The Beginnings of Pediatric Psychiatry in the Czech Lands

Helena Chalupová

Charles University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 4 (2025): 537-562 DOI 10.38145/2025.4.537

Records concerning mental disorders among children are sparse for the earliest period of the field of psychiatry in Bohemia, but they do exist. For a long time, however, no public care was actually available for mentally ill children. This paper investigates the formation of child psychiatry as a separate field in the Czech Lands, tracing the emergence of public care for mentally ill children and the establishment of the first educational institutions for children and adolescents. In Bohemia, these efforts date to 1871, when Karel Slavoj Amerling founded the Ernestinum, an institute for “feebleminded” children in Prague. In 1902, the first outpatient clinic for child psychiatry was established in Prague by Karel Herfort, the first professor of child psychopathology in Bohemia.

Keywords: pediatric psychiatry, mental disorders, children, Ernestinum, Karel Slavoj Amerling, Karel Herfort

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Centralizing Custody and Curing by Chance: Early Austrian Madhouses under Medical Supervision and State Constraint, c. 1780–1830

Carlos Watzka

Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 4 (2025): 493-536 DOI 10.38145/2025.4.493

This article offers an overview of the early development of madhouses as an insti­tutional framework for the custody and treatment of mentally ill persons, from the initial phase of comprehensive governmental health politics in Austria (the peak of the Enlightenment movement in the region in the late eighteenth century) until 1830, when a second phase, which had begun in 1815 and which bore witness, again, to the establishment of asylums for people suffering from mental disorders, came to an end with the foundation of an asylum in the city of Hall in Tyrol. The article outlines the establishment of such institutions for the accommodation, detention, and, partially, treatment of people seen as insane in the Austrian Hereditary Lands as a political and societal attempt to react to a rising number of individuals who were perceived as suffering from serious mental problems but whose families and communities either did not feel obliged to provide care for them or were simply not capable of treating them anymore in their respective localities. The article points out, as has been noted in the secondary literature, that all early madhouses in Vienna, Linz, Graz, and Salzburg operated primarily as institutions for the internment of persons perceived as mentally ill and posing a threat to themselves and others. The physicians involved intended to implement therapeutical activities, but this was only rarely possible due to a lack of financial resources, accommodation space, and asylum staff.

Keywords: madhouse, psychiatry, Austria, Josephinism, early nineteenth century, social history

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The Journalistic Activity of Rosika Schwimmer
from the 1890s until her Death in a Transnational Perspective

Dóra Fedeles-Czeferner

ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 459-490 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.459

This paper examines the journalistic career of Rosika Schwimmer, a prominent Hungarian feminist and pacifist, from the 1890s until her death. It situates her work within the broader historical context of transnational feminist and pacifist movements of the early twentieth century. Schwimmer’s career was shaped by a wide network of contacts in the international progressive women’s movement. Her activism enhanced her visibility as a public intellectual, but her controversial pacifist stance later led to political isolation and negatively affected her professional opportunities after emigrating to the United States. Throughout her life, Schwimmer used the press as a tool for activism and as a platform for self-promotion. The paper also explores her qualifications, skill sets, and the range of publications she contributed to, which included liberal newspapers and feminist journals.

The paper also provides insights into the challenges women faced in journalism in the first half of the 20th century, contrasting two articles from 1912 and 1914 that present opposing views on women’s prospects in the field. Schwimmer’s career began with translations, which served as a gateway to international journalism. She published in Hungarian, German, and later English-language journals, often on topics like women’s rights, peace advocacy, and international cooperation. Her controversial and eccentric personality led to conflicts with colleagues, which also shaped her professional image and legacy. The paper concludes with a case study of her articles from 1919–1920, which illustrate the fusion of her political and journalistic identities.

Key words: Rosika Schwimmer, journalism, feminist, pacifist, women’s rights, activism, transnational, Hungary, international press

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Beginning of the Nazi Era:
Between Invisibility and Solidarity

Anna Veronica Pobbe

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 443-458 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.443

In a 1934 publication of the International Red Aid (MOPR), it can be read that Rudolf Diels, head of the Gestapo between 1933 and 1934, described communist women as “the most stubborn enemies of the state because they did not become informers despite being tortured.” Despite their absence in higher positions of the RHD (Rote Hilfe Deutschland, German Red Aid), women played a major role in the activities of the RHD: “It was women [in fact] who drove the bailiffs out of their homes and the provocative Nazis out of the welfare office. […] In the Ruhr region, proletarian housewives put together a delegation and demanded a pay rise for their husbands in the factories. Women prevented arrests and demanded the release of their husbands. This was the case in Berlin and Breslau, where women snatched an arrested apprentice and market trader from the police. In Berlin, the police were unable to arrest a communist in one factory because the workers threatened to go on strike. In the Rhineland, 40 women went to the district administration office and demanded the release of their husbands. In another place, 60 women and their children forced the release of 40 prisoners through a demonstration. In Freiburg, women achieved the release of a communist woman.”2 Taking this attestation as our starting point, the current paper aims to shed a light, at first, on the communist women activism during the Nazi Era. This activism is also reported by some members, like Rosa Lindemann, who was also the leader of a mostly women resistance group based in the Tiergarten district of Berlin: “Some of our women helped the men whose wives had been arrested in the household and looked after the children. We had contacted over thirty families and were able to alleviate some of the suffering. It was a particular joy for us to hear how happy our comrades in the prisons and penitentiaries were that we were looking after their relatives and caring for them.”3 Secondly, the paper aims to address the peculiar strategies that were used by the women, like it has been reported in the Berlin Moabit case, where there was a circle of women, that organized relief campaigns and met weekly, disguised as coffee parties or meetings in garden sheds; these women collected money for relatives of the prisoners and helped resistance fighters who had gone into hiding.4 Last, but not the least, the paper aims to address some key-role women in the Red Aid scenario: like Ottilie Pohl, who died in Theresienstadt.

Keywords: communist women, political activism, solidarity, Third Reich, resistance

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Adrift on the Periphery: The Alternative Development of Hungarian Women’s Organizations in Interwar Transylvania

Zsuzsa Bokor

Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 402-442 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.402

This study explores the interwar history of Hungarian women’s organizations in Transylvania, focusing on the complex interplay between gender, ethnicity, and politics in the aftermath of the Treaty of Trianon. It examines the foundation and evolution of the Central Secretariat of the Hungarian Minority Women of Romania (RMKNKT) and its affiliated religious and social associations, analyzing how Transylvanian Hungarian women developed alternative, hybrid models of emancipation that blended traditional gender roles with modern political activism.

Through discussion of archival sources from transnational perspectives, the essay traces how Hungarian women in Romania adapted to exclusion from national and international women’s organizations by reconfiguring their activism along ethno-religious lines. It devotes particular attention to so-called “railway mission” programs designed to protect women, who were compelled to move among various locations in the country to pursue work, illustrating how these initiatives became vehicles for ethnic self-defense and identity construction.

The study reveals that Hungarian women’s activism in interwar Romania cannot simply be categorized as conservative or progressive. Instead, it operated in a liminal space shaped by the constraints of minority status, the failures of multicultural inclusion, and opportunistic engagement with both international and religious networks. This essay contributes to the redefinition of minority women’s political subjectivity and highlights how social work and community care were understood in ethnic frameworks.

Keywords: Transylvanian Hungarian women’s organizations, interwar, railway mission

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Phantom Borders and Nostalgia: German Women’s Associations in the Second Polish Republic after 1918

Paula Lange

University of Vienna, Department of History

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 373-401  DOI 10.38145/2025.3.373

Transformations associated with the end of World War I had an immense impact on the population of the former Prussian partition area, most of which became, in the wake of the war, the Second Polish Republic. Members of the German women’s associations, which had existed before 1918, found themselves in a new situation. As members of a national minority in the newly established Polish state, they were confronted with a reversed balance of power. Meanwhile, women’s suffrage had been introduced, opening up new political spaces of action for women. This article examines gender-related spaces of action for German women in this region after 1918 and explores the strategies and points of reference used by these women. The two examples on which it focuses, the Vaterländischer Frauenverein in Graudenz/Grudziądz and the work of feminist activist Martha Schnee in Bromberg/Bydgoszcz, are examined using the concepts of phantom borders and nostalgia.

Keywords: Second Polish Republic, German women’s associations, phantom borders, nostalgia, interwar period

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