents

FORMS OF MEDIEVAL DIPLOMACY

Gergely Kiss
Staying in the Family? The Role of the Vienne Kinship in Reclaiming the Neapolitan Heritage under King
Charles I 3

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Ágnes Maléth 
“Pro arduis negociis destinandum” – Papal Delegates and the Neapolitan Succession (1328–1352) 18

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

ARTICLES

Antoon De Baets
Historians Resisting Tyranny: A Preliminary Evaluation 39

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Shanshan Liu
The First Generation of Architectural Historians in Modern China: Their Studies and Struggles 59

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Thomas Bujnink
Smokescreens and Smear Campaigns: The Dutch Communist Party in Times of Crisis 80

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Josip Mihaljević
Jakša Kušan’s Forgotten Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Croatia 107

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

BOOK REVIEWS

Full Text (PDF)

The Culture of the Aristocracy in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1750–1820. Edited by Gábor Vaderna. Reviewed Ágoston Nagy 133
Full Text (PDF)

East Central Europe between the Colonial and the Postcolonial in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Siegfried Huigen and Dorota Kołodziejczyk. 
Reviewed Barbora Buzássyová 139
Full Text (PDF)

Agitátorok: Kommunista mozgósítás a pártállam kiépítésének mindennapjaiban (1948–1953) [Agitators: Communist mobilization in the everyday life of the construction of the party state, 1948–1953]. By Heléna Huhák. 
Reviewed Péter Csunderlik 144
Full Text (PDF)

Notes on Contributors
Full Text (HTML)

 

 

HHR 2024 1 borito 11

Meaning of Diversity in the Middle Ages

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Julia Burkhardt and Paul Schweitzer-Martin
Concepts of Diversity in the Time of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368–1437): Introductory Remarks and Conceptual Approaches 153

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

ARTICLES

Bernd Schneidmüller
Unitas and Diversitas: Sigismund’s Empire as a Model of Late Medieval Rulership 172

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Markus Christopher Müller
Alterity and Self-Understanding: Inclusion and Exclusion Strategies of Southern German  Estates in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 195

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Éloïse Adde
The League of Lords between Feudalism and the Modern State: Diversity of State Models,  Political Agency, and Opposition in Late-Medieval Bohemia (1394–1405) 213

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Klara Hübner
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” – The Impossible Term “Propaganda” and Its Popular and Anti-royal Uses in Luxembourg Bohemia (ca. 1390–1421) 235

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Christine Reinle
Diversity, Differences, and Divergence: Religion as a Criterion of Difference in the Empire in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century 261

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Iryna Klymenko
Religious Diversity: What or How? Towards a Praxeology of Early Modern Religious Ordering 287

Abstract Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Nora Berend
Medieval Diversity: Contexts and Meanings 306

Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

BOOK REVIEWS

Full Text (PDF)

Climate and Society in Europe: The Last Thousand Years. By Christian PfisterClimate and Society in Europe: The Last Thousand Years. By Christian Pfisterand Heinz Wanner. Reviewed András Vadas 320
Full Text (PDF)

Christians or Jews? Early Transylvanian Sabbatarianism (1580–1621).Christians or Jews? Early Transylvanian Sabbatarianism (1580–1621).By Réka Tímea Újlaki-Nagy. Reviewed Graeme Murdock 323
Full Text (PDF)

Párhuzamok és kapcsolódási pontok a spanyol és a magyar politikai emigrációPárhuzamok és kapcsolódási pontok a spanyol és a magyar politikai emigrációtörténetében 1849–1873 [Parallels and connections in the historiesof Spanish and Hungarian political emigration 1849–1873]. By Viktória Semsey.Reviewed Ádám Tibor Balogh 326
Full Text (PDF)

Multicultural Cities of the Habsburg Empire 1880–1914. Imagined CommunitiesMulticultural Cities of the Habsburg Empire 1880–1914. Imagined Communitiesand Conflictual Encounters. By Catherine Horel. Reviewed Gábor Gyáni 330
Full Text (PDF)

Notes on Contributors
Full Text (HTML)

 

 

Volume 7 Issue 4

Medical Authority in East Central Europe

Contents

Janka Kovács and Viola Lászlófi
Special Editors of the Thematic Issue

ARTICLES

Barbora Rambousková – Darina Martykánová
Social Class in the Czech Physicians’ Quest for Professional Authority and Social Acknowledgement, 1830s–1930s 363

Abstract

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, physicians in the Czech lands could claim neither elite status as a professional group nor unquestioned authority in the medical field. Despite the legal protection granted by the Habsburg Monarchy, they did not have an efficient monopoly on medical authority and practice and had to face fierce competition from lay healers, male and female, and other medical professionals. This article examines how Czech-speaking physicians navigated social dynamics in nineteenth-century society in urban and rural areas and how they strove to strengthen their authority in the medical field both through appeals to their professional credentials and through class and gender discourses. We identify individual strategies of social ascension and collective efforts to boost the standing and authority of the whole professional group. Practices such as socializing in patriotic circles and authoring medical guidebooks for laymen proved as important as publications in the professional press and the work of professional associations in this complex effort, which was eventually crowned with success in interwar Czechoslovakia.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Zsuzsa Bokor
“Separation is Required in Our Special Situation”: Minority Public Health Programs in Interwar Transylvania 395

Abstract

Abstract

This paper presents the distinctive manner in which the Hungarian public health system in Transylvania was built up, parallel to the state structures in the interwar period. In several policies and public health projects, the young medical generation of the 1930s formed the basis of the biologically based ethnic community of Hungarians in Transylvania. This process was presented by them as part of ethnic survival and made the presence of the doctor necessary. The paper discusses the foundation of minority health institutes and also the discourses around the formation of these.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Šárka Caitlín Rábová
Between Public Health and Propaganda: Tuberculosis in Czechoslovakia in the First Decades of the Communist Regime 433

Abstract

Abstract

In early postwar Czechoslovakia, medical doctors identified the fight against tuberculosis as one of their fundamental tasks, since mortality and morbidity rates from this dreaded and hardly curable disease were still high. However, the country initially struggled with a lack of special institutions and trained staff. The situation became even more complicated in 1948, when the Communist Party seized power in Czechoslovakia and transformed the organization and practice of healthcare. Focusing on the first two decades of the postwar period, this article presents the strategies used by the socialist country against tuberculosis, stressing especially the importance placed, in the development of these strategies, on having a mass impact. The most significant shifts, which concerned not only tuberculosis but healthcare in general, involved changes to the legislation. The responsibility for the health of the population was transferred to the state, which declared that it would provide free treatment and care for all citizens, regardless of their social background. During this period, the first law to prevent and control the disease was passed, and mandatory vaccination and tuberculosis treatment were introduced. As was often the case, advances in medicine were used for political propaganda, and so, in the period after 1948, tuberculosis was labelled a “capitalist disease.” This label implied that the fault for the continued presence of the disease lay at the feet of the prewar capital system. Yet as I show in the discussion below, many of these basic pillars of the fight against tuberculosis had already been established in the interwar period, and it was first and foremost the growing availability of antibiotics that helped bring this disease under control in the 1960s.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Annina Gagyiova
Every Child According to Its Pace: School Maturity between Expertise, State Policies, and Parental Eigensinn in Socialist Hungary 461

Abstract

Abstract

It is widely known that socialist states such as Hungary attempted to increase social mobility through a compulsory elementary school system. While the research on socialist education is vast, the relevance of school maturity to an egalitarian education system is still understudied. By the end of the 1950s, lack of preparedness for school among children had captured the attention of Hungarian experts in medicine, psychology, and pedagogy, who were hoping to ensure that first-year students would begin their schooling under roughly the same conditions. In response, in 1965, local initiatives started experimenting with corrective (remedial) classes. The aim of these initiatives was to overcome class differences by offering targeted support and helping children who were less prepared for institutional schooling catch up and transfer into the standard school system later. During the first half of the 1970s, the Hungarian Ministry of Education adopted this pedagogical experiment on a national level. In this article, I put two distinct methodological approaches into dialogue, the sociology of expertise on the one hand and Eigensinn on the other. By doing so, I shed light on the complex interplay of state policies, concepts of expertise, and parental agency. As I show, corrective classes reflected persisting social inequalities, thus children from the lower middle classes and the Roma minority were overrepresented in these classes. Ultimately, I explore how bottom-up initiatives had unintended consequences that were often disadvantageous for the children who were in principle the intended beneficiaries. These initiatives thus worked against rather than for the quest for social equality. In the discussion below, I show how pediatricians, psychologists, pedagogues, and parents shaped the school system, working within, taking advantage of, and thus limiting efforts for social transformation despite asymmetrical power relations.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

Judit Sándor – Viola Lászlófi
Women Facing the Committee: Decision-Making on Abortion in Postwar Hungary 493

Abstract

Abstract

In this article, we examine the medical, legal, social, and political context of abortion in Hungary after the Second World War, with special attention to the decision-making process of the so-called abortion committees. These committees collected data on the social and medical status of women to support their decision on whether to permit the operation or not. In the first half of the 1950s and after 1973, the committees were given a relatively free hand in making their decision on whether to allow an abortion. Women had to appear in front of these committees in person, and the process was a performance of demonstrating compliance with the law by stating a legally acceptable reason to terminate the pregnancy. In our article we analyze how the hierarchical-paternalistic structures of healthcare were reproduced and operated in the frequently changing abortion regimes within a state socialist legal and political framework. We also explore how these phenomena affected women’s requests and the options available to doctors at the micro level of decision-making on abortion. The study shows how women and doctors were forced to make efforts to comply with the changing normative framework and how different forms of paternalism (e.g., institutional, medical) shaped this process. The main purpose of the various laws was to regulate abortion and population policy by monitoring the measurable circumstances of pregnancy. In the early 1950s, the focus was on the health of the mother, whereas in the 1970s it was more on the living conditions necessary to raise a child. Despite the detailed regulations based on the paternalist structure of the healthcare system, it was left to doctors and other members of abortion committees to implement the norms at the local level. In some cases, doctors utilized this paternalist framework and patriarchal techniques characteristic of the healthcare system to circumvent the intentions of population policy. The article demonstrates these phenomena by analyzing the medical records of Pesterzsébeti Szülő- és Nőbeteg Otthon (Gynecological and Maternity Hospital of Pesterzsébet) and the documents of the abortion committee of Pécs.
Full Text (HTML) and Full Text (PDF)

BOOK REVIEWS

Full Text (PDF)

Buda oppugnata: Források Buda és Pest 1540–1542. évi ostromainak történetéhez [Buda oppugnata: Sources on the history of the sieges of Buda and Pest in 1540–1542]. Edited by Péter Kasza. Reviewed Emőke Rita Szilágyi 524
Full Text (PDF)

Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time. By Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger. Translated by Robert Savage. Reviewed János Nagy 527
Full Text (PDF)

The 1868 Croatian–Hungarian Settlement: Origin and Reality. Edited by Vlasta Švoger, Dénes Sokcsevits, András Cieger, and Branko Ostajmer. Reviewed Veronika Eszik 531
Full Text (PDF)

Family, Taboo and Communism in Poland, 1956–1989. Polish Studies – Transdisciplinary Perspectives 36. By Barbara Klich-Kluczewska. Reviewed Fanni Svégel 534
Full Text (PDF)

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Edited by Paul Stubbs. Reviewed Milorad Lazic 539
Full Text (PDF)

Notes on Contributors
Full Text (HTML)

 

 

More Articles ...

  1. Volume 12 Issue 1 2023
  2. Volume 11 Issue 4 2022
  3. Volume 11 Issue 3 2022
  4. Volume 12 Issue 2 2023
  5. Volume 11 Issue 1 2022
  6. Volume 10 Issue 2 2021
Page 2 of 9