|
|
The 'Mystery of the Hungarian Talent,' Part Two: Hungarian Intellectual and Political Immigration to America
| Article
# : |
11753 |
|
|
Section : |
CULTURE
|
| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
7,204 Words |
| Author
: |
Steven Bela Vardy
|
Since the middle of the nineteenth century about 850,000 Hungarians have made the United States their permanent home, of whom approximately 80-85 percent (650-700,000) came in the period between the 1870s and World War I. These turn-of-the-century immigrants were part of the so-called new immigration, and they were driven almost exclusively by the lack of economic opportunities at home, and by the enticement of possible enrichment in America. Being mostly peasants and unskilled workers of peasant background, they brought with them only their "brawn power." Fueled by the desire to make it in this new world, their contributions to American society were largely limited to hard work and the transplantation of some of their social customs.
Most of the other Hungarians who preceded or followed this mass immigration came from another stratum of Hungary and thus provided other contributions. The combined number of these nonpeasant immigrants was much smaller (15-20 percent of the total), and they were not driven to this country by economic privation, but almost exclusively by political considerations. Moreover, although - like the peasant immigrants - initially they did not intend to make the United States their permanent home, they brought with them an education and a body of knowledge that ultimately benefited their new country. Their intellectual contributions to American society not only exceeded those of the peasant immigrants, but in proportion to their numbers, those intellectual immigrants from many other nationalities.
The first group of these educated immigrants from Hungary (about 4,000 strong) were the "Forty-Niners," who came in the middle of the nineteenth century, following the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849. They came as political immigrants fleeing the persecutions that followed the revolution, but desiring ultimately to return to Hungary as liberators. Their hope for liberation, however, never materialized. They soon had to face the hard choice of either returning to Hungary (especially after the partial amnesty proclaimed by the Austrian Imperial Government in 1857), or of making the United States their permanent home.
Many took the first alternative and repatriated, particularly after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which made Hungary a partner of Austria in the dual state of Austria-Hungary (1867-1918). Others, however, refused to compromise their political beliefs and stayed on permanently. Many of these became entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, explorers, gentlemen farmers, industrial magnates, and even the founders of new cities. Most, however, had difficulties in finding their places in nineteenth-century America, a nation made up mostly of hardy pioneers and unpolished self-made men. These frontier conditions help to explain why so many of these immigrants jumped at the chance to join the U.S. Armed Forces during the American Civil War.
Involvement in the Civil War
Although it does not even rate a footnote in most American history books on the Civil War, many of the Hungarian Forty-Niners - even some who later returned to Hungary - participated in the confrontation between the North and the South, and did so almost exclusively on the Northern side. This participation was both fortuitous and natural to them.
First, most of these immigrants were men of gentry background with
...
Read Full Article
|
|
