Tibor Frank: Through the Looking-Glass

Published in
Lehel Vadon, ed.,
Multicultural Challenge in American Culture---Hemingway Centennial.
Eger: EKTF, 1999,
pp. 21-36.

Tibor FRANK
Eötvös Loránd University
Budapest, Hungary

'Through the Looking-Glass'

A Century of Self-Reflecting Hungarian Images
of the United States
(1834-1941)

America was the China of the nineteenth century--described, analyzed, promoted, and attacked in virtually every nation struggling to come to terms with new social and political forces. Sure of her destiny, she commanded international attention. The Declaration of Independence appealed to the conscience of the world, the Revolution enlisted international support, and the Constitution thrust an unknown political personality into the society of nations. What had been a somewhat obscure, occasionally romanticized backwater of colonial exploitation became, virtually overnight, a phenomenon to be investigated, a political and moral experiment to be judged. Throughout the following century thousands of foreign visitors--reporters, social critics, and artists among them--took up the challenge.

What most of these travelers felt in common was a sense of intense curiosity about the future and about America as the country of the future.

The overwhelming interest in the United States was perhaps nowhere more understandable than in Hungary striving to regain her constitutional rights and national independence from (or within) the Habsburg Empire throughout much of the 18th and the 19th centuries. From early on, important and influential visitors from Hungary traveled to the United States in search of a proper example and to determine what had gone wrong in their own country.
In Prince Metternich´s pre-1848 Hungary the motif of America became part of the political agenda. Some Hungarian travelers reached the United States at the same time when Alexis de Tocqueville toured the new continent. Sándor Bölöni Farkas (1795-1842) published his Journey in North America [Útazás Észak Amerikában] in 1834, a year before de Tocqueville´s Democracy in America [De la démocratie en Amérique] appeared and he analyzed Jacksonian democracy in contrast to the oppressive régime of Prince Metternich. Coincidentally De Tocqueville and Bölöni Farkas met in Charlestown where the prison logbook preserves the memory of their respective visits on the same day in 1831. Just as de Tocqueville´s Democracy was conceived with France in mind, Bölöni Farkas wrote his own work focusing on Hungary. As the Hungarian-American translator of Bölöni Farkas´s Journey rightly observed,

In the former, Pascal looms large, in the latter, the presence of Rousseau is felt inescapably. Pascal prevents Tocqueville from seeing the emerging industrial democracy, while Rousseau, partly refracted through William Ellery Channing, enables Farkas to grasp intuitively the emerging democracy of steam and steel.

The Hungarian student of the emerging United States was astonished to see a democracy at work. "To a foreigner," he noted in his Journey,

the contrast between European and American laws and institutions is so striking that he attempts to attribute it to a unique historical accident. But a closer study of the Revolutionary era and constitutional history convinces him that America´s uniqueness is not accidental. On the contrary, years of deliberation and debate made America unique and different from Europe.

The secret of American success was, Bölöni Farkas observed, that people were granted control over their own lives. For the Hungarian who arrived from the Habsburg Empire of the Holy Alliance system this meant a completely different world, indeed. When visiting a tea party in Boston, Bölöni Farkas´s hosts started to ask him questions as to the state of affairs in Hungary.

Under these questions my situation was not unlike the person who, caught in a dishonest act, is asked upon his honor to give an honest explanation. Suddenly and crushingly I felt, under the weight of these questions, the tremendous contrast between my country and America. How I wished for an honorable retreat. But it would have put me in the position of appearing either ignorant of my country, or having to lie and blush before the Americans. ... I am afraid my hesitation did not leave a good impression on the guests and I left the host´s house sad and depressed. But a Hungarian traveler abroad is often dejected and distressed, particularly if he carries with him the memory of his land, and if he wants to praise not only its fertility but also its culture. The memory of my embarrassment at the tea party tormented me endlessly. How painful it was to reflect on my country´s condition, survey its literary, scientific, and cultural accomplishments, the prejudices and lack of knowledge about us abroad. Are Hungarians responsible for our backwardness in the civilized world? Why is the nation consumed by eternal millennial yearning? Why that veiled torment and melancholy mortification so characteristic of many of our writers? What is that the best Hungarian minds seek to express in a thousand ways to help national enlightenment yet are unable to find the proper words for? Suspended between despair and defiance, the soul finds solace only in the promised future.

The government understood the message quite clearly: the censor´s watchful scissors cut out some of the most important texts. Even De Tocqueville was censored: translated and published in Hungarian shortly after the original edition, the Hungarian text was subjected to censorship and appeared with several important omissions. The censor also abridged the witty review of Bölöni Farkas´s book by the contemporary social critic Mihály Táncsics who used the text to launch a sarcastic mock-attack on democracy and social equality.
Pre-March Hungary enthusiastically responded to Bölöni Farkas who made the American example particularly attractive, and a critique of the Hungarian conditions, in the crucial fields of natural law, social contract, freedom of religion, and universal suffrage.
The next Hungarian of some standing to visit the United States was Agoston Haraszthy. Though his family liked to perpetuate the legend that Haraszthy tried to escape the oppressive Austrian government and find a new life in the home of liberty, his 1844 Utazás Éjszakamerikában recorded quite different experiences acquired during his 1840-41 trip to America. In fact Haraszthy went to the U.S. for very practical reasons: "to see this blessed country for myself." "... I had entertained hopes of establishing commercial relations between my homeland and North America. My experiences here convinced me that there was a real possibility for these hopes to materialize, as a number of the products of my country are needed in the United States..."
Yet, though focusing primarily on the economy, Haraszthy also recognized American freedom, which he discovered primarily in the economic vitality of the American people. "He saw industry, self-reliance, and endurance as the characteristics of a practical country. In his view the driving force in American life was the quest for private wealth... Liberty meant to him limited government interference with private enterprise."

This vast country with all its freedoms is open to all, and all can freely choose to engage in any undertaking. The American does not have to ask permission to build railroads, canals, steamboats, machinery, factories, and the like. He is not hindered by two or three monopolies, which try to suppress everybody who attempts to compete, to the great disadvantage of society.

Haraszthy contrasted Americans and their lifestyle to their Hungarian equivalents. He repeatedly pointed out how diligent Americans were and how even the wealthiest of them avoided the idle lives of the Hungarian aristocrats in an effort to remain "active and productive long after they acquired their fortunes." Haraszthy´s admiration for a diligent, active and productive élite was clearly the critic´s voice that craved for change in feudal Hungary. One may argue that the rich and enthusiastic literature on America in the pre-March era was a thinly veiled form of criticism directed against socially and economically backward Hungary.
It is symptomatic that the Declaration of Independence, first published by Bölöni Farkas, was republished during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. It appeared together with the American Constitution published in Hungary in 1848 for the first time. For the revolutionaries of 1848 the Constitution of the United States was "the greatest example of such institutions." Those trying to change Hungary into a republic looked towards the United States whose constitutional form became the great example for Hungary - and a welcome opportunity to criticize monarchical government, and the Habsburg House. "Look at America," a pamphlet argued at the end of 1848, there the Republic, and popular government, is 60 years old, and this 60-year-old popular government is more successful than the kings of Europe ever were; though they rule from their sovereign thrones since the beginning of the world, their lustre was derived from the tears of their subjects.

In the Spring of 1849 the Hungarian parliament declared Hungary independent. Drafted by Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian Declaration of Independence was clearly following its American model. Though the similarity is striking, historian Aladár Urbán aptly stated that while Kossuth evidently closely followed the structure and logic of the American original, he did not just simply adapt the primary text. Thus the American Declaration of Independence had a dramatic impact on the history of the Hungarian War of Independence. Once published, Kossuth sent its Hungarian version to President Zachary Taylor in May 1849 hoping that the United States would recognize the independence of Hungary. The Hungarian Declaration, however, was not necessarily supposed to create a republican government, the emphasis was on independence from Austria.
One of the best-known chapters of the emerging image of the United States came in the aftermath of the Hungarian War of Independence. In exile in Turkey after August 1849, former Hungarian Governor-President Lajos Kossuth, with the assistance of the U.S. government, traveled to America where he attempted to continue raising political and financial support for the cause of Hungarian independence. Hungarians who had lost their fight for freedom increasingly identified the United States as a source of real and potential help and looked upon Americans as forerunners in an effort to achieve liberty and independence. Though Kossuth´s efforts proved to be largely futile, his American journey left the lasting imprint among Hungarians of a nation that could serve as a great example and model.
It is a great pity that recent American literature on nationalism, and particularly Imagined Communities, a powerful and widely read book by Benedict Anderson, avoided even mentioning these questions when surveying Hungarian nationalism in the 19th century solely on the basis of two, largely outdated though insightful books by Oscar Jászi and Paul Ignotus, mostly because those were available on the subject in English.
In the 1860s this image served as a logical source for the popularity of America as a freedom-loving nation, ready to fight for the noble cause of liberty and justice. Beaten in 1849, members of the Hungarian army and other Hungarian exiles felt that they might continue their freedom-fight on another continent and willingly participated in the American Civil War. They identified their lost cause in Hungary with American democracy for which they were ready to fight in considerable numbers. They fought in Lincoln´s army as if it was that of Kossuth, they fought for American democracy as if it was Hungary´s cause. The war was American, the motifs Hungarian, the cause shared.
The Hungarian image of the United States underwent significant changes after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Even before mass emigration began in the 1880s and migrant workers left Hungary for the United States by the hundreds of thousands, Hungarian observers started to be increasingly critical of the U.S. noticing the signs and symbols of a class society where they thought none existed. In a largely forgotten book, written at the end of his career, on Éjszak-Amerika 1876-ban [North America in 1876], the noted journalist and secret agent, Aurél Kecskeméthy made several important observations and social comments on American democracy. He noticed the "parlor-car" attached to trains in the U.S., more elegant and somewhat more expensive than ordinary "first-class" carriages, and criticized the pretended democracy of the seemingly "one class only" trains. Kecskeméthy was highly critical of the tendency of American democracy where
equality tends to oppress every refined phenomena, every noble endeavor, every independent character, as it does not lift the masses to the more educated upper classes, rather it pushes those down to the low level of the mob... No wonder that at its lowly moral and intellectual level the people in America actually do not honor, respect anything and anybody, but fortune, and people with money. How he got it? No questions asked. He has it! This is what matters.

At the end of his book Kecskeméthy launched an overall attack on the United States. He made it quite clear that he did not consider

American political institutions serving the interest of the people, they tend rather to hand them over to the lower classes of the people who become the mere tools of the very worst elements as the practical circle of government and administration stretches more and more widely. This gave birth to a political corruption unparalleled in the New World, resembling only the old Roman Republic in its dying period.

Critical comments were not missing from István Bernát´s 1886 Észak-Amerika [North America] either, an important book published by the Hungarian Academy of Letters and Science. Throughout his book Bernát compared Europe and America and found that

[i]n our Old World the greatest pomp and splendor surround the ideas of religion and the center and head of our political life. The architect tried to immortalize his ideas in churches, while taste was defined and improved by the splendor surrounding the throne. The American is proud of his hotels and of the palaces built for his newspapers. He refers to their light if he wants to impress you and discusses their size when trying to explain the proportions of his own endeavors. He describes their advantages and elegance with passion and warmth and in his enthusiasm he seems to forget completely that his subject is not worthy of his efforts.

Bernát contrasted the vanishing power of religious faith in Hungary to the still prevalent strength and meaning of religious belief in the United States. He came to the conclusion that "we ourselves are in the same current that lifted the United States so high through the material results it reached although it involves a threat to the purity of society and the family as well as to the development of the future." In general, Bernát was very positive about American achievements, which he weighed critically against Hungary´s condition "comparing our petty ambitions and even more negligible results [in Hungary] with the superb success reached over the Ocean [in the U.S.] by the human hand that understands the exploitation of advantages provided by nature."
For those close to the Hungarian government it became increasingly evident that the United States could and should play an eminent role in the Hungarian economy. The comments of government officials such as Iván Ottlik and Emil Zerkowitz were different from the social commentators and the immigrants: they tinged the American image with the colors of Hungarian business interest.
Iván Ottlik travelled to the World´s Columbian Exposition in 1893 "to study American economic conditions so vital in many ways for us, and particularly for our agriculture." He was astonished to see the tremendous leap ˜America made in the field of human progress and development and, first and foremost in the realm of material improvement" which inspired awe and inspiration in him. Wandering around the World Fair, Ottlik was pleased to see the nice Austrian pavilion but distressed to find how little was known of Hungary, ˜which was perceived only as the country of cheap "hungarian" [sic], that is Slovak, laborforce, in competition with the Chinese, and consequently hated by the Americans." This was a major change in the mutual perception of Hungary and the United States: with the coming of mass migrations the image of the other becomes more tangible, less abstract, with daily experiences replacing colorful idealized stereotypes.
A few years later, another Hungarian government representative compiled a complete, long list of the "secrets" of American success. The key to the wonderful greatness of the United States, argued Emil Zerkowitz after visiting the 1904 St. Louis Universal Exposition in a book in 1905, was the honor and liberty of labor, the lack of prejudice and conservatism, real democracy, institutions based on civil equality, the respect of the constitution, the tremendous business spirit, the lack of militarism, unified national spirit... Zerkowitz was particularly keen on pointing out the obvious, though cautiously mentioned differences between the United States and his own country. The list reads like a thinly veiled criticism of the feudal conditions of turn-of-the-century Hungary, once again revealing the mirroring qualities of imaging another country. Zerkowitz emphatically suggested that there were "no power excesses on behalf of some preponderant classes," there was no prevalence of old-fashioned conservatism or reactionary spirit. American society, he concluded, had respect for human beings only when they had the admiration of their fellow-countrymen through work.
It is natural that in a book entitled Amerikai kereskedOk [American Merchants] Zerkowitz went out of his way to describe the best qualities of American businessmen. "´Try again!´ is their slogan," he quoted adding that the merchant class had a role equal to that of the producing and the consuming classes. ˜Nobody questions there [i.e. in the United States] the enormous significance of the commercial profession," stated Zerkowitz with an obvious though coded reference to the Hungarian conditions.
The social criticism of American travelogues by Hungarian authors became increasingly direct and harsh in the interwar years. Chronicling the "Kossuth pilgrimage" of 1928, a trip to inaugurate the statue of Lajos Kossuth on Riverside Drive in New York City, Zoltán Biró focused on the surviving symbols of an antiquated feudal hierarchy in Hungary that was in striking contrast with the American social experience. "It is very funny how you address each other, Mr. Biró," a Hungarian-American turned to the author.

You address each other ´Your Excellency´ or ´Your Magnificence´ in such a way that I do not know whether to wonder or laugh at it. I´d rather laugh, as this sounds very funny for us. ...I have been out here [i.e. in the United States] for a long time and my ears are no longer accustomed to this. With us even the President is just Mr. President, not Your Excellency, while in your group there are some fifty ´Excellencies,´ with all the others addressed as either ´honorable´ or ´magnificence.´

For Hungarian-Americans it would have been difficult to return to Hungary and they would have preferred for a United States of Europe to exist. "Here in America we are all waiting for this." As suggested by his concluding chapter on "War and Peace," the inevitability of a United States of Europe was in fact Biró´s main message for his Hungarian readers as early as 1928. The very existence of the United States of America thus became a model to follow for Europeans, holding out the promise of international peace, economic prosperity, and a clear-cut democracy. The lessons of war-torn Europe should make the United States the absolute paragon for the future.
While Dr. Biró´s enthusiastic book was written shortly before the great economic crisis, Mrs. Ferenc Völgyesi, wife of a famous Hungarian psychiatrist, was again impressed to see America smiling, rich, and successful not even a mere decade after the Depression. For someone coming from Europe just on the verge of World War II, the image of a prospering and smiling country was indeed striking. She observed that in America there was a real chance for most people to suddenly rise ´from a humble economic and cultural stage to ...a high level unparalleled in the whole world." The existence of equal opportunity was in itself the strongest publicity and best advertising for the American system. "This is what is most stunning for the European just arriving." Mrs. Völgyesi perceived the United States as an effective and modern society where the two-party system helped to avoid the feudal entrenchment of political power, where unemployment was taken care of by the social system, and where those who wanted to work would have a safe way to prosperity.

America is after all the richest, by far not completely used region of the world with great potentials. Her entire historical tradition encompasses a mere few hundred years. There it is well-known for every one that if not he or she, then his or her parents or grandparents arrived into the New World as Europeans stricken by fate to start a new life. This is why the principle is observed everywhere, ´to live and help others to live.´

The last major Hungarian survey of the United States, Ez Amerika [This Is America] by Géza Zsoldos, conveyed the message of a diligent country where the New Deal produced unbelievable wealth and economic power. "America is rich, very rich!"Zsoldos underlined when he spoke of the gigantic proportions of production and consumption. "The New World is the home of hard workers, the home of wage and work. People are driven by some inexplicable electric current." "The feverish, shattering American life that we call speed while there they call it efficiency, produces unimaginable results." The heavy emphasis in Zsoldos´s book on work, productivity, zeal, and efficiency throughout tries to shed light on the basic differences between Hungary and the United States and it endeavors to make it easier for Hungarians to see the real nature of an enemy country -- in 1942.
From here on, until quite recently, the Hungarian perception of the United States was marred by political bias and ideological prejudice. The Hungarian images of the United States after 1942 should be considered in a separate chapter. This brief survey of a century of Hungarian perception of the United States should be sufficient to suggest, however, that the images of another country are almost always products of comparative efforts, conscious or subconscious, that measure the differences and similarities between "them" and "us."
Characterizations of national stereotypes are shown to be interdependent by social psychology. In the study of social identities, the theory of "self-categorization" points to the interaction between homogeneity within our own groups and heterogeneity within the other. The national characterization by the pioneering 19th century Hungarian scholar Jácint Rónay had already demonstrated how the descriptions of the various nations proved to be interdependent and how describing the other contributed to the understanding of the self. According to recent investigations in social psychology the perception of our own group and that of the other could even be similar to the relation between the perception of other persons and us. In these cases the cognitively elaborated features of self-characterization provide a suitable starting point and frame of reference for a person, or a nation, to get to know others.
Based on historical evidence, this abstract field of social psychology can be further developed and enriched through future research. Traveler and travelogue act as a lens and mirror in one, which both shows the object and reflect the photographer at the same time. Sometimes the image of the photographer is clearer to be seen than the picture he or she takes.

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