Black Humor and the White Terror 9781032124018, 9781032124032, 9781003224389

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface
1 War-Time Humor
2 Jewish Black Humor
3 Antidefamation Humor
4 The Love Affair with the Nobility
5 Finding Humor in Factional Tension
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Black Humor and the White Terror

This book examines political humor as a reaction to the lost war, the postwar chaos, and antisemitic violence in Hungary between 1918 and 1922. While there is an increased body of literature on Jewish humor as a form of resistance and a means of resilience during the Holocaust, only a handful of studies have addressed Jewish humor as a reaction to physical attacks and increased discrimination in Europe during and after the First World War. The majority of studies have approached the issue of Jewish humor from an anthropological, cultural, or linguistic perspective; they have been interested in the humor of lower- or lower-middle-class Jews in the East European shtetles before 1914. On the other hand, this study follows a historical and political approach to the same topic and focuses on the reaction of urban, middle-class, and culturally assimilated Jews to recent events: to the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy, the collapse of law and order, increased violence, the reversal of Jewish emancipation and the rise of new and more pernicious antisemitic prejudices. The study sees humor not only as a form of entertainment and jokes as literature and a product of popular culture, but also as a heuristic device to understand the world and make sense of recent changes, as well as a means to defend one’s social position, individual and group identity, strike back at the enemy, and last but not least, to gain the support and change the hearts and minds of non-Jews and neutral bystanders. Unlike previous scholarly works on Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, this study sees Budapest Jewish humor after WWI as a joint adventure: as a product of urban and Hungarian culture, in which Jewish not only played an important role but also cofounded. Finally, the book addressed the issue of continuity in Hungarian history, the “twisted road to Auschwitz”: whether urban Jewish humor, as a form of escapism, helped to desensitize the future victims of the Holocaust to the approaching danger, or it continued to play the same defensive and positive role in the interwar period, as it had done in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. Béla Bodó is a Professor of Eastern European History at the University of Bonn, Germany. He is the author of The White Terror: Antisemitic and Political Violence in Hungary, 1919–1921 (Routledge, 2019) and Tiszazug: Social History of a Murder Epidemic (Columbia University Press, 2002).

Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe

The nations of Central and Eastern Europe experienced a time of momentous change in the period following the Second World War. The vast majority were subject to Communism and central planning while events such as the Hungarian uprising and Prague Spring stood out as key watershed moments against a distinct social, cultural and political backcloth. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification and the break-up of the Soviet Union, changes from the 1990s onwards have also been momentous with countries adjusting to various capitalist realities. The volumes in this series will help shine a light on the experiences of this key geopolitical zone with many lessons to be learned for the future. The Mentality of Partisans of the Polish Anti-Communist Underground 1944–1956 Mariusz Mazur Biopolitics in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th Century Fearing for the Nation Edited by Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, Joachim von Puttkamer and Immo Rebitschek The Intellectual Foundations of Modern Ukraine The Nineteenth Century Andriy Zayarnyuk and Ostap Sereda Black Humor and the White Terror Béla Bodó The Anthems of East-Central Europe Ref lections on the History of a National Symbol Csaba G. Kiss For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Histories-of-Central-and-Eastern-Europe/book-series/ CEE

Black Humor and the White Terror

Béla Bodó

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Béla Bodó The right of Béla Bodó to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-12401-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-12403-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-22438-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003224389 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgments Preface 1 War-Time Humor

ix xi xiii 1

2 Jewish Black Humor

57

3 Antidefamation Humor

99

4 The Love Affair with the Nobility

168

5 Finding Humor in Factional Tension

199

Epilogue

229

Bibliography Index

235 247

Illustrations

Cartoons: 2.1 Logic 64 2.2 Future plans 65 66 2.3 Business before everything 2.4 Question of word order 71 72 2.5 Hotel Britannia 2.6 His ration 84 87 2.7 True Honesty 2.8 Practical Israelite 88 89 2.9 A Viennese joke 3.1 Herkulsz-Abelesz 105 3.2 Duel 106 3.3 In Hell: Haynau to Szamuely 131 3.4 Mistake 149 4.1 In the Flea Theater 177 4.2 On Sunday 178 4.3 Introduction 179 4.4 The Next Morning 180 4.5 Close Attention 181 4.6 Mihály Magyar and the Jewish Question 191 4.7 The good villagers 192 5.1 Religion and income 206 5.2 After a long time 210 5.3 Comfortable religion 213 5.4 Because of them, we have antisemitism 220 5.5 On the shores of Lake Balaton 221 5.6 The pious renegade 222

x Illustrations

Figures: 3.1 Pogromist Placard Reading “Is This What We Fought For?!” (MNL-PKG 1919 0032) 3.2 Pogromist Placard Reading “They Wash Themselves Clean.” (MNL-PKG 1919 0018) 3.3 Pogromist Placard Reading “This is How They Work!” (MNL-PKG 1919 0057) 4.1 Cover Page of Uj Barázda (MNL PKG 19190054)

123 124 126 189

Acknowledgments

This book was a long time in the making. The first draft chapter was written about a decade ago—that is, six years before the publication of my last monograph, The White Terror: Antisemitic and Political Violence in Hungary, 1919–1921 (Routledge, 2019). My original plan was to write a chapter on Jewish black humor as one of the many reactions to paramilitary violence. However, it soon became clear to me that the topic of Jewish humor was simply too complex and too important to be handled in a single chapter, and that it might be developed into a separate volume, perhaps as a sequel to the monograph on the White Terror. Gradually, the research on Jewish humor began to take on a life of its own, moving from the periphery to the center of my attention and interests. Humor thus became both the reason to explain individual and communal strategies to counter violence during the counterrevolution and the pretext to tell the larger story of Jewish emancipation and assimilation in Hungary in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Writing a book on Jewish humor represented a special challenge. I had written extensively and had taught many courses on antisemitism, pogroms, and the Holocaust during the last twenty-two years. Yet, the focus of my research was on discrimination, antisemitism, and antisemites: on the perpetrators of violence rather than on its victims. Jews were present in my studies mainly as targets rather than active agents and framers of their and other people’s destinies. The switch from study of perpetrators to the study of resistance and resilience required re-tooling; so did the use of comic weeklies, jokes, cartoons, novels, poems, anecdotes, and theater plays as primary sources. Learning about the history of Jewish jokes, Hungarian newspapers and periodicals, the birth of cabaret, and popular culture proved to be a highly enjoyable and intellectually rewarding undertaking. But as a social and political historian, I remained interested mainly in what was taking place in the world outside the text rather than in the vocabulary and internal structures of jokes, poems, novels, and other literary sources. What fascinated me, and the story that I most wanted to tell, was the state of mind and behavior of individuals laboring under stress and the tale of a community in crisis. This book, like all history texts, is the product of a joint effort. First, I would like to thank my friend and poet, writer, and literary historian, the

xii Acknowledgments

late Szilárd Borbély, for his help. He not only faithfully scanned some of the periodicals, such as Az Ojság (The News), when I wasn’t able to travel to Hungary; he also drew my attention to many contemporary novels and poems that dealt with Jewish assimilation before the war. Borbély was familiar with Orthodox Judaism and literary traditions and shared many of his insights about Jewish humor with me during our long conversations. Historian Mihály Kálmán, who has written extensively on the role of Jews in sports, recommends Az Ojság to me as a primary source. Peter Haslinger, who had used the comic weekly Borsszem Jankó ( Johnny Peppercorn) in one of his early articles, shared his insights about antisemitism and the role of comic weeklies in the Dual Monarchy during our stay as fellows at Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Germany, in 2014. The time spent in Jena, Germany, was intellectually one of the most rewarding periods of my life. I profited immensely from the weekly group discussions and informal daily conversations with colleagues such as Rudolf Kučera, Marie-Janine Calic, Ivana Dobrivojević Tomić, Ota Konrad, Paul Newman, Martin Jemelka, Jochen Böhler, Joachim von Puttkammer, Vladimir Solorari, Sándor Horváth, Ferenc Laczó, and others. It was also during our weekly seminars in Jena where I first presented Jewish humor as my next research topic and solicited advice. I owe a special thank you to my colleagues in Jena for their critical remarks, many suggestions, and the ensuing theoretical discussions on resistance and humor. Here I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends Curtis Richardson, Péter Csunderlik, and Emily Gioielli, who have read the draft chapters. I am especially grateful to Emily, who also helped to edit the text. I am also indebted to our student assistants at the Department of Eastern European History at University Bonn, Nikolas Böß, Victoria Kloska, Leon Altenaehr, and Dilara Dagoglu, who assembled the index and bibliography. My wife, Bethany Walker, an archeologist and historian at the University of Bonn, patiently read every chapter, helped correct my grammar and style, and assisted with the myriad administrative tasks related to assembling the manuscript. This book is devoted to the memory of my old friend Károly Deményfalvi, who was like a father to me. It was Károly Bácsi who, when I was eighteen, put Hašek’s Svejk in my hands and taught me to appreciate interwar Central European and Jewish humor. I hope that his life-long support, trust, and intellectual investment was not in vain.

Preface

I have very often in my lifetime been a prophet and have been mostly derided. At the time of my struggle for power, it was in the first instance the Jewish people who only greeted with laughter my prophecies that I would someday take over the leadership of the state and of the entire people of Germany and then, among other things, also bring the Jewish problem to its solution. I believe that this hollow laughter of Jewry in Germany has already stuck in its throat. I want today to be a prophet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.1 Hitler’s speech to the German Reichstag on January 30, 1939, revealed the depth of the dictator’s hatred and paranoia; it also shed light on at least his murderous desire, if not his intention, to eliminate Jews from Europe. Because of his prediction about the “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe,” many historians consider Hitler’s Reichstag Speech in early 1939 as the prelude to the Holocaust.2 The speech testified to Hitler’s paranoia and his belief in the alleged omnipresence and secret powers of his Jewish enemy; it also showed the dictator’s fear and his lifelong obsession with Jewish humor. For his entire life, Hitler’s remark suggests, the dictator had been fighting one enemy only—the source of all his personal and his nation’s tribulations and the alleged curse on humanity: the Jews. Like David against Goliath, he, a poor son of the great Volk, had been locked in a life-and-death struggle with “the international finance Jewry.” Jews had all the money and political connections in the world on their side; yet, their most important weapon remained their humor. All his life, the dictator tells us, he had been walking around with the maddening sounds of Jewish laughter ringing in his ears. Like the prophet Jonah in Nineveh, he had to endure ridicule and humiliation. But with truth and God’s assurance on his side, he was always victorious. And now that he had become as powerful as his Jewish enemies, they could no longer laugh at him with impunity. If they tried to pit the nations of Europe and the world against one another in a new war, if they dared to laugh at him

xiv Preface

again, he would strike back with all his might. And his vengeance would be awful: in his righteous anger, the dictator would “annihilate the Jewish race.” “International finance Jewry” would not have the last say; the sounds of their mockery and laughter would cease. Finally, the joke would be on them. Hitler’s obsessions were unique. Nonetheless, he was not alone in fearing and rejecting Jewish humor. Since the time of Metternich in the early 1800s, authorities in Central Europe for political reasons tried to prevent the publication of Jewish satires and block the spread of Jewish jokes on the street by persecuting their authors. They regarded Jewish humor as subversive, immoral, and dangerous, as a threat to the political class and law and order. The authorities’ assessment of Jewish humor in the early nineteenth century foreshadowed, and in many respects prepared the ground for the conservative and right-radical critique of modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While conservatives were mainly concerned with secularization and liberalization, which they believed had been advanced by Jews, the right radicals and, later on, the fascists believed Jewish humor, as a part of modern and urban culture, undermined the vitality of the nation-state and threatened the “race” with destruction. Right radicals and Nazis, from the Hungarian Catholic Bishop Ottokár Prohászka to Alfred Rosenberg, an ethnic German from the Baltics, dismissed modern culture including avant-garde art, film, cabarets and revues, and tabloid journalism as Jewish creations and as manifestations of the “Jewish spirit.” They liked to contrast the “culture of urban plaster” (Asphaltkultur) to the “culture of the people” (Volkskultur): they denounced the former, which they believed to be rootless and alien, as poison, but praised the latter, supposedly rooted in tradition and the soil, for feeding the body and soul.3 The nineteenth century, especially the period between 1830 and 1880, has often been described as the golden age of liberalism. After 1880, liberalism as a political ideology and movement never again regained its former hegemony in Western and Central Europe. The same period was also the golden age of comic weeklies. From the French Charivari to the English Punch, from the German Fliegende Blätter and Kladderadatsch to the Austrian Kikeriki and the Hungarian Borsszem Jankó, comic weeklies had a strong impact on public opinion and exercised considerable inf luence over the political elite. Many politicians welcomed their increased power: liberal politicians in Central Europe, in particular, saw and pursued humor in general, and Jewish humor in particular, as a weapon against the forces of reaction, cast arrogance and religious fanaticism, and as a political instrument to realize enlightened reforms. The reputation of Jewish humor, especially among members of the liberal political elite, also improved significantly after 1850. The notion that Jewish humor was a means of liberation was soon extended from the political to the scientific arena, from the public to the private realm, and from the world without to the world within. At the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud, a man of Jewish descent, tried to solve the mystery of Jewish humor’s power by analyzing its psychological mechanism and function in his

Preface  xv

famous essay Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). The renowned doctor and founder of psychoanalysis believed that the success of Jewish jokes hinged on listeners’ sense of escape from danger and their feeling of liberation from restraint and repression. A product of persecution and marginalized existence, the function of Jewish humor, Freud believed, was to protect and nourish the soul. Jewish jokes offered solace in times of mourning, helping victims and potential victims of violence preserve their dignity and self-respect when threatened, and providing support for both individuals and the persecuted minority as they sought to maintain their identity under duress.4 Freud’s path-breaking study set the tone for the bourgeoning scholarship on the same topic for more than two generations. Even today, the bestknown studies on Jewish humor follow a psychological, anthropological, or a linguistic approach. They describe Jewish humor as a product of longue durée, stable social structures, mental patterns, cultural traits, and moral values, as well as lasting language configurations: in brief, they conceive of humor as an expression of a “Jewish essence.” The same works locate the origins of Jewish humor in the East European shtetle: they see classical Jewish jokes as the product of Judaism, rural culture and small-town existence, age-old customs, and traditional social institutions.5 Fortunately, cultural historians have expressed a growing interest in both rural and urban humor not only in Jewish humor in Russia but also in jokes produced in the Dual Monarchy. This growing interest is connected to and has been inspired by, the current debate among social and cultural historians on “multiple modernities”: whether Jews simply assimilated into the culture of their host nations and made their contributions to it as assimilators in what Peter Gay once called “insiders/outsiders,” or whether Jews adapted the native and urban culture of the Habsburg Empire, adding Jewish elements. In other words, scholars debate whether and (if so) to what extent modern and urban culture in Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Kraków and the smaller cities of the Dual Monarchy can be described as national, transnational, or Jewish.6 Admittedly, relatively few of the grand cultural surveys on this region have devoted more than a few pages, or at best a chapter, to urban humor and Jewish jokes.7 Historical studies dealing with the rise of modern newspapers and comic weeklies, on the other hand, tend to ignore other manifestations of humor such as cabarets, jokes told on the streets but published only decades later, etc. The role of “the cultural industry” as well as formal education and education institutions has been duly recognized by scholars who write about the rise and fall of empires, the birth of nationalism, the formation of ethnic and national identities, and state and nation and state-building in Central and East-Central Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.8 In these studies, the authors have treated Jewish assimilation and national identity in the Habsburg Empire as part of a wider and regional phenomenon and as an outcome of larger processes including modernization, urbanization, and secularization.9 In the last decade, historians have paid close attention to the role of the First World War and the postwar chaos in the rise of Jewish

xvi Preface

national identity.10 Similarly, important works have been published on the emergence of new and more pernicious antisemitic stereotypical images during the war and the spread of the myth of a worldwide Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy after October 1917.11 The lost war and postwar crises have been described as the main reason behind the rise of both fascism and “the culture of defeat” characterized by revolutionary ultranationalism, the belief in ethnic and national rebirth through war, resentment, the thirst for revenge, and violent antisemitism in Central Europe.12 However, with the exception of Péter Csunderlik’s work on the right-radical and proto-fascist political pamphlets in Hungary in 1919 and the early 1920s, none of these studies cited here have paid any attention to the role of humor as a catalyst or even a symptom of cultural change, a heuristic device, or a political weapon.13 In the Hungarian context, excellent studies have been published on the rise of changing ethnic, including antisemitic, stereotypes before 1914.14 Unfortunately, no one has explored soldiers’ humor, or humor in general, during the First World War, neither has anyone, with the exception of Boldizsár Vörös’s short study on the Red Terror, paid any attention to political humor as an outlet for tensions in the postwar period.15 Although several publications of varying quality on cabarets and Budapest jokes have recently appeared, none of them have used Jewish jokes to help explain the reversal of assimilation, the changing position of Jews in Hungarian society, and their reaction to violence.16 Historians of the Holocaust recognized the importance of Jewish humor as a defense mechanism relatively early on. In the 1980s, Lucy Dawidowicz argued that jokes functioned as a weapon of the weak during the genocide: humor tilted the balance of power in favor of the oppressed, helped victims of violence overcome their fear, and conquered their anxieties and their feelings of inferiority vis-à-vis the perpetrators of mass violence.17 More recently, Steve Lipman has contended that humor in concentration camps functioned both as a weapon and as a palliative. Jokes helped inmates fend off despair and regain hope; they also reinforced group cohesion and strengthened individual identity. Jewish humor during the Holocaust saved lives by frustrating Nazi plans and slowing down the machinery of destruction.18 Interestingly enough, historians concerned with public opinion in Nazi Germany have come to a more nuanced conclusion about the role of political humor in the single-party state. In the 1970s, Richard A. Grunberger still considered anti-Nazi jokes as “a low-key expression of resistance (or at least disapproval) and a form of therapy.”19 According to Egon Larsen, political jokes in the early stages of the Nazi regime reinforced the impression and evoked hope that the government would soon collapse and that resistance to Nazism was both widespread and principled.20 John Morreal argued that jokes about Hitler in particular attacked the main pillar of Nazi power: the cult of the dictator.21 However, in the last thirty years, newer studies have painted a rather unf lattering picture of the people who told and listened to jokes. They have shown that the majority had no political affiliation and told their jokes for

Preface  xvii

a number of reasons, very few of which had anything to do with politics: some were bored; others were chronic attention-seekers; still others sought the tantalizing feeling of danger on the cheap. Very few of these storytellers found their way into the resistance or committed individual acts of sabotage or terrorism. Telling and listening to political jokes did not turn cynics and politically disinterested individuals into responsible citizens; such activities, if anything, tended to increase alienation and encourage the fragmentation of body politics and the withdrawal of individuals into private life. The jokers, recent studies argue, rarely rejected Nazism completely. Typically, they continued to accept and praise certain aspects of Nazi rule; they often idealized Hitler and did not hesitate to take advantage of the financial incentives, such as marriage loans, offered by the state. Criticism of the failures and shortcoming of local government and its representatives as expressed in humor did not necessarily imply a principled rejection of Nazi ideology; in many cases, storytellers criticized the authorities for being too soft on the Jews and other enemies of the state. The authorities pursued denunciations rather selectively (for example, they arrested and punished men and outsiders, such as Jews and foreign workers, more often than women, the elderly, and ethnic Germans). In this environment of repression, jokers got off lightly; no one was executed and only a few people were sent to concentration camps for telling political jokes in Nazi Germany.22 Political humor seems to have fulfilled a similar function in countries where communist regimes were established after the Second World War. Many jokes poked fun at dictators, ridiculed the overblown rhetoric of the ruling party and state, and drew attention to horrific living and working conditions, the lack of consumer goods, and the gap between the humanitarian rhetoric of the regime and the harsh reality of neglect and oppression.23 Some historians have gone so far as to claim that political humor made a meaningful contribution to the collapse of the single-party state.24 Others have remained more skeptical, however. They argue that political jokes, manufactured by loyal jesters, published in censored periodicals and aired by government-controlled radio shows and television programs, if anything, conserved and prolonged the existence of “existing socialism.” Consumerism, soap operas, game shows, and political humor produced by highly talented comedians provided outlets for social and political tensions, and they served as a sophisticated means of political legitimization, at least in those states of East-Central Europe, such as Hungary, which preferred petty tyranny to open terror.25 Humor as criticism—and its role in society—is not new. As the first chapter shows, it has a long history going back to ancient Greece. The most devastating critique of modern humor and entertainment in which Jews in Europe and North America played an important role came from the founders of the left-oriented Frankfurt School, which is associated with the Institute for Social Research, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor W. Adorno. Horkheimer claimed Jewish descent, and Adorno was half-Jewish. In their seminal work,

xviii Preface

Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1947), Horkheimer and Adorno described humor as both a function of global capitalism and a product “the cultural industry.” The omnipresence of humor in a culture, in their view, testifies to the existence of a civilizational crisis produced, on the one hand, by the mechanization of cultural production, the commoditization of art, science, and education, and by the alienation of individuals in capitalist society, on the other. Modern mass culture, best represented by films, cartoons, and photographs is not able to create anything new or valuable; what it does best is reproduce nature. The mechanical reproduction of nature in turn “leaves no room for what was once essential to beauty.” The narrow focus on humor and merry-making and the illusion of joy and happiness they produced, bear witness to the mastery of “the cultural industry” over nature and its defeat of beauty. In the modern world, Horkheimer and Adorno argue, there is a lot of laughter because there is “there is nothing to laugh at.” The cultural industry appeals to our negative side and plays to humanity’s worst instincts such as jealousy, resentment, laziness, moral depravity, and, worst of all, the insatiable thirst for malicious joy (Schadenfreude). While Freud had seen humor, particularly Jewish humor, as a defense mechanism, which helped the individual maintain his sanity by suppressing and trivializing danger, Horkheimer and Adorno regarded laughter as an “escape” not only from danger but also from the “grip of logic” and individual responsibility. The promise of laughter and the offer of cheap entertainment fed the insatiable desire of modern man for escapism. Fun is a medicinal bath. The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it. It makes laughter the instrument of the fraud practiced on happiness. In the modern world, the person who is the saddest laughs the loudest. He is not happy, because the moments of happiness are without laughter.26 The best analysis and most devastating critique of Jewish humor in Hungary in the interwar period, a subject that is the most relevant to my analysis here, was provided by literary historian Aladár Komlós. A Holocaust survivor himself, Komlós had already made a name for himself as a poet and writer in Hungary and the neighboring states before 1945. He was also one of the few politically progressive Jews who recognized early on that the new form of antisemitism that developed after 1918 and the counterrevolutionary regime threatened the survival of the Jewish community in Hungary.27 In his magnum opus on the Jewish contribution to Hungarian literature in the nineteenth and twentieth century, Komlós devoted a separate chapter devoted to Jewish humor in the interwar era. Published for the first time in 1979, at the very end of Komlós’ long life and distinguished career as a writer, the book’s conclusion ref lected Komlós’ negative experiences with Jewish humor in the interwar period. Unlike many Zionists, Komlós welcomed Jewish participation in Hungarian social and cultural life; he also praised the contributions of Jewish poets and writers, as well as publishers, newspaper editors, and journalists, to the development of modern Hungarian literature. However, he saw Jewish humor in a different light. Like Freud, Komlós recognized the importance of humor as a defensive mechanism, and admitted that Jewish

Preface  xix

jokes could be witty; but he condemned the indifference of storytellers to social and political reality. Komlós regarded Hungarian Jews’ obsession with humor in the interwar period as symptomatic of deep-seated crisis: a form of escapism, an expression of alienation and total despair, and a manifestation of “Jewish masochism.” 28 In this book, I advance a different argument that refines Komlós’s conclusion and refutes his critique of Jewish humor as an overall negative and self-destructive force. Like recent books on jokes in Nazi Germany and in the communist countries of Europe, this study is concerned primarily with the social function and political impact of Jewish jokes and caricatures. In other words, the work examines Jewish reactions to a historical event against the background of well-established cultural traditions, mental patterns, and historical ref lexes conditioned by decades, perhaps even centuries of persecution and existence as a minority. Humor is defined loosely. This book is concerned with both high and popular culture; with anecdotes and satires written by famous authors like Ferenc Molnár and Ferenc Karinthy published in books or comic weeklies or performed on stage; and with jokes and anecdotes whose authors had long been forgotten and which had been passed down orally by friends meeting accidentally on the street, told by women waiting in line for bread, or shared by colleagues in pubs and cafes after a long day of work. This study is, in part, an exercise in historical methodology. I am interested to know if Jewish jokes, which are often transnational and difficult to date, can be used to measure the political and psychological effect of specific events such as the Great War and the Red and White terrors or to illustrate recent social developments and cultural trends. For example, what does the periodic reappearance of the same late nineteenth-century Russian-Jewish jokes in Hungarian comic weeklies say about the shifting position of Jews in Hungarian society, the civilizational regression the country had experienced, the setbacks in the process of Jewish emancipation, and the changing attitude of certain segments of the Hungarian Jewry toward cultural and ethnic assimilation after 1918? Why did jokes about conversion and name changes multiply in the comic weeklies during the counterrevolution? In contrast to the majority of cultural studies, this work is events-centered and has clearly defined spatial and chronological boundaries. I am, however, also interested in connections with the more distant past as well as in antecedents, models, and counter-models in the wider and non-Jewish domain. For this reason, chapter 1 examines the place of humor in its diverse forms, as well as its social and political functions during the war. The chapter distinguishes between patriotic/conservative and pacifist/subversive humor and examines the Jewish contribution to both types. Humor came in many forms and appealed to every social group during the war. In the trenches, friendships were formed between people from different regions, social and religious groups, and levels of education; the boundaries between the different forms of jokes also became more f luid: the situational (and apolitical) humor of working-class and peasant soldiers found its way into the war reports and

xx Preface

published memoirs of famous writers; common soldiers, on the other hand, learned about and enjoyed the urbane jokes of their officers. The second part of the chapter examines the situational humor of rightwing officers and war veterans during the White Terror, the most violent period of the counterrevolution, between August 1919 and March 1920. The section focuses on the mental and moral universe of perpetrators of violence and the role of militia humor as the facilitator of violence, and especially the ability of practical jokes and anecdotes to remove inhibition, break down moral and cultural barriers to violence, soothe the conscience, maintain morale, and reinforce military hierarchy. Like the “satanic laughter” of the right-wing militias, Jewish black humor was also a product of the war and the postwar crisis. It emerged in the context of military defeat, foreign occupation, national humiliation, economic collapse, social dislocation, the brutalization of soldiers and civilians, moral disorientation, rising antisemitism, and physical attacks on Jews. Chapter 2 focuses on the postwar clash between the two kinds of humor: the first was Gentile, military, and authoritarian; the second Jewish, civilian, and democratic. The first was meant to destroy, while the second aimed to save lives. But the second chapter is also interested in long-term developments and antecedents: it traces the origins of Jewish black humor back to the long tradition of anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe social as well as to political developments in the immediate postwar period in Hungary. In other words, humor was not a sui generis product of the distinctive historical situation of Hungary in 1919 but drew from models and inspirations in world literature that had developed since the early 1800s. Like every chapter in this book, this chapter is concerned with the political, social, and psychological functions of Jewish jokes rather than their internal structures and literary forms. In contrast to the rest of the book, however, the second chapter puts the individual—his or her fears and anxieties—rather than the Jewish community and its interests at the center of the analysis. As self-depreciating humor, black humor was often complex, and the jokes were frequently motivated by seemingly contradictory impulses. Thus, the chapter raises the question of whether, in the context of the Hungarian civil war and pogroms, self-depreciating humor promoted reform and self-improvement or had proved to be counterproductive or even self-defeating; in other words, whether such sharply-worded jokes bolstered self-respect or undermined one’s will to resist. Chapters 3 and 4 turn readers’ attention from the private domain to the public sphere; from conversations between friends and family members to newspaper editorials, parliamentary speeches, and political posters; and from black humor, concerned with the integrity of the individual, to jokes and cartoons that served to protect the reputation, social status, and political interests of the entire Jewish community. Antidefamation humor was designed to counter false accusations, prevent the spread of rumors, and defeat the new and more pernicious antisemitic caricatures that emerged after the war.

Preface  xxi

Chapter 3 sheds light on the nature of this anti-Jewish campaign by analyzing the language of right-radical newspapers and explaining the effectiveness of antisemitic posters. Antidefamation jokes were an extension of the same campaign conducted in newspapers, the august chamber of the parliament, and even in fencing halls (many false accusations and insults often led to duels). The most insulting of these false accusations was the claim that Jews had not pulled their weight during the war and did everything in their power to escape military service. Even more widespread was the belief that Jews as “merchants of death” profited handsomely from the war; that Jewish peddlers and petty thieves controlled the black market; that Jews played a major role in the democratic revolution in late 1918, and that the communist dictatorship and Red Terror in the spring and summer of 1919 were entirely their work. Jewish newspapers and comic weeklies were determined to prove the opposite: that not only did Jews do their duty in the war but also that proportionally more Jews sacrificed their lives for the country than any other ethnic and religious group; that Jews always paid their taxes, made their living honestly, and were underrepresented among war profiteers and speculators; that, with the exception of the small minority of Jewish converts to Christianity and agnostic elements, Jews not only remained untouched by communism but suffered disproportionally than Christians during the Red Terror; and that Jews were among the earliest supporters of the counterrevolution. In antidefamation jokes, assimilated Jews tried to distance themselves from recent immigrants and refugees from the East. Yet, the most perceptive among them recognized the threat that the equation of Jews with communism, as well as with dirt, epidemic disease, and other sorts of biological threats, posed to the community. Many of the jokes about “dirty Jews” that had been among the favorites of culturally assimilated Neologs acquired a new meaning after the war: what used to be amusing, albeit insulting, became dangerous. Chapter 4 assesses the result of the antidefamation campaign in its many forms and facets, focusing on the question of whether jokes and caricature were able to bridge the widening emotional and cultural gaps between Jews and Gentiles during the counterrevolution and beyond. The last two chapters deal with Jewish assimilation and its contradictions as well as the attempt to solve these contradictions through humor. Chapter 5 examines the changing relationship between Jews and nobles, the social group that set the terms of the “assimilationist social contract” in the nineteenth century and into whose culture the Jewish middle class and elite tried to assimilate. It sheds light on the limits faced by elite Jews who attempted to culturally and ethnically assimilate into the aristocracy, on the forms of informal and social discrimination the wealthiest and most accomplished Jews were forced to experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the pain and cultural disorientation that such discrimination produced. The chapter also explains, with the help of the same literary sources, the worsening relationship, especially after 1918, between poorer nobles, the

xxii Preface

so-called gentry, and the “Christian and noble middle class,” a group of middle-class and Gentile commoners who imitated the lifestyles and internalized the values of the gentry. The same chapter examines Jewish responses to the growing hostility of peasants toward the Jewish segments of the rural middle class, manifested in, among other things, pogroms and other types of physical attacks. Jewish jokes about peasants display the arrogance and incomprehension that urban dwellers typically harbored toward farmers and the rural poor. At the same time, they ref lect Jewish disappointment over peasant politics, especially over the failure of the leaders of the newly established peasant parties to reign in rural militias, put an end to robberies and plunder, and stop inciting violence and hatred against religious and ethnic minorities. Finally, chapter 6 uses assimilation jokes to highlight the growing tensions within the Jewish community after the war: the quarrels between the Orthodox and Neologs, Hungarian nationalists and Zionists, the wealthy and poor, and the urban and the rural Jews over the possibility, desirability, and morality of cultural and ethnic assimilation. The chapter focuses on jokes and cartoons inspired by name changes, religious conversion, and intermarriage and the changing meanings of assimilationist humor after 1918. It investigates what happened to the emancipation project after war: how Jews reacted not only to violence but also the reversal of emancipation and the political, cultural, and emotional cul-de-sacs in which they found themselves following the lost war, two failed revolutions, and the bloody counterrevolution. Indeed, it is precisely the failure of emancipation that functions as the red thread that knits the chapters of the book together.

Notes 1 Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during the World War II and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 52. 2 See Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London: Arnold, 2000). 3 Ottokár Prohászka, Kultúra és Terror (Budapest, “Élet,” 1918); Alfred Rosenberg: Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit (Munich: Hoheneichen, 1930). 4 Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960). 5 For anthropological, cultural, and linguistic approaches to Jewish humor, see Salcia Landmann, Jüdische Witze (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2010); Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1992); Desanka Schwara, Humor und Toleranz: Ostjüdische Anekdoten als historische Quelle (Lebenswelten osteuropäischer Juden) (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996); Miklós Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe (Budapest: Gondolat, 2014); Avner Ziv, ed., Jewish Humor (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1998). 6 Such chapters normally appear in the section on modern literature and the life and works of great satirists such as Karl Kraus. On this debate, see Steven Beller, The Habsburg Monarchy 1815–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 211–220. For the older literature, which emphasizes the assimilation

Preface  xxiii of Jews into the dominant culture and the “re-feudalization,” of the middle class including its Jews segments and their adaptation of the values, norm and sensibilities of the aristocracy, see Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981); John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture (London: PUB, 1989). Other, more recent works, not only emphasize Jewish contributions to national culture; they also see urban culture as exhibiting “Jewish” sensitivities and revolving around typical Jewish concerns such as identity, assimilation, and survival. See, Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 7 William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind. An Intellectual and Social History,1848–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), esp. pp. 116– 127; Edward Timms, Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986); Marjorie Perloff, Edge of Irony, Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Géza Buzinkay, “The Budapest Joke and Comic Weeklies as Mirrors of Cultural Assimilation,” in Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske, eds., Budapest and New York. Studies in Metropolitan Transformation, 1870–1930 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994) pp. 224–247; Géza Buzinkay, Mokány Berczi és Spitzig Itzig, Göre Gábor mög a többiek.... A magyar társadalom figurái az élclapokban 1860 és 1918 között (Budapest: Magvető, 1988); Géza Buzinkay and György Kókay: A magyar sajtó története I. A kezdetektől a fordulat évéig (Budapest: Ráció Kiadó, 2005); and Mary Gluck, The Invisible Jewish Budapest. Metropolitan Culture at the Fin de Siecle (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016). 8 Jeremy King, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity and Beyond,” in Maria Bucur and Nancy M. Wingfield, eds., Staging the Past (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001), pp. 112–152; Pieter M. Judson, “Frontiers, Islands, Forests, Stones: Mapping the Geography of a German Identity in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1900,” in Patricia Yaeger, ed., The Geography of Identify (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 381– 408. Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experiences, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). 9 Gary B. Cohen, Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague; 1861–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Kateřina Čapková, Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012). 10 See the essays in Marsha L. Rozenblit, ed., Reconstructing a National Identity. The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 11 Paul A. Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Harvard: Belknap Press, 2018); Eliza Ablovatski, Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe. The Deluge of 1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2021); Robert Gerwarth, “Bolshevism as Fantasy: Fear of Revolution and Counter-Revolutionary Violence, 1917–1923,” in Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, eds., War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 40–51. 12 Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (New York: Routledge, 1991); Wolfgang Schivelbuch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery (New York: Picador, 2004). 13 Peter Csunderlik, A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig.’ A Tanácsköztársaság A Korai Horthy-Korszak Pamflet –És Visszaemlékezés Irodalmában (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2019).

xxiv Preface 14 Kati Vörös, “Judapesti buleváron. A zsidó fogalmi konstrukciója és vizuális reprezentációja a magyar élclapokban a 19. század második felében,” Médiakutató 4 (Spring, 2003), pp. 19–43, accessed June 8, 2019, https://mediakutato.hu/ cikk/2003_01_tavasz/02_ judapesti_bulevaron. 15 Boldizsár Vörös, “A rabbi tehát elmegy Kunfi közoktatásügyi népbiztoshoz.” Zsidó figurák a Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaságról szóló 1919-es viccekben.” Szombat 3 (2009a), accessed June 29, 2019, https://www.szombat.org/ politika/3846-a-rabbi-tehat-elmegy-kunfi-kozoktatasugyi-nepbiztoshoz. 16 For two informative and nicely illustrated books, which, however, are weak on historical analysis, see Tibor Bános, A Pesti Kabaré 100 Éve (Budapest: Vince Kiadó, 2008); Anna Szalai, Entertaining between Worlds: Béla Pásztor and his Era (Tel Aviv: Pastor Publishing Ltd, 2018). 17 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933–1945 (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986), p. 218. 18 See Steve Lipman, Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor during the Holocaust (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993). 19 Richard.Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), p. 331. 20 Egon.Larsen, Wit as a Weapon: The Political Joke in History (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1980), p. 45. 21 John Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), p. 102. 22 Meike Wohlert, Der Politische Witz in der NS-Zeit am Beispiel ausgesuchter SD-Berichte und Gestapo-Akten (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 149–159; Detlev Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemenschaftsfremde. Anpassung, Ausmerze und Aufbegehren under dem Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Bund Verlag, 1982), pp. 72–84; 92; Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 28; Hans-Jochen Gramm, Der Flüsterwitz im Dritten Reich (München: List, 1966). 23 György Majtényi, Egy Forint a Kruplis Lángos—A Kádár Kor Társadalma (Budapest: Libri Könyvkiadó Ltd., 2019). 24 See Bruce Adams, Tiny Revolutions in Russia: Twentieth-Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes (New York and London: Routledge and Curzon, 2005); Ron Jenkins, Subversive Laughter: The Liberating Power of Comedy (New York: Free Press, 1994). 25 György Dalos, Világ Proletárjai, Bocsássatok Meg!: Vicces Búcsú a Létező Szocializmustól (Budapest: Corvina, 2009). 26 Italics in the original Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of the Enlightenment (New York: Continuum, 1972), pp. 140–141. 27 Aladár Komlós, Zsidók a válaszúton (Budapest, 1920). 28 Aladár Komlós, “Három zsidó megy a vonaton (A zsidóvicc),” in Magyar-Zsidó Szellemtörténet a Reformkortól a Holocaustig, vol. 2, Bevezetés a Magyar-Zsidó Irodalomba (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek, 1997), pp. 47–61.

1 War-Time Humor

The population living in European capitals received the news about the outbreak of the Great War in early August 1914 with a mix of joy and relief. Pacifism, which had grown into a popular movement since 1890, collapsed under the weight of mobilization; its proponents, who claimed to have found an alternative to imperialist wars and state oppression, either ended up in jail, went into exile, or more often, lost their voice amidst the pandemonium of saber-rattling. With a few exceptions, socialist parties, which had vowed to prevent conf lict by staging, if necessary and as a last resort, a general strike, jumped on the war bandwagon and voted for war credits. From Great Britain to Austria-Hungary and Russia, the leaders of ethnic minorities, who had reasons to distrust their governments, pledged their support for the war and promised eternal loyalty to the state. The coming of the war fostered dreams and fed unrealistic expectations about social peace and ethnic harmony at home. Jews, in particular, hoped that the war would tear down the last emotional and cultural barriers to their full acceptance and complete the project of emancipation in Central and Eastern Europe. The mood of the population was buoyant and optimistic, and the political and military elites were confident about an early victory in the autumn of 1914. After the first major battles, however, reality swiftly set in. By the end of the year, as casualty rates began to mount and with no end to the conf lict in sight, overconfidence and messianic expectations increasingly gave way to insecurity, pessimism, and fear about the future. Contemporary art and literature ref lects the changing mood of the public and their increasingly gloomy appraisal of the situation. But already in the summer of 1914, some of the paintings of the avant-garde artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner captured the general unease of the population and their sense of foreboding about the war. The works of his colleagues such as Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Max Beckmann chose human cruelty and the dark sides of life during the war and its immediate aftermath of the war as their subject matter: the manifest arrogance and stupidity of military officers and civil servants; the indifference and hedonism of the leisure class; the desperation of disabled

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224389-1

2  War-Time Humor

veterans; the grief and plight of war widows and abandoned children; and the disorientation of refugees. The image of dead soldiers returning from their graves in close formation in postwar French cinema helped viewers grieve the loss of the lives of millions of soldiers in a meaningless war. German expressionist films like Robert Wiene’s Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) paid tribute to the trauma of the war by capturing the nightmares and phobias the conf lict had produced. A few years later, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) conjured up visions of a gloomy utopia through images of a fully organized society, inspired in part by the experience of mechanized warfare and the emotional and cultural impoverishment of the population during the conf lict.1

Subversive Humor in War Literature But not everything was doom and gloom even after the war euphoria dissipated in early 1915. The war proved to be a source of mourning and despair; at the same time, by providing the material for countless jokes and anecdotes, it also functioned as a deep well of joy and laughter. Peasants continued to sing and tell war anecdotes in the fields while hoeing and harvesting; blue-collar workers teased and entertained one another with war-time jokes on factory f loors and in the pubs where they drank after a hard day’s work. The members of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy exchanged gossip and amusing anecdotes about the war at their soirées, afternoon tea parties, and hunts. In cafes and editorial offices, as well as in novels, poems, and newspaper articles, urban intellectuals pilloried the stupidity and incompetence of the military and political elite. The boundaries between elite and popular culture, on the one hand, and between the sense of humor of the educated middle classes and that of the lower orders became more porous after September 1914. Tavern jokes, street humor, and soldiers’ wit provided the inspiration for the best satire of the First World War in Central and Eastern Europe: Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk (1923). Subversive humor, which drew attention to the larger, impersonal, and structural causes of the war and sources of human cruelty, is also present in the most important critical novels about the war in Central European literature: Arnold Zweig’s The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1927) and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). The best known among the three, Hašek’s novel follows the adventures and tribulations of the “genius simpleton,” a dim-witted bachelor from Prague who participates in battles on all three fronts during the war while not pulling the trigger or harming anyone and survives the war against all odds. Švejk and his adventures became a metaphor for the vagaries of life and a tribute to the resourcefulness of “small people” coping with wars, social upheaval, and tyrannical governments in the region. The satirical novel also provides a devastating critique of the Dual Monarchy in the final years of its existence: of the cruelty of a benevolent police state, the venality of its civil servants, and the arrogance of its military cast.

War-Time Humor  3

More sober in tone, but not without dark humor, is Zweig’s novel, which tells the story of a Russian prisoner of war (POW), Grischa, who after a successful escape from captivity meets some partisans in the forest who advise him to pretend to be a deserter. This was the wrong advice to follow because the German military had just issued an order to treat deserters who had been on the run for more than 3 days as saboteurs and spies. After his recapture, Grischa, who is married with children, is sentenced to death based on this recent order. The ensuing debate among military officers over Grischa’s fate exposes the inbred cruelty and irrationality of the system and the corruptness of military leaders. Even though the military judges recognize Grischa’s true identity and innocence, they lacked the courage to go against their superior’s order and had Grischa executed. Equally critical of the political and social system and middle-class clique which fed the war machine is Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The book traces the fate of a class of high-school students who, brainwashed by their history teacher, volunteer for the war and one-by-one lose their lives. Because of its critical edge, the Nazis and other nationalist groups boycotted the film based on the novel in the early 1930s. The realistic portrayal of mechanized warfare and soldiers’ lives in the trenches, and the description and critique of militarized German society with its drill sergeants, warmongers masked as educators, and cruel officers hit a nerve in Weimar Germany by asking troubling questions about the origins and meaning of the conf lict. Although the novel exudes melancholy—the typical tone of pacifist work, which set out to mourn the loss of life of millions of soldiers—its pages are not completely free of soldiers’ humor. Comical episodes such as when the soldiers thrash their drill sergeant after boot camp or when they steal and slaughter a pig to satisfy their hunger humanize the protagonists of the novel. By recounting their exploits as jokes, the author pays his last respects to his fallen comrades, mourns their death as individuals, and encourages his readers to think about and sympathize with their fate. Hungarian novelists failed to produce a war novel to rival Hašek’s Švejk or Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. It was not for the lack of talent or literary tradition: Mór Jókai’s A Kőszivű Ember Fiai (The Sons of a Stone-Hearted Man) about the 1848/1849 War of Independence and Géza Gárdonyi’s Egri Csillagok (The Stars of Eger) about the Turkish Wars provided inspiration for generations of young Hungarians before 1914. The absence of a major novel about the First World War in the 1920s and 1930s is still a mystery: it may have to do with the relative backwardness of the Hungarian bourgeoisie, its division along occupational and religious lines, which worked against the forming of a consensus on the causes and consequences of the military conf lict and the social and political upheavals in its aftermath.2 The most popular texts about the military conf lict were written in the form of war reports. Among the earliest of these, Dezső Szomory’s novel Harry Russel-Dorsan a francia hadszíntérről (Harry Russel-Dorsan’s Reports from the French Front) (1918) distinguished itself by the beauty of its form

4  War-Time Humor

and the wisdom of its content. Yet the novel was also a farce, and a joke on the reading public. Szomory, who was of Jewish descent, never saw action in the First World War. Eager to escape regular military service, he had immigrated to France in 1890, and lived in exile for more than 15 years. His reports were published at regular intervals in the best literary journal of its times, A Nyugat (the West): they were so vivid that no one, neither the readers nor Szomorys’ colleagues, suspected foul play: namely that the stories, including their alleged author, the English soldier, Harry Russel-Dorsan, were Szomory’s inventions. Szomory’s book belonged to the category of subversive literature: the reports exposed the brutality and dehumanizing aspects of modern warfare, the cruelty of officers, and the suffering of the enlisted men. Blessed by a great imagination, Szomory also wrote a drama entitled Matuska (1918) about the tribulation of Russian POWs in Hungary. Matuska is the only text which deals with the fate of foreign prisoners of war: their exploitation by the state, their relationship with Hungarian women (the drama is about a love affair between a Russian POW officer and the wife of a Jewish owner of a noble estate) and their longing after their family and homeland.3 The war reporters were professional journalists and often well-known novelists. Many of them were active in the cabaret scene before the war. While a minority sympathized with the social democratic movement, most remained conservative or progressive liberals in their political convictions. Their reports were often hastily written; since their authors rarely spent more than a few hours or days at the front, they were best suited to capture impressions and they could not deal with the complexity of the military situation, not to mention the psychological state of soldiers. Given that Jewish role in the creation of the modern press in Hungary, it comes as no surprise that many, if not the majority, of the war reporters were of Jewish descent. They were also intensely patriotic: serving as war reporters provided middle-aged and urban intellectuals with the opportunity to join the war efforts and get close to the people, especially to the peasants, whom they idealized but knew previous little about. Contemporaries often noted and made fun of the eagerness of war reporters to please their readers by exaggerating the real or imagined virtues of the Hungarian common soldiers.4 The best known of these real (in contrast to Szomory’s book invented) war reports were penned by Ferenc Molnár, one of the most celebrated writers of the prewar period. Molnár was not only one of the most famous novelists in the prewar period but he also wrote short stories and comical pieces which were put on the stage at cabaret theaters in Budapest. The individual stories in his The Great War: War Reports (November 1914–June 1916) first appeared in the liberal and nationalist tabloid Az Est (Evening News), for which Molnár worked as a war correspondent. To his credit, the middle-aged Molnár visited the most important battlefields during the first years of the war. Yet, he never questioned the war’s necessity and morality, nor did he dare criticize the country’s military and political leaders. His war reports are filled with nationalist fervor, and both their style and content supported the editorial policy

War-Time Humor  5

of the liberal tabloid, which had been one of the main sponsors of Hungarian imperialism and expansionism in the Balkans before 1914. Yet, the journalist Molnár also had a keen eye for details and a good heart: he was especially affected by the plight of the civilian population laboring under Hungarian military occupation. Still, the war correspondent was more inclined to talk about victorious battles, heroic deeds, and military strategy than the suffering of soldiers and civilians. Like the fights between youth gangs in his most famous prewar novel the Boys of Pál Street, Molnár portrayed war as an elevating experience and wholesome adventure that had a positive effect on common soldiers. His reports included many amusing examples of conscripted men’s heroism. In one of these anecdotes, which he told in the style of the great Hungarian storyteller Kálmán Mikszáth, a peasant soldier returns to the battlefield to retrieve his lost pipe, defying the orders of his commanding officer and the pleas of his comrades. In another story, the commander asks a squad of seven hussars if they were willing to attack and clear a village of 40 Russian Cossacks. In the style of Budapest Jewish humor, the leader of the squad, after a long deliberation with his comrades, tells the commander that the squad was prepared to take on 50 Cossacks. Significantly, the book does not address the physical injuries, mutilation, and death caused by such reckless attacks.5 More critical of the war, yet still rather superficial when it comes to the life of soldiers, is Ferenc Göndör’s novel On the Highway of Sufferings. My War-Time Notes (A szenvedések országútján. Háborús feljegyzések) (1916). Like the majority of his Hungarian contemporaries, the social democratic journalist Göndör does not hide his hatred for despotic Russia, which is regarded as both a hopelessly backward country, autocratic, “the prison of the nations,” and the land of pogroms. Göndör praises the pacifist convictions of fellow social democrats in Serbia and Bulgaria and their opposition to their governments without, however, questioning his admittedly conditional commitment to the war effort. Göndör’s book is also a testimony to the cruelty, inventiveness, and rough sense of humor of Hungarians peasants. For this reason, Göndör shares the story of Hungarian soldiers who pretended to surrender to the Russians; led back to the opposite trench, they suddenly turned on their captors and massacred them to the very last man. As a prank, Hungarian infantrymen made a sport out of stealing the enemy soldiers’ food and equipment; they also used small bells to annoy and keep their enemies on edge. In one of Göndör’s most harrowing anecdotes, Hungarian soldiers find the corpse of a Russian officer on no man’s land. As a form of black humor, they tied the corpse to a post, lifted it up, and turned the cadaver, like a scarecrow, toward the Russian line to serve as a warning and ward off the attack. However, the book is free of ethnic hatred; it also gives several examples of fraternization between enemy soldiers on the Eastern Front to prove that poor people everywhere shared Göndör’s desire for peace and his socialist convictions.6 The idealization of peasant soldiers as daredevils and patriots is also present in many of Zsigmond Móricz’s short stories published in his In Blood, Iron, and

6  War-Time Humor

Small Pictures (Vérben, vasban, kis képekben) (1918). A man of modest peasant origins, Móricz was a naturalist writer who wrote in the style of Gerhard Hauptmann and Anton Chekhov. As a regular contributor to the most prestigious literary journal in Hungary, Nyugat (The West), Móricz had already made a name for himself before the war with his novels about grinding rural poverty and the gross exploitation of the agrarian poor by heartless landlords. In 1918 and 1919, he supported both the democratic government and—with reservations and growing criticism—the Soviet Republic in the spring and summer of 1919, a mistake for which he faced prosecution after the collapse of the communist experiment. But in the first months of the war, Móricz, like Hauptmann, was swept up in the wave of patriotism and war euphoria; in his first war reports, he took a patriotic, even hawkish, position. Yet, unlike Molnár, Móricz paid more attention to the suffering as well as the dreams and political aspiration of peasant soldiers in his novel. A talented writer, Móricz was no stranger to sarcasm and irony, which helped him to circumvent military censorship. Composed in the form of a letter written by a peasant soldier to his parents, Móricz praised the officers for having handled the rank-andfile “as if we were their children.” The writer of the fictitious letter shared the good news with his parents that “the war changed the gentle folks’ attitude towards the people” and that they were now going to “grant us our rights.” It would happen, the peasant lad pontificated, because “the gentle folk” recognized that “the children of the poor were as good at killing the enemies of our land as were the counts and the lawyers.” 7 The peasant soldiers, according to Móricz, were not only fearless and wise, but they also instinctively sympathized with the downtrodden and the unfortunate. In one of Móricz’s early war stories, which bears the name of the protagonist in its title, Kis Samu Jóska (1914), peasant soldiers talk openly about the hardships caused by the war and the basic decency of enemy soldiers and fellow peasants with whom they had met in the trenches. Moreover, unlike Molnár, Móricz recognized early on the brutalizing effects of military conf lict on both soldiers and the civilian population. In his best war-time novel, entitled Poor People (Szegény emberek) (1916), he paints the picture of a brutalized peasant soldier on furlough. The protagonist, a simple peasant who has robbed and mistreated civilians and even killed a young girl in the occupied country, continues his ghastly trade during his visit home. Faced with the starvation of his wife and children, the protagonist borrows money from an unscrupulous moneylender. To repay his loan, he breaks into a house and robs and kills a family, including children. After repaying his debt, the soldiers and his family go to the market to spend the money. However, distraught by what he has done, he is able to buy only small gifts and throws the rest of his booty into the river. Betrayed by his child, the protagonist is arrested by gendarmes and is awaiting his fate by the end of the novel. Although Móricz’s story is dark, it is not free of black humor. In one of the more humorous scenes, the moneylender advises the protagonist, who just murdered an entire family, to be careful with his money and not to indebt himself further.8

War-Time Humor  7

Unlike the war reporters and many of the novelists, the Zionist officer Avigdor Hameiri spent two years in the trenches and more than two years in Russian captivity. His The Great Craziness (A Nagy Őrület) (1929) and At the Bottom of Hell (A Pokol Legmélyén) (1932) are based on his personal war-time experience and personal memories (and perhaps his literary imagination). The two novels paint a reliable picture of the Dual Monarchy on the verge of dissolution and the Austro-Hungarian Army: its ethnic and religious diversity and internal weaknesses, particularly the tension between Jews and non-Jews, professional soldiers and reserve officers, and the officer corps and the rank-and-file. The two novels also provide a realistic description of life in the trenches and the POW camps, and testify to the existence of strong emotional ties, bordering on homoerotic love, between soldiers. Hameiri, too, idealized common soldiers (while demonizing upper and middle-class officers and Jewish converts to Christianity). The Zionist officer also shared many of the prejudices of frontline Hungarian soldiers toward the ethnic minorities (especially the Czechs), as well as Russian and Ukrainian peasants and civilians. The two novels are full of great anecdotes and Jewish jokes, some of which were Hameiri’s inventions, while others clearly had come from fellow soldiers. Hameiri’s books also stand out because, alone among the works discussed in this chapter, they directly address the question of humor, particularly Jewish humor, in the trenches and the POW camps. According to the Zionist officer, Jewish humor was a highly prized commodity in both places: even the most antisemitic officer appreciated Jewish jokes. Jewish enlisted men often played the role of the joker or “clown” in individual units. Jewish reserve officers organized cabarets behind the front lines, and send entertaining stories home to their friends and colleagues.9 In one of his stories, Sergeant Bernát Rosenberg, the Jewish “clown” of his unit, responded to Hameiri’s reproach that he had been telling too many jokes. Rosenberg’s responded: I humbly report (jelentem alásan) that it is as difficult to live without jokes on the front line, as it is under the gallow. Once the executioner, Mihály Bali, asked the condemned what his last wish was. The condemned man responded that he wanted to hear a good joke for the last time. Then Bali told him this joke. Which one? Hameiri asked. I humbly report, the same that I am telling you right now.10 Much of the subversive humor in Hameiri’s novels was directed against professional soldiers and non-commissioned officers. As mentioned earlier, the majority of his jokes must have been shared property; they must have come from the rank-and-file or from his fellow reserve officers and trickled down to the cultural level of common soldiers. Unfortunately, the better part of the jokes and anecdotes told in the trenches and the POW camps have been lost— only a small percentage found its way into novels and the diaries of soldiers. We know that the composers of diaries came from all walks of life during the

8  War-Time Humor

First World War: they were not only professional journalists or even members of the educated middle class and elite but also blue-collar workers, petty merchants, peasants, and artisans. The motives of the diary-writers varied; some wanted to preserve the memory of historical events, while others used the diary to kill time, testify to their sufferings, or find meaning in the devastation they had witnessed (and helped produce). A full examination of this rich material has only begun and very little has been written about soldiers’ humor during the war. My cursory reading of the soldiers’ diaries and letters suggests that humor in the trenches was highly situational; the majority of pranks, jokes, and anecdotes served no immediate political purpose beyond reinforcing group solidarity and perhaps maintaining morale. Older soldiers harassed new recruits and teased one another or made fun of their commanding officers. Because of strict censorship, common soldiers rarely criticized or ridiculed political and military leaders or talked about the larger impersonal and structural causes of the war, though such a perspective became more common in the final years of the war, along with more universal complaints about the never-ending conf lict.11 Hameiri’s stories suggest that humor was also an expression of, and an outlet for, aggression and tension in the army: a testimony to the existence of both interclass (the middle classes/elite versus the lower orders) and intra-class (non-Jewish/civil servants versus Jewish/liberal professionals) antagonisms in the armed forces. In jokes, soldiers and reserve officers ridiculed the ignorance and the social pretensions of the members of the military caste, as well the servility, unquestioning obedience, and cruelty of non-commissioned officers. Jewish reserve officers, in particular, liked to poke fun at the class arrogance and anti-intellectualism of professional soldiers. For example, in Hameiri’s A Nagy Őrület, one Lieutenant Print shares his wisdom about the world with his subordinates. He tells his soldiers that Michelangelo was a weak painter; Jesus a cowardly Jew; Marx a careerist, and that Tolstoy became a pacifist only because he could not cut it as an officer. Print regards Haydn and Wagner as the greatest of the German composers only because they had written excellent marches.12 Hameiri’s autobiographical novels show that humor was a double-edged sword: it functioned both as a means of resistance and, in the hand of the officer corps, as a weapon of destruction. The war not only failed to equalize life chances but it also made class differences and privileges more visible and more painful. Professional soldiers often lived a separate and often luxurious life behind the front lines. They organized parties and drinking bouts: when they had no women, the officers extracted pleasure from men: normally by torturing their personal servants and underlings. The officers often invented crimes to inf lict unfair punishment on their hapless servants. The punishments were normally carried out in public to terrorize others; however, their main function, as pranks and practical jokes, was to entertain like-minded friends and colleagues and heighten the mood at the parties. The officers were highly inventive when it came to torturing their butlers: they could, for example, force the hapless servants to drink the content of the

War-Time Humor  9

cuspidor, the large bowl normally used as a receptacle for spit from chewing tobacco. The victims had to pretend that they were drinking costly wine or liquor, and were forced to make a salute or show their appreciation by asking for more. Drunken Austro-Hungarian officers in war-torn Russian competed to invent cruel punishments. They punished their underlings on the basis of their occupation: a carpenter, for example, had to swallow wood chips, a locksmith ate small nails; a shoemaker was forced to drink glue. One gardener was ordered to climb out of the trenches and stand at its edge as a bush or a small tree; his attempts to duck the bullet reminded the officers of the movements of a tree in a windstorm.13 Jokes, the novel shows, were a form of resistance to the almost absolute power of the officers. Soldiers’ humor testified to the class antagonism between the rank-and-file and their commanding officers and the almost absolute power that the officers exercised over their subordinates. The majority of professional soldiers, and often enough reserve officers, behaved as if they had been a different kind of, and superior, human beings. With a few exceptions, regular officers cared little about the well-being of their subordinates; they regarded common soldiers as physically and morally inferior, at best, and objects, cannon fodder and a means to an end, at worst. Officers had the power to send on deadly missions, harass, humiliate, jail, torture and even kill their men almost at will. It comes as no surprise that most soldiers regarded their superiors as their most immediate and dangerous adversaries. Humor thus became a means to combat the overwhelming power of the commanding officers. The orders were more often than not were meaningless, or their only purpose was to humiliate or destroy soldiers. To show defiance, the soldiers not only fulfilled but often went beyond the existing order, laughing and pretending that the carrying out of a meaningless order was part of a game. This shared laughter was a means to express resistance and show contempt for the officers and the entire system.14 Hameiri’s interest in common soldiers, class conf licts, humor as well the life in the POW camps, and the POWs’ relationship with their captors contrasts sharply with the narrow focus of the most popular war novel in the interwar period, Lajos Zilahy’s The Two Prisoners (1926). In contrast to Hameiri, Zilahy uses the military conf lict and captivity in a Russian POW camp only as the backdrop of a stormy love affair and a gradually failing marriage. The emotions of two people in love and their strong, sometimes uncontrollable, sexual desire, jealousy, homesickness, and guilt take center stage. Obsessed with the inner world, Zilahy pays only scant attention to the outside world and the war.15 The hero’s character does not evolve significantly in the tranches and in the POW camp. Takács never loses his innocence or shows the signs of war-time brutalization: having made the promise not to kill or harm anyone, he is taken captive while asleep. In contrast to Hameiri, who describes the POW camps as hell, Zilahy portrays life in captivity as normal, even attractive: he and his fellow soldiers behave as if they have been taken on a vacation. The captors, particularly the civilians, behave normally, as  well. ­Instead of throwing stones or rotten eggs on enemy  soldiers, the

10  War-Time Humor

people of Kiev give a warm welcome to the Hungarian captives. Young and beautiful women line the streets of the city to shower the POWs with f lowers and pamper them with ham and oranges. There is no death march or even a long trek on foot in his book: if trains are not available, the Russians transport the Hungarian POWs on sleighs. The greatest sin of the Bolsheviks, according to the novel, is that they no longer treat enemy soldiers as welcome guests: instead of pork and roast beef, they feed the inmates camel, cat and dog meat, and rotten fish. Takács and his comrades disliked Bolshevism and Bolsheviks because the new rules implemented by the revolutionaries did not accord respect to the prisoners and deprived the POWs of the comforts that they as middle-class “Europeans” deserved and which they believed was their birthright as gentlemen. The best war literature in Hungary came from poets rather than novelists. The most celebrated progressive poet, Endre Ady, denounced war from the start; others, such as Mihály Babits and Géza Gyóni, had first welcomed the conf lict as a form of cleansing and a chance for renewal; yet, within months, they revised their position and wrote some of the best-known anti-war poems in Hungarian literature.16 The opinion of Jewish poets about the war followed a similar pattern. The best-known Jewish poets, such as József Kiss, Zoltán Somlyó, Tamás Emőd, and Ernő Szép, denounced the horror and futility of the war and drew attention to the suffering of the mainly peasants recruits early on. Only a handful of Jewish poets, such as Andor Peterdi, continued to view the war in a positive light, supporting the conf lict as a fight between good and evil, as an opportunity for Jews to prove their patriotic love and credentials, and for poets to sing the heroism of Jewish soldiers. Jewish poets employed the same symbols and iconography (the cross, the image of Holy Marie, etc.) as their Christian counterparts; indeed, one has to look hard to find references to the Old Testament or Jewish oral traditions in their works. Most Jews composed their poems in the dated language of Romanticism or imitated the style of folk ballads during the war. The modernist poet József Kiss found only a handful of imitators among his co-religionists; besides the populist (népi) and neo-Romaic tradition, the symbolicism of Endre Ady enjoyed the greatest fame among Jewish poets. Alone the expressionist work of Renée Erdős, The World on Fire (Lángbaborult Világ) could match the intensity of Babits’ famous anti-war poem. Although many Jewish authors, such as Andor Gábor, Endre Nagy, and Ernő Szép, had been active in the cabaret scene before the war, their poems remained sober in tone, heavy in content, and without any humor. The writers and poets seem to have regarded soldiers’ suffering as too serious matter to turn it into an object of ridicule.17 The gap between pacifist poets and more hawkish novelists is difficult to explain.18 Literature (and history) in Hungary, like in other countries in Eastern Europe, was tied to the project of nation creation and nation building in the nineteenth century. Famous novelists like Mór Jókai, Géza Gárdonyi, and Kálmán Mikszáth attracted far more attention and had larger fan clubs than the best poets; they not only earned more money but some—for example,

War-Time Humor  11

Mikszáth before the war or Cécile Tormay and Ferenc Herczeg in the interwar period—came to wield significant power due to their friendships with leading politicians. On the other hand, poets had been regarded as rebels, pioneers, and visionaries in Hungary (and much of Europe touched by Romanticism), which explains why the progressive Nyugat, in contrast to conservative literary journals such as Napkelet (The Orient), had almost as many poets on its payroll as novelists. The poet, novelist, screenwriter, and film director Béla Balázs, too, had a Jewish background; more importantly, he was a socialist. Like many socialists and Jewish intellectuals, Balázs first welcomed the war as an opportunity to “bring the lion and the lamb” together, reconcile the differences between the social classes and the ethnic and religious groups, and complete the process of Jewish emancipation.19 All this had changed by 1916. In his fictional diary (which is more like a long poem and a philosophical essay) entitled The Soul in the War: the Diary of Corporal Béla Balázs (Lélek a háborúban. Balázs Béla honvédtizedes naplója) (1916), Balázs denounced the war unequivocally.20 Even though, as a writer of librettos for operas, puppet shows, and mystery dramas, Balázs clearly had an excellent sense of humor, his fictional diary, strangely enough, contains very few comical lines.21 The harrowing stories in the novel (which may have been based on personal experience), especially those dealing with the suffering and dying of soldiers on the battlefield and in military hospitals,22 had been informed by the same fascination with and aesthetic of death that became the main characteristic and indeed the trademark of Balázs’ films and novels after 1920. Laboring under the inf luence of both vitalism and Marxism, the neo-Romantic Balázs sought to re-create the gauzy and surreal atmosphere of ancient fairy tales with the help of modern film techniques and popular culture. His ultimate goal was to overcome alienation by breaching the widening gap between everyday life and cultural production in the modern world. Balázs regarded artists who worked in the shadow of death as visionaries, heroes, and martyrs. It was this cult of heroes and martyrs that tied him to Leni Riefenstahl in the early 1930s; the same obsession made him vulnerable and receptive to the cult of Stalin during his exile in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s.23 Perhaps the best of war-time black humor could be found in Rodion ( Jakab) Markovits’ novel Siberian Garrison (Szibériai Garnizon) (1928). Both a Jew and a Communist, Markovits based his novel on personal experience at the front and in a Russian POW camp. His book bears an uncanny resemblance to Hašek’s masterpiece Švejk in regard to its subject matter, the characteristics of the main protagonist, and its use of irony. Even though the two had met and become friends during the war, Markovits’ novel was more than a cheap imitation: in fact, the Hungarian author seems to have composed the first version of his novel earlier than Hašek. The similarity between the two novels had to do with the shared cultural background and similar sense of humor of their authors and the reality of life in the Dual Monarchy. Both novels mock the military elite and the officer corps of the Dual Monarchy:

12  War-Time Humor

their rigid professional code of conduct, their arrogance, and their atavistic social habits. The protagonist in Markovits’ novel has no desire to partake in history by volunteering for the war effort or playing the role of a hero or martyr. He uses every excuse, from having a sore throat and f lat feet to typhus, to avoid the draft. However, all his efforts to obtain an exemption fail, and the protagonist soon finds himself at the front and is even taken captive by the Russians in one of the early battles. Markovits does not idealize the war, soldiers, or life in the POW camp. The Russian soldier who takes him into custody first wants to shoot him to avenge the death of his comrade. Life in the trenches and in the POW camps on the Eastern Front is harsh; the soldiers fear death and suffer from hunger, cold, and boredom, and all their efforts are focused on survival. Everything, including lying, cheating, and stealing, even at the expense of fellow soldiers, is permitted to achieve this goal. Hungarian soldiers are no heroes: they surrender en masse to avoid injury or death. In one of many humorous scenes, a colonel, using the sophism typical of Jewish humor, justifies his men’s surrender with the argument that there was nothing wrong with the morale of his troops; by disarming and taking them into captivity, the Russians had deprived Hungarian soldiers of both the chance and capacity to resist. Markovits ridicules official propaganda according to which captive soldiers endured their fate with “dignified humility” and “sadness” and which advanced the narrative that Hungarian soldiers fell into Russian captivity, hundreds of kilometers inside the alien territory, while “defending their homeland.” The officers in Markovits’ novel are accomplished sophists and their blind arrogance brings even Russian peasants to laughter. Thus, Hungarian officers organize a “strike” to protest against the Russian plan to transport them as though they were common soldiers;24 they describe the plan as an assault on their honor and are prepared to fight to the death to gain access to a regular passenger wagon. But the best scene follows only after the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution; not knowing what to do with their freedom, Hungarian officers decide to hire new prison guards, remain in the barracks, and even keep their shackles on to maintain the appearance of normality and to claim fair treatment guaranteed by international law. A Russian officer, tonguein-cheek, wishes the released Hungarian POWs good luck on their journey home so they can soon return to the slaughterhouse and meet their fate.25

The Cabaret Scene The war-time humor could be found not only in novels and poems but also in cabaret skits and songs. Originally a French and Parisian invention, cabaret arrived in Budapest, with a more than a two-decade delay, via Munich and Vienna in the first decade of the twentieth century.26 The German and Austrian inf luences remained well into the 1920s: many couplets were originally translated from German into Hungarian; the cabarets’ programs were advertised and performed in both languages; several actors and actresses

War-Time Humor  13

traveled back and forth between seasons and performances in Budapest and the Bavarian and Austrian capitals even after the war. The cabaret audience, too, was international: before 1914, foreign tourists, officers of the common army, and imperial administrators mingled with local inhabitants. In France, the cabaret was popular mainly among the middle and lower-middle classes; in Budapest, on the other hand, the upper-middle class and the elite, too, frequented the shows of the more upscale establishments. The cabaret Modern Szinpad (Modern Stage), in particular, attracted the cream of Hungarian society before the war: besides young aristocrats, university students, the privileged children of the capitalist elite, ministers, leading parliamentarians, bankers, manufacturers, socialites, famous writers and academics, and the stars and starlets of the theater world and budding movie industry could be spotted among the guests. While the fare was generally lighter in the cabaret than in the theater, the quality of texts and the level of performances were generally better in Budapest than in Paris, and they at least matched those in Vienna. The leading cabarets, including Modern Szinpad, Fővárosi Orpheum (Capital City Orpheum), Fasor Kabaré (Alley Cabaret), Intim Kabaré (Intimate Caberet), Coliseum, Fekete Macska (Black Cat), and Modern Cabaret, attracted some of the best composers in the country (Imre Kálmán, Béla Zerkovitz, Viktor Jakobi, Pál Ábrahám, József Konti, Albert Szirmay, Pista Dankó, and Pongrác Kacsóh), poets (Ernő Szép), writers (Ferenc Molnár, Andor Gábor, Jenő Heltai, Ferenc Herczeg, Frigyes Karinthy, Jenő Rejtő, Géza Gárdonyi, and Endre Nagy), singers, actors, and actresses (Vilma Medgyaszay, Béla Salamon, Vilmos Komlós, Gyula Kabos, Rózsi László, Sándor Radó, and Jenő Herczeg). With a few exceptions, all of these people were of Jewish descent.27 In the first half of the twentieth century, 65 cabarets, many of which existed only for a few years, were established in Budapest.28 Over 90 percent of these establishments were located in the most commercial and heavily Jewish districts on the Pest side of the capital.29 In addition to the artists who presented their work there, nearly all of the cabarets in the Hungarian capital were founded, owned, and operated by Jews. Founders, such as Dezső Bálint, were, with a few exceptions, Jewish venture capitalists with an interest in popular entertainment. Bálint, a wealthy manufacturer’s son who babbled in music and had a weakness for beautiful actresses, started out his career as a real estate speculator; around 1907, he bought up several cabarets and small theaters in downtown Budapest. Even though he had become known as a wealthy and prominent cabaret owner, Bálint continued to buy and sell real estate, art, antiques, cigars, perfumes, champagne, and quality wine during the next two decades.30 But it was not only the owners and managers of the establishments who shared the same background: the owners, the editors, and the majority of journalists of newspapers and periodicals that published the pieces performed on the stage, such as Pesti Napló (Pest News), Szinházi Élet (Theater Life), Fidibusz, Kabaré Ujság (Cabaret News), Kis Élclap (Petty Comics), and Magyar Kabaré (Hungarian Cabaret), were also Jews. But the

14  War-Time Humor

connection between Jews and cabarets goes even further than the religious and ethnic background of the majority of writers and a substantial segment of the performers and the audience. Both the content and form of cabaret humor bore the mark of Jewish culture. Many stories took place in spaces frequented or populated by Jews, such as cafés, shops, and offices. The skits dealt with issues, such as assimilation, antisemitism, and alienation, which were close to the hearts of the urban audience; the antagonists, such as the loving yet also overbearing Jewish mother, the middle-aged female socialite who wasted her time in cafés, or the loveable small-time crook, too, were stereotypes familiar to the public. The language of the cabaret incorporated many Yiddish and German words, idioms, and expressions: it was more succinct, logical, and concept-based than the metaphorical language of peasants and rural nobles. The Budapest cabaret thus played a major role in the renewal and further development of the Hungarian language; at the same time, it opened up a new venue for Jewish participation in Hungarian cultural and social life and hastened cultural assimilation. While helping to preserve and modernize the humor of the Shtetl, the cabaret made a major contribution to the modernization of Jewish identity and urban culture.31 Before 1914, the cabarets in Berlin were either apolitical or supported imperialism, the ruling Hohenzollern dynasty, and the conservative political order. Even in the roaring twenties, a minority of theaters sympathized with the radical Left, which hated Weimar democracy; the rest remained apolitical or yearned for the restoration of the monarchy.32 In Budapest, too, the majority of shows remained apolitical; the jokes, such as the famous Hacsek and Sajó dialogues, were purely for entertainment ( Joke 1). But in the minority of cases, when politics mattered, the cabarets, like the majority of Neolog Jews in the city, cast their lot with liberalism and the mainstream liberal parties. They hailed the emperor and the Dual Monarchy, advocated moderate social reforms, and rejected extreme nationalism and nationalist parties, such as the Party of Independence and its leader Ferenc Kossuth. They even dared to make fun of such powerful politicians as Prime Minister Count István Tisza and the Minister of Culture, Count Albert Apponyi.33 Hacsek and the Census (Hacsek: Jenő Herczeg; Sajó: Vilmos Komlós; Waiter: Lajos Baros Hacsek: Waiter! Waiter: Servus, Herr Hacsek. Why did you come so early today? Hacsek (with mirth in his voice): Lajos! I am expecting a baby! Waiter: You don’t say! And with whom? Hacsek: What do you mean “with whom?” With my wife, of course. Waiter: Herr Hacsek, do you have a wife? Hacsek: Yes! And how ugly! Waiter: The blond one? Hacsek: No, she is my girlfriend. Waiter: But she is rather ugly, too. Hacsek: then you can imagine how ugly my wife must be if I cheat on my wife with her. Waiter: How many children do you have? Hacsek: I have a daughter, but she looks like a boy. Waiter: Is she that strong? Hacsek: No, she has a moustache, same as her mother. Waiter: That must be beautiful.

War-Time Humor  15

And if I may ask, Herr Hacsek, why don’t you wait for the good news at home? Hacsek: I have to work and cannot do it at home. Please watch the phone because I expect a call from home at any moment. Waiter: But Herr Hacsek, do you have a phone? Hacsek: No, I don’t. But my neighbor, the grocer, does. I asked him to callif he hears a baby cry. Waiter: Still, it’s nice. I’m sure you will be overjoyed to hear your child uttering the word Daddy for the first time. Hacsek: No, this won’t happen; my child will call me Hacsek. One can never be sure who its father is, but everyone knows Hacsek.34 Budapest had a lively cabaret scene even before the war. The horror of the war seemed to have increased the need for escapism, which, in turn, led to a rapid increase in the number and political importance of cabarets. The majority existed for only a few months; yet, two, Modern Stage (Modern Szinpad) and Apolló, not only survived the war but financially prospered during the conf lict. Modern Stage appealed to the well-to-do, the better-educated, and the more discerning. Apolló in the Rákóczi Street functioned both as a movie theater and a cabaret; the shows started at four in the afternoon and ran until midnight, and combined cabaret skits with short films, literature, and music. The cabaret shows, which featured some of the best actors and actresses, such as Lili Berki, Juliska Németh, Ferike Vidor, Rózsi Szőllősi, Géza Borros, Gyula Gózon, Géza Sajó, Gerő Mály, Jenő Herczeg, Gyula Kőváry, and Imre Harmath, attracted guests from every walk of life in the city. The war promoted the democratization of the cabaret; it also favored pure entertainment to public education and political commentaries. The uncrowned king of light entertainment in the first stage of the war was the writer Lajos Zilahy, whose light skits, such as Rózsika, the Ox (Az ökör), and Pest Kitchen (A pesti konyha), posed no political threat. Politics, however, was never fully absent. Immediately after the outbreak of the war, the cabaret shows hit a highly nationalistic tone: like the liberal newspapers, they denounced Serbia and Russia, pleaded for national unity, and advocated a full mobilization of resources to defeat the enemy. The cabaret writers and performers became swept up in the war hysteria: Endre Nagy, the founder of Hungarian cabaret, returned from Paris to volunteer for war service in the fall of 1914. The liberal and conservative newspapers engaged their best of journalists and writers, such as Ferenc Molnár, as war reporters. Still, as the news about military losses began to come in, and more and more families had lost their loved ones, the tone of the cabarets changed. The first critical shows, such as Andor Gábor’s the Boot camp (Kiképzés, December 1915), pilloried the blind obedience and the mindless drill so typical of the Joint Amy. Ferenc Molnár created a Švejk-like character called Pufi (played by Károly Huszár) on the eve of war. Already in October 1915, Gábor used the same character in one of his comedies, Pufi and the Lard (Pufi és a zsír), to draw attention to, and chastise the authorities for, the lack of basic consumer goods. Cabaret skits and songs made fun of militarism (Mihály Nádor, Hindenburg’s admirers), exposed the cruelty of war and

16  War-Time Humor

the emotional burden that it placed on the soldiers and their family members (Albert Szirmai and Ernő Szép, Come home; Mihály Nádor and Tamás Emőd, The legend of a dead soldier). László Békeffi’s cabaret song What is for sale? (Mi van eladó), which depicted the cold logic of war-time speculation and the moral emptiness and hedonism of the war profiteers, became an instant hit. In his skit, the News Taxes (Az új adók, August 1916), Andor Gábor, the best-known social critic among the cabaret writers, did not hesitate to reprimand the state for its lack of social conscience and concern about the poor. In an ever more critical and humorous piece, entitled The Entertainment of the People of Pest (A Pesti ember játékai, Spring of 1918), Gábor and two of his colleagues (Géza Boross, and Albert Szirmai) pillaried incompetent civil servants and drew attention to the breakdown of law and order and the disappearance of basic food items from the shelves in the final stage of the war.35

Heroic Laughter The majority of jokes and anecdotes told in the trenches and the POW or, in regards to their impact, conservatice: they reinforced customs, engendered conformity, and buttressed existing social and political hierarchies. The majority of the published diaries and memoirs, in both Germany and Hungary, too, were either apolitical or expressed sympathy for the political right. Ernst Jünger, the author of the most significant soldier’s diary from the period, The Storm of Steel: from the Diary of a German Stormtroop Officer on the Western Front (1920), was clearly a man of the radical right. 36 A talented writer and distinguished war veteran who held the highest decoration for bravery in Germany, the Pour le Mérite, Jünger spoke about his war experience with credibility and strength. The publication of his diary marked a significant moment in the history of war-time literature: Jünger revolutionized the language of his genre by breaking age-old taboos and pushing the boundaries of what could be said about killing and cruelty in war. The tone of his fictional diary is generally somber, but by incorporating anecdotes and relating his experience in soldiers’ slang, he occasionally evoked a lighter, even humorous, chord. The war dehumanized soldiers, yet as a form of self-defense, soldiers also sought to humanize the weapons of war and developed strong emotional ties to their guns and equipment. As a sign of their strong attachment to lifeless objects, they often gave cannons, for example, female or funny names; thus, Jünger and his comrades reported to their superiors that “Helen is spitting into our trenches. Nothing but great big bits,” and asked for reinforcement and more ammunition (“We want potatoes all sizes”).37 Battle-hardened soldiers spoke in euphemisms and used slang to relate their thoughts and feelings to their comrades. Jünger’s diary is filled with strange and humorous associations, which must have sounded outlandish and even sacrilegious to civilian and more devout contemporaries. He called the pungent smell of corpses, which, “acted on the nerves as an irritant and wrapped one in a mood of overstrung and eerie foreboding,”

War-Time Humor  17 38

as an “offensive incense.” The trench was a place of constant anxiety, fear, and death; yet, it was also a place for drinking, socializing, camaraderie, and joking.39 Older veterans and high-status soldiers poked fun at inexperienced recruits and those at the bottom of the hierarchy; infantrymen ridiculed the comical appearance and stiff mannerisms of cavalry officers; frontline soldiers mocked general-staff officers and reservists; soldiers of all ranks derided civilians, especially young men unqualified to serve.40 Soldiers’ humor, as Jünger’s diary shows, was rarely free of violence. Soldiers passed their time in the trenches by hunting rats, throwing explosives into the holes, and burning them alive. They amused themselves by pouring hot coffee or water into the mouths of their snoring comrades. Officers tried to steal the guns of guards on duty; if successful, officers sent the negligent soldiers into the no man’s land unarmed to gather information and equipment as a form of punishment. Derided as “Redskins” by their comrades, these unarmed scouts became sitting ducks for enemy snipers. Jünger and his comrades enjoyed killing as a sport. They cut a narrow track through the wire in front of their post to lure enemy patrols into the trap and then kill them. They placed bells on the top of the trenches and used a long string to cause alarm and create panic on the other side. In violation of international law, the commanders often refused to take prisoners, especially after pitched battles that claimed victims on both sides. “The prisoner was a tall young fellow with yellow hair and the face of a child. ‘A pity, thought I,’ as I looked at him, to have to shoot such a fellow as that,” Jünger noted in his diary, forgetting that his commanding officer did have a choice.41 By ridiculing one’s enemy, soldiers sought to elevate the status of their group. Suffering was perceived as a test that hardened and ennobled the individual, strengthened his ties with his comrades and fellow sufferers, and separated real men from weaklings. Soldiers were expected to follow orders blindly and take lives, if necessary, without hesitation. They were also expected to suffer in silence. According to Jünger, only effeminate foreigners such as French POWs and Jews, cried and complained about their fate to the nurses and doctors in the military hospital. “Real men” were supposed to be indifferent to pain and maintain their composure in every circumstance. Such men found the behavior of effeminate outsiders both pathetic and ridiculous. Close by was a dressing-station, a dugout covered with branches. Here I spent the night among a crowd of other wounded. A worn-out doctor stood in the midst of groaning men, bandaging, injecting, and giving directions in a quiet voice. I pulled the cloak of one of the dead over me and fell into a deep sleep, disturbed by strange and feverish dreams. I woke once in the middle of the night and saw the doctor still at work by the light of a lantern. A Frenchman uttered every moment a piercing yell, and near me some one grumbled irritably: Just like a Frenchman! Oh, well, if they couldn’t yell they wouldn’t be happy.’ Then I fell asleep again.42

18  War-Time Humor

Many of these brutalized soldiers received the news about the armistice in November 1918, which marked the end of major military engagement, with disappointment. Many, especially soldiers whose cities and provinces had come under foreign occupation, could not go home. Others did not want to return to civilian life, which held no prospects and no meaning for them. One such soldier, a reserve officer called Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, captured the mindset of these brutalized elite soldiers best in his memoirs: People told us that the War was over. That made us laugh. We ourselves are the War. Its f lame burns strongly in us. It envelopes our whole being and fascinates us with the enticing urge to destroy. We obeyed … and marched onto the battlefields of the postwar world just as we had gone into battle on the Western Front: singing, reckless and filled with the joy of adventure as we marched to the attack; silent, deadly, remorseless in battle.43 These brutalized soldiers found ready employment in the paramilitary armies set up either with the support or tolerance of their respective governments to defend old borders, conquer (new) lands, or fight leftist revolutionaries and insurgents.44 As Winston Churchill noted in his diary, in the fall of 1918, “the war of the giants has ended and the war of the pigmies has begun.”45 Organized on a voluntary basis, irregular units included not only brutalized soldiers but also many tens of thousands of high-school and university students, such as the future head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, who had missed their chance to fight in the Great War. From Britain to Russia and from Poland and Czechoslovakia to Italy, Hungary, and the future Yugoslavia, the members of paramilitary groups had a similar social/political and almost the same psychological profile: with the exception of the Red militias, they came from the lower-middle, middle, and upper classes; they were predominantly of rural rather than urban origins, sympathized with right-radical or fascist parties and movements, embraced integral nationalism as their ideology and, last but not least, viewed and practiced violence as a source of national revival and ethnic/racial rejuvenation. The right-wing militias in Germany, the Freikorps fought against foreign and domestic enemies: in Germany, against French and Polish; in the Baltic States, against Russian, Latvian, and Estonian troops and insurgents; and against anarchists and communists who threatened stability and, in some places (Munich) even wrested control of the state for a few weeks. The Hungarian equivalent of the Freikorps, the szabadcsapatok, mainly battled communists and social democrats; however, they also had minor skirmishes with the Romanian, Serbian, and Czechoslovak armies and even staged a half-­successful uprising in Western Hungary, the Burgenland, in the summer and fall of 1921. The majority of the leaders and rank-of-file of the German and Hungarian right-wing militias regarded themselves as conservative revolutionaries or fascists rather than national socialists. In Germany, the majority kept

War-Time Humor  19

their distance from Hitler’s party before 1933. Nonetheless, they shared their language, many of their political goals, and violent fantasies with the Nazis: both groups exulted war and sought to revive the nation through bloodshed— via the complete annihilation of their real or imagined adversaries. Their violent fanaticism, political paranoia, and demonstrated cruelty mirrored that of the Nazis and foreshadowed the horrors and genocide of the Second World War.46 The large majority of right-wing militia men had supported conservative authoritarian regimes in the interwar period. A significant minority, however, joined national socialist parties in the 1930s and played a vital role in the Hungarian phase of the Holocaust after 1942.47 There was continuity in personnel between the Nazi Stormtroopers of the 1930s and the Freikorps soldiers of the late 1910s and early 1920s. Similarly, German and Hungarian diaries written during the Great War bear a great resemblance to the memoirs inspired by the experience of civil war: many soldiers seem to have continued their diaries as if the war had not officially ended.48 Freikorps officers described their exploits in the same language after 1918 as they had related their experiences in the trenches or their mistreatment of civilians in occupied lands during the war. In Germany, members of the right-wing militias vented their anger and frustration not only on male and blue-collar workers but also on proletarian women, who had either taken up arms or had tried to hide their loved ones. According to Klaus Theweleit, fascist and proto-fascist Freikorpsmen divided women into three groups. The first group included absentees and those who had been left behind, such as wives and fiancées, whom they barely talk about and whom they rarely name in their diaries. The second group was populated by “White nurses,” (“pure” women of middle and upper-class origins who had volunteered for medical service). The women of their class enemies, “the Red women” (strikers, protesters, or as the wives and daughters of workers and political activists) belonged in the third category. Women in the first two categories were sexually off limits; additionally, “the White nurses” in the second category were inapproachable or difficult to get and, thus, they remained the object of admiration, Platonic love, and legitimate sexual fantasies—ghosts rather than f lesh-and-blood individuals. “Red women,” however, were real, fatally attractive, and dangerous individuals. Lower-class women dressed in unorthodox ways and even smelled strange; they screamed, agitated, and cursed, and violated middle-class norms of behavior at almost every turn. They, especially the fighters among them, the so-called rif le women (“woman with a penis,” according to Theweleit) (“the Marjas” and “the Red Maries”) represented danger, and indeed posed a mortal threat to the young and sexually inexperienced Freikorpsmen. Social conventions forbade middle-class officers from dating or being openly involved with proletarian women; had they tried, their advances were normally rebuffed by the objects of their desire, who regarded middle-class adolescents as no match or substitute for their working-class husbands and boyfriends as lovers and breadwinners. A close examination of memoirs and diaries of the Freikorpsmen suggests that the

20  War-Time Humor

assaults perpetrated by young Freikorpsmen against proletarian women were primarily motivated by the fear of physical proximity and sex: the pre-Oedipal struggle of the f ledgling self, before there is even an ego to sort out the objects of desire and the odds of getting them: It is a dread, ultimately, of dissolution—of being swallowed, engulfed, annihilated. Women’s bodies are the holes, swamps, pits of muck that can engulf.49 It was not only the fear of contamination through physical contact and annihilation through sex that prompted Freikorpsmen to assault the wives and daughters of their class enemy. They were equally afraid of becoming an object of ridicule. The young militia men dreaded the malicious laughter as well as the words and gestures of their adversaries which could make them look weak and ludicrous in the eyes of their comrades. For young officers such as Horst Wurttemberg, who was fighting against communists on the streets of Berlin at the end of 1918, such rolling laughter was perceived both as an insult and a mortal threat. During an ambush in Berlin, the joyful sounds of Jewish women going about their business reminded him of the metallic-sounding laughter of Ruth, Esther, and Salome: with faces as lovely as those of the Old Testament women. And it seems as if, in that mocking laughter, a mask is being lifted from another face that appears behind it: the head of the Gorgon, Medusa.50 The young men could not admit their fateful attraction to Jewish and ­lower-class women; in fact, women had to be punished for the rude gestures they made and for the scornful and insulting words that they uttered. Young officers such as Manfred von Killinger, a minor leader in the infamous Ehrhardt Brigade, therefore turned to violence to find both justice and satisfaction. I am presented with a slut. The typical bad girl from Schwabing. Short, stringy hair; seedy clothes; a brazen, sensuous face; awful circles under her eyes. “What’s the story with her?” She slobbers out, “I’m a Bolshevik, and you bunch of cowards! Lackeys of princes! Split-lickers! We should spit on you! Long live Moscow!” Whereupon, she spits into the face of a corporal. “The riding crop, then let her go,” was all I said. Two men grab hold of her. She tries to bite them. A slap brings her back to her senses. In the courtyard she is bent over the wagon shaft and worked over with riding crops until there isn’t a white spot left on her back. “She won’t be spitting at any more brigade men. Now she’ll have to lie on her stomach for three weeks,” said Sergeant Hermann.51 Hysterical women who spat on middle-class officers deserved to be mowed down, along with their children.52 Theweleit believes that the Freikorpsmen

War-Time Humor  21

attacked the mouth, the buttocks, and the sexual organs of working-class women in self-defense: they sought to destroy and turn into a “bloody mess” (resembling an open wound after castration) the very organs that threatened to engulf and annihilate them.53 An alternative reading of the same texts would be that the Freikorpsmen attacked the body parts of women that made them appear ridiculous and weak: they wanted to shut the mouths that made clever remarks and destroy sexual organs which reminded the world of their inadequacy. Their attack on women was not a form of self-defense. On the contrary, the Freikorpsmen were on the offensive: they were out to humiliate and destroy their opponents and amuse themselves in the process. Thus, one of the Freikorps leaders advised his underlings on how to deal with proletarian women during the Kapp Putsch in Halle in March 1920: It’s a well-known fact that women are always at the head of these kinds of riots. And if one of our leaders gives the order to shoot and a few old girls get blown up, the whole world starts screaming about bloodthirsty soldiers shooting down innocent women and children. As if women were always innocent. We all laugh. “Gentlemen, there’s only one thing to do in cases like that. Shoot off a few f lares under the women’s skirts, and then watch how they start running. It won’t really do much. The magnesium in the f lares will singe their calves or behinds, and the blast f lame may burn a few of the skirts. It’s the most harmless device you can think of! So, gentlemen, no more warning shots! Flares between the legs will do the job best.54 In German, the private parts of the body are known as Schamteile (“shameful parts”); to expose someone’s genitals was to shame and humiliate the victim and destroy his or her honor and public and sexual personae. By stripping their victims and attacking their sexual organs, the Freikorpsmen broke taboos: it was this transgression and violation of social conventions—rather than newly gained insights or the discovery of hidden truths through intellectual efforts and humor—that was the source of their joy. Their pleasure was crude and physical rather than subtle and intellectual or spiritual, much like the grins and malicious laughter of the torturers and murderers who got away with their crimes. For the Freikorpsmen, such pleasures seem to have been worth remembering, and they recorded their exploits in their diaries and memoirs to preserve the traces of such joy, which they hoped to share with their readers.

Humor in Pál Prónay’s Diary The members of the right-wing militias in Hungary left behind fewer memoirs and diaries than their German counterparts. Perhaps a dozen were published in the interwar period, and only a handful survived the purges of “fascist” literature from libraries after 1945. Published in the 1930s and early

22  War-Time Humor

1940s, Hungarian memoirs, in general, lack the literary qualities and philosophical depth of their German counterparts. Like adventure stories and youth novels, the memoirs idealize the militia men as patriots, heroes, and daredevils; they invite the readers to witness and enjoy the heroic exploits while downplaying or completely ignoring the suffering and death of their adversaries.55 By far the most important Freikorps diary was penned by Baron Pál Prónay, the commander of the largest, deadliest, and politically most important paramilitary unit during the counterrevolution in Hungary. Prónay composed his three-volume diary (one volume was unfortunately lost) between 1919 and 1922. Encouraged by Nazi victories abroad and the rise of the national socialist parties at home, he began to edit his diaries for publication at the end of the 1930s and early 1940s. The work was never completed. Under unknown circumstances, the diary ended up in Czechoslovakia either during or after the war and was smuggled back to Hungary in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Two official historians, loyal to the communist party line, published an abridged version of the diary in 1963. The authors, somewhat predictably, focused on the entries that ref lected badly on the interwar political elite—omitting remarks that were critical of the democratic and communist leaders—and kept in references to some of the most gruesome murders committed by Prónay’s troops.56 In the 1990s, the diary was transferred to the newly established archive for national security. Since then, it has been used by a handful of scholars to shed light on some of the controversies surrounding the revolutions and counterrevolutions in Hungary after 1919. Deputy Colonel Baron Pál Prónay represented an important power player during the counterrevolution. As the commander of the first unit of Admiral Miklós Horthy’s National Army and a close and distant relative of the future regent, he rubbed shoulders with the military and political leaders of the new regime, who often sought out his advice. Prónay’s unit played a major role in the cleansing campaign in the fall and winter of 1919; at least one-third of the victims of the White Terror were killed by his men. He and his unit accumulated significant power: in the first years of the counterrevolution, they worked as Horthy’s Praetorian Guards; they ran intelligence operations and controlled the borders and the most important prisons and internment camps. As a minor aristocrat of ancient lineage and a professional soldier, Prónay could draw on both the support of many aristocrats, particularly in the western part of the country, and that of younger officers in the National Army. He was backed by the semi-fascist patriotic associations, such as the Alliance of Awakened Hungarians (Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete or ÉME) and Alliance of the Double Cross (Kettős Kereszt Vérszövetség—KKVSZ), and the largest veterans’ organization (Magyar Országos Véderő Egyesület or MOVE). Many right-wing newspapers praised Prónay and defended the actions of his men well into the early 1920s. Until the autumn of 1920, he could have staged a successful coup and become a second Mussolini. However, he

War-Time Humor  23

lacked the political skill, and perhaps even the ambition, of the Italian Fascist leader. After the dissolution of the civilian paramilitary groups, which represented his reserve army, and with the gradual consolidation of the counterrevolutionary regime and the restoration of the local administration, his power, and the power of the surviving paramilitary groups, declined rapidly. Prime Minister István Bethlen used a minor scandal to sideline Prónay and deprive him of his command in the summer of 1921. The disgraced paramilitary leader tried to regain power and public attention as the chief organizer of a militia uprising in Western Hungary in the fall of 1921. Unable to unite his troops, and unwilling to follow the government’s orders—most importantly by failing to come to Horthy’s aid during the second royalist coup in October—he lost his remaining leverage. Ostracized by the political and military elite, Prónay played a marginal role in Hungarian political life in the interwar period. He sympathized with both Fascism and Hitler’s National Socialism and followed the news about German victories in the first years of the war with great interest. Already an elderly man, he participated in the defense of the Castle District during the Soviet siege of the capital in the winter of 1944, together with battle-hardened German SS units. He was taken by the Russians and died in captivity in the late 1940s. Since Prónay was not an impartial observer, the value of the militia leader’s diary to reconstruct historical events remains limited. His diary can be best described as a collection of chatter, gossip, rumors, platitudes masquerading as wisdom, and what we call today as “fake news.” Prónay was, indeed, more a collector rather than the original source of rumors and false information; the same urban legends and gross prejudices brilliantly analyzed by Péter Csunderlik in his recent book found their way not only into the political pamphlets of by-now long-forgotten journalists and right-wing political commentators but also into the fictional diaries and novels of highly respected and popular writers and poets such as Cécile Tormay and Dezső Kosztolányi.57 The militia leader had a sharp tongue and was full of malice: he ridiculed not only his political enemies on the left, such as Count Mihály Károlyi, but also his conservative opponents, such as Prime Minister István Bethlen, and his one-time allies, such as Gyula Gömbös, Iván Héjjas, and even Regent Miklós Horthy. Like Jünger and many German Freikorps leaders, Prónay talked at length, and without shame or regret about the murders and other types of atrocities that he and his men committed. He related these events in the form of entertaining anecdotes meant to amuse and provoke laughter from his readers and listeners. While not a good memoir writer (this will be discussed later), Prónay also displayed some talent as a storyteller. His anecdotes are fully formed: he must have told his stories many times before including them in his diary. The anecdotes are verbose, and they often appear to be disconnected from the political events described in the diary. They seem to have been composed or later added to the text with a different goal in

24  War-Time Humor

mind: as if they had a social function and were meant to satisfy psychological rather than political needs. On the basis of style and motives, Hungarian historian Pál Pritz has distinguished between four kinds of authors of historical diaries and memoirs. In the first category, he includes authors who seek to participate in the public discussion about the past for social rather than political or ideological reasons, that is, to mobilize their networks, reinforce or elevate their social status. The second group includes people who want to tell the truth, as they see it, at any price. Driven by moral and ideological concerns, they are prepared to risk alienation, ostracism, and even death to “tell it all.” The third group includes diary writers who deliberately distort the truth in order to alter collective memory, grab the limelight, and promote themselves as central figures either to establish themselves as national figures or achieve political rehabilitation. People in the fourth category compose their diaries for health (to preserve their balance and sanity) or psychological reasons: to practice introspection or express suppressed feelings and desires. Preoccupied with their emotions, such writers pay only scant attention to outside events and historical details. They tend to go off on tangents, and their recollections are often riddled with factual mistakes.58 Prónay’s diary belongs to the first and the third categories. Though he planned to publish and distribute the diary, it was not written as a literary work. The diary was based on well-rehearsed dinner-party anecdotes; what drove the baron to commit his oral stories to paper was personal insults rather than concern about the country. The militia leader consciously adjusted the date of the expected publication of his diaries to the f low of historical events; he wanted it to appear after the collapse of the conservative authoritarian state to avoid possible backlash and forestall retribution from the people whom he set out to harm. Prónay’s goal was to regain public respect and obtain full political rehabilitation. He also wanted to set the historical straight as the most important paramilitary leader after August 1919. To achieve this end, he was prepared to slander the reputation of his one-time colleagues, allies, and subordinates such as Anton Lehár, László Magasházy, Miklós Kozma, Iván Héjjas, and Árpád Taby. The retired militia commander was especially troubled by the emerging cult of Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös, with whom he had closely collaborated before 1923. With the publication of his diary, Prónay hoped to repair his tattered reputation as a gentleman, aristocrat, and professional soldier, moreover. Finally, the militia commander sought to reinforce his social ties and elevate his status within his primary group - the aristocracy. The rough and poorly educated paramilitary leader set a difficult task for himself: after all, using diaries and memoirs to change one’s image requires considerable tact as a social participant and talent as a writer. In brief, Prónay had to be good at what the socialist, Erving Goffman called “impression management”: projecting the right image to the right audience and knowing (and manipulating and using to his advantage) the language, subculture, prejudices, and even sense of humor of his potential readers. He had to be good

War-Time Humor  25

at keeping “backstage secrets” and distinguishing and negotiating between the various roles he was expected to play well, or at least adequately. At the very least, he could not afford to alienate his readers by making too many mistakes.59 He especially had to be careful by making jokes. Humor is never a laughing matter: what is clever and funny in one context might be ridiculous and offensive in another. Observing all the unwritten rules and conventions poses a serious challenge even to the best-educated and most astute writers of memoirs and diaries. As we will see, it certainly exceeded the talent of a poorly educated, socially awkward, and emotionally unstable cavalry officer.

Surprise! Prónay’s goal with the diary was to regain the limelight and change the historical memory of his role in the counterrevolution. He also wanted to prove his credentials as a gentleman, politician, and professional officer. The paramilitary leader sought to project the image of a patriot and political soldier: a “tough but fair” man who spared no effort to avenge communist crimes, cleanse the country of its enemies, and restore law and order. The militia commander was determined to set the record straight; yet, he also wanted to entertain his readers and show his soft side. Prónay wanted to prove to the world that he was easygoing, that he was a man with a good sense of humor, who knew and appreciated fun. His published diary was supposed to appeal to a large number of people from many, if not all, walks of life: hardened war veterans and civilians who never witnessed occupation and war at close range, refined aristocrats and crude militia and police officers, liberal professionals and civil servants, and men and women of all ages. Many of his anecdotes simply passed on gossip and rumors; others were based on his first-hand experiences. The anecdotes in the second category, such as the one recounted below, tended to combine memory fragments, which normally do not appear in the same story. It was about mid-August when I arrived with my detachment in the above-mentioned village [Lepsény]; we took up residence in the barns of the Nádasdy estate, located along the railway road. The village also housed a hussar company, which used to be part of the Red Army; it stood under the command of Captain Leó Valentini. Together we maintained order in [the village and its] vicinity. I had the dangerous communists, whom we captured in Lepsény and its environs, locked up in the granary of the estate. The local Jews in particular complained about and whined over the arrest of a Jewish-communist veterinarian, who had been one of the most bloodthirsty [killers], and whom, with others, I kept as a prisoner in the building mentioned above. The first thing that this incorrigible and sinful Jew did when no one was paying attention [to him] was cut his throat with the knife he had hidden in his shoes in order to escape hanging. He was badly disappointed,

26  War-Time Humor

however, because he and his buddies [in the end] got the punishment they deserved. The branches of the acorn tree beside the barn could tell the rest of the story. After Lepsény, we quickly cleansed the nearby villages of rebellious communist elements. Only minor criminals remained, who were merely whipped. I and my horses were put up on the estate of the elderly Ede Tóth, who, having learned about my arrival in Lepsény, invited me to his castle. In the prewar years, after I had come back from Poland to [Székes] fehérvár with the 13th hussar regiment, the officers of my unit visited his house frequently because the family spent the winter there. In the summer, on the other hand, I hunted for partridge on his estate in Kajár, or we met on the beach at Aliga. The master of the house had two pretty daughters; Ella was the wife of Jenő Hausmann, a gentleman farmer from Velence; Valy, the more beautiful of the two, was the spouse of First Lieutenant Miklós Halm, who served in the 12 k.u.k. ulan regiment. I had not seen the Tóths for a long time. I met them the last time in the summer of 1913 in Aliga since they owned a large part of the beach. On that day I, the mama, and the two daughters sailed on the boat of a factory owner from Győr called Schricker, first to Balatonfüred and later to Tihany.60 The above anecdote combines two very different stories linked together only by the same location and the storyteller. The first anecdote is about soldiers’ handiwork and violence in the most extreme and deadliest forms (a topic which should remain a secret); the second is about leisure and romance, which could be publicized and openly enjoyed. In both stories, Prónay occupies the center stage: he is the avenging angel-hero in the first, and the tourist-gossip columnist—sportsman—“friend of the house” (the lover of the hostess) in the second. The first part of the anecdote was likely to appeal to (and was composed in the language of ) brutalized war veterans, ideological warriors, and political soldiers. The goal of this story was to elicit malicious laughter from members of this minority group. The second part of the anecdote had a broader appeal: it could be enjoyed by any member of genteel society, irrespective of age. One would have expected the latter audience to respond to this mixture of insider’s gossip, arrogance, and sweet reminiscence with a polite (but uncomfortable) smile or an appreciative nod. In his Critique of Judgment (1790), Immanuel Kant defined laughter as a product of incongruity: “an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.”61 The supporters of the Kant incongruity theory of humor contend that the observer of a humorous situation comprehends it either by interpolating the multiple inconsistent frames within the structure of the situation or by extrapolating from or referring back to background knowledge:

War-Time Humor  27

The solution of the conf lict—the comprehension that the connection between the contrasting elements is possible—results in laughter.62 In other words, the presence of seemingly incompatible memory fragments in the same text and/or the unusual arrangements of signs violate the readers’ and listeners’ expectations and mental patterns. The incongruity creates tension and leads to nervousness, which finds an outlet in the audience’s laughter. On the other hand, the supporters of the surprise theory of rumor believe that incongruity, and the ensuing shock and nervous reaction, are not enough to bring the audience to laughter, especially when the same technique has been used repeatedly. Repetition leads to predictability; the removal of surprise, which in turn weakens the stimulus and reinforces the observers’ resistance to situations. What the readers and listeners find comical for the first time might evoke their dislike, annoyance, or even boredom when they encounter the same gag for the second or third time.63 Prónay seems to have been aware of the threat that repetition posed to the success of his pranks and, indirectly to his status as commanding officer. His pranks and anecdotes were meant to appeal to young officers, especially to the members of his own unit, who adored him as a gentleman, and submitted to him as a father figure. Already a middle-aged man, the paramilitary leader seems to have understood youth culture well; he knew how to satisfy his young officers’ unquenchable thirst for adventure and entertainment. His orders were meant to increase the challenge and elevate the fun for the participants—provide fodder for stories, with which he planned to amuse his listeners and future readers. In the above-mentioned village, again something annoying happened, which was also the result of Hermann Salm’s cynical negligence. As the condemned men were being led one-by-one to the tree picked for this purpose, one ugly, dark-faced, rabbit-eared (konyafülű) Jewish-Communist Commissar called Schwarz suddenly escaped. This man was led by Salm from the school building to the place of execution. He [Salm] did not shackle him, as was normal with such criminals, but led him casually along, like one walks a vizsla [a Hungarian hound], by holding the sleeve of his coat. I even thought to myself, “how funny! A Jew is leading another Jew to the gallows,” and was ready to ask why he didn’t tie his hands.64 But there was no time to say anything; when the Jewish delinquent (delikvens) noticed the plum trees, on which about six people had already been hanged, he became alert. Like a rabbit surprised in its den, he jumped away from Salm who, with his mouth agape, stared after him. The Jew, running in a zigzag path to dodge bullets, escaped into a nearby cornfield. The shots I fired after him from my revolver hit only plowed ground, stirring up dust; the distance had grown too large by the time I was able to pull my revolver out of its holster. Liptay and Bibó began to run like crazy to catch the escapee. The incident made me very

28  War-Time Humor

agitated because the most dangerous criminal, who we had pulled out of his attic hiding place, had just escaped, with so much ease, from the gallows—and all this thanks to Salm! Although I heard the shots being fired in the cornfield, I had already given up hope of ever capturing this crook; so I began cursing at Hermann Salm, who, breathing heavily, had just returned with Dénes Bibó and Antal Liptay. “Herr Captain, I humbly report that we have got the Jew. He has run into me from the side in the cornfield; so I shot him in the head and that is the end of him,” Bibó reported. “I do not believe you,” I screamed, “at least you should have brought me the rabbit ear of this imposter crook as proof.” Bibó did not say a word but took off again. As we ran out of condemned men and there were no more communists to be hanged, Bibó suddenly reappeared beside me. He had a stray leaf (lapulevél) folded in his hand; having discretely unwrapped it, he showed me a freshly severed human ear. Only after I had made sure that neither the communists hanging from the tree nor those still kept alive to witness the executions were missing an ear (no one could be more craftier than Bibó when he wanted to prove a point) I came to believe him. “Well done,” I told him, “now put it in alcohol and keep it as a talisman.”65 The anecdote f lows nicely, has a clear structure, and ends with a memorable line—features that suggest that Prónay must have told the story dozens of times before he wrote it in his diary. The story combines (or better, it is based on the incongruity between) two social and cultural universes: that of members of the leisure class engaged in a recreational activity (in this case hunting), and that of brute soldiers embarked on a deadly campaign of revenge against communists and Jews. The racist, antisemite Prónay was surprised that an aristocrat and a “Jew” (Count Hermann had one Jewish grandparent) could participate in the execution (“a Jew is killing a Jew”). The story takes an unexpected turn with the escape of the prisoner in Salm’s custody. The incident serves to pique readers’ interest and raise their emotional and moral investment in the story: it functions as an invitation to join the hunt and participate in the gruesome execution. The story both entertains and corrupts; it turns the listeners and readers into accomplices. Prónay has successfully turned a brutal crime into an adventure story, and he infantilized his soldiers, readers, and listeners in the process. Violence works like drugs, Primo Levi writes: the need for either is unknown to anyone who has not tried them, but after the initiation, which can be fortuitous, the dependency and the need for ever larger doses is born, as are the denial of reality and the return to childish dreams of omnipotence.66 Prónay instinctively recognized, and used to his advantage, the fact that violence transports perpetrators, as well as the viewers, listeners, and readers of

War-Time Humor  29

pulp fictions, “into a fairyland, where there is no accountability and reality could be denied.”67 Militia humor and entertainment were tied to language: to a mental and linguistic universe, or prison, with rigid boundaries and fences that the members had neither the imagination nor the courage to cross. Vague and “one-size-fits-all” words, concepts, and expressions (such as “terrorists,” “communists,” “communist-Jews,” “Soviet-agents,” “spies,” “agitators,” “instigators,” “speculators,” and “war profiteers”) obscured rather than expose reality; their function was to facilitate violent attacks on civilians, by depriving potential victims of their identity and making them look either threatening or ridiculous.68 Thus, Prónay’s anecdotes are full of humorous scenes—humorous from the vantage of the perpetrators. In the late summer of 1919, his officers arrested a Jewish peddler on the Hungarian side of the border. They identified the desperate man as a spy and a messenger of the exiled communist leader Béla Kun. The interrogator took the peddler into the cellar of their temporary residence. The next day I came home around noon. It was an intolerably hot day. I immediately heard screaming coming from below. Bibó reported that Árpássy had broken down and was ready to tell us everything. This made me very curious, indeed; thus, I went to the basement to hear what this crook had to say. It was even more hellishly hot in the “laboratory” than outside because the doors and windows had to be kept closed and the sun was shining all day on the latter. The prisoner sat on the table, tied and trussed. No criminal could endure the position, which I am going to describe in detail, for long. In a squatting position, the prisoner’s knees were bent over a stick and drawn to his chin, his ankles were bound, and his arms were wrapped around his legs and bound at the wrists. No one, especially no soft and overweight people, can stay like that for long. They become malleable and say things which they know nothing about and confess to crimes they have not committed. Árpássy found not only the tying methods but also the millions of f lies intolerable. The room was full of the sounds of buzzing f lies, many of which settled on his face, swollen and greenish-bluish from the many slaps, because Bibó had sprinkled him thoroughly with powdered sugar. The Jew, unable to move, tried to get rid of the f lies by blowing at them; still, they continued to sit on the tip of his nose. This incapacitated pile of f lesh, drenched in his own sweat, begged me (he had learned my name between the slaps) to end this ordeal. He promised to confess to everything in return. Árpássy, who had been sitting in this position for about three hours, when finally untied, could not straighten his back; still he thanked us profusely. However, as he had collected himself, he continued to respond to our questions with lies; not surprisingly, he ended up contradicting

30  War-Time Humor

himself. Therefore, I ordered Gyurka Orosz, in place of the exhausted Bibó, to continue with the treatment of this incorrigible crook. Orosz employed the following method: while posing the most difficult and tricky questions to Árpássy from his notebook, he continued to rain down blows on him with a thick stick. He yelled: “you stinky dog, if you are not the messenger of Béla Kun, then why you are saying that you came in the name of the Soviet Republic, hmm? You can’t answer this question, can you?’. Baam—said the stick—and then baam again. “If no one had sent you, then why did you come to Szeged? You can’t explain that either, hmm?” They worked thoroughly and methodically with the stick on the screaming man’s back and on the soft parts of his body. I could not watch this circus any longer because I had to run some errands; there had to be a break also because the Jew had announced in a self-conscious voice that he had to go to the toilet immediately, otherwise the greatest of troubles would follow and he would not be responsible for anything.69 Many of the torture scenes described in Prónay’s anecdotes (and in police records and trial documents) resemble the hijinks and hazing rituals practiced in boarding schools, barracks, and military academies. Many of the cruel jokes (some leading to suicide) found their way into famous contemporary novels such as Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless (Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless) (1906) and, in the interwar period, in Géza Ottlik’s A School at the Border (Iskola a határon) (1959). The gusto with which Prónay told his stories leaves no doubt that he and his men found the torture scenes hilarious and that they drew enormous pleasure from their victims’ suffering. In one of his anecdotes, Iván Héjjas’ right-hand man, Mihály Francia Kiss, forced a middle-aged Jewish man to touch the tip of his shoes with his hands during interrogation; his comrade then, on the basis of “an improvised verdict,” hammered the lower part of the victim’s body with a stick. Kiss loudly (mis)counted the lashes; when the victim tried to correct him, the militia man, claiming that he had lost count by the interruption, ordered his comrade to start all over again. In one of the rare moments of clarity, recognizing perhaps that his boasting and rough humor might alienate his more civilized readers, Prónay ended the story with a qualifier: “I never liked childish jokes and cowardly braggarts, never let any of them [the Jews, BB] get hurt without reason; if they deserved it, however, I was capable [of anything], including killing and murdering them.” 70 Prónay’s anecdotes open a window to militia culture and youth culture during the civil war. This culture was permeated with both violent fantasies and humor. The young officers did not carry out orders they disapproved of and/or found morally reprehensible. Orders, in fact, unlocked the door to a fantasy world: they gave eager underlings the permission and opportunity they required to realize their deepest desires. At the end of 1919, Prónay’s officers arrested a Jewish peddler on the Austrian side of the border. They

War-Time Humor  31

smuggled him into Hungary, together with other “suspicious-looking” individuals, and locked him up in the cellar of the military base in Sopron. The peddler, who wore a traditional Jewish coat, the so-called caftan, allegedly failed to prove his identity. According to Prónay, his officers could not prove that he was of guilty of anything. So, to make sure he would not return to the other side of the border empty-handed, and also as a [form of ] deterrent, my officers tied him up and, as a present, tattooed the word ‘smuggler’ on his forehead with blue ink. Seeing his shaggy face in the mirror, he began to moan desperately. In this state, he was then chased across the border back into Austria at Savanyúkút. I wonder if he was ever able to remove this lasting mark from his skin? I [seriously] doubt that.71 Childish plays, sprinkled with rough humor and infused with violence, tended to get out of hand; what often started as a prank could lead to torture and death. Iván Héjjas’ militia arrested a Jewish merchant from the town of Izsák, Adolf Ábrahám Landau, and his nephew and business partner, Géza Landau, on a trumped-up charge of lèse majesté in Budapest in September 1920. The original denunciation seems to have come from Nándor Dobé, Adolf Landau’s one-time friend and business partner, who owed money to the merchant.72 At the military base in Kelenföld, Héjjas’ men tried to force the detainees to admit to the charge. Faced with denial, the troops resorted to tougher interrogation techniques. According to newspaper reports, the interrogators first beat the two men with the butts of their guns; they then poured water down their throats to evoke the sensation of drowning; as a particularly effective form of torture, they even beat the soles of the unfortunate men’s feet with sticks. To the amusement of his colleagues, one detective forced Géza Landau to his knees, took his head between his legs, and “beat him as one beats a child.” For even more fun, the attackers tore the pants off the two Landaus and rubbed their genitals with silver nitrate. The torture session came to resemble a wild party. The interrogators even hired a small band to play military marches to drown out the victims’ cries. The case ended in a tragedy: unable to stop, the detectives crucified Adolf Landau and then mutilated his remains.73

Name-Calling and Rumormongering Name-calling is typical of youth groups and among inmates of “closed institutions,” such as prisons, barracks, and dormitories. It is good fun, and rarely misses to evoke a smile or malice laughter from those present. Name-calling also has a social function: the practice creates bonds; hastens new members’ integration into the group; engenders new and reinforces old hierarchies; strengthens the emotional bonds among comrades and between the leader and his or her followers; delineates the group’s boundaries, weakens members’ ties

32  War-Time Humor

with the outside world; and help develop a group culture. But name-calling is also about intimacy, fun, humor, and entertainment. Prónay called one of his sub-commandants, Lieutenant Ferenc Molnár, simply “Ducky” (Kácsa), a nickname, he surmised, his officers had given Molnár because of the shape of his nose and mouth, which allegedly resembled the waterfowl’s beak.74 However, name-calling served a very different purpose when it came to outsiders and adversaries: here the goal was to strip the real or potential victims of their identity and humanity through violence. Prónay and his men nicknamed one of their captives, a highly decorated Jewish war veteran, “Muki” shortly before they shot him. Prónay dubbed the double agent Ferenc Csuvara “Marabou” because he reminded Prónay of an exotic bird. The paramilitary leader admitted that he and his men toyed with the idea of assassinating the famous double agent many times.75 Gossip and rumor played an even greater role as sources of fun and entertainment—in addition to political weapons—than name-calling in Prónay’s diary. With a few exceptions, gossips in the diary focused on the private lives and character of people in the conservative and right-radical camps: Prónay’s comrades and subordinates, fellow counterrevolutionaries and political leaders, and men who had allegedly betrayed or wronged him. Most immediately, rumors were meant to elicit laughter or at least put a cynical smile on the faces of readers. Their second function was to show the world that disgraced Prónay was still an insider, that he was still “in the know” and privy to what Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman called “the backstage secrets” of famous people and his one-time-friends-turned-adversaries. Rumormongering reinforced self-confidence; however, the spreading of false information and malicious gossip did not necessarily help the diary/memoir writer to achieve his goal: political and social rehabilitation and social reintegration. Prónay was too inexperienced as an author; the military man lacked self-control, humility, ref lexivity, and enough respect for the craft: he simply could not hold his tongue and restrain himself from releasing all the poison and venting all his frustration accumulated since 1922. His desire to “tell it all,” his gossip and rumormongering, inappropriate remarks, and coarse humor condemned his attempt to restore his good name, via a well-written diary, to failure. He was lucky that the diary was not published in his lifetime. Had it been published, it most likely would have only added a new entry to the long list of his infamies and reinforced his potion as a political pariah and social outsider. The rumors in the diary revolved around a handful of themes; besides their intended comical effects, they served to achieve political goals. defined First, they were meant to shed doubt on the ethnic Hungarian bona fides of Prónay’s adversaries; the militia leaders sought to expose his opponents as ethnic outsiders, i.e., as Germans or Jews, by revealing, and in the process ridiculing, their original family names. Second, with the help of rumors, Prónay sought to unmask his rivals as social climbers and careerists: as ambitious peasants, petty-bourgeois Spießbürgers, and commoners, who did not know or did not want to accept their place in society. Third, by drawing attention to

War-Time Humor  33

the physical infirmities and spreading rumors about the character f laws, and alleged missteps and misbehaviors of his foes, the militia leader wanted to delegitimize his rivals as a gentleman. Finally, the anecdotes served to expose Prónay’s conservative opponents as potential traitors by revealing their membership in freemason lodges and their family, friendship, or business ties to Jews. Prónay, in brief, weaponized gossip, sexual innuendoes, and humor not only to entertain his listeners and readers but also to assassinate the character and destroy the good name and deputation of his opponents. While often funny in a twisted way, the anecdotes exude maliciousness and hatred. In one of his many spiteful stories, the militia commander thus ridicules the name, physical appearance, and mannerisms of his one-time deputy Captain Victor Ranzenberger. A commoner of ethnic German background (his brother, the future Arrow Cross leader Jenő Ranzenberger, later changed his family name to Ruszkay, Prónay intimates), was a short and stocky man, who looked like “a circus acrobat.” The middle-aged and graceless Ranzenberger, Prónay opined, had the audacity to court the beautiful, intelligent, and well-educated Countess Fanny (“Baby”) Erdődy, the daughter of Count György Erdődy, a scion of an old aristocratic family in Western Hungary. Stupid enough to fall into the trap set by the crafty young countess, Captain Ranzenberger soon became the laughingstock of good society.76 Prónay’s rough humor was originally meant for internal consumption only: it was meant to impress and entertain like-minded officers. Shortly before the war, Prónay tells his readers, he had a quarrel with one of his younger colleagues and distant relatives, Captain György Görgey. The captain, a scion of an old and famous noble family, accused Prónay of trying to seduce his 16-year-old wife (Prónay was 39 years old in 1913). The jealous Görgey forbade Prónay to talk to his wife; the affair, Prónay admits, would have most likely ended in a duel had Prónay not been transferred to Vienna for further training. Soon after his departure, the paramilitary leader remarked with Schadenfreude that Görgey’s wife had eloped with a Polish officer.77 In Szeged during the early months of the counterrevolution, the two met and became political allies. But a rivalry between the two alpha males also emerged. One evening in Szeged, the officers were invited to the local French garrison to enjoy a horse show. After the show, Prónay, two of his deputies, and a young woman rode home in the same coach, with Prónay and the young woman facing Captain Görgey and one more officer. “During the whole trip,” Prónay intimated, I discretely tickled the lower parts of Görgey’s body with the tip of my shoes and watched the happy grin on his face as he thought that the pretty woman sitting beside me was giving him signals. He became very disappointed when I later told him the truth. He then started an argument because he did not want to believe me. I told him that he should ask my fellow passengers in person. Because of this joke he held a grudge against me for a long time.78

34  War-Time Humor

Baron Prónay truly disliked Gyula Gömbös, the head of the powerful veterans’ organization MOVE in 1919, and his ally during the counterrevolution, and the future prime minister of Hungary. Gömbös’ mother was “a skinny Schwabian (Sváb) peasant woman,” Prónay told his readers, who worked as a midwife in her native village of Murgán while his father, also an ethnic German from Baranya County, eked out a living as a substitute teacher.79 The upstart Gömbös married a plain-looking and socially clumsy Bürgelmädel from Vienna. “As I have mentioned earlier, her father was an optics manufacturer by the name of Reichert who many people thought was Jewish,” Prónay passed on what he thought was vital information to his readers. Gömbös and his wife tried to overcompensate for their lack of noble pedigree and their parents’ modest social background by purchasing a stately villa in the elite Svábhegy district of Budapest in the 1920s, where they planned to host elaborate parties they hoped would advance the MOVE chief ’s career. However, the gatherings turned out to be failures because both the host and hostess lacked social grace.80 Even though it is unlikely that the rough militia man ever read Nikolai Gogol’s novel Death Souls (1842), he clearly understood the nature of the rumor. In this classic of Russian literature, a traveling businessman and excivil servant Chichikov pursues a get-rich-quick scheme. On the verge of success, however, his drinking companion, a desolate local landowner and fellow crook, Nozdryov, began to tell the truth about him and his plan. Even though the members of the local elite had not believed the mix of tall tales and accurate information spread by Nozdryov and by the bored local noble women and social butterf lies, out of boredom and in lieu of more reliable information, they still passed them along to their friends and relatives. The falsehoods did not harm the reputation of the rumormongers, but they did, in the end, expose Chichikov as a crook, and destroyed his life. Like Chichikov’s drinking companion, the desolate local landowner, Nozdryov, Prónay was also a provocateur, a rake, and a collector of malicious rumors. As a radical antisemite, he was particularly interested in rumors about the Jewish origins of his rivals and their alleged membership in freemason lodges. Prime Minister István Friedrich, he told his readers, served as the Grand Master of Freemason lodges in southern Hungary before the war, and as a card-carrying member, he filled his cabinet with fellow freemasons including András Csilléry, Jakab Bleyer, and Lóránt Győri, and with Jews such as General Gábor Tánzos in the fall of 1919.81 The Minister of the Interior in early 1920, royalist politician, Ödön Beniczky, on the other hand, had a Jewish wife by the name of Janka Blum, Prónay intimated. The police chief of Budapest, Elemér Mattyosovszky, too, was rumored to be a freemason.82 Prónay was convinced that General Sándor Belitska, Minister of Defense between 1920 and 1923, was both part Jewish and a freemason.83 Lieutenant General Pál Nagy was a tyrant, whom nobody likes; he also protects Jews. Before he entered the military, he worked as an apprentice in a pastry shop in Miskolc. One of

War-Time Humor  35

his brothers, Miklós Nagy, a grocer in Miskolc, was arrested during the war because he delivered spoiled food to the army. Nagy allegedly called Horthy “a stupid sailor” behind his back, but he still joined the admiral’s government to advance his career.84 Miklós Kozma, Prónay’s intelligence chief in the early 1920s and later head of the Hungarian Information Agency, had a Jewish mother who had been first married to a Jewish veterinarian. This degenerate woman had a lengthy love affair with a Hungarian hussar officer, Kozma’s father, who later married her and adopted all of her children, including Miklós, as his own. Philosemitism ran deep in the Kozma family: Miklós Kozma’s grandfather Sándor Kozma served as the Crown Attorney during the Tiszaeszlár blood libel trial in the early 1880s, and he secured the acquittal of the Jewish defendants. As the sure sign of his ethnic origins, Kozma succeeded in every business venture that he started or joined in the interwar period. His business partners included not only Jews but members of the conservative and radical right, such as the fellow counterrevolutionary and later peasant politician, Tibor Eckhardt, Prime Minister István Bethlen, and Regent Miklós Horthy.85 The leader of the Smallholders’ Party, István Szabó Nagyatádi, in Prónay’s opinion, “made the impression of an intelligent peasant.” Yet, peasant politicians, he continued, were also overweight gluttons, drunkards, and hypocrites. In Budapest, they kept mistresses and visited brothels while their uncouth wives, with whom they were ashamed to appear in public, stayed behind in the villages to look after their army of offspring.86 Prime Minister Sándor Simonyi-Semadam, “the one-time elementary school teacher and freemason lawyer,” was an effeminate person; making fun of his family name, Prónay described the hapless Simonyi-Semadam (whose only claim to fame was that he was the person forced to sign the disastrous Treaty of Trianon in June 1920 on behalf of Hungary) as “neither Monsieur nor Madame.”87 Among his political adversaries on the left, Prónay harbored a special hatred for Count Mihály Károlyi, the head of Hungary’s first democratic government in October 1918. After his controversial resignation as president and his transfer of power to the communists in March 1919, Károlyi became the most demonized politician in Hungary during the interwar period. In right-radical publications after August 1920, he was portrayed as a degenerate aristocrat, pervert, traitor, and fool; a toy in the hands of foreign powers and international Jewry.88 Prónay, the rumor collector, also included some of the urban legends and stereotypical images in his short anecdote about the former leader. Predictably, the ever-malicious paramilitary leader focused his attention on, and tried to make fun of, the physical deformity of Hungary’s first democratic prime minister (Károlyi was born with cleft palate and had a speech impediment). The anecdote below is based on an urban legend (namely that the retreating German army under General Mackensen was both in the position to and was willing to fight communism and defend Hungary’s historical borders). It is also typical of Prónay, who had no respect

36  War-Time Humor

for other people’s privacy, that the anecdote also included juicy gossip (his own alleged affair with Countess László Károlyi, neé Franciska [Fanny] Apponyi). The violent scene at the end of the anecdote served as a rhetorical device: it was meant to bring make readers laugh. That day, I was standing in the elevator ready to go upstairs to visit Mrs. Elemér Szemző and Mrs. Vilmos Sebastiány, who also lived in the same hotel [Ritz], when Count Mihály Károlyi and another man entered. This was the first time I [had the chance to] look at his degenerate face (pofa) at close range. I can’t understand the taste of the beautiful Mrs. László Károlyi, neé Fanny Apponyi, who is rumored to have fallen in love with this man. It was he [Károlyi] who [arrested] [General] Mackensen and handed him and his army over to the enemy; he [the General] and his troops could have destroyed communism, root and branch, in all of Europe. Mackensen then told him: “Herr Count you have no honor at all.” Mihály Károlyi often chatted with one Captain Pomerol, an English General Staff officer who also lived in the Ritz; I knew him, because we had met before at the party in [the apartment of ] Baroness Gábor Bornemissza, neé Luise Preiss, who was born in the United States, on Veres Pálné Street. By then, Károlyi had lost power and inf luence … Soon after our encounter, he immigrated to Austria; while there, he accidentally met on the street [of Vienna] Count Lajos Salm, who slapped him around to the delight (gaudium) of the entire world.”89 While always ready to hurt and immensely enjoyed ridiculing others, the dreaded militia man could not tolerate slights, and was always sensitive to jokes: he interpreted the smile, not to mention the laughter, of bystanders as a sign of lack of respect, and was ready to mete out punishment on the spot. Prónay accepted at face value the contemporary gossip that Count Mihály Károlyi and his allegedly Jewish and freemason associates, such as Pál Kéri, László Fényes, and Hugó Daehne, had been behind the assassination of Count István Tisza, Hungary’s conservative prime minister during the better part of the war, on October 31, 1918. Prónay echoed his contemporaries’ conviction that the talented Tisza could have saved Hungary and the Dual Monarchy from destruction.90 To satisfy the public’s craving for revenge and to legitimize the consolidating counterrevolutionary regime, the government put Mihály Károlyi (in absentia) and his alleged co-conspirators on trial in the winter of 1920 and 1921. Prónay, who had been in the courtroom to witness the proceedings, was so infuriated by the behavior of the defendants “who were just laughing it up and looking around insolently, challenging us, [spectators],” that he almost decided to end this shameful scandal, leave and fetch my battalion, surround the justice building, and take these scumbags, who were

War-Time Humor  37

just laughing it up on the defendants’ stands, out of the hands of the weak and easily persuadable court and execute them.91 Prónay shared the conservative middle-class dislike and contempt for Károlyi. However, there was no one the failed paramilitary leader hated more than the longest serving prime minister of interwar Hungary, the conservative Transylvanian politician Count István Bethlen. It was Bethlen, “the Székely trickster, who always told everyone, including the legitimists and the antisemites, what they wanted to hear, only to do the exact opposite immediately after their conversation,” who taught Horthy to lie, according to Prónay.92 Corrupt Bethlen exploited the undeniable charm of his wife Margit (maiden name Countess Mocsonyi), who the womanizer Horthy could not resist, to gain full control over the government’s domestic and foreign policy.93 Bethlen, who had lost got involved in many shady business deals in the 1920s in an effort to regain his fortune. The unscrupulous politician, who had lost his landholdings in Transylvania as a result of the territorial changes after the First World War, used every means to further his career and regain his wealth and social status. He was not only corrupt, Prónay told his readers: Bethlen planned to get the peasant leader István Szabó Nagyatádi assassinated, if he had gone public about Bethlen’s role in the so-called Esküdt corruption scandal.94 Bethlen, and his fellow Transylvanians Pál Teleki and Miklós Bánffy, “the three Transylvanian crooks,” played on Horthy’s vanity and political ignorance only to amass power and line their pockets. All three politicians were freemasons and cultivated good relations with Jewish leaders.95 Prónay used both humor and rumor to expose Admiral Miklós Horthy, the Supreme Commander of the National Army and Minister of Defense in Szeged, and later the regent of Hungary, as a weak man of limited intelligence and an indecisive politician. A prisoner of his urges and desires, the admiral made a fool of himself in Szeged by wooing Mrs. Sóváry, a woman of ill repute, in front of his officers. Horthy’s wife discreetly left town, knowing her husband well and hoping that his passion would soon blow over. She might have even been secretly glad since [the love affair] kept Horthy busy and left him with no time for his antisemitic and Christian friends.96 Prónay believed that Mrs. Sóváry would have preferred him to Horthy as a lover, but the militia leader had better things to do than waste his precious time on frivolous affairs.97 Horthy’s wife, Magda Purghly, did not care much because she, too, was of part-Jewish descent (her father or grandfather was a shochet, a kosher butcher, in the town of Arad, the meddlesome paramilitary leader whispered into his readers’ ears).98 The anecdotes, while making Horthy look ridiculous, were meant to show that the admiral was a man of limited intellect and weak morals. After his

38  War-Time Humor

election as regent in early March 1920, Prónay told his readers the following story: Horthy “began to give a long speech, the contents of which I can’t recall because it had no content and logic at all. He repeated slogans ceaselessly and incoherently. He emphasized his patriotism and whined over the fate of his beloved country; all this in a strange accent, with bad grammar and in an unctuous voice that reminded me of a priest saying farewell to a corpse. He talked very long, for almost an hour. We officers listened to him patiently, only exchanging understanding winks with one another. Since Szeged, this was the second time that Horthy truly shocked me, and I began to have serious doubts about him. Will he be able to do his job? Will he be able to fulfill the roles that I assigned to him in Szeged? Well, we’ll see, I thought to myself with confidence. If surrounded by the right people, he will do his job and will be able to separate the scum from those who want to work with him on behalf of Hungary and its people.99 Horthy, Prónay intimated, always followed the advice of the last person he had talked to; as a man of weak moral fiber, he also failed to keep his promises. Thus, despite his repeated assurances, the admiral failed to order a nationwide pogrom to punish communists and Jews. He also prevented his royal troops from purging Budapest after their entry into the capital in mid-November 1919. The trashing of a few Jews and a few deaths, such as the wasting (elgajdeszol) of an old piano-manufacturer by the Kovács brothers, was by no means an adequate response to the revolution and communism; they did not punish those who were behind [these events], the militia leader opined.100 Having no moral compass, Horthy soon fell under the spell of the “Transylvanian freemasons”; from then on, he was passed, like a soccer ball, back and forth between the “playmaker” Count Pál Teleki and the “goalie” Count István Bethlen.101 In a rare moment of self-ref lection, Prónay admitted, “I did not see (and only realized much later) that I had been supporting a weak and indecisive man who put on the mask of strong man only to gain power.”102

She-Man as an Object of Ridicule Hannah Arendt recognized the nature of totalitarianism in the tendency of extremist parties and movements to tear down the wall between public and private realms: through the politicization of the private domain (and the destruction of individual freedom of choice in the process) and the privatization

War-Time Humor  39 103

of the public sphere. Prónay, too, did not (and could not) distinguish between politics and private life and between civil servants and private individuals. On the one hand, he judged politicians and public personalities on the basis of private criteria (normally their ethnic origins and social background); on the other hand, he politicized the same qualities and viewed private individuals through the lens of extremist ideology. His male ideal was the hardened and merciless warrior of noble background who neither asked for nor showed any mercy. Like the German Freikorpsmen whose moral and intellectual universe Klaus Theweleit so brilliantly described, Prónay and his fellow counterrevolutionaries found masculine women repulsive: they were terrified of the male within the women’s body and feared and ridiculed the “soft and languid” female in the men’s body. Their ideal male body was “hard, organized, phallic body devoid of all internal viscera,” like a machine. “This body-machine is the acknowledged ‘utopia’ of the fascist warrior. The new man is a man whose physique has been mechanized, his psyche eliminated.”104 Although he hated communists, the hardened paramilitary leader was generally prepared to acknowledge the manly qualities even in his enemies. In the village of Simontornya in August 1919, for example, his men captured “the famous communist officer,” hussar First Lieutenant Miklós Zay and some of his men. In his memoirs, Prónay claimed that he ordered his men not to torture or hang them; instead, they were to be executed by firing squad. The execution was carried out on the shores of the Sió River. “I have to admit that Zay behaved courageously: he faced the firing squad by wearing a monocle in his left eye,” Prónay recalled in his diary.105 The commander of the most dreaded right-wing militia was also impressed by the behavior of József Cserny, the commander of the infamous Red militia the Lenin Boys, the communist counterpart of the Prónay officers’ company. In his anecdote, Prónay described Cserny as a tall and handsome man, a modern-day betyár (highwayman) who was misled by “the humpbacked sadistic Jew, Korvin-Klein” into setting up the Red paramilitary unit. Like every good Hungarian, Prónay was convinced that Cserny remained a fanatical antisemite at heart. Cserny “died courageously, like a [real] man. He did not collapse from fear like the rest of the [ Jewish, BB] criminals.”106 Prónay was very proud of his own military record and used every chance to retell his real or imagined exploits. But any suggestion of Jewish heroism made him angry and violent. Jewish men, as far as Prónay was concerned, had to be cowardly, unpatriotic, and effeminate. For Prónay, there was no greater proof that Jewish men lacked both the martial qualities and honor of real men than their physical and mental collapse under the gallows. The hardened militia leader was a regular visitor of executions. At the end of January 1920, Prónay attended the public hangings of László Szamuely, the brother of Tibor Szamuely, Cserny’s superior, and the mastermind behind the Red Terror. He usually took up a position close to the gallows in order to taunt

40  War-Time Humor

the condemned. As Szamuely was being led to the gallows, Prónay yelled at him so that everyone could hear: You are afraid now, aren’t you, Lacika? He had no time to answer because the hangmen grabbed him and placed the noose around his neck. A young rabbi was praying the whole time by his side, whispering all kind of things into his ears. When his body was twitching on the gallows, the rabbi looked the other way with determination. His stare was full of condescension as he looked at us, Christian spectators, as if he had just promised [us] Christians to avenge the execution a thousand times. For this look alone, I would have strung up this Jewish priest.107 The sadistic Prónay clearly enjoyed every second of the executions which he either ordered, participated in, or only witnessed during the counterrevolution. That 20 years later, he was still able to recall the above event in such vivid detail suggesting that he had told and retold the execution as an anecdote in the circle of like-minded people many times during the interwar period. He must have got positive feedback from his comrades as well; otherwise, he would not have included the incident in the diary he was preparing for publication. Whether it was a smart move on the part of the fanatical militia leader to include the anecdote in his edited diary, which was to be read by men and women from an array of backgrounds, is a different question. As mentioned earlier, Prónay saw the publication of his diary as a means to achieve political rehabilitation and re-enter the good graces of members of his social class. He was, as a writer, doing “impression management” on a public stage aimed to restore his honor and attain greater respect. By attending (and admitting that he attended) public executions, harassing the condemned, and worse, by retelling the gruesome event as a joke and his role as a prank, he was bound to alienate many of his more cultivated readers.

Sexual Violence as a Laughing Matter That the dreaded paramilitary leader was an avid collector of tantalizing gossip and a rumormonger could be, in part, attributed to his social origins. The aristocracy continued to represent a closed social group in Hungary after the war; it kept, or at least tried to keep, information about its affairs and the scandals of its members closely guarded secret, available only to social insiders on a strictly need-to-know basis. By joining the rumor network, Prónay sought to advertise his continued membership in high society despite his declining fortune and his controversial reputation. But there was also a more personal reason to engage in rumor-mongering. The militia commander liked to be at the front and center and dominate every conversation: besides the role of the gatekeeper to high society and the arbiter of elegance, he claimed the status of, and fancied himself as, a moral judge: the defender of the virtues and cherished values of his social group and society at large. Besides practicing

War-Time Humor  41

physical violence, he loved to pass judgment on, ridicule and mock, censor the behavior, and destroy the reputation of others. Humor played a vital role both in his anecdotes and his attempts at character assassination. However, the proper response to his yarns, similar to his men’s pranks, was not loud laughter but a silent and contemptuous grin: the arrogant and triumphant smirk of a successful taboo-breaker. With few exceptions, Prónay’s anecdotes are infused with violence. Some of his stories were meant to commemorate his and his men’s exploits (to put him in the limelight and lionize perpetrators); others, perhaps the majority, served to destroy the reputation of his rivals and neutral bystanders. Prónay was full of venom, and it was clearly difficult for him to recognize the virtues and praise in the positive qualities of others. With regard to subject matter and style, his anecdotes about high-class personalities bear a close resemblance to contemporary tabloid news. His sordid tale about the 60-year-old Baron István Ebergényi, who fell in love with and later married his niece, 40 years his junior, served no obvious political goal besides showing off his social connections. According to Prónay, one day, the old baron fell sick; suspicious that this young wife and sister might have poisoned him, the elderly baron forced the two women at gunpoint to drink the tea they had served him. His suspicion proved to be unfounded; however, the elderly aristocrat did die a year later under mysterious circumstances. Given his family’s sordid record, it would not be surprising if the two women had killed him, Prónay intimates to his readers. After all, the dreaded militia leader whispered into his readers’ ears, Baron István Ebergényi’s sister Ilona Ebergényi and her lover, Count Chorinszky, had poisoned Chorinszky’s wife, who was an actress in Munich. The Count escaped justice by taking his life with the revolver his father had smuggled into his cell; Mrs. Ebergényi, however, died a convicted criminal in prison in the 1850s. Baron Ebergényi’s second sister became an alcoholic and married a pig herder. Ilona Ebergényi had a daughter Margit who, despite receiving the best education possible at the time (she attended the famous Sercé Ceurb in Pressbaum near Vienna, the well-informed Prónay tells his readers), eloped with a lowly servant soon after graduation. Until her death, the paramilitary leader periodically visited Mrs. István Ebergényi, whose elegance and knowledge of the world he admired. She was a beautiful soul, though there was a rumor, Prónay added, that she was an illegitimate child of the King of Denmark. Mrs. Ebergényi trusted Prónay so much that she appointed him the executor of her will. However, Prónay added, he could not carry out his duty, because her testimony had disappeared after Mrs. Ebergényi’s mysterious death in 1911.108 In contrast to the proletarian “Red” women in the memoirs of the German Freikorps leaders, most of the women who appear in Prónay’s diary were about the same age—or were only a few years younger—and were of the same upper-middle class or elite background as the diarist. Elegant and feminine (unlike “Red” proletarian women) as well as sensual and adventuresome (in contrast to the sober, frigid, and unavailable “White” middle-class women),

42  War-Time Humor

female aristocrats and high-class prostitutes posed no threat to the sexual identity of the dreaded paramilitary commander. The only and far less dangerous and even tantalizing threat to him and his fellow officers came from the femme fatales of their own class: wealthy seductresses and female soldiers-of-fortune who made a sport out of breaking the fragile hearts and stealing the significant fortune of their suitors. Prónay was very proud of his power to resist the charms of these modern-day sirens. Jewish seductresses, he was convinced, posed a special risk to respectable gentlemen like himself. Baron Vilmos Gutmann and his family, refugees from Serbian-occupied Nagykanizsa, took up residence in Hotel Ritz in the winter of 1918. Prónay also had a room in the same hotel. The wealthy Jewish family regularly invited aristocrats, national politicians, and famous celebrities to their parties. Baroness Stefi Gutmann allegedly asked Prónay to come several times as well; however, the future militia leader always turned down the invitations and resolutely rebuffed the Baroness’ unsolicited sexual advances.109 Jewish women like Stefi Guttman Prónay intimated, were prepared to do anything to achieve their goals. In Szeged in the summer of 1919, Prónay told his readers, Dr. Lajos Varjassy, the leftist editor of the local newspaper Magyar Figáró (Hungarian Figaro), used his French-Jewish wife to harm Hungarian interests and undo the work of the counterrevolutionaries. The sophisticated and “still quite pretty” Mrs. Varjassy “dazzled” Entente and Hungarian officers and politicians alike: alone among the patriots, Prónay claimed, he was strong enough to resist her siren song.110 Prónay’s attitude toward upper-class Jewish women vacillated between the elitist antisemitism (informed by a mixture of envy, admiration, and snobbery) of the scions of old aristocratic families and the desire of impoverished and poorly educated army officers for eloquent and wealthy Jewish heiresses. His story about the famous belle juive of his period Vera Keppich reminds one of the protagonists in Arthur Schnitzler’s short story Lieutenant Gustl (1900).111 Both the fictional character (as well as a prototype and caricature of a typical Austro-Hungarian Army officer) in Schnitzler’s short story and the f lesh-and-blood Prónay were inveterate duelers, who used the most harmless remarks and misconstrued gestures as an excuse to challenge to duel (and in the process harm or even kill) disrespectful civilians, turncoat friends, and prickly rivals. Despite their prejudices, neither the fictional character in the novel nor the f lesh-and-blood Prónay was able to suppress his desire for upper-class Jewish femme fatales. The militia leader included the story in the edited diary for psychological and social reasons. The sadistic army officer, as we have seen, loved the limelight; thus, he included the story about Vera Keppich to impress his contemporaries, particularly younger officers of middle-class background, with his popularity with the fairer sex, his worldliness, and extensive knowledge about the world of the rich and famous, which came with his alleged status as an insider. The story of this woman’s career is not without interest. She was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish farmer (bérlő), Keppich, and her first name

War-Time Humor  43

was Vera. She was first married to the Jewish Baron Vily Kohner, who, as the owner of a large stable, had fallen in love with her. Vera was a horsewoman and in general knew a lot about horses. However, she did not want to remain Mrs. Kohner forever, so she cunningly seduced Prince Ypsilanti, the patron of horsemen. Not long before this happened, during a dinner in Hotel Hungaria, Prince Ypsilanti described her, in my and other people’s presence, as “schmierige Jüdin” [“dirty Jew”]. Still, it did not take long for them to become husband and wife. The marriage allegedly happened this way: Vily Kohner, not thrilled about [the Prince] courting [his wife], paid a visit to Ypsilanti and asked him directly: “Herr Prince, is it true that you want to marry my wife?” The surprised cavalier said “yes.” “Well, then she is all yours,” said Kohner and immediately filed for divorce; the prince, thus, had no other option but to marry her. Prince [Theodor] Ypsilanti later became so jealous of his new wife that she had to sit in restaurants with her back to the public. Before he married Vera Keppich, the same Ypsilanti had lived with a woman called Devanger, who in her younger years had been one of the most beautiful and famous demi-mondes in Vienna. Once, when I was still a young non-commissioned officer and completely new to the social life of Vienna, I spotted a beautifully dressed lady in a rapidly approaching a coach on Kolowrath Avenue. I jumped in a coach too and [ordered the driver to] follow her. After a short chase in Prater Allee, the lady got out and started walking. I followed her but, having imagined her to be a very high-class lady, I did not have the courage to make a pass. Finally, I pulled myself together and stepped up to her: “Please forgive my intrusion.” I started my modest and confused speech; however, I could not finish because she interrupted me: “finally, what took you so long?” All my beautiful and Platonic illusions were shattered. I was even more shaken when I was later told who this lady actually was. So, I had a good time with Mrs. Ypsilanti until Vienna. During our conversation, we also talked about her husband’s ex-lover, Mrs. Devanger; she had only bad things to say about her. In Vienna, I said goodbye to my traveling companion. This was the last time I met her because she died a few years later.112 Prónay’s crude racism, biting humor and barely disguised sadism surfaced immediately when he came into contact with lower-class Jewish women. At the Teleki Square f lea market, the paramilitary leader told his readers, Orthodox Jewish women tried to pass themselves off as Christians. “I saw with my own eyes,” he amused his listeners, that a Jewish wench with a wig and hairnet on her head and two koscher geese under her armpits showed off a golden cross on her neck. They [the Jews] hoped that the cross would save them from pogroms, which they very much dreaded.113

44  War-Time Humor

The description of Jewish women in Prónay’s diary resembled caricatures; meant to amuse, they were based on stereotypes, rather than objective observations. With his prejudices and distorted view of reality, he was not alone: many of his more respectable contemporaries shared the militia commander’s contempt for Orthodox Jewish women. For example, in her best-selling fictional diary entitled An Outlaw’s Diary (Bujdosó Könyv) (1920), the celebrated conservative author (also a self-proclaimed fascist and Regent Horthy’s favorite novelist and close friend) Cécile Tormay described the female residents of the Jewish quarters in Budapest in almost identical language: as hideous, unwashed, lice-ridden, and inscrutable members of an alien and repulsive race or vicious communists, who, as carriers of deadly viruses, posed a serious threat to the nation.114 The difference between Tormay and Prónay and his men was that the latter not only parroted political slogans, verbalized phobias, and articulated ethnic hatred and religious prejudices but also acted on them. Sexualized violence touched the lives of both sexes during the White Terror. The right-wing militias shore off the beards of Jewish men; ordered their captives to strip; assaulted their sexual organs with sticks, and even raped them. The sources make it clear that the young Hungarian Freikorpsmen regarded the attacks on political activists and Jews as wholesome fun (one of Prónay’s officers, for example, tied a string to his prisoner’s penis and drove him around in a circle as if he had been training a horse); the soldiers laughed a lot and drew much joy from sexual violence. While they clearly enjoyed the humiliation of men, the attacks on the “weaker sex” gave young militia men more sexual pleasure. Few women who had ended up in prisons and internment camps were able to escape sexual assaults. The majority of rapes took place in the dark or out of the sight of other inmates. Yet, in a few cases, the perpetrators staged their attacks in the open as a show to entertain and bring the perpetrators and bystanders to laughter. Prónay’s officers, led by lieutenant Iván Héjjas, forced two heterosexual prisoners in the winter of 1919 to engage in sexual intercourse; frustrated by their victims’ non-compliance, they tortured the woman by assaulting her sexual organs; then in an atmosphere of frivolity, they murdered the man and mutilated his remains.115 Had it been published during the counterrevolution, or even in the first half of 1920, Prónay’s diary would have still missed its target: it would not have helped him to regain his honor, restore (or establish) his reputation as a model gentleman, or reinstate him as a close adviser to Horthy. But the content and style of his diary would not have been completely out-of-step with the public mood and the intellectual currents and artistic currents of the time. Many of Zsigmond Móricz’s naturalistic novels and short stories, such as the previously mentioned Poor People (Szegény emberek) (1916) and the Barbarians (Barbárok) (1931), related stories at least as gruesome as Prónay’s anecdotes. There was also a contemporary obsession both with women who killed and with violence against women in Hungarian and Central European literature and art in the 1920s. This is the story of one of the most successful novels of

War-Time Humor  45

the period, Dezső Kosztolányi Sweet Anna (Édes Anna) (1926); the book deals with the fate of a domestic servant who murdered her master and his wife in 1919, exemplifying best bourgeois fears about lower-class women.116 János Kodolányi’s novel Pretty Zsuzska (Szép Zsuzska) (1923) also draws attention to the pettiness and cruelty of farmers and peasant women and the narrowness and oppressive conformity that defined rural life. Exploited sexually by men (brutalized and made more selfish because of the war) and ostracized by her envious female neighbors, the good-hearted but also sensual and naive protagonist ends up as a village prostitute and pariah. Her outburst at the end of the novel that “all men are drunkards and evil” seems to have expressed the feeling of many wives, daughters, and children of recently discharged war veterans.117 Sexual violence was also very much present in postwar German literature and art. Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Island of the Great Mother: Miracle on the Ladies’ Island (Die Insel der großen Mutter oder Das Wunder von Île des Dames. Eine Geschichte aus dem utopischen Archipelagus) (1924), for example, ends with a scene of orgy and mass rape, when a group of young men, led by their father, invade the female part of the island to destroy a peaceful, yet also stagnant, matriarchal society established by the lucky survivors (all women, with the exception of a small boy) of a shipwreck stranded on an uninhabited island. The violent uprising destroys the utopia of a peaceful matriarchal world; but it also revitalizes the island’s society, puts technological development in motion, and gives history both direction and purpose.118 Finally, Lustmord (sexual murder) of prostitutes was a constant, if not the dominant theme in the paintings of German expressionist artists such as George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann. Paired up with other disturbing or outright gruesome images of postwar German society—such as disabled war veterans begging on the streets while bankers and generals drink champagne in restaurants or political prisoners being tortured in cellars—these avant-garde paintings were meant to highlight bourgeois hypocrisy and draw attention to misery and cruelty. However, the images of dead prostitutes stripped half-naked did more than critique alienation, spiritual impoverishment, and moral degradation: they also provided an outlet for male aggression in postwar Germany. The works of such artists seem to have appealed to the same violent impulses, suppressed desires, and hunger for power and domination that permeated the writing of right-wing authors, such as Jünger or even Prónay in the 1920s. The same impulses and public sentiments may have presaged and provided the cultural and moral basis for, the anti-women legislation and persecution of “asocials” in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.119 The rape scenes in Prónay’s diary did not have any deeper social or political meaning: In addition to the deeper psychological needs and violent and sadistic impulses of the storyteller, they were only meant to amuse readers. The anecdotes are told from the perspective of an outsider and neutral observer— as if the men who organized the events and harmed Jews had not been his men and had not been carrying out his orders. According to Prónay, on the

46  War-Time Humor

night of a pogrom in Marcali, he had dinner in a local restaurant; afterward, as he headed home, he heard some strange noise coming from a nearby house. Through the window, he spotted two young peasants chasing two scantily clad Jewish women around the kitchen table, periodically pinching the women’s behinds and shouting “Where is the old Jew? Where is the money?” The Jewish women allegedly screamed back, “there is no money at home, and Tata (Dad) has left town.” The farmers could not be fooled, however, Prónay added; they continued yelling, “your father, that sticky old usurer, has to be around because his bed is still warm! So where is he? Tell me, the Christ of your grandmother.” At this point, Prónay entered the house and rebuked the boys; thus humiliated, the two pogromists left the scene. The women expressed their gratitude to Prónay, whom they had first failed to recognize. Then, the militia leader continued: Suddenly like a ghost, the old Jew appeared in his underwear and undershirt. Under his arm, he was squeezing an enormous money pouch, which was most likely filled with hard currency. “The geranium bush saved my life”—he pointed toward the center of the yard—without it, they would have found and beat me to death.” “It would have been no loss, you old usurer—now get lost and close the door because next time I won’t be here to save your life.” Then, I left. Indeed, the old Jew, when he heard that the lads were in the kitchen, took off through the second door and lay down in the geranium bush. That is where he hid with his money pouch, not moving an inch. I am convinced that he could not have left [his hiding place] even if his daughters had been skinned alive in the house. During the Commune, as Cserny’s men were taking hostages, the elderly Leó Lánczy escaped from his manor in the Városliget in a manner very similar to the one mentioned in this story. When they were looking for him on the first f loor, he hid in the attic; when the terrorists went upstairs, the doorman let him down to the yard; he then hid in the hot bed in his garden, where no one was looking for him, until Cserny’s men left. Most likely this was an old Jewish trick. In Marcali, a number of episodes like this took place that night; according the next morning’s reports, many Jews were beaten blue and green, and many lost their belongings. Well, one should expect these kinds of things to happen during anti-Jewish uprisings.120 The anecdote was inspired by a real event, one of the worst military pogroms staged in the western part of the country in August 1919. In real life, the rioters burned down houses, demolished their interiors, and stole private property; they also raped women, murdered several people, and injured dozens more. In his story, Prónay turned a hate crime into a carnival and joke. Like his earlier anecdotes, this one also has a clear structure and ends with a memorable line that summarizes what Prónay, his men, and most likely many of his listeners

War-Time Humor  47

thought about the White Terror and sexualized violence. The feared paramilitary leader describes the attempted rape by two peasants (more likely his officers) as merely playfulness. Typically, he blames the victims for their fate: the women were “half-naked,” and they took the unnecessary risk to protect their father and hide their money. Jews in the anecdotes resemble cartoon characters rather than real people. Jewish women are f lirts and whores; Jewish men, on the other hand, are cowards who think more about their money than the safety of their wives and daughters. Since their fathers, brothers, and husbands were no gentlemen, Jewish women had to look for help somewhere else: to the real protagonist and hero of the anecdote: Prónay himself. Through a strange twist of logic, then, the man who ordered the pogrom turns into the savior of Jewish lives and honor.

Satanic Laughter There is a common tendency today to equate laughter with maliciousness: to perceive laughter as one of the possible and the most common responses to the misfortune of others. The equation of laughter to malicious joy (schadenfreude) and humor to aggression is not new. However, already in the fourth century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato held ridicule in such low regard that he planned to outlaw it in his ideal state. About 100 years later, Aristotle praised sophisticated humor in the form of comedy as an art form and worthy form of entertainment, as well as a means to reveal important truths about human society. However, he, too, disliked pranks and jesting, which he believed were motivated by resentment and malice, and expressed contempt for the “vulgar buffoons,” normally enslaved persons, who engaged in such lowly activities. The majority of medieval theologians, such as Saint Thomas, shared the opinion of Jorge of Burgos in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1983) that humor was the work of the the devil; that laughter undermined the authority of the state and the church, disrupted political and social stability, and weakened the Christian faith based on revelation. Only a small minority of medieval thinkers subscribed to William of Baskerville’s view that humor could be a force for good, a powerful weapon to defeat lies and liars, and a useful tool for seekers to find the hidden truth about the world and the correct path to God.121 The early proponents of Enlightenment were slow to change this essentially negative view of humor. In his book Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes, like Plato many centuries earlier, located the stimulus to laugh in the comparison between one’s attractive physical appearance, alleged virtues, and righteous actions with the obvious deficiencies of his fellow man. The comparison normally prompts the observer not only to applaud himself but also to belittle and censor the loser. His contemporary, Protestant theologian Isaac Barrow, was even more explicit in his condemnation of “satanic joy” as a sign of deviant behavior and proof of evil intention and a character f law.

48  War-Time Humor

We must, I say, rejoice always, although not with all sorts of joy; for there are joys improper for us and unworthy of us … There are vain and childish, there are sordid and brutish, there are wicked and satanic joys; there is laughter of fools, like to the cracking of thorns; I said of laughter, it is mad; and of mirth, what doth it? There is joy attending on folly itself; for Folly, said he, is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom, that is nothing so wretchedly mean, or pitifully silly, in which vain men will not please themselves… There are those of worse temper, who rejoice to do evil and delight in the forwardness of the wicked.122 The reputation of humor as a force for good was the product of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. With works including A Tale of a Tub (1704), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729), Jonathan Swift established political satire as a respectable literary genre. From then on, philosophers from Montesquieu and Voltaire to Rousseau and Kant, regarded subversive humor as a blessing: an indispensable tool to destroy age-old prejudices, undermine caste privileges, demolish corrupt institutions, and improve the mores and expand the intellectual horizon of the population. In Britain, satire as a literary genre had reached its first apogee in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1847/48) and its second with George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1913). By the mid-nineteenth century, subversive humor had conquered the continent: from painters (Goya and Delacroix) to poets and novelists (Heine, Petőfi, Baudelaire, and Gogol), and philosophers (Marx, Engels, Bain, Spenser, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche), intellectuals embraced satire and caricature as both an artistic device and a political weapon.123 While the reputation of irony as a force for good improved significantly, the old discomfort in public life about empty jesting, harmful and violent pranks, and malicious joy failed to disappear. If anything, the concern about such practices became more pronounced with the rise of mass politics and popular culture and the arrival of tabloid journalism in the nineteenth century. The introduction of universal conscription; the building of thousands of new military bases to house hundreds of thousands of young men; the creation of a large police force and the construction of thousands of police headquarters; the spread of other “closed institutions,” from prisons, hospitals, and mental institutions, to orphanages, boarding schools, students’ and workers’ dormitories; rapid urbanization, and the formation of youth and criminal gangs all led to the rise of new subcultures, each with its own language (or discourse), moral codes, norms and types of behavior, as well as forms of entertainment, jokes, and, indeed, sense of humor. At least some subcultures were touched by the new ideologies, such as racism and imperialism, which preached and justified violence. “Satanic joy” was most at home among, and the most enjoyed by, soldiers, policemen, prisoners, and prison guards. The First World War and the subsequent civil war helped to spread this form of humor to the large segment of the population. The humor of the trenches was, then, brought home by discharged soldiers.

War-Time Humor  49

During the war, soldiers laughed to kill time and, more importantly, to vent their fears, frustrations, and aggression. Sudden movements, rapid changes in the conditions on the battlefield, and surprises of any sort signaled danger and increased nervousness among the recruits; heightened tensions, in turn, found an outlet in nervous laughter. The laughter of Prónay’s men resembled the reaction of Pavlov’s dog to an outside stimulus: it was mechanical, predictable, and easy to switch on and off. Their jesting revealed no hidden truth about the world, mankind, society, or even the joker; it was not a product of deep ref lection about the world or painful soul-searching. The militia men’s humor was f lat and volatile because it relied on the manipulation of surface objects only. The laughter of militia men was difficult to sustain; like Tom and Jerry cartoons, its longevity depended on the ready supply of surprises and unexpected events: on the reckless activism of the paramilitary groups and the sustained humiliation of a continuously expendable circle of victims. The function of militia humor was to remove psychological and cultural barriers to violence and complete the submission of the individual to the demands of his group and the wishes and orders of his commander. The Freikorpsmen always laughed loudly and in groups. Theirs was the hilarity of a mob in public places, rather than the elation of autonomous and private individuals; the deafening howl of a wolf pack poised to attack, rather than the silent snickering of private persons who have just discovered the truth. Militia humor stupefied and infantilized both the joker and his listeners. But it also helped to focus energy on the task ahead; the militia men’s pranks and jokes were those of political activists and fanatical soldiers, rather than the humor of peaceful civilians disposed to contemplation. Yet, it was also the activism of social and political conservatives: unlike subversive humor, which was meant to demolish power structures, remove or at least f latten hierarchies, improve life chances, and increase social mobility, militia humor served to reinforce old hierarchies and create new dependencies, underpinning the legitimacy of the existing social and political order, and prevent change. Militia humor was about conformity: the surrender of autonomy and the submission of the individual to the culture of his group and the orders of his commander. It also went hand-in-hand with and served to reinforce the egoism, selfishness, greed, and megalomania of individual members and their units. Subversive humor was normally separated from or even inimical to the material interests and social aspirations of the storytellers themselves: in many cases, storytellers were prepared to suffer discrimination and even risk their lives to reveal the truth. Militia humor, on the other hand, was not disinterested, and besides improving the image and social position of the storyteller, it served to cut down those it targeted to size and destroy their reputation. The storyteller used rumormongering and character assassination via anecdotes to grab the limelight and place himself in a superior position via-a-vis the targets of his jokes. Militia humor was a form of aggression meant to subjugate and humiliate its objects: not only to infantilize but also to satisfy the

50  War-Time Humor

hunger for power and indeed the feeling of omnipotence, as well as fulfill the deepest desires and wildest fantasies of the right-wing activists. Militia laughter was satanic, both because it was empty and because it did not recognize and respect boundaries, especially the privacy of potential readers. The horror scenes described on the pages of Prónay’s diary put its composer in a bad light. Prónay’s wanted to promote himself as a cultivated and sensitive gentleman of many talents and interests; yet, the violent anecdotes exposed him and his men as butchers, and cold, crude, and heartless murderers. Prónay’s violent stories most likely gained the approval and put a smile on the faces of his like-minded friends and many brutalized war veterans. But by crossing invisible—but very real—moral boundaries, the dreaded and thoughtless paramilitary leader was bound to insult many more sensitive civilians and even professional soldiers, who rightly felt that by reading his text they became accomplices in his crimes. Prónay wanted to re-enter the political establishment. While spreading malicious rumors about respectable conservatives, such as Prime Minister István Bethlen, might not have been a suicidal undertaking given the right-wing shift in Hungarian politics, his attacks on Regent Horthy, whose standing with the population as the “Restorer” only increased during the first stages of the Great War, and his attempt to undermine the cult of the hero of the radical-right Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös, were bound to backfire. Because of his inability to restrain his tongue, Prónay set himself up for defeat and prolonged social and political isolation. Sarcasm and malicious humor were the hallmarks of Prónay’s text and his main strengths as a writer. But his coarse sense of humor and his unquenchable thirst for “satanic” joy condemned him to the status of a social pariah and political outsider.

Notes 1 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 168–206; 336–362; Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 15–28; 29–53; 78–116; 204–229. 2 János Kőbányai, “Elbeszélés Fragmentumokban, A Nagy Háború és a Magyar Próza,” in Avigdor Hameiri, ed., A Nagy Őrület (Budapest - Jeruzsálem: Múlt És Jövő Könyvek, 2009), pp. 371–419, here pp. 371–372. 3 Ibid., pp. 377–379. For a history of the Hungarian POWs, see Peter Pastor, “Capture and Captivity. Hungarian Prisoners of War in Siberia,” in Peter Pastor and Graydon A. Tunstall, eds. Essays on World War I (Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 111–129. 4 Ibid., p. 388. 5 Ferenc Molnár, A Nagy Háború. Haditudósitások I. (1914 november–1916 június) (Budapest: Atheneum Kiadó, 2012), pp. 394–402. Molnár is best known in the West for his novel the Boys of Pál Street (Pál utcai fiúk) (1907) and the play Liliom (1909). The famous German expressionist film director Fritz Lang turned the play into a film (Paris, 1934); later on, the work was adapted into the Broadway stage musical Carousel (1945) and a film (1956) in the United States. 6 Ferenc Göndör, A Szenvedések Országútján. Háborús Feljegyzések (Budapest: Atheneum, 1918), pp. 20–21; 36–38, accessed October 15, 2021, https://mtda. hu/books/gondor_ferenc_a_szenvedesek_orszagutjan.pdf.

War-Time Humor  51 7 Zsigmond Móricz, Vérben, Vasban. Kis Képek a Nagy Háborúban (Budapest, 1927), p. 161. Cited by Kőbányai, “Elbeszélés Fragmentumokban,” pp. 388–389. 8 Zsigmond Móricz, Vérben, vasban, kis képekben (Budapest: Légrády Testvérek, 1918). For an overview on war-time Hungarian literature, see János Kőbányai, Az elbeszélhetetlen elbeszélés. Az első világháború a magyar irodalomban (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2014). 9 Avigdor Hameiri, A Nagy Őrület (Budapest -Jeruzsálem: Múlt És Jövő Könyvek, 2009), pp. 74–75. 10 Ibid., p. 122. 11 Krisztina Babos and Tamás Pintér, eds., Mesék a Nagy Háborúból. Kovács György harctéri naplója (Budapest: Nagy Háború Kutatásáért Közhasznú Alapítvány— Nagy Háború Könyvek, 2016). Balázs, Eszter, “A sakktáblától a lövészárkok mikrovilágáig: az első világháború régiés új történeti megközelítései,” Múltunk 56, no. 3 (2010), pp. 109–113; Péter Bihari, A nagy háború száz éve. Személyes történetek (Budapest: Pesti Kalligram, 2014); Eszter Edina Molnár, ed., “…az irodalmat úgyis megette a fene”—Naplók az első világháború idejéből (Budapest: Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, 2015); Gergely Romsics, “Az első világháborús magyar emlékezetkultúra,” in Romsics Ignác et al., Magyarország az első világháborúban (Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 2010), pp. 179–196; Csaba Katona, “Mit adtak nekünk a magániratok? Naplók, emlékiratok az első világháború kutatásába,” Belvedere Meridionale 29, no. 3 (2017), pp. 99–110. 12 Ibid., pp. 68–69. 13 Ibid., pp. 248–252. 14 Ibid., pp. 124–125. 15 Péter Takács, a young middle-class man, falls in love with a beautiful girl from a noble background, Miett Almády. They marry on the eve of the war and spend their honeymoon in bliss in a cottage at Lake Balaton. Takács is soon drafted and is taken into Russian captivity during the first stage of the war. His wife, at first, waits for him, but the war, years of waiting, and the loss of her father takes an emotional toll on her. Bored, lonely, and deeply unhappy, she gets involved in a tumultuous love affair made sweeter by the knowledge of and the shame over the fact that she has broken her marriage vows. Takács, meanwhile, is tortured by jealousy in the Russian POW camp. Yet, he too soon forgets about his marriage vows and becomes involved in short-term relationships with local women. When he learns that his wife has recently remarried (having received the false news that Takács died of typhus in a POW camp hospital), the protagonist decides not to return to Hungary. After the war, his ex-wife and her new husband take a trip to Russia to find Takács’ grave. They get lost and accidentally turn to a peasant working in the little garden in front of his hut for information. The peasant, Takács dressed as a Russian peasant, recognizes his wife but does not reveal his identity. The couple takes their leave, and the novel ends on this melancholic note. Lajos Zilahy, Két fogoly (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1926). 16 The most important anti-war poems include: Endre Ady, At the Head of the Dead (A halottak élén); Chronicle Song from 1918 (Krónikás ének 1918-ból); Mihály Babits, Pater Noster 1914 (MiatyánkÖ 1914), Poem for an Occasion (Alkalmi vers), Before Easter (Húsvét előtt), Fortissimo; Have You Ever Inhaled Poison Slowly? (Szíttál-e lassú mérgeket?); Gyóni Géza, Only for One Night (Csak egy éjszakára); János D. Mekis, “Hadi-esztétika, termékeny nyelvzavar. Első világháborús irodalmunkról,” Bárka, no. 3 (2014), accessed October 6, 2021, http://www. barkaonline.hu/kritika/4144-i-vilaghaborus-irodalmunkrol. 17 See József Kiss, In the Rain (Esőben) (1916); Zoltán Somlyó, Remember ( Jusson Eszetekbe) (1916); Maria of Doberdó (Doberdói Mária) (1916); Ernő Szép, The Prayor (Imátság) (1916); The Blind Soldiers (Világtalan Katonák) (1916); The

52  War-Time Humor

18

19 20

21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

Death of the Twenty-Year-Old Lads (Húszéves Fiúk Halála) (1916); Andor Peterdi, A Quiet Song (Csöndes Ének); For the Grave of Jewish Hero (Egy Zsidó Hős Sirjára) (1916); Zseni Várnai, A Mother’s Heart (Az Anyasziv) (1916); and Renée Erdős, The World on Fire (Lángbaborult Világ) (1915), in János Kőbányai ed., Két évszázad Magyar-Zsidó Költészete. Volume I. Kivirágzás (Budapest: Múlt És Jövő, 2015), pp. 629–703. The comparison should not be stretched too far: the vast majority of poets were not politically conservative before 1914; they rejected the modernity in literature and art. On the other hand, many writers sympathized with the political left. Progressives, moreover, had no monopoly on avant-garde art and poetry as the fascist sympathies and politics of Ezra Pound, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Bernard Shaw demonstrate. Kőbányai, “Elbeszélés Fragmentumokban,” pp. 379–383. Before the war, Balázs was a member of the Sunday Circle, a debating club of progressive intellectuals that attracted such illustrious thinkers as the young philosopher György Lukács, art critic Lajos Fülep, and sociologist Karl Mannheim. In 1911, he wrote the text that later became the libretto for Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle (first performed in 1918). In 1932, just before his departure for Stalinist Russia, he helped Hitler’s favorite filmmaker and future Nazi collaborator Leni Riefenstahl direct her best-known film, the Blue Light. Escaping from Nazism, Balázs, who had become a communist in the early 1930s, settled in Stalinist Russia. After the war, he wrote the screenplay for Géza von Radványi’s film, Somewhere in Europe (Valahol Európában) (1947). But he was best known as a film critic and esthetician. His book Theory of the Film (1949) is still considered a standard text in film esthetics. For more on his life, see Hanno Loewy, Béla Balázs: Märchen, Ritual und Film (Berlin: Vorwerk, 2003). In a famous scene in his last great film Somewhere of Europe, for example, intoxicated children nearly hang a world-famous concert pianist to amuse themselves. One of the most harrowing scenes in the diary takes place in a military hospital. The squad, which is in charge of removing the dying and the dead from the hospital ward, uses a simple method to determine who is beyond help: if the f lies settle the patient’s eyelid and he no longer cares or is no longer able to chase them away, he is taken to the morgue. A seriously wounded artillery man spots the entry of the medical team; he tries desperately to lift his injured arm to chase the f lies from the eyelids of his comrade who is lying next to him. He collects his strength and in the last second succeeds—the squad leaves the room. Nevertheless, both the good Samaritan and his wounded friend die on the same night. See Béla Balázs, Lélek a háborúban. Balázs Béla honvédtizedes naplója (Divéky József rajzaival) (Budapest/Gyoma: Kner Izidor Kiadása, 1916), pp. 16–17. Hanno Loewy, “Space, Time, and ‘Rites de Passage:’ Béla Balázs’s Paths to Film,” October 115 (Winter 2006), pp. 61–76. Officers were supposed to get special treatment according to the prevailing “laws of war.” Béla Márkus, “Szibériai garnizonok, lágerek népe. Rögtönzött jegyzetek—Hadifogságról és az Irodalmáról,” Tiszatáj no. 3 (1982), pp. 37–50, accessed October 1, 2021, http://tiszataj.bibl.u-szeged.hu/11715/1/tiszataj_1982_003_038–050.pdf. Marie-Therese Arnbom and Georg Wacks, Jüdisches Kabarett in Wien. 1889– 2009 (Vienna: Armin Berg Verlag, 2009). Endre Nagy, Egy város regénye. A kabaré regénye (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1958), pp. 146–148; 197–199; 230–232; 250–254. On the Orpheum, see Mary Gluck, A láthatatlan zsidó Budapest (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvkiadó, 2017), pp. 140–175. For the role of Jews in the culture of modern Budapest, see Julia Richers, Jüdisches Budapest. Kulturelle Topographien einer Stadtgemeinde im 19. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2009); Raphael

War-Time Humor  53 Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Detroit, MI: Wayne University Press, 1996). 29 Andrássy Avenue had eight cabarets; Erzsébet Boulevard had seven; Rákóczi Avenue, four; Teréz Boulevard, four; and Király Street, three. See Ágnes Alpár, A cabaret—A fővárosi kabarék műsora, 1901–1944 (Budapest: MSZI, 1978), https://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/view/SZAK_SZIN_ Sk_1978_Cabaret/?pg=121&layout=s. 30 Nagy, Egy város regénye. A kabaré regénye, pp. 171–192. 31 Aladár Komlós, “Három zsidó megy a vonaton (A zsidóvicc),” in Magyar-Zsidó Szellemtörténet a Reformkortól a Holocaustig, vol. 2, Bevezetés a Magyar-Zsidó Irodalomba (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek, 1997), pp. 47–61. 32 Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret (Harvard University Press, 1996). 33 Nagy, Egy város regénye. A kabaré regénye, pp. 162–170. 34 László Vadnai, “Hacsek és a népszámlálás,” in Ádám Maróri and Zoltán Nagy, eds., Magyar Kabaré. 100 évfolyam éjszakai különszám. Archivált Humor. Konzert Poénok (Budapest: Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár Mikrofilmtára, 2007). 35 Tibor Bános, A Pesti Kabaré 100 éve (Budapest: Vince Kiadó, 2008), pp. 49–70. 36 Ernst Jünger, In Stahlgewittern. Ein Kriegstagebuch (Leipzig, self-edition, 1920). Jünger was a conservative revolutionary. He praised Hitler as an exceptional leader and the “new hope” for Germany in the 1920s. However, he regarded the Nazi movement as not pure or radical enough and did not join the party. Despite his checkered past and Nazi sympathies, Jünger faced no serious backlash after 1945. On the contrary, his fame and fortune only increased with time in Konrad Adenauer’s West Germany in the 1950s and the early 1960s. By then, he had become one of the grand old men of German politics. Jünger’s impact on political thought cannot be overstated: he is celebrated today as the father (or at least one of the founders) of both the German and the French New Right, which emerged in the 1960s and continues to have an inf luence on public debate in the European Union. See Paul Noack, Ernst Jünger. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Fest, 1998). 37 Ernst Jünger, The Storm of Steel. From the Diary of a German Stormtroop Officer on the Western Front (New York: Howards Fertig, 1996), 74. The habit of personifying weapons was common on all sides of the war. See Mary R. Habeck, “Technology in the First World War: The View from Below,” in Jay Winter et al., The Great War and the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 99–131. 38 Jünger, The Storm of Steel, p. 282. 39 Ibid., p. 117. 40 See Jakub Kazecki, “Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2006). 41 Jünger, The Storm of Steel, p. 86. 42 Ibid., p. 29. It is interesting to compare Jünger’s contempt for the weak with the attitudes and behavior of wounded American soldiers in Hemingway’s novel Farewell to Arms. In this work, comrades used mild jokes to console or give one another courage—to speed up the process of recovery. See Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929). 43 Robert G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918–1923 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1952), p. 42. 44 Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, eds., War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London: Penguin, 2016); Jochen Böhler, Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921: The Reconstruction of Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Eliza Ablovatski, Revolution

54  War-Time Humor

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57

58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

and Political Violence in Central Europe. The Deluge of 1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021). Peter Gatrell, “War after War: Conf licts, 1919–1923,” in John Horne, ed., A Companion to World War I (Chichester: Wiley and Blackwell, 2010), pp. 558–575. Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 13. Béla Bodó, “Iván Héjjas: The Life of a Counterrevolutionary.” East Central Europe/L’ Europe du Centre-Est 37 (2010), pp. 247–279. Ernst von Salomon, Die Geächteten (Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt, 1930): Ernst von Salomon, Mein Buch vom deutschen Freikorpskämpfer (Berlin, 1938); Edgar SchmidtPauli, Geschichte der Freikorps, 1918–1924 (Stuttgart, 1936). Barbara Ehrenreich, “Forward,” in Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies. Vol. 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. xiv. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, p. 197. Ibid., p. 173. Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., pp. 191–196. Ibid, p. 174. Aurél Héjjas, A Rongyos Gárda harcai, 1919–1939 (The struggles of the Ragged Guard) (Budapest: Magyar Ház, 1999); Dr. Jenő Héjjas, A nyugatmagyarországi felkelés: kecskemétiek az 1921. évi nyugat-magyarországi harcokban (The uprising in Western Hungary: the people of Kecskemét in the struggle for Western Hungary in 1921) (Budapest: Magyar Ház, 2006); Gyula Somogyvári, És mégis élünk (And we are still alive) (Budapest: Auktor Könyvkiadó, 2004). See Ágnes Szabó and Ervin Pamlényi, A határban a Halál kaszál. Fejezetek Prónay Pál feljegyzéseiből (Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó, 1963). See Péter Csunderlik, A “vörös farsangtól” a “vörös tatárjárásig. A Tanácsköztársaság a korai Horthy-korszak pamphlet- és visszaemlékezés-irodalomban [From the “Red Carnival” to the “Red Mongol Invasion.” The Soviet Republic in the Pamphlet and Memoir Literature of the Early Horthy Era] (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2019). Pál Pritz, “Napló és történelem,” Múltunk 62, no. 1 (2017), pp. 4–6. Erving Goffman, Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Social Science Research Centre, 1956); Bernard N. Meltzer, “Mean Social Psychology,” in Jerome G. Manis and Bernard N. Meltzer, eds., Symbolic Interaction: A Reader in Social Psychology (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1972), pp. 4–22. Prónay Pál, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (ÁBTL) (Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security Services) 4.1. A-738/1, pp. 200–201. Frank M. Zanetti, eds., Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Naturphilosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker-Verlag, 2009). Philosophy of Humor,” accessed September 18, 2020, https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/humor/. Kazecki, “Laugher in the Trenches,” p. 22. Count Hermann Salm, one of Prónay’s lieutenants, was rumored to have a Jewish grandparent. This made him, in Prónay’s eyes, a Jew. Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim,” pp. 180–181. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2017), p. 67. Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 17–18. In the late summer of 1919, Prónay arrested a few innocent and frightened peasants on the outskirts of Siófok in what he considered a mopping-up operation. Without any evidence, he concluded that “the terrorists” had been members of the infamous communist militia, the Cserny Detachment. He then added that

War-Time Humor  55 “they were sinful creatures, and it [their sin] was written all over [their faces]. They and the rest of the communist Jews were interrogated and then hanged here, in Újmajor.” Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” p. 208. 69 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” pp. 133–134. 70 Ibid., p. 502. 71 Ibid., p. 243. 72 Pesti Napló, July 26, 1922. 73 See Béla Bodó, The White Terror: Antisemitic and Political Violence in Hungary, 1919–1921 (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 228–229. 74 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” p. 139. 75 Ibid., p. 226. 76 Prónay Pál, “Tótprónai és Blatniczai Prónay Pál alezredes naplójegyzetei az 1921. év szeptember 1-től 1922. év végéig lefolyt fontosabb eseményekre vonatkozólag,” ÁBTL 4.1. A-738/2, pp. 79–80. 77 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” pp. 537–538. 78 Ibid., pp. 117–118. See Béla Bodó, Pál Prónay: Paramilitary Violence and anti-Semitism in Hungary, 1919–1922 (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, Carl Beck Papers, 2010). 79 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” p. 398. 80 Ibid., p. 457. 81 Ibid., p. 207. 82 Ibid., p. 319. 83 Ibid., pp. 88–89. 84 Ibid., pp. 356–357. 85 Prónay, “Naplójegyzetek az 1921. év szeptember 1-től 1922. év végéig lefolyt fontosabb eseményekre vonatkozólag,” p. 65; 310. 86 Ibid., pp. 443–444. Ironically, Borsszem Jankó ( Johnny Peppercorn), the weekly humor magazine edited by assimilated Jews, had the same stereotypical images of peasant leaders. 87 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” p. 312. 88 See Csunderlik, A “vörös farsangtól” a “vörös tatárjárásig, pp. 107–115. 89 Ibid., pp. 46–47. 90 Ibid., pp. 18–19. This was, of course, complete nonsense: the conservative politician was killed by an enraged group of war veterans. See Ferenc Pölöskei, A rejtélyes Tisza-gyilkosság (Budapest: Helikon, 1988). 91 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” p. 505. 92 Prónay, p. 15. 93 Ibid., p. 366. 94 Prónay, “Naplójegyzetek az 1921. év szeptember 1-től 1922. év végéig lefolyt fontosabb eseményekre vonatkozólag,” ÁBTL 4.1. A-738/2, p. 346. 95 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” p. 12. 96 Ibid., pp. 118–119. 97 Ibid., p. 118. 98 Ibid., p. 355. 99 Ibid., p. 325. 100 Ibid., p. 279. 101 Ibid., p. 15. 102 Ibid., p. 303. 103 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1973). 104 Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 2. p. 162. 105 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” p. 195. 106 Ibid., p. 226. 107 Ibid., p. 338. 108 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” pp. 56–58. 109 Ibid., p. 46.

56  War-Time Humor 1 10 Ibid., pp. 92–93. 111 See her photo, accessed September 30, 2021. https://www.geni.com/ photo/view/6000000016914860061?album_type=photos_of_me&photo_ id=6000000071948649586. 112 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” pp. 665–666. 113 Ibid., p. 396. 114 Cécile Tormay, Bujdosó Könyv (Budapest: Gede Testvérek, 2003) (originally published in Budapest by Pallas Irodalmi és Nyomdai Rt in 1920–1922), esp. pp. 136–140. 115 See Bodó, The White Terror. Antisemitic and Political Violence in Hungary, 1919– 1921 (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 220–238; Emily R. Gioielli, “The Many Lives of Mrs. Hamburger: Gender, Violence, and Counterrevolution, 1919– 1930,” in Jochen Böhler, Ota Konrád, and Rudolf Kučera, eds., In the Shadow of the Great War: Physical Violence in East-Central Europe, 1917–1923 (New York: Berghahn, 2020), pp. 65–89. 116 The protagonist in the novel, a quiet servant girl called Anna, is put through hell: she is raped by the relative of her master, who was a recent graduate from a military academy; she becomes pregnant, kills the fetus, but gets away with her crime; she falls in love with a decent man of her social background, but her landlady, who treats her like property, gets involved and prevents the union. Finally, after so much abuse, the servant girl, unexpectedly and without any direct provocation, snaps and murders both her landlady and landlord. Dezső Kosztolányi, Édes Anna (Pozsony: Kalligram, 2010). 117 János Kodolányi, Szép Zsuzska (Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó, 1975). 118 Gerhart Hauptmann, Die Insel der großen Mutter oder Das Wunder von Île des Dames. Eine Geschichte aus dem utopischen Archipelagus (Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1924). 119 Maria Tatar, Lustmord. Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 120 Prónay, “Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921,” pp. 215–216. 121 Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (New York: Harcourt, 1983). 122 The Theological Works of Isaac Barrow, “Rejoice Evermore,” p. 163, accessed November 30, 2020, https://books.google.de/books?id=pLc8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA155&dq=The+Theological+Works+of+Issac+Barrow+rejoys+ever more&h l=en&sa=X& ved=0ahU K EwikweuSx9jpAhVQzKQK HeDS CAwQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=The%20Theological%20Works%20of %20 Issac%20Barrow%20rejoys%20evermore&f=false. 123 Kazecki, “Laughter in the Trenches,” p. 23.

2 Jewish Black Humor

Both Jewish black humor and the dark humor of right-wing groups fed on and ref lected the traumas experienced during the First World War and the civil war in its aftermath. With a few exceptions, the content and form of jokes cited in this book were connected to concrete events or shared trends: military defeat in a long war; the brutalization of soldiers and civilians; foreign occupation; the inf lux of refugees; the Treaty of Trianon; and middle-class sufferings during the Red and White terrors. The rough humor of the paramilitary groups, conversely, both facilitated and justified violence; its function was to hinder self-examination and protect the self-image of militia men as patriots, heroes, and gentlemen. Jewish black humor, on the other hand, helped the victims of violence deal with the psychological consequences of physical assaults and verbal abuse; its main purpose was to protect, preserve, and restore Jewish dignity and self-respect. Military humor was about action, rather than introspection; offense rather than defense; and changes in power relations rather than the protection and maintenance of the status quo. It served to elevate the status of the perpetrators by subjugating and destroying their opponents. Malicious joy weakened with self-ref lection; it promoted conformity, promoting the full absorption of the individual into his group and the subjugation of his will to the orders, wishes, and whims of his commander. Jewish black humor, in contrast, was non-conformist and individualistic; it accumulated knowledge through introspection and self-criticism. Jewish balck humor provided a bitter critique of the outside world: of its blatant injustices, irrational institutions, and the outright cruelty and unmitigated stupidity of one’s fellow man. At its very best, Jewish black humor was subversive. The two types of humor served different purposes and had different cultural origins. Jewish black humor had its roots in Judaism and Jewish popular culture, and, to a lesser extent, in classical European literature and philosophy, but it was also inf luenced by contemporary popular culture. The origins of the right-wing militias’ humor can be traced back to two sources: first, oral tradition and the violent practices of “closed institutions” such as military barracks, boarding schools, and prisons; second, the historical novels, travel, and adventure stories popular among middle-class youth and the films

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224389-2

58  Jewish Black Humor

of the prewar period. Jewish black humor was only indirectly connected to the war, whereas the pranks and physical jokes of militia men represented a continuation of the war and the rough humor of the trenches. Because of its proximity to elite culture and the written word, Jewish jokes tended to be rich, multi-layered, and linguistically sophisticated. Jewish black humor was democratic: the jokes and cartoons were meant to be known and enjoyed by people from every walk of life: by soldiers and civilians, men and women, the young and the old, and Jews and non-Jews alike. Their democratic and egalitarian features notwithstanding, Borsszem Jankó and Az Ojság both unified and divided society along geographical, social, religious, and political lines, separating those who read and enjoyed Jewish humor from those who did not. The members of the first group normally came from the cities rather than the countryside; they hailed from the upper and middle classes rather than the lower orders; they were liberal professionals rather than civil servants; Jews rather than Christians; literate and highly literate rather than semi-literate. Finally, Jewish humor drove a wedge between those who were broadly liberal and democratic in their politics and those who were attracted to more radical, particularly right-wing, ideologies and political movements.

Jewish Humor in Hungary Before 1867 As a literary genre, black humor has a long history. Scholars disagree as to where and when “gallows humor” first appeared; whether it grew out of elite or popular culture; what role Jews played in its development; and how important it was to Jewish civilization and culture. Harold Bloom and Blake Hobby claim that gallows humor already existed in the ancient world and in medieval Europe. Invented by ancient and medical writers and poets such as Aristophanes and Dante, dark humor found its way into the writing of Jonathan Swift and other thinkers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and reached full maturity in the works of modern geniuses such as Mark Twain, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut. Irrespective of their geographical origins, black humor, the same authors argue, has always been a product of elite culture; it was more at home in the mansions, urban salons, academies, universities, and editorial offices of the wealthy, privileged, and highly educated rather than in the modest dwellings of the poor.1 Others reject the idea that such a long history. Surrealist writer and poet André Breton, for example, traces the history of black humor to the satires of the Irish novelist Jonathan Swift—particularly to his Modest Proposal, published in the early eighteenth century. In contrast, the writer Kurt Vonnegut asserted that black humor first emerged not among the elite and in the West but among “the small people,” i.e., the poor and the downtrodden of Central and East-Central Europe in the early modern period. Jews, Vonnegut argued, participated actively in the culture of their neighbors; thus, Jewish gallows humor had the same sources, and it differed neither in content nor in form from the wit of other ethnic and religious groups in Central and East-Central Europe.2

Jewish Black Humor  59

Most scholars acknowledge the link between Jewish culture and black humor; however, with a few exceptions, they attribute this connection to history and social, cultural developments, and political events rather than to a rarefied essence or psychological disposition. Arthur Asa Berger argues that “disaster jokes” represent “an important genre of jokes that seem to spontaneously arise after [or during, depending on the duration of ] major disasters.”3 Dan Ben-Amos is convinced that “Jewish humor is not an expression of the genius of the Jewish people, but just a particular case of a general sociological principle.”4 “[M]uch of Jewish humor deals with such… negative facets of Jewish experience,” Henry Eilbirt contends. “Therefore, it is wry, bitter, ironic. A common Yiddish phrase identifies it as lichen mit yashtsherkes, which means literally ‘laughing with lizards’ but is best translated as ‘laughing through tears.’” Because of their long history of persecution, Eilbirt continues, Jews may have resorted to black humor more often than other ethnic and religious groups; however, they do not have a monopoly on this kind of humor.5 Sociologist Carolyn Miller doubts that Jews have a better sense of humor or that their jokes are, on the whole, darker than that those of other ethnic and religious groups. Her conclusion is that non-Jewish jokes can be as funny as Jewish ones; yet, Jews as a group might be more inclined to resort to dark humor, especially when under stress.6 Sarah Blacher Cohen argues that by laughing at their own misery, Jews have been able to fend off depression and “internal sadness,” combat “external adversity,” preserve Jewish dignity, and find “salvation” even in the most hostile circumstances.7 Since the Jewish population remained small in Hungary and the majority spoke only Yiddish or German, Jewish humor was unknown in the country before 1800. The Magyars cultivated a different kind of humor. The most common form among Magyar peasants and petty nobles was the anecdote. Light-hearted, apolitical, local (normally inspired by local events), and easy to understand, the anecdote was best suited to satisfy the modest intellectual demands of these traditional social groups. In Restoration Europe after 1815, and particularly in Prussia and the Habsburg and Russian empires, local administrators were no friends of Jewish humor, which they regarded not only tasteless but also as a threat to the existing social and political system. It was not only reactionary and unimaginative civil servants but also many (by contemporary standards) progressive artists, writers, and poets who eyed Jewish humor with suspicion. Romantic poets, in particular, were prone to denunciations of Jewish jokes for their alleged shallowness, moral depravity, and lack of respect for religious—particularly Catholic—mysticism, and local, especially peasant, tradition, and culture. Cut off from these vital sources of inspiration, modern Jewish culture, the Romantics (with a few notable exceptions, such as Heinrich Heine) were convinced, had produced nothing valuable or lasting. The same authors regarded the growing popularity of Jewish humor in the German-speaking parts of Europe and the presence of Jews as journalists, editors, theater directors, and cultural managers both as the cause and consequence of the intellectual and moral decline caused

60  Jewish Black Humor

by the commercialization of the press and the commodification of cultural production.8 But it was not only in Berlin and Vienna but also in the mainly German-speaking Pest-Buda where Jewish jokes encountered growing resistance from the authorities. The first great Jewish satirist born on Hungarian soil, Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, worked as an editor for the literary journal Pannonia in Pest in the early 1820s. His Little Police and Censorship Stories (Kis rendőrségi és cenzurtörténetke) outraged the authorities. Saphir was summoned to the city hall, where the civil servant in charge allegedly told him that “the town of Pest has no need for viccek (jokes), and if such a need arrives, we will find local ones. And you, Sir, are from Székesfehérvár, so please stop cracking jokes [at our expense] here.”9 With increased immigration, Jewish humor must have become more popular before 1848 because otherwise, the authorities would not feel the need to take action. Unfortunately, we know little about Jewish humor in this early stage: how large, for example, was the share of “gallows humor” in Jewish jokes? It had to be significant: one of the first references to Jewish jokes in Hungary, found in the memoirs of Adolf Ágai, the founder of the Jewish comic weekly Borsszem Jankó ( Johnny Peppercorn, discussed in more detail below), fell into the same category. The joke was allegedly passed on to Ágai by his father, who had been a medical student during the cholera epidemic in Pest-Buda in 1848. The situation was extremely serious; the morgues, Ágai’s father told his son, were quickly overwhelmed with corpses, to the extent that the bodies had to be interred in mass graves. The top of a coffin suddenly f lew off. The occupant sat up and says: “but Herr Matthes, please! Why do you want to bury me? I am not even dead yet!” “No ja freili! Dös kunnt a jeder sagen!” (Well, everyone can say that). And then the gravedigger pushed the coffin into the pit.10 The gradual acceptance of Jewish humor was the product of the cultural assimilation of the newcomers, secularization, and the slow liberalization of the country. The decision of Jewish communities to either side with the revolution of 1848 or remain neutral during the liberal revolution and nationalist uprising greatly increased the political elite’s respect for the religious minority. As a reward for their support, the revolutionary government removed many of the restrictions that had hindered the geographical and social mobility of Jews for centuries. The growing sympathy between the two groups was reinforced by continued political cooperation after the defeat of the revolution. In the 1850s and early 1860s, political humor, which had taken on Jewish features, became an important tool to circumvent censorship, maintain morale, and reinforce resistance to the neo-absolutist regime.11 Recently founded comic weeklies, such as Üstökös (Comet), which already employed several Jewish authors, helped to keep the idea of liberty, major political reform, and modernization alive during the two decades of authoritarian rule. The burgeoning alliance between liberalism and political humor, on the one hand, and Hungarian nationalists and Jewish assimilationists on the other, was sealed with the founding of Borsszem Jankó by writer and publicist

Jewish Black Humor  61

Adolf Ágai in 1868. The publication of Borsszem Jankó marked a watershed in the history of Hungarian journalism and political humor.12 The new comic weekly is considered to be a joint enterprise of assimilationist Jews and the liberal political establishment (and Hungarian state), which provided financial, moral, and political support. With the founding of the magazine, the political elite sought to drum up support among the middle and lower-middle classes for the Ausgleich (the Compromise) with Austria in 1867, a political settlement that continued to encounter strong resistance among radical nationalists. Established with liberal and elite support, Borsszem Jankó remained the quasi-official comic weekly of the government during the next decade. Although its relations with the government had soured somewhat by the late nineteenth century, the comic weekly remained a mouthpiece of liberalism, an advocate of modernization, a defender of the Ausgleich, an agent of Hungarian nationalism (and imperialism), and a fervent champion of Jewish emancipation and cultural assimilation until 1918 and beyond.13 Open elite support for Borsszem Jankó gave legitimacy to Jewish humor in Hungary. The periodical revolutionized political humor in the country, providing a model for friends and enemies alike for decades to come. Instead of anecdotes, which were associated with the culture of the gentry and peasants, the weekly relayed its message through jokes and cartoons. Informative, short, and witty jokes and cartoons were better suited to express the opinions and satisfy the cultural needs of a rapidly growing, better educated, and ethnically and culturally more diverse urban population.14 Admittedly, the transition from “Hungarian” anecdotes to “Jewish” jokes did not happen all at once, nor was it ever finished; in Borsszem Jankó and other comic weeklies, the two types of stories appeared side-by-side and increasingly merged.15 Regarding content, the break was even more radical. The comic weekly took its activist liberalism seriously: Ágai and contributors to Borsszem Jankó used humor not only to understand and ref lect upon social and political realities but to change culture and society for good. The writers and cartoonists saw themselves as modernizers, educators, and trendsetters. They wrote with confidence and occasional arrogance in their voices and zealously tried to convince their readers and prod the laggards to catch up and ridicule reactionaries. With one major setback in the 1880s, Borsszem Jankó’s humor remained optimistic, confident, and even combative before 1914; the editor and his constituents seem to have been convinced that history was on their side. Borsszem Jankó fought against graft and corruption; advocated moderate electoral reforms; supported workers’ fight for better wages, working conditions, and more respect from society (without accepting socialism, however); they backed moderate welfare measures; welcomed technological modernization, the construction of railways, and the modernization of urban infrastructure, better sanitation, the founding of new schools and universities, and the spread of urban civilization to the provinces and the embourgeoizement of workers and peasants. As might be expected from a liberal periodical, Borsszem Jankó combated religious fanaticism, questioned the utility and morality of many

62  Jewish Black Humor

old customs and habits, and challenged religious stereotypes and caricatures. The weekly had fully embraced Hungarian nationalism from its founding; after 1880, it became increasingly intolerant toward ethnic minorities, occasionally accusing Romanians, Croats, and Serbs of separatism. While not free of ethnic intolerance and chauvinism, the intolerance of Borsszem Jankó did not reach the level of the conservative-liberal dailies such as Az Est (Evening News) and Budapesti Hirlap (Budapest News). The comic weekly found many powerful friends in the political and cultural elite, especially in the press corps: the leading journalist of the Dualist era, Jenő Rákosi, the editor-in-chief of the inf luential Budapesti Hirlap, was one of the founders of Borsszem Jankó. Yet, over time, the comic weekly acquired not only friends but also many enemies. Because of its unabashed support for liberalism and modernization, Orthodox leaders vilified the comic weekly from the start. Paradoxically, the Neologs, too, remained skeptical at best, and hostile at worst: the leaders of the Neolog Community of Pest feared that the periodical, known for its subversive humor, would not only divide the community, but would weaken or even destroy ancient and deeply held religious beliefs and cherished social values and norms. On the left, social democrats derided Borsszem Jankó as a typical product of capitalism, a dangerous instrument in the hands of greedy entrepreneurs, and as a conduit of embourgeoizement and cultural imperialism. The agrarian conservatives regarded the famous comic as an enemy of tradition and a threat to their time-honored privileges. The Christian Socialists and members of the antisemitic parties and pressure groups described the periodical as a driving force behind secularization and a weapon in the arsenal of international Jewry. The business rivals of Borsszem Jankó included the older Üstökös (which had been broadly liberal in the 1860s but later became staunchly antisemitic); Bolond Istók (Crazy Steve), the comic weekly of choice for conservative nobles and provincial administrators; the even more antisemitic and nationalistic Füstölő (the Smoker), and the most anti-Jewish of all the comic weeklies in Hungary, the Christian Socialist Herkó Páter (Pater Herkó). While under attack from many directions, Borsszem Jankó stood its ground and remained the most successful comic weekly in Hungary before the war. The comic weekly owed its success to the exceptional talent of its editor-in-chief, its permanent staff, and regular contributors.16 The majority of jokes in Borsszem Jankó were never “confessional”: they dealt with national and secular problems rather than religious issues and community concerns, such as conversion and assimilation. Only their authors’ ethnic/religious background and, more importantly, their form and style betrayed their origins. Jewish humor occupied a more prominent place in popular culture only during periods of crisis, such as the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Affair in the early 1880s and the controversy surrounding the so-called Law of Reception of 1895, which fully separated state and church, instituted civil marriage, and put Judaism and Jewish religious organizations on equal footing with Catholicism and Protestantism. Jewish humor published in Borsszem

Jewish Black Humor  63

Jankó in the 1870s breathed optimism. Typically, one of the most important publications, Adolf Ágai’s, Abrincs!: 150 Jordány Vicz (Invoice: 150 Jordanian Jokes, 1879) included not one single anecdote about physical violence against Jews. The book relates light-hearted stories about crafty beggars; warns against the violation of kosher dietary laws (and made fun of the violators); and sheds light on the problems associated with quick success, upward social mobility, and rapid cultural assimilation. The cartoons, which were the work of János Jankó, bear a close resemblance to contemporary antisemitic caricatures, especially when it comes to the portrayal of “Jewish” bodies. This fact could be interpreted in two ways. On the other hand, some argued that no one took these caricatures seriously (confused images or perceived cartoons as a threat); that Jews saw physical threats as a thing of the past and viewed emancipation and cultural assimilation as a more or less completed process. Further, the cartoonish figures testify to the rough sense of humor that prevailed at the time. Jews were not special: contemporary Austrian and Hungarian comic weeklies regularly portrayed Czechs and Slovaks as monkeys, Romanians as wild animals, and Serbs as half-crazed assassins. The comics liked to make fun of the sounds of foreign accents; they caricatured ethnic clothing and exaggerated, if not outright invented, differences in psychological disposition and cultural orientation. The liberal Borsszem Jankó, too, was occasionally hostile to ethnic minorities, especially to Romanians and Serbs, whose ambitions they regarded as a threat to the Hungarian nation after 1880 (following the establishment of independent states following the 1878 Congress of Berlin). Its competitors such as the Christian Socialist comic Herkó Páter, paradoxically, were more favorably disposed toward at least some ethnic minorities, such as the Slovaks while continuing to demonize Jews.17 On the other hand, when it comes to the images of Jews, Borsszem Jankó and antisemitic publications, such as Herkó Páter, parted ways. In the latter publications, Jews look alien and threatening rather than amusing; the function of cartoons and anecdotes was to “expose” and destroy “aliens” and drive a wedge—rather than build bridges—between the two communities. Borsszem Jankó, however, sought to endear Jews and Jewishness to the general public by making fun of alleged ethnic and religious peculiarities and cultural and psychological predispositions such as the tendency to overthink (­Cartoon  2.1), the love of logic and language manipulation (Cartoon 2.2), and the ability to recognize profitable business opportunities (Cartoon 2.3). The optimism of Borsszem Jankó faded somewhat after the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Affair and the rise of political antisemitism in the late 1870s and 1880s. The trial of innocent Jews accused of murdering a Christian servant girl in 1883 was accompanied by antisemitic riots in the capital and several provincial towns and vigorous campaigns against both native Jews and recent Jewish immigrants in the right-wing press.18 The Tiszaeszlár Affair was part and parcel of a new wave of antisemitism that engulfed Eastern Europe, particularly in the Western (mainly Ukrainian and Polish) half of the Russian empire after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. The riots in

64  Jewish Black Humor

Cartoon 2.1  Logic.19 Uncle Salamon (monologue): “Who took my glasses? The young man didn’t take them because he doesn’t need them. The old man didn’t take them because he has his own pair. Still, I see my glasses aren’t here. How can I see that my glasses aren’t here? Since I see they’re not here, then I must be wearing them… Quod erat demonstation.”

Hungary, while significant, paled in comparison to their Russian counterparts. The atrocities ignited a wave of emigration to the West, mainly to the United States, and led to the introduction of new restrictions on Jewish life.20 Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews crossed the borders from the east into Austria-Hungary before the First World War; while the vast majority headed, via port cities in southern and Baltic Europe, for North and Latin

Jewish Black Humor  65

Cartoon 2.2  Future plans.21 Husband: My dear Ruf keleben. If one of us happens to die first, I will move to Pest.

America, tens of thousands decided to set up permanent residence in the Dual Monarchy.22 The Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial and the antisemitic violence that followed crushed the hopes of many assimilated Jews and philosemites that the merger of the Jewish and Christian bourgeoisies into a progressive, cultured, and ethnically and religiously middle class would be smooth. Yet, while certainly tragic, the Tiszaeszlár Affair did not lead to a reversal in state policy nor did it change the Hungarian elite’s attitude toward Jews: the alliance between the liberal political establishment and reform-minded Jews continued after 1883. The Liberals continued to dominate poltical life after the Affair; the antisemitic parties that had emerged in the early 1880s not only failed to gain widespread support, but had disappeared from the scene by the end of the decade. Most importantly, Jewish emancipation was not reversed: on the

66  Jewish Black Humor

Cartoon 2.3  Business before everything.23 Lipme Gänsekrógen (has just been pardoned. He turns to the executioner and points at his accomplice). Since I am here already… would you sell me Móricz Schuftelesz’s clothing?

contrary, with the passage of the so-called Law of Reception of 1895, which recognized Judaism as a “received” or state-supported faith and provided equal rights to Jews, the emancipation project was complete, and the process of cultural and ethnic assimilation shifted into a higher gear. The Tiszaeszlár Affair did, however, change the political and cultural climate in Hungary, and the ways in which Jews viewed and related to the majority population. The riots reawakened fears about violence and drew Jewish attention to the existential threat emanating from the peripheries of political life. Black humor published in Borsszem Jankó in the 1880s ref lected

Jewish Black Humor  67

this change in the cultural and political climate. For the first time, “disaster jokes” came to occupy a significant part of the comic weekly’s offerings in the early 1880s. Some of the new jokes were clearly foreign imports and might have traveled to Hungary with desperate Jewish refugees from the east ( Joke 1). Others were clearly home-grown and testified to the shock and disappointment over the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial and the violent attacks on Jews ( Jokes 2, 3, 4, and 5). Some of the “disaster jokes” (like Joke  2) ­published in Borsszem Jankó were sent in by readers; others, in fact, the majority (in our example, Jokes 2, 3, 4, and 5), were the works of professional writers and journalists like Ágai. Irrespective of their authorship and origins either in popular or high culture, “disaster jokes” continued to exhibit the best features of Jewish humor such as its love for the absurd. In the following examples, the words of Itzig Spitzig (one of Ágai’s main characters, who stood for the Jewish petty bourgeoisie in Budapest) stand in sharp contrast both to his character (the readers had come to know Itzig as a clumsy, eccentric, and highly likable character—a “wise guy” who likes to pontificate about things and enjoys his own harmless jokes) and to the solemnity of the occasion. By accepting the most outrageous accusations about Jews at face value, Ágai tried to underscore the irrationality and cruelty of modern antisemitism. 1 The Cossacks have broken into the house of a Jewish merchant, Mandel, who has a large family. They order the family members to line up. “We are going to beat the men to death and rape every woman,” the Cossacks scream. “You can beat us to death and rape our wives and daughters, but please leave my elderly mother alone,” Mandel begs. The old woman jumps forward and interrupts him: “Let it be, my son, Mojse, if there be pogroms, let them be.”24 2 In a small Hungarian town, a rumor spreads that somewhere a corpse of murdered Christian child has been found. The terrified Jews are ready to f lee when the temple servant makes an excited announcement: “Jews! I have good news! The murdered child is Jewish!”25 3 Itzig Spitzig is invited by his brother-in-law Salamon Seiffensteiner to celebrate Passover. His letter of response reads: My Dear Brother-inLaw! Thank you for the invitation, but I must decline. I am not feeling well and don’t enjoy lots of company. Instead, I will stay at home this year and will slaughter little Eszter Solmosi myself. Servus, Itzig Spitzig, and his immediate family.26 4 Spitzig’s son asks his father why the Passover matzo has no flavor this year. His father’s response is that the Jews could not find a young Hungarian girl this year, so they had to do with [the blood, BB] of an old woman.27 5 Someone asks Seiffensteiner about the advantages of the Jewish faith. They asked me the other day why I don’t convert. I responded: I would not do such stupid thing because I know that Jewish butchers are not going to harm daughters now; but were they Gentile girls, it is very likely that they would be butchered.28

68  Jewish Black Humor

Many jokes and anecdotes published in the Borsszem Jankó during the Tiszaeszlár trial have a pessimistic tone and an almost nightmarish quality. In one of Ágai’s anecdotes, Salamon Seiffensteiner dreams that he has immigrated to Palestine. In his new homeland, Jews make up the majority of the population, but there is still a sizable Christian population. One day, upset by the rumor that Christians have kidnapped and crucified a small Jewish girl with the name of Moczele to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, Jews gather to attack their neighbors. The instigators of the attack on Christians belong to the anti-Christian league led by Kobi Blau (known from Ágai’s anecdotes as an unscrupulous lawyer and opportunist), who was also the editor-in-chief of the local tabloid, Jerusalem Independence ( Jeruzsálemi Függetlenség). Kobi harangues the crowd before the attack: he accuses Christians of exploiting and stealing everything, including their names, from Jews. He tells his followers: This scum of the nations, which we, in our thoughtless generosity, have given a homeland, bread, and civil rights, do not even feel enough gratitude to learn, in place of their hybrid European tongue, the holy and musical language of the Bible f luently… But how could we expect decency from a people that bases its behavior toward us on the dangerous teachings of the Jesuits, and who owes its loyalty to the bell-ringer in Rome and follows the slogans of the antisemitic association in Dresden? (True! Down with the traitors!) Down with the lowly gang, which poisons our ancient purity with its dirty blood! Death to the murderers of children, whom the justice system of the old Rome, too, punished for the same crimes! (Down with them!) Let’s crucify them… Down with the murderers! Down with the bell-ringers’ language! Onward! In his dream, Seiffensteiner confronts the demagogue directly. He begs the crowd, “in the holy name of Jehovah,” to not lend credence to the rumors and follow the siren songs of troublemakers. Yes, he says, there are bad people among Christians; but, he adds, “shouldn’t we also admit that there are people among us, Jews too, who are not perfect gentlemen?… Are Christians not human like us, Jews?” he continues. “Why shouldn’t they love the land that feeds them in the same way as we Jews do? Why shouldn’t they cling to the nation of which they are part?” Despite his entreaties, the mob remains restive. Some scream, “down with the imbecile philosemites! Down with the fake liberals! Down with the traitors! He has been bought! Christian gold spills from his mouth.” Others are ready to attack and kill him. At this moment, Seiffensteiner, bathed in a cold sweat, is woken from his dream by his concerned brother-in-law, Itzig Spitzig, who has come to visit him. “Thank you, Itzig,” says Seiffensteiner, “you have done me a great favor. What a world we live in! When I am awake, the antisemites want to kill me; when I am asleep, the anti-Christians want to club me to death.”29

Jewish Black Humor  69

Black Humor after 1918 Though its editor’s and contributors’ optimism clearly waned by 1883, Borsszem Jankó had not lost its faith in the prospect of social acceptance and cultural assimilation. For the real turning point in the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, one had to wait another 30 years. It was the First World War, and especially the communist dictatorship and the Red and White terrors in its aftermath, that was the watershed moment in the history of Hungarian Jews and antisemitism in Hungary. The war and the political and social upheavals in its aftermath both reinforced old prejudices and led to the rise of new and more perniciously antisemitic stereotypes such as the one who equated Jews with traitors, (wartime) speculators, shirkers, and communists.30 The same events seriously weakened liberalism both as an ideology and a political force, especially among the members of the political elite and the non-Jewish segment of the middle class, many of whom had come to identify liberalism with the vengeful and devious Western powers who forced an unfair peace treaty on them and with Jews. In the Dualist era, Jews enjoyed the full protection of the conservative-liberal Hungarian state and political elite. After the war, with the partial collapse of state authority, local administrators and the political elite reneged on their commitment and responsibility as civil servants to protect Jews as Hungarian citizens. Whereas the Hungarian Soviet Republic made no distinction between citizens of different ethnic origins or religious backgrounds, the new counterrevolutionary regime, which came to power in August 1919, not only clearly favored Christians but also openly discriminated against Jews. Particularly during the hot phase of the counterrevolution between August 1919 and March 1920, the elite Freikops units and their allies among the civilian militias, patriotic associations, and local administrators enjoyed significant discretionary power in their treatment of Jews. This power often translated into pogroms and riots. In the spring of 1920, the consolidation of the counterrevolution moved into its second stage. After Horthy’s election as regent in March 1920, the state, especially its local organs, such as municipal and rural police and administrators who had been gaining both power and confidence since the autumn of 1919, began to take stronger measures to end chaos and reign in the militias. Law and order slowly returned, first to the cities at the end of 1920, and then to the most troublesome rural regions, like Kecskemét and its vicinity in Central Hungary, in 1921. However, the consolidation of the Horthy regime by the summer of 1921 did not lead to the full restoration of the liberal system and equal rights for all, Jews included. On the contrary, with the passage of the numerus clausus legislation in the fall of 1920, legislation that limited the enrollment of Jewish students and women at institutions of higher learning, legal inequality, for the first time, became enshrined in law. The law signaled a drastic change in the practical approach of the successive governments to the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as well as

70  Jewish Black Humor

the ideological orientation of the state. Before the war, the Hungarian state and political elite resisted antisemitism as an alien and hostile ideology. After the war, antisemitism became one of the ideological pillars of the conservative-authoritarian state, a creed and moral imperative, and an important dimension of the professional identity of the civil service class. Finally, it was not only the political and social elite but large segments of Hungarian society who began to question the utility and doubt the viability of Jewish assimilation. By the 1930s, millions of peasants and workers had come to internalize state-sponsored antisemitism, which blamed the Jews for Hungary’s wartime defeat and the two revolutions. Spread by clerical and state institutions such as elementary schools, high schools, and even universities; preached from the pulpits by Catholic priests and Protestant pastors; and instilled in peasant recruits by army officers, this state and elite-sponsored antisemitism made the success of the fascists and national socialist parties and movements possible prior to the outbreak of the Second World War—and paved the way to the final, most intense final phase of genocide. Very few Jews (and non-Jews) were able to predict the long-term consequences of the postwar chaos and antisemitic riots. The majority were concerned with their own safety and hoped for the quick and full restoration of law and order. “Disaster jokes” captured the mood of hopelessness and desperation of the population broadly, and particularly Jews, during the counterrevolution ( Jokes 1–3). Black humor realistically appraised the situation, i.e., the social and political consequences of the breakdown of law and order on the streets of the capital (Cartoon 2.4, Jokes 4–10). They showed that the chaos was not confined to the main traffic arteries, but engulfed football stadiums, hotels, cafés, and restaurants, which became veritable death traps for civilians, and especially for Jews (Cartoon 2.5, Jokes 11–14).31 1 Good News. Readers’ comment: “To travel to the next world, one [no longer] needs a visa.”32 2 Fatherly advice (Apai écák). The streetcar will come more often if you throw yourself onto the tracks.33 3 Suicide candidates! The beaches on Margit Island are open all day. Clothing and personal effects (végrendeletek) will be returned home. The family will be informed about the death with sympathy and care.34 4 Train and ship fares to Palestine! For Christians, return ticket is also available. Ask our travel agent.35 5 Sacrifice: “Mancika, please believe me: I am ready to do anything for you. If necessary, I would die for you.” “Do you really mean it, Feri? Then, let’s take a walk on the Grand Boulevard tonight.”36 6 News from the optics market. The price of eyeglasses has risen 200 percent in the last couple of weeks.37 7 Babble with pasta (Smoncák laskával). In the past, if we didn’t like the look of someone’s nose, we looked away; today, we simply smash it.38 8 If your nose is crooked—tough luck!39

Jewish Black Humor  71

Cartoon 2.4  Question of word order. Strange world that we live in. Some people hit the nail on the head; others find their heads on the nail.40

72  Jewish Black Humor

Cartoon 2.5  Hotel Britannia. The Menu.41

9 Announcement. Last night, a fake silver watch ended up in my pocket by accident. The original owner of the watch, who has to prove his identity, can take his [worthless, BB] piece of junk back. Address: Rubber Truncheon Street (Gummibot utca) 28.42

Jewish Black Humor  73

10 Erger, Berger, and Schlossberger. One evening, Mór Erger, Izidor Berger, and Izráel Schlossberger, three good friends, were walking home on the Grand Boulevard. They continued walking as they came face-toface with a jovial group, singing the popular new song, “Erger-Berger” at the top of their lungs. The group suddenly stopped; its leader yelled at the three meek friends to halt. “Show your identification! What is your name?” the leader screamed. “Erger,” whispered Erger. “Berger,” murmured Berger. “Schlossberger,” said Schlossberger in a low voice. “See, I told you these are great chaps,” yelled the loudest member in the group. “Wholesome, good Hungarians, who are pulling our legs. May the devil take you all! We are going to slap you around only once for the bad joke. Goodbye!”43 11 Betting. Make your bet! Win or lose your teeth at every VAC game! (Minden mérkőzésre fogad fogért a VAC).44 12 In a Pest café. “I want a coffee.” “With whipped cream?” “No, with horse whip.”45 13 POFOCAIN Advertisement. For slaps in the face in the café, use the most reliable painkiller to date, POFOCAIN [play on the word pofon which means slap in the face, BB]. Shake the guy (pasi) a few times before application.46 14 Next week’s menu. Wednesday: Slaps in the face and pieces of lung Boulevard-style (Pofázli and tüdővagdalék körutmódra). After the main course: pasta. Thursday: Slap soup (nyakleves),47 bruised face with salad on the head (Piritott arc fejresalátával). Friday: Bomb soup (Bombaleves),48 Fried streetcar bell (villamos csengő rántva); Pancake filled with horror (rémeslepény). Saturday: Numerus clausus soup (Numeruszni leves). Sunday: Slap-in-the-face soup perhaps prepared with sudden anger (Pofleves, esetleg hirtelen haragon); Roast beef with stone dust sauce (marhahús kőpormártással); inf lated rumor (rémhirfelfújt).49 Black humor was modern in both content and form. The stories immortalized in the jokes and by the cartoons had taken place in an urban environment. With a few exceptions, the protagonists were urbanites: businessmen, White-collar workers, shopkeepers, artisans, students, or simply bystanders. The stories normally took place in popular spaces such as the main boulevards, the famous cafés and restaurants of the capital, theaters, public parks, the zoo, sports stadiums, swimming pools, and spas, which not only made Budapest famous but also both embodied and symbolized the modernity and the modernization of the country in which Jews had played a prominent role. Despite the urbanity of the jokes, they continued to rely on stylistic elements and techniques inherited from traditional (eastern, Russian, and rural) Jewish humor. Like traditional Jewish jokes, these urban creations thrived on paradox; they also relied on the same techniques—the frequent use of questions marks, logical, spelling, and grammar errors, double-entendre, the division of words into two or more syllables, etc.—that gave traditional Jewish humor

74  Jewish Black Humor

its distinctive character. In Budapest humor, these traditional techniques and stylistic elements had become divorced from their traditional, religious, and rural context and became wedded to the problems, sensations, and images familiar to city dwellers engaged in fields like commerce, journalism, high and popular culture, sports, and entertainment; in other words, in fields where men and women of Jewish descent were not only actively engaged but had come to dominate.50 Before the war, black humor was relatively rare in Borsszem Jankó. Even during the White Terror, “disaster jokes” made up only a small share of the material published in the liberal comic weekly. Black humor was more pervasive in recently founded comic magazines, notably its rival among Jews in the capital, Az Ojság (The “Nous” paper).51 Published biweekly, Az Ojság was closely tied to the world of cabaret theater. It was edited by Endre Nagy, one of the founders of cabaret in Hungary. The list of its regular contributors reads like a who’s who in the world of light entertainment and theater in Hungary in the first half of the twentieth century. With a few exceptions, they all tried their hand at journalism; many including Frigyes Karinthy, Károly Lovászy, László Cholnoky, Béla Paulini, Andor Nagy, Lajos Nagy, Dezső Erdősy, and Ádám Gosztonyi also published essays, short articles, and poems in the liberal literary journal Nyugat (West) and the more left-leaning Világ (Light). About two-thirds of the regular contributors came from Jewish backgrounds. None of them seem to have cultivated ties to Jewish religious organizations; some, like the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Endre Nagy, had converted to Christianity without, however, hiding their origins. Almost all of the better-known contributors were agnostics. However, Nagy and his colleagues took pride in their proximity to secular Jewish culture in Budapest (while maintaining an ambivalent attitude toward Orthodox Jews). With few exceptions, the contributors rejected Zionism as an alternative to assimilation. In contrast to Borsszem Jankó, which tried to escape the mark of a “confessional” (i.e., Jewish) magazine, Az Ojság paid close attention to the rise of violent antisemitism and growing discrimination, as well as internal Jewish concerns such as conversion and intermarriage rates and the conf lict between Zionists, Neologs, and the Orthodox in the early 1920s (Joke 1). Az Ojság was proudly left-wing liberal in its political orientation; in contrast to Borsszem Jankó, it saw fighting antisemitism, proto-fascism, and later Nazism as its mission.

AU: A closing quote seems to missing. Please check.

1 Subscription announcement. We call upon both sexes and the members of both religions—who in this “crazy world” (ebben a cintányéros, cudar világban) want to “keep [literally awaken, éberen], and in regard to Jews, héberen, themselves and their families in a good mood—to please send us the subscription fee ASAP. The annual subscription fee for Az OJSÁG (26 issues) is: 120 korona; for half a year (13 issues): 60 korona. As a matter of principle, we do not accept overpayment. Az Ofság, Budapest, VI., Liszt Ferenc tér 14.52

Jewish Black Humor  75

In his path-breaking book on Jewish humor entitled Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious published at the turn of the century, Freud described “gallows humor” as a defensive mechanism best suited to deal with the harmful effects of violence. Jokes, Freud argued, represented hope and helped Jews survive in a hostile world. In Jewish jokes, the super-ego allegedly said to the ego: “Look, there is nothing to be afraid of. It is not really serious; it is even funny.” Anything, according to Freud, that can be mocked no longer looks threatening; and anything ridiculous is normal.53 In the 1930s, one of the first collectors and publishers of Eastern European Jewish humor in the West, Jacob Richman, contended that “the Jew has the happy faculty of being able to perceive the grotesque and the ludicrous in the most tragic situations. He can laugh even in the face of death.” Jewish jokes mix humor and pathos, for “beneath the smile you can notice a tear.”54 Thirty years later, another writer and publisher, Theodore Reik, compared and contrasted Jewish witticism with “the gallows humor” of other ethnic groups. While the black humor of others, he contended, allowed for “deliverance from a momentary emergency,” Jewish jokes, on the other hand, offered “a moment of truth in a permanent emergency… The social situation of Jewry makes misery the normal and commonplace condition; the Jew only makes a joke out of it, a joke that can awaken laughter, but is not merry.”55 In the 1980s, Sarah Cohen argued that the main role of Jewish humor had been to restore serenity and balance and defend the group and its members against both external threats and internal sadness.56 More recently, Henry Eilbirt attributed the success of “gallows humor” to its shock effect, which, he argues, is meant to “open up repressed feelings” and dissipate fear.57 Harvey Mindess describes Jewish black humor as a unique form of wisdom that arms man with the talent to “picture his plight as part of the absurdity, the gross injustice of human affairs and in so doing to become a free, detached observer of fate.”58 Emanuel S. Goldsmith is also convinced that Jewish humor soothes the pain of a perplexing or degrading situation with inner spiritual power derived from faith in the dignity of man and in the ultimate victory of justice. Even in the most hopeless of situation, such humor playfully feigns victory in order to emphasize the meaninglessness, evil and unnaturalness of our predicament. It protests sarcastically and gives oneself and other the courage to endure.59 All these commentators agree that Jewish black humor was a defensive mechanism; its function was to provide advice to people on how to behave and how to preserve their composure, dignity, and sanity under duress. The pessimistic tone of the majority of the jokes notwithstanding, Jewish humor remained loyal to its liberal heritage: the liberals’ love for logic and reasoned morality and their belief in truth as a supreme value. Jokes extolled the courage, brightness, and honesty of victims of violence; at the same time, they exposed the mendacity, hypocrisy, stupidity, and moral depravity of the

76  Jewish Black Humor

attackers, their defenders in the state bureaucracy, and the social, political, and cultural elite. Disaster jokes questioned the even-handedness of the authorities and the police’s determination to capture attackers ( Jokes 1–3). They exposed the hypocrisy of government propaganda and conservative and right-wing newspapers, which claimed that violent assaults were the work of saboteurs and “irresponsible elements” (i.e., communists, common criminals, and agents provocateurs in stolen army uniforms) ( Jokes 4 and 5). They also ridiculed the claim that militias and patriotic organizations were only responding to Jewish violence ( Jokes 6 and 7). Black humor exposed the true identity of the perpetrators: rural civic militias such as the Héjjas Detachment, the more professional and elite Freikops units that were part of Admiral Horthy’s National Army (such as the Prónay and the Osztenburg Officers’ detachments), and patriotic associations such as the Awakened Hungarians. As a result, these magazines took on significant risk. At the same time, by identifying the perpetrators, they helped speed up the process of social and political consolidation ( Jokes 8–12). The comic biweekly criticized the foreign, mainly British, defenders of the White Terror and the paramilitary groups ( Joke 13). 1 Liebe Az Ojság! “If the assassins—we ask, are captured in the next 25 years, will the good informant receive interest on the one and half million koronas reward?” Signed: Dr. Determined.60 2 Police Announcement. The assassins responsible for the latest bombing should send us their address immediately. They will be greatly rewarded.61 3 The White Terror in Palestine. August 1. A typical example of the strongly denied White Terror in Jerusalem. From our cable: A few days ago, the police in Palestine arrested Ármin Maulkorb, a book salesman, who, at the corner of Mandl and Haselnuss streets at night, attacked an innocent Galician, Ezsajást Zitterponem, from behind and beat him. Maulkorb stated as his defense that he mistook Zitterponem’s kaftan for a priest’s cape, and he could not resist the temptation to pull on it a little bit. The police acquitted Maulkorb and set him free immediately. Police Captain Gelbloch apologized for the incident in front of the Galician Embassy.62 4 Gift. Last night, an irresponsible element honored Mór Klein with two slaps in the face.63 5 A sensational chemical invention by a young Hungarian scientist. We visited the young chemist, Mauritius Kohn, who has discovered the “irresponsible element” (felelőtlen elem). We found the young scholar preoccupied with caring for his swollen face; still, in a few words, he summarized for us the characteristics of the new element. Here are the results of his research. The new element’s name: irresponsible element; chemical designation: Hitthestinkyjew (Übsd—üssd büdzsid).

Jewish Black Humor  77

Scientific name: terroricum; weight: very light, almost zero; mixing: only with similar elements; [when mixed with] alien elements, if heated, it releases liquid (csapadékot ad); its liquid: red, almost bloodlike; color: outside white, inside green; taste: bitter, no one likes to take it; related elements: lead, rubber truncheon; color: according to some courageous scientists, red, yellow, and blue stars—those who have contact with it saw stars even in daylight. If heated—the temperature rising because of “courageous” people—it evaporates. Location: dark places, in small groups, never alone. These are the statements of the young scientist who has just returned from his laboratory, József Boulevard.64 6 Really? “Have you heard? Károly Ereky and his friends say that Christians are being persecuted in Buda.” “Really? Now I understand why the young lads beat me up a few nights ago. They mistook me for a Christian.”65 7 Attention! Jews are arming! Medieval weapons were sold at a gun show held in Ernst Museum. All the guns were purchased by Jews, such as Jakab Weisz, Aladár Braun, Gyula Winkler, Samu Weinberger, Lajos Gun, and Gyula Schwarz. Hundreds of weapons ended up in Jewish hands! What can we say to that? Ajvé, Ajvé!66 8 Armed Robbery. Last night, unidentified perpetrators broke into the mouth of the grain merchant Izsák Nelkenstrausz, and stole several golden teeth and platinum parts. The damage exceeds the profit.67 9 Denunciation. Ignác Preisztreiber, a wealthy commercial farmer, notified the French mission in Budapest that his innocent vineyard was severely beaten by a hailstorm. The investigation has revealed that nature acted alone.68 10 Suicide in the Ergerberger Military Base. Jerusalem, August 15. Dr. Etele Faj-keresztény (racially pure Christian), a physician from Bethlehem brought into the Ergerberger Military Base from Jericho for his participation in Communist robberies (rabolsevista bűncselekmények), committed suicide at 9 a.m. this morning. The physician asked permission to use the bathroom; there he pulled a light tower, which he had received from his mother as a child, out of his back pocket and stabbed himself in the chest. He died immediately.69 11 The young man, whose mother was a laundress and whose father has been struck down with the help of rope, please respond as soon as possiple, and tell us the whereabouts of the lost and indispendable rope. A reward is being offered. To Erger-Berger-Schlossberger & Co.70 12 In the labyrinth of linguistics. The sensational letter of a Hungarian language professor at the University of Jerusalem was sent to the editor-in-chief of Az Ojság. Dear Editor-in-Chief! The Hungarian language, which is otherwise famous for its nuances, is short on words to express the fine differences between the various shades of antisemitism. For example, we cannot distinguish between the antisemitism of an Awakened [Hungarian, BB] and that of the wealthy and poor Smallholders.

78  Jewish Black Humor

How many tears have been shed over this weakness! Because, for example, there are people, who among the many races of the world, happen to dislike the Jews (akik a világ sok népfaja közül éppen a zsidókat nem szeretik), and there are those who just happen to dislike the Jews (vannak, akik a zsidókat éppen nem szeretik). As Kochba wrote in one of his famous comedies: in every healthy body, there is a healthy currency speculator. Now, I have found in komátácsi the right word to express the differences due to activism on the part of the individual. Therefore, here I propose to add the following entry to the Big Dictionary: antisemite—one who does not like Jews. Antiszemitácsi: one who makes his dislike felt. I hereby share my discovery with the public; please enjoy it. Beten Sie sich alles Gute aus Sch. Szabó J. Attila, Hungarian language instructor at the Jerusalem Yeshiva.71 13 The White Terror is ranging in Hungary. What is the conclusion of the English Labor Delegation? From our cable report. London, July 20. In the Lower House of the English Parliament, Kendosz (Klein), a Labor MP, addressed the government on the issue of the Hungarian White Terror. He quoted the Report of Labor Delegation, which, as the most shocking example, mentions that the inmates in the Hajmáskér internment camp received salted, boiled potatoes twice, and frequently three times a day. In his response, Minister Bonar Law (Löwy) stated that since many decent Hungarian civil servants, according to the official investigation, can hardly afford salted boiled potato once a day, the interned have no reason to complain. The investigation also concluded that the inmates do not like boiled salted potatoes because they instinctively reject everything that has a peel (héjjas) or is salty (soós).72 Black humor was subversive humor: it criticized not only the perpetrators and the enablers of violence but also the new antisemitic laws, such as the socalled lashing law, which restored physical punishment for smugglers, black marketeers, usurers, and currency speculators; the numerus clausus legislation which limited the percentage of incoming students from ethnic minorities to their share in the general population; and the law which forbade Christian domestic servants to work for Jews. While it was put into effect in only a handful of cases, the lashing law humiliated Jews by associating them with criminals ( Jokes 1–4). The comic weekly did not fail in drawing attention to the cruelty and greed of nationalist newspapers, such as Új Nemzedék, which defended the measures ( Joke 5). To circumvent the numerus clausus, many middle-class Jewish families sent their children abroad to study despite the enormous costs and the personal sacrifice ( Joke 6). The law was not only cruel but also wasteful and irrational: it violated the principle of meritocracy. The best minds among high-school graduates who could not afford to leave the country were forced to give up their dreams and learn a trade at home ( Jokes 7–9). A handful, the more desperate among them, committed suicide ( Joke 10). The third law forced poor domestics, who mainly came from rural

Jewish Black Humor  79

areas and who had been gainfully employed by wealthy Jews, such as the banker Simon Krausz, to quit their jobs ( Jokes 11 and 12). 1 Meczie Cream: Use it after lashing! It works!73 2 Spanish reed, hazelnut twigs, and walnut clubs. Seeds are not for sale in Mautner’s Seed Shop.74 3 The FEVÉL has been founded. To cope with the impact of lashing, the Defense League of Threatened Parts (Fenyegetett Részek Védelmi Ligája) has been founded in the capital. Every adult Israelite, irrespective of gender, age, and religion is welcome to join.75 4 The National Union of Price Speculators (árspekulánsok) has been using the Danube, Tisza, and Drava Rivers as the front men for their businesses because even with a stick, the justice system cannot reach their bottoms.76 5 The lashing law. In vain did the secretive and destructive race send the whining newspapers and its group of paid parliamentarians into battle. Our movement has survived baptism by fire; the cane has had the last word. The time of talking is over: with the cane we have our say and teach people that the Juj Nemzedék (the Pain Generation) is the best Hungarian newspaper. Having been driven back into their f lea-ridden burrows in the ghetto, may the Jewish rats never again enter the glorious forum of politics. We cannot allow, in the worn-out disguise of fake liberalism, the return of the international Jewish oligarchy. Never again (after we have raised the price of our paper to two koronas), are we going to put up with higher prices! And who the hell cares what the West has to say? Western public opinion is the voice of the international Jewry and an expression of their paranoia. The Idea will surely win, if everyone subscribes to Juj Nemzedék for at least 1 year, and so long as no honest Christian uses Jewish newspapers for reading purposes. The Jew stole everything from us, but he cannot steal our honor. Beat the Jew while he is still warm!77 6 The musings of Solomon Seiffensteiner: Joseph Leberschmaltz sent his son Zoltán to Leipzig to study. When the son returned, his father asked him: “Well, my son, what did you learn on my good money?” “Philosophy,” said Zoltán. “What is philosophy?” “Philosophy is a science, and with its help, I am going to use to prove to you, my father, that you are not here.” “How come?” “Dad, you are not in Vienna. If you are not in Vienna, then you must be somewhere else. If you are somewhere else, you cannot be here.” The old Leberschmaltz slapped his son so hard that he began to see stars. “Why did you hit me,” Zoltán asked. “Did I slap you in the face? What crazy talk is this! How could I have hit you? You have just proven that I am not even here.” See, this is how people lately talk about the students who are not allowed to enroll at the university. What nonsense is it to say that they are being thrown out of the university? Were they there in the first place?78

80  Jewish Black Humor

7 Shop and musical training together. We have learned that from next year on, those branded as politically unreliable will attend only vocational schools to make gloves. There they will learn to play the bagpipe (kesztyűbe dudálni).79 8 The New Law. Via a new decree, the government tasked school superintendents to ensure that calves (tinók) could study to become oxes (ökrök). The law promises to reduce the meat shortage significantly.80 9 “Petite” Chemical Company. We mix goose fat with pork lard to match the share of national groups [in the general population, BB].81 10 Suicide. Izidor Schwarzkopf, an 18-year-old student who graduated from high-school summa cum laude, committed suicide yesterday because he failed to gain admission to the university. May each and every Jew facing the same dilemma show the same sense of honor and follow his example!82 11 Protest letter. I strongly protest against the proposal by parliamentary representative, László Budaváry, that a Jew should no longer hire Christian domestics. István Kiss István, the servant of Simi Krausz. (Samuel Krausz was a wealthy banker who also financially supported the National Army.)83 12 Female Domestics’ mass conversion. The entire body of female domestics in Budapest appeared in the office of the Jewish Community of Pest and pronounced their intention to convert to Judaism. The reason for the domestics’ horrifying decision is the new Budaváry-Lex, which states that Jewish families no longer can hire Christian domestics. The domestics also declared that they have found Újváry’s proposal more to their taste.84 Black humor was not confined to the two liberal comic magazines; its traces can also be found in editorials and political pamphlets of left-leaning or even communist intellectuals, many of whom were of Jewish descent. The bestknown among these leftist activists was the writer, poet, and humorist Andor Gábor. The author of such famous comic plays as Dollár Papa (Dollar Daddy), and one of the librettists for the hit musical Mágnás Miska (Lord Miska), Gábor was closely associated with the heavily Jewish world of the cabarets and operetta. With some exaggeration, one could describe him as the king of light entertainment before 1914. But Gábor also had a more serious side. Having sided both with the democratic regime and with the Soviet Republic (he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Journalists’ Union and served as the spokesperson for Press and Theater in the summer of 1919), he was forced to f lee to Vienna after the collapse of the communist experiment at the end of July 1919. In exile, he drew attention to the cruelty of the paramilitary groups and exposed the political elite’s responsibility for the atrocities. He particularly liked to poke fun at right-wing newspapers and journalists, who defended the perpetrators and tried to justify extra-legal violence against communists and innocent Jews. His favorite expression and trademark, “say it isn’t so” (Ne mondja) was perfectly suited to cast doubt on

Jewish Black Humor  81

the rumors sold as news during the counterrevolution—as well as to question the motives and the integrity of those who spread them. Gábor used question marks, divided and reconstituted words and entire sentences at will, and played with grammar and logic (all typical of Jewish humor) to highlight the absurdity of the situation. Thus, in one of his bestknown pieces, he ridiculed the police’s assertion that a witness to the White Terror had committed suicide. Gábor surmised that the killers, who had been military or police officers, most likely first tried to ascertain the identity of the witness by asking the typical police question: is this really you (Ön)? Then, they simply murdered (gyilkol) the hapless man. In their report, the police then simply merged two words—and reached the conclusion that the witness had committed suicide (öngyilkosság). The police and the right-wing newspaper called on the public to remain calm and wait patiently until the conclusion of the investigation to find out the identity of the assassins. But, Gábor interjected, the perpetrators’ names were known all along: “they are called Bibó, Salm, Prónay, Osztenburg.”85 There was nothing mysterious about the crime committed and the identity of the perpetrators: the killers were so arrogant they had not even tried to cover their tracks. Those whom the police did finally question came up with the lamest excuses to escape prosecution. One of the suspects, for example, told his interrogators that the victim, named Kohn, committed suicide by jumping off the top of the Catholic Cathedral at midnight. But what is the chance that a Jew, Gábor asked sarcastically, would, in the middle of the night, climb up to the top of a Catholic Church on his own and take a dive? The police who accepted such a claim, Gábor concluded, lacked investigatory skills and logic. Those who had committed such a murder, however, were anything but amateurs.86 Gábor’s pieces on the White Terror fall into the category of subversive humor; his style bears a close resemblance to that of Hašek even if his heroes met a much darker fate. Both sought to expose capriciousness, cruelty, and brute force under the surface of civility and normality; both authors were wedded to the truth and saw it as their mission to unmask lies and those who told them. Thus, in one of his essays, Gábor ridiculed the urban legend (which had been accepted at face value by the right-wing press and frequently cited by state officials) that the young men who assaulted Jews and were responsible for armed robberies were not the soldiers of Horthy’s National Army or members of the patriotic associations but agents provocateurs and communists in stolen uniforms. Gábor also poked fun at the claim advanced by right-wing journalists that the four young men who seriously injured an elderly Jewish man by the name of Názi Braun on the balcony of Hungarian Restaurant only pretended to be the members of the antisemitic and fascist Alliance of Awakened Hungarians (Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete or ÉME). How could they be “fake,” Gábor mused, when the police had found the membership cards in their pockets? In another incident also involving three “fake” nationalists, three men stopped the car of György Szmrecsányi, the vice president of the ÉME at night on Gizella Square. The funny part of the

82  Jewish Black Humor

story was, Gábor intimated, Szmrecsányi purchased the luxury vehicle with the same money that he and his fellow counterrevolutionaries had stolen from the Hungarian Embassy in Vienna during the spring of 1919. Ironically, the attackers thought that the vice president of the violently antisemitic organization was a Jew and wanted to kill him. However, the ÉME leader hit the first one in the face so hard because he “took even the Pope for a Jew”; terrified, his two comrades then simply took off and disappeared into the night. It is a shame though, Gábor mused: it would have made a much better story had the three attackers killed the vice president of the antisemitic organization. In the best tradition of Jewish black humor, Gábor even had a few “nice” words to say about the terrorists, praising their commitment to equality. The attackers took their egalitarianism seriously, he said tongue in cheek, because they did not distinguish between young and old and rich and poor Jews: between those who “dressed in tuxedos and those in kaftans; those who smelled of expensive cologne and those who reeked of garlic.” It would not be long before the radical ÉME turned against their patrons and the counterrevolutionary regime, Gábor predicted. It is rumored that they had warned Regent Horthy to end the “Jewish Wirtschaft,” or else he, his family, and their entire retinue in the Royal Palace would suffer the same fate as the elderly Jew in the Hungarian Restaurant.87

The Antihero Physical violence is never easy. Even aggressive people rarely resort to violence unless the circumstances are strongly in their favor and the weaknesses of their prospective victims promise almost certain success. Violence is rewarding for perpetrators: the process of subjugating, degrading, and destroying victims provides great joy by promoting the sensation of omnipotence among those performing acts of aggression. However, that which is a rare and joyous event for the perpetrators is a tragedy for victims of violence. Physical assault threatens victims’ entire world with collapse; victims lose their mental and physical balance and points of orientation, as if the rug had been pulled from under their feet. Old certainties suddenly collapse, life turns into a nightmare where everything changes its shape and meaning at will, and the most harmless and trivial affairs become threatening. Innocent bystanders suddenly turn into potential prey; one feels as if they must be alert and constantly on the defensive, aware of the fact that despite their best precautions, tragedy might lurk around the corner. Life for such men and women becomes merely a temporary reprieve, a furlough from death. Contemporary Jewish jokes, many of which were eastern imports, testify to this changing moral and cultural climate and disorientation. The reappearance of black humor in the Budapest comic weeklies shows that the historical experience and accumulated wisdom of Polish, Ukrainian and Russian Jews had suddenly become relevant for their Hungarian counterparts. Admittedly, many of the “recycled jokes” lack the succinctness and beauty of

Jewish Black Humor  83

their original ( Joke 1); particularly annoying is the use of fake and degrading names in the Hungarian versions ( Jokes 2 and 3). Despite the distortions in form, the borrowed jokes are able to fulfill their original purpose: they bear witness to the tribulations of Jews after the war and their crisis of identity. The classical Jewish joke about Reb Chaim could be read as self-criticism (poking fun at the alleged Jewish tendency to overthink) and insecurity produced by voluntary and peaceful assimilation. The Hungarian version, on the other hand, is clearly connected to violence and the paranoia of the psychological and verbal attacks Jews had experienced during the counterrevolution. It is no accident that many of the Jewish jokes published in this period are sad or even fatalistic; they suggest that misfortune was the key element in the Jewish story, and, thus, one had no other option than to resign themselves to his or her fate ( Joke 4). The main function of black humor was to protect individuals and the Jewish community against the debilitating psychological effects of militia and mob violence. The jokes offered practical advice on how to avoid injuries, overcome fear, and preserve dignity; they also provided models for respectable behavior. The protagonists in Jewish jokes were not the typical male role models and heroes one encountered in contemporary novels and films. They were neither sneidig army officers nor brash university students or the dandy sons of millionaires, who answered violence in kind and responded to insults by challenging their attackers to a duel. The chief character in Jewish humor was normally a middle-aged and plain-looking civilian (man), who liked to complain and ponder the ills of this world (Cartoon 2.6). He was not a hero in the traditional sense of the word; but neither was he a coward. The protagonist’s main concern was defense: how to survive the attacks and preserve his dignity, composure, and sense of humor in the process ( Joke 5). The counterattack was limited to verbal response and witticism at the expense of the attackers ( Jokes 6–8). 1 A Jew is walking down the street and suddenly hears a stranger calling from behind him: “Reb Chaim, Reb Chaim!” The Jew shudders and murmurs: “Where does this man knows me from? After all, I am not even called Reb Chaim!”88 2 At the railway station in Becskerek, where this story took place. The train stops for 5 minutes. Someone screams: “Herr Meyer.” A passenger sticks his head out the window and is slapped in the face. The injured man gets off the train and takes his complaint to the station master. The station master asks his name. “My name is Krausz,” says the man. Then the station master: “so why are you making such a big fuss? You are not even called Herr Meyer.”89 3 Nótl Backzahn travels from Munkács to Sziget. On the train, he meets Palte Schmiertiegl. He looks at him for a while and asks: are you by any chance Mendele Eierschmalz from Dindes (Gyöngyös)? Palte responds: “No.” “I did not think so,” says Nótl. “You don’t even look like him.”90

84  Jewish Black Humor

Cartoon 2.6  His ration.

What happened to you? Nothing. I just received my ration.91

Jewish Black Humor  85

4 Gavrile Péncz, a peddling Jew (batyús zsidó) from Paks, is on his way, with a heavy bundle on his back, to the market in Izsák. Tired, he decides to light his pipe. He strikes the match first, but the wind blows the light out. He strikes a second time, but the wind extinguishes the f lame again. He wants to try for the third time but then realizes that he has no matches left. He puts his pipe back into his pocket and says, “Why do I need to smoke all the time?”92 5 Liebe Az Ojság! Samu Braun enters Orczy Café with bandages on his head. “They cracked my skull,” he said. “Why did they do that?” they asked him. “Because I told the truth.” “What did you say?” “That I am a Jew.”93 6 Bomb etiquette: How should we behave in the presence of a bomb? Because the police and the bomb experts are on vacation, Az Ojság gives advice on the matter. The best thing that one can do is to frequent places where there are no bombs… you should always remain calm and cool in the proximity of a bomb… you should not rock or push a bomb to the wall… if a bomb walks around with its ignition wire already burning, you should give the bomb a warning. If it does not follow your advice, notify the police: they will write down the [bomb’s] name. Do not take Dohány Street [place of the main synagogue, BB]. If, despite all these precautions, a bomb does go off when you are around, please pay close attention to the color and smell of the smoke. Can you identify its elements? Final advice: prepare your last testament before you approach a bomb. You can leave the rest to the police.94 7 Solution/Name. “Your Name?” “Izidor Rozenduft.” “Religion?” “Well, you know, I have a good sense of humor. So, let’s agree that I’ll give you ten thousand koronas.”95 8 Violence at night: A co-religionist (hitsorsos) walks home at night on the main boulevard, when four young men stop him. “Identify yourself, Jew!” The fellow believer gets nervous but doesn’t lose his cool. “Since the gentlemen already know that I am a Jew, he wonders, why should I then identify myself?”96 Despite his apparent humiliation, the protagonist proves himself to be vastly superior, both morally and intellectually, to his tormentors; instead of brute force, he uses his superior intellect to outfox and ridicule his adversaries. Black humor proved to be subversive at many levels: among other things, it questioned the validity of the traditional masculine ideal, gender norms, and accepted forms of behavior. The ideal Hungarian male in the early twentieth century was a soldier rather than a civilian; a civil servant rather than an intellectual or a liberal professional; a provincial rather than an urbanite; a man of action and strong convictions rather than a man of thought, hesitation, and conf licting emotions. The protagonist in Jewish jokes lacked what the Hungarian public regarded as virtus: arrogance, masculine pride, and the readiness

86  Jewish Black Humor

to resort to violence to defend the honor code of his class. The jokes prefer passive resistance to direct confrontation and wisdom to grand gestures. Not to resist heavily armed, violent, racist, and often drunken soldiers certainly made sense and was good advice. The vast majority of civilians, irrespective of their religious background, complied with the orders of militia men. However, historical studies show a minority of Jewish men, mainly war veterans in the capital and in provincial towns, responded to aggression in kind. They also show that Jewish armed resistance normally ended in defeat due to the imbalance in numbers, the lack of weapons, the complicity of the local elite in militia crimes, and the hostility of the local population.97 The chief character in Jewish jokes in this period may have followed living examples. But the weak and clumsy civilian, pacifist, and equally rebellious, or at least anti-authoritarian “small man” was also an established character and recurring topos in Jewish jokes and anecdotes: a literary, rather than real-life character, and a product of the writer’s imagination. The passive-yet-dignified antihero owed its popularity among Jews to an old literary tradition as opposed to recent political events. In Jewish jokes, it was life that had come to resemble art, rather than stories and characters from art that ref lected or imitated reality. Jewish humor traditionally celebrated men and women who were quick on their feet: the opportunists, tricksters, and petty crooks, who by using their superior wit were able to climb out of every hole, survive, and even make a living in the most hostile of circumstances (Cartoon 2.7). This trickster had his heyday in the chaotic period after the war, especially during the White Terror (Cartoon 2.8). Shrewd Jews allegedly found ways to go about their daily business (almost) as usual during the White Terror ( Joke 1). Disguised as “pure-blooded” Magyar peasants, Jewish peddlers were able to outfox their adversaries and ply their trades in peace ( Joke 2). “Illegal aliens” from the east escaped deportation by using their superior rhetorical skills (Cartoon 2.9). 1 The Man Whom Nobody Touched. “Tell me, how is it possible? The whole time, Svarc has been going calmly about his business, and no one has touched him.” “You know, Svarc is very shrewd. Since February he has been traveling in an ambulance car.”98 2 Market Day. The village of Izsák held a weekly market, and I decided to go. I was wandering around the tents for hours to find someone to interview. Finally, I found a handsome peasant who sold needles, threats, scissors, knives, knobs, shoelaces, soaps, and similar things. I tried to strike up a conversation. “Why do you do this? Doesn’t your land produce enough?” The peasant looked the other way and gave no answer. I continued to press him with the same question. “Wouldn’t it be smarter, Sir, if you plowed and planted, and sold wheat, meat, hens, and eggs instead?” The vendor said [in Yiddish, BB] between his teeth, without even looking at me: “Aber lassen se mech mit diese Narischkátn (Please leave me alone with this nonsense).”99

Jewish Black Humor  87

Cartoon 2.7  True Honesty. Jantef: I am telling you, this Dalfi Langfinger is an honest man! Zéleg: What? He belongs on the gallows! Jantef: I am telling you, he is an honest man. He looks like a crook, and indeed he is a crook. So, he does not fool anyone. And a man who does not fool anyone is honest.100

While certainly entertaining, these stories slightly exaggerated if not necessarily the courage of opportunists, the efforts that Jews still had to expend in order to circumvent restrictions, defeat malice, and escape violence. Empirical studies show that in a few cases, Jewish merchants hired the militia men to settle scores with their rivals or force their clients to pay back loans or return

88  Jewish Black Humor

Cartoon 2.8  Practical Israelite.

Under the protection of the White Guard.101

equipment. Even when the enforcers played this role, there remained the very real possibility that they would turn against their Jewish clients. “Protection” often turned out to be a code word for extortion. There was very little

Jewish Black Humor  89

Cartoon 2.9  A Viennese joke.

Haven’t you been expelled? Of course, would I be here if I hadn’t been deported?102

opportunity for persons to avoid detection, escape harassment and persecution, and lead a normal life in postwar Budapest. Some Jewish peddlers, petty merchants, or pedestrians may have, indeed, tried to hide their identity by wearing crosses. However, the image of Jewish opportunists was less inspired by real-life events and characters than by stereotypes and literary tradition. In small agrarian towns like Izsák, local militias regularly vandalized the stands and either destroyed or stole the wares of Jewish peddlers. Since many of the merchants were local, they could not hide their identity. The majority of Jewish “illegal aliens” could not escape detention and deportation. The arrest

90  Jewish Black Humor

and incarceration of “illegal aliens” in internment camps like Zalaegerszeg, where they faced starvation and physical abuse at the hands of their captors and ultimately deportation, continued even after the dissolution of the last paramilitary groups at the end of 1921.103 Jokes revolved around the old topos of the loveable small-time crook and opportunist who used his superior intellectual and rhetorical skills to extricate himself from trouble. In traditional Jewish jokes before 1914, the trickster was normally a beggar, marriage broker, merchant, or petty criminal. The antihero was the direct opposite of the hegemonic male ideal in terms of appearance, norms, and behavior. Jewish humor recognized the inherent weakness of human character ( Joke 1). In jokes, Jewish authors expressed sympathy for the weak, downtrodden, and poor; in lieu of fanatical nationalism, subservience to the wealthy and powerful, and blind obedience to the state and its representatives, they placed logic, linguistic dexterity, and skepticism at the top of their values and at the center of Jewish identity ( Jokes 2–4). Jewish black humor did not idealize or worship the antihero, however; indeed, by encouraging the readers to enjoy the predicament of the smalltime crook, authors sought to prevent their readers from fully identifying with the protagonist. For this reason, black humor was not only subversive but also self-effacing and self-critical. Shrewdness and opportunism might be necessary to survive, but, the desire to survive at any price should not be regarded as the ultimate goal and supreme value. 1 In the Jewish cemetery a small child is trying to make out the epitaphs of the deceased. He turns to his father: Papa, why don’t the ganefek (crooks) ever die?104 2 At the German-French border. “What is in it?” asks the border guard, as he pulls a bottle out of the luggage of a Lemberg Jew. “What is in it? Nothing interesting; only holy water from Lourdes.” The border guard opens the bottle, smells its contents, and says: “but it is pure cognac!” The Jew from Lemberg exclaims: “another miracle!”105 3 A Jew is crossing the border. “What is in your sack?” asks the border guard. “Nothing, only animal feed for my canary.” The border guard takes a second look: “but this is coffee! No one has ever seen a canary that eats coffee!” The Jews shrug his shoulders and say: “like it or not, it won’t get anything else!”106 4 Schwarz and Grün, two Jewish beggars, are plying their trade on the stairs of the Basilica. Schwarz carries a sign around his neck that reads: “I am a Catholic beggar”; Grün’s sign, on the other hand, says: “I am a Jewish beggar.” Leaving the mass, the worshippers, to annoy Grün, give Schwarz a lot of money; Grün, however, did not get anything. A priest witnessing the event takes pity on the hapless beggar. He goes up to him and with empathy in his voice says, “my son, you belong to different religion. Don’t you think that you should be begging in front of a synagogue?” “No, my father,” Schwarz responds. “I feel that I am

Jewish Black Humor  91

at the right place.” The priest shrugs his shoulders and leaves. “Did you hear that Schwarz,” Grün turns to his colleague. “A Goy wants to teach us about business (özlet).”107 In traditional Jewish anecdotes, the fool appeared in two forms: the schlemiel and the schlimazel. The village fool, the schlemiel, was a simpleton: he lacked the cognitive abilities, accumulated knowledge, and social skills needed to succeed in life. Unable to understand the world, not to mention master its challenges, the schlemiel remained a child at heart; naïve, superstitious, and socially clumsy, he had been taken advantage of by unscrupulous people and normally ended up a loser. The second type of fool, the schlimazel, in contrast, was smart, even too smart for his own good, as well as socially adept and culturally sophisticated. Unlike the village fool, the schlimazel was able to digest large amounts of information; he thought logically and could have made the right choices in life. What he lacked was not cognitive ability but certain character traits and the resolve to make up his mind. Because he did not have a moral core, the schlimazel was torn between different options; indecisive, tormented by self-doubt, and constantly changing his opinions (and friends), the schlimazel normally provoked distrust and often ended up a pariah like the schlemiel. The readers of traditional Jewish tales responded to the plight of the two types of fools differently, however. While the fate of the village simpleton generated their sympathy and even love, readers observed the downfall of the smart but indecisive and unprincipled schlimazel with a mixture of indifference and malicious joy. The protagonist in modern Jewish jokes, according to Jay Boyer, represents a combination of these two traditional characters: he is situated “midway between the two points on a continuum, embodying the failing of both extremes, moving first toward the right, then back toward the left, forever betwixt and between.” The protagonist in Jewish jokes is “defined by incapacities rather than his virtues. He is one moment rebelling, one moment trying to accommodate the demands on him; remain the same or change everything or change his frame of reference completely. He is an anti-hero.” European novels force readers to choose between accommodation and rebellion and normally praise the latter as the right choice and correct course of action. Jewish black humor, on the other hand, holds that neither option is still available or even desirable. Humor originates from the conf lict between the two and “from the fact that the protagonist in the joke is unable to recognize and admit this fact.”108 The opportunist in Jewish black jokes in Hungary after the First World War, too, was a combination of these two traditional characters. Because he had been the victim of circumstances and was subject to the cruelty and hostility of the outside, non-Jewish world, he had a claim on readers’ and listeners’ sympathy. The nervous laughter provoked by his plight stemmed from the fact that he did not deserve his fate and also that the audience could easily put themselves in his shoes. However, the audience also recognized the moral failings of the protagonist, which drove an emotional wedge between

92  Jewish Black Humor

the antihero and his fans, provoking a feeling of Schadenfreude. Many of these jokes, thus, fall into the category of self-critical and self-depreciating humor. Their frequent appearance underscores the strength of a more recent theory about the origins of humor. In contrast to “the superiority theory of humor,” which emphasizes the alleged physical and moral superiority of the storyteller and, more importantly, the attempt of the joker (for example, Prónay in his diary) to place himself in a superior position in order to, i.e., subjugate, humiliate, and destroy his opponents, the “inferiority theory of humor” locates the source of joy in self-criticism, self-deprecation, and the laughing person’s sense of inadequacy.109 Jewish black humor during the civil war worked on three different levels. On the first and most immediate level, the jokes, anecdotes, and cartoons provided practical advice to victims or potential victims of violence concerning how to fend off attacks or deal with the consequences of violence: how to preserve or restore their dignity and self-respect as citizens, private individuals, and Jews. Black humor was subversive humor. It not only criticized the state, its institutions, and the majority society, which had made possible and tolerated terror; it also questioned the universality (thus negating the hegemony) of the values and ideals of the majority society and dominant social groups. By rejecting the hero cult as both harmful and hypocritical, Jewish jokes exposed the shallowness of mainstream culture and the vanity, arrogance, and outright stupidity of its protagonists.110 But the function of Jewish black humor was not limited to critiques of the majority society and official culture: it also offered an alternative system of values and even a new vision of man: more civilized, less aggressive, humbler, wiser, and more at peace with himself or herself than the prevailing value system. At the second level, jokes poked fun at their own advice and ridiculed the character and values they had just proposed as an alternative. Admittedly, self-criticism and self-deprecation in black humor had its limits: it should not be confused with self-hate or antisemitism. The jokes poke fun at the opportunist who tries to survive at any cost, but, in contrast to antisemitic texts, they do not demonize Jews. Jewish black humor does not provide a compromise between, or create a synthesis out of, two different perspectives and value systems.111 Instead of a synthesis, the jokes take the audience to a higher, third level. At the third stage, the jokes force readers and listeners to go beyond their everyday problems and the obvious failings of state and society and seek answers to the larger epistemological and ethical questions underlying the joke’s premise. On this third level, Jewish jokes function as literature, philosophy, and theology. They deal with such vital questions as what can be known about the world?; what is knowledge and what is truth?, and if and how it can be expressed?; what makes someone’s behavior moral or immoral?; and how is moral behavior connected to knowledge and social reality rather than practical advice and everyday morality? Normally, the jokes provide no solid answer to such questions; instead, they seem to suggest that truth and morality are always contextual, that what is truth and exemplary

Jewish Black Humor  93

moral behavior in one context can turn out to be dishonest and morally wrong under different circumstances.112 Since life remains full of contradictions, is in constant f lux, and because no two problems are ever the same, there can be no perfect advice or ideal solution to any problem. At the third level, Jewish humor takes its readers and listeners out of the real world, liberates them from the constraints of life, and transports those seeking help, solace, and answers to deeper questions that swirl around the world of the imagination and the surreal. There is no real solution to any problem in the world; yet, if there is still an ideal solution, it must exist only in the imagination and in high culture: in the world of literature, art, and philosophy.113 The plots and protagonists of Jewish jokes, despite their uncanny resemblance to real-life situations and characters, came from Jewish cultural tradition and European literature. Their proximity to high culture did not negate their practical functions; if anything, it only underscored the relevance of literature, art, and philosophy to people’s everyday lives.

Notes 1 Blake Hobby and Herold Bloom, eds., Bloom’s Literary Themes. Dark Humor (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010). 2 Laurie Clancy, “Running Experiments Off: An Interview,” in William Rodney Allen, ed., Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988), pp. 46–56. 3 Arthur Asa Berger, The Genius of the Jewish Joke (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1993), p. 117. 4 Dan Ben-Amos, “The ‘Myth’ of Jewish Humor,” Western Folklore 32/22 (April 1973), pp. 112–131, here p. 117. 5 Henry Eilbirt, What is a Jewish Joke? An Excursion into Jewish Humor (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993), pp. 34; 35; 278. 6 Carolyn Miller, “Are Jews Funnier than Non-Jews,” in Avner Ziv and Anat Zajdman, eds., Semites and Stereotypes. Characteristics of Jewish Humor (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), pp. 59–70. 7 Sarah Blacher Cohen, “Introduction: The Varieties of Jewish Humor,” in Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 1–15, here p. 4. 8 Mary Gluck, A láthatatlan zsidó Budapest (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek, 2016), pp. 108–110. 9 Moritz Gottlieb Saphir (1795–1858) was born in the village of Lovasberény in Hungary in a pious Orthodox family. His father, a wealthy merchant, Israel Gottlieb Saphir, wanted him to become a businessman. The young Saphir, who had a retentive memory and a talent for learning languages, had different plans, however. Having attended Jewish religious schools in Pressburg and Prague, Saphir decided to embark on a career as a journalist and writer in the early 1820s. Seen as a troublemaker, however, he was dismissed from his jobs as a publicist, first in Pest and later in Vienna (even being forced to leave the Austrian town in 1825). He then moved to Berlin. He was expelled from the Prussian capital for the same reasons in 1829, so he set up a residence in Munich, where he edited several newspapers. Soon, however, he was forced to f lee again, this time to Paris, where for a year, he shared a room with the famous German poet and publicist Ludwig Börne. Under Heine’s inf luence,

94  Jewish Black Humor

10 11 12

13 14

Saphir converted to Lutheranism in 1832, soon after his return to Munich. His conversion smoothed his path to the inf luential position of superintendent of the local theater; in the 1830s, he continued to work as the editor-in-chief of several tabloids, which he founded and owned. Although Saphir spoke several languages, he never fully mastered Hungarian. Still, Jewish religious leaders in Hungary considered him both a disgrace and a grave threat and helped prevent the publication of his best-known satires: Der falsche Kaschtan. E Schnoke in zwei Akten and Die falsche Catalani (both of which had been written before 1848 and circulated in what we now call samizdat form until 1900). See Katalin Fenyves, Képzelt Asszimiláció (Budapest: Corvina, 2010), pp. 47–48; 57–58. “Édes atyám,” in Adolf Ágai, Az örök zsidó. Régi naplók, életképek (1862–1906) (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek, 2010), pp. 12–66; here p. 61. For a more positive evaluation of these decades, see Pieter Judson, The Habsburg Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), pp. 218–269. Adolf Ágai (1836–1916) was born in the town of Jánoshalma, into a Jewish immigrant family from Galicia. His father, who was a doctor, changed residences frequently; since the family then lived in the Croatian town of Orahovica, the child Adolf spoke only Yiddish and Croatian as his first and second languages. The family then moved to Pécel, Nagyabony, and Budapest, where he learned Hungarian. As a teenager, he attended the Evangelical gymnasium in Pest and later the gymnasium in Nagykőrös, where he studied Hungarian literature from the famous poet János Arany. In the 1850s, Ágai studied medicine at the University of Vienna. However, like Saphir, he became attracted to journalism early on. As a fervent nationalist and principled liberal, he dressed in Hungarian national dress during his university years in Vienna as a protest against continued political repression at home. After his return to Budapest in 1862, he switched professions and fully devoted his time and attention to journalism, literature, and politics. In the 1850s and 1860s, he worked for several newspapers and cultural magazines, such as Pesti Napló (Pest Diary), Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday News), Hon (Homeland), and Magyarország és a Nagyvilág (Hungary and the World). He was also a regular contributor to several Hungarian and German comic weeklies such as Bolond Miksa (Crazy Mike) and Fliegende Blätter. Drawing his inspiration from the German Fliegende Blätter and the British Punch magazine, and with the financial and political support of the liberal political establishment, Ágai, founded Borsszem Jankó in 1868. Ágai was a talented and prolific writer and an even better organizer and publisher. From 1871 on, he edited the first children’s magazine, Kis Lap (Little paper), and under the name Forgó Bácsi (Uncle Sunf lower), he even wrote children’s stories. In appreciation for his accomplishments, Ágai was accepted as a regular member of powerful professional organizations including the prestigious Kisfaludi Társaság (Kisfaludi Society) in the final decade of the nineteenth century. He died during the war in 1916, but his main work, Borsszem Jankó, survived the war and remained part of the cultural scene until 1938. Aladár Komjáti, “Ágai Adolf Zsidósága. Egy Magyar Zsidó a Múlt Században,” pp. 221–228; Ágai, “Édes atyám,” pp. 12–66; Géza Buzinkay, Borsszem Jankó és társai: Magyar élclapok és karikatúrák a XIX. Század második felében (Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1983), pp. 38–70. Mary Gluck, A Láthatatlan Zsidó Budapest (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek, 2016), pp. 114–119. Géza Buzinkay, “Budapest Jokes and Comic Weeklies as Mirrors of Cultural Assimilation,” in Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske, eds., Budapest and New York: Studies in Metropolitan Transformation, 1870–1930 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994), pp. 224–247; here, pp. 243–244.

Jewish Black Humor  95 15 A student of János Arany, Adolf Ágai was one of the greatest storytellers in nineteenth-century Hungary and a friend of the most celebrated Romantic novelist Mór Jókai, who also collected and published anecdotes in his own comic weekly. Ágai harbored no hostility to anecdotes or to the rural world: in fact, he penned hundreds of adomas during his long and illustrious career as a writer. See Adolf Ágai (Csicseri Bors), Ha’ SSzólljék. Dombszögi és Bugaczi Mokány Berczi Viselt Dolgai, Két Kötetben, Jankó János és Garay Ákos Rajzaival (Gyoma: Kern Izidor Nyomdája, 1910). 16 The weekly was the comic magazine of choice for the Jewish middle and lower-middle classes. However, it also appealed to the social elite, rural civil servants, non-Jewish liberal professionals, artisans, and shopkeepers. Borsszem Jankó owed its popularity to the high quality of its jokes and caricatures. The editor-in-chief, Adolf Ágai, gathered an exceptionally talented team. His staff included, among others, Ludwig Hevesi, Lajos Dóczy, Jenő Rákosi, and Árpád Berczik, as well as the cartoonist Karl Klietsch. Hevesi was considered one of the leading theoreticians and critics of the art nouveau in Vienna. Dóczy was a popular poet and librettist of operettas, served as press chief in the foreign ministry, and was later awarded the title of baron. Rákosi made a name for himself first as a playwright; later, he became a media magnate, the editor and owner of the conservative newspaper Budapesti Hírlap, and a member of the Upper House of the parliament. Berczik also started out as a playwright; later, he worked as head of the press office of the Prime Minister. Klietsch was one of the bestknown cartoonists in Europe; he later moved to Vienna and London and made a career for himself as Charles Kley. See Gluck, A Láthatatlan Zsidó Budapest, pp. 111–113. 17 Ágnes Tamás, Nemzetiségek görbe tükörben (Budapest: Pesti Kalligram Kft., 2014), pp. 85–90; 122–123. 18 György Kövér, A tiszaeszlári dráma—Társadalomtörténeti látószögek (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2011). 19 Adolf Ágai, Salamon Seiffensteiner, Abrincs!: 150 Jordány Vicz (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1879), p. 83. 20 Stephen M. Berk, Year of Crisis, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1985). 21 Ibid., p. 54. 22 János Gyurgyák, A Zsidókérdés Magyarországon: Politikai Eszmetörténet (Budapest: Osiris, 2001). 23 Ibid., p. 28. 24 Miklós Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe (Budapest: Gondolat, 2015), p. 212. This joke might be of antisemitic origins, but nevertheless enjoyed considerable popularity among Jews, as its inclusion in the anthology of Jewish jokes shows. 25 Ibid. 26 Kedves Svógerleben! Koszonom a te invitáczión. De nem fogadhatok el. Ed kissé vagyok beteg és nem szeretek naid társaság. Majd otthon, az én soládi kurben fogok lesakterolni a magma Solmosi Eszterke. Szervos, Spitzig Iczig Gluck, A Láthatatlan Zsidó Budapest, p. 136. 27 Ibid., p. 137. 28 Kérdezték emgem a molt minapjában, hojd én is kikuerueszkoedoem-i mogomat? Feleltem rá: oljan balandot már nem teszem. Mert most todom, hojd a sakterok nem bántanak a lányaimat; de ha keresztény hajadonok lenének: akor nadjon valószinoe, hojd bizomosan lesakterolnák ueket.” Gluck, A Láthatatlan Zsidó Budapest, p. 137. 29 Küszönöm Iczig—feleltem. Tetted naidon jól. Forcsa világ! Mikor vadjok ébren, okorják engemet ogyonötni antiszemitok; mikar meg alszok, okorják ogyonötni

96  Jewish Black Humor

30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53

54

antikürüsztének. See György Kövér, “Seiffensteiner Salamon lidérces álmai,” 2000. Irodalmi és társadalmi lap 7 (2006), accessed September 18, 2020, http:// ketezer.hu/2006/07/seiffensteiner-salamon-liderces-almai/. See Béla Bodó, “The White Terror, Newspapers and the Evolution of Hungarian Anti-Semitism after WWI,” Yad Vashem Studies 34 (Spring 2006), pp. 45–85. In 1920, several paramilitary groups set up residence in the Hotel Britannia. Located close to the Western Railway Station in the heavily Jewish fifth district, Hotel Britannia was a perfect place to control traffic, rob businesses, and harass civilians. Az Ojság, December 10, 1921. Az Ojság, September 3, 1921. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Az Ojság, July 15 1920. Borsszem Jankó, June 13, 1920. Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Az Ojság, September 30, 1922. Az Ojság, September 25, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, January 11, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, November 21, 1920. The menu card includes: Only for Jews [csak zsidóknak]—violence soup [erőszakleves; instead of erőlevel which is a strong beef broth, BB], Jewish schnitzel [zsidó pecsenye—this is in reference to the burning of political prisoners alive by Prónay’s men, BB], cured tongue [pácolt nyelv, a reference to the militias’ practice of cutting out the tongues of their victims, BB], stuffed bomb [töltött bomba], fried swordfish [kiránott kardhal]; if he refuses to die then one more time (ha nem hal akkor még egyszer), etc. Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Borsszem Jankó, April 4, 1920. The ditty went like this: “Erger, Berger, Schlossberger/Minden Zsidó gazember/Akár bankár, akar más/Kenyere a csalás.” [“Ebenezer Grün or Cohen, Every Jew is a dirty con/Whether banker or greengrocer/his bread is won by no means koscher.”] See Ignác Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century (Budapest: Osiris, 2010), p. 111. Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Borsszem Jankó, May 23, 1920. Az Ojság, March 20, 1921. Nyakleves means both slap on the neck and neck soup. This plays on the word mushroom soup (gombaleves). Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Gábor Gyáni, Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin de Siècle Budapest (New York: Columbia University Press, Eastern European Monographs, 2005); John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture (New York: Grove Press, 1994). The title is a pun on the name of a liberal daily Az Újság (the News). Az Ojság. August 15, 1920. Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say about the Jews (New York: Quill, 1992), p. 17. Desanka Schwara, Humor und Toleranz—Ostjüdische Anekdoten als historische Quelle von/Lebenswelten osteuropäischer Juden (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1996), p. 37; Avner Ziv, “Psycho-social Aspects of Jewish Humor in Israel and in the Diaspora,” in Avner Ziv, ed., Jewish Humor: Classics in Communication and Mass Culture (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997), pp. 47–71; here p. 54. Jacob Richman, Laughs from Jewish Lore (New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939), xiv, cited by Aviva Atlani, “The Ha-Ha Holocaust: Exploring Levity Amidst the Ruins and Beyond in Testimony, Literature and Film Beyond in Testimony, Literature and Film” (PhD diss., University of Western Ontario, 2014), p. 21, accessed September 21, 2021, https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/

Jewish Black Humor  97

55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

viewcontent.cgi?article=3776&context=etd; Richard Raskin, Life Is Like a Glass of Tea. Studies of Classic Jewish Jokes (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1992). Theodor Reik, Jewish Wit (New York: Gamut Press, 1962), p. 212. Cohen, “Introduction: The Varieties of Jewish Humor,” p. 4. Henry Eilbirt, What Is a Jewish Joke? An Excursion Into Jewish Humor (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993), pp. 34; 35; 278. Harvey Mindess, Laughter & Liberation (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011), p. 49. Emanuel S. Goldsmith, “Sholom Aleichem’s Humor of Affirmation and Survival,” in Ziv and Zajdman, Semites and Stereotypes. Characteristics of Jewish Humor, pp. 13–27, here 15. Az Ojság, April 29, 1922. This and the next three jokes make references to the terrorist attack on a Jewish club in Erzsébetváros in April 1922, which targeted Jewish and non-Jewish, liberal and democratic politicians, public figures, as well as innocent civilians. Az Ojság, April 14, 1922. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Az Ojság, September 30, 1922. Károly Ereky was one of the most noted antisemitic agitators in the national parliament between 1919 and 1922. Borsszem Jankó, April 4, 1920. Az Ojság, April 14, 1922. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Az Ojság, August 15, 1920. Az Ojság, August 15, 1920. Az Ojság, September 25, 1920. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. This joke makes reference to the infamous paramilitary leader Iván Héjjas and the Minister of Defense Károly Soós. See Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. Endre Nagy, Így Írom Én az Ojságot (Budapest: Ojság, 1921), p. 41. Ibid., p. 46. This joke makes reference to the name of the irredentist organization, Defense League to Protect the Territorial Integrity of Hungary (Magyarország Területi Épsége Védelmi Ligája or TEVÉL) founded in 1919; Ibid., p. 124. Ár in Hungarian means both f lood and price. Az Ojság, August 15, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, July 4, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, December 7, 1919. Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, July 4, 1920. Az Ojság, August 15, 1920. Az Ojság, August 15, 1920. This is a reference to the names of some of the most infamous paramilitary leaders and their chief lieutenants, such as Dénes Bibó, Hermann Salm, Pál Prónay, and Gyula Osztenburg. Andor Gábor “Helyreállott,” Bécsi Magyar Újság, March 25, 1920, in Robert Major, 25 év ellenforradalmi sajtó (Budapest: Cserépfalvi, 1971), pp. 71–73. Andor Gábor, “Az igazi és az ál,” Bécsi Magyar Újság, June 12, 1920, in Major, 25 év ellenforradalmi sajtó, pp. 93–95. The clue to the joke is the tension between action and words. The protagonist concludes from the man’s action that the stranger must know him; the stranger is also calling him by the wrong name. Since he knew him, the stranger might be right: his real name might be, indeed, Chaim. Miklós Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe (Budapest: Gondolat, 2014), p. 278.

98  Jewish Black Humor 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 1 01 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

112 113

Ágai, Seiffensteiner Salamon adomái, p. 80. Ibid., p. 80. Borsszem Jankó, November 17, 1919. Ibid., p. 115. Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Az Ojság, September 2, 1922. Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. Nagy, A bölcs rabbi tréfái, p. 77. See the chapter on defamation; Béla Bodó, The White Terror: Antisemitic and Political Violence in Hungary, 1919–1921 (London: Routledge, 2019). Borsszem Jankó, November 14, 1920. Az Ojság, April 29, 1922. Adolf Ágai, Salamon Seiffensteiner, Abrincs!: 150 Jordány Vicz (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1879), p. 96. Borsszem Jankó, September 14, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, November 16, 1919. Bodó, The White Terror, pp. 137–152. Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe, p. 159. Ibid., p. 215. Ibid. Ibid., p. 29. Jay Boyer, “The Schlemiezel: Black humor and the Shtetle Tradition,” in Ziv and Zajdman, Semites and Stereotypes, pp. 3–12. Robert Solomon, “Are the Three Stooges Funny? Certainly! (or When Is It OK to Laugh?),” in Joel Rudinow and Anthony Graybosch, eds., Ethics and Values in the Information Age (South Melbourne: Wadsworth Publishing, 2002). Christie Davis, “Exploring the Thesis of Self-Deprecating Jewish Sense of Humor,” in Ziv and Zajdman, Semites and Stereotypes, pp. 29–44; here 31. This reminds me of the famous joke by Sholom Aleichem (1859–1916). It is about the dispute between two students who turn to their rabbi to pass judgment on their case. After hearing their arguments, the rabbi declares that both sides are right. But how could both be right, a third student asks? The rabbi then responds: “You’re right, too!” The joke entered American popular culture via the 1964 Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, which is based on Aleichem’s novel entitled Tevye the Milkman (Tewje der milchiker) (1894 and 1916). A film with the same title as the musical was released in 1971. See Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe, p. 12. Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe, p. 17. Ibid., pp. 281–282.

3 Antidefamation Humor

The jokes, anecdotes, and caricatures published in the comic weeklies and disseminated on the streets helped defend the dignity and preserve the sanity of the victims of violent assaults during the White Terror. They provided advice on how to evade threats and behave in dangerous situations. They ridiculed the perpetrators of violence and their accomplices, exposed their motives and real character, and exposed the less obvious economic, social, and political causes of violence. Black humor functioned as a form of self-criticism, identifying character traits and patterns of behavior Jews considered harmful and problematic for their community. Self-depreciative humor was full of contradictions: the jokes and anecdotes that belong in this category relied on stereotypes that had anti-Jewish and antisemitic origins. Other topoi, such as the image of the loveable small-time Jewish crook and opportunist, had been part of Jewish humor for at least a century and were certainly less harmful than the demonized images spread by antisemitic propaganda. While they provided solace and strengthened the will to survive, these essentially negative images were unlikely, in the context of the postwar crisis, to endear Jews to the majority population. Self-deprecating humor not only ridiculed and criticized Jews: under the disguise of self-criticism, it exposed bourgeois hypocrisy and questioned many of the dominant values and ideals of mainstream society. Jewish humor was not revolutionary, however. Utilizing the best traditions of mainstream European liberalism, such humor promoted self-ref lection and self-improvement though constant adaptation to the ever-changing environment. Antidefamation humor, which is the subject of this chapter, served a more obvious goal. Directed outward rather than inward, these jokes, anecdotes, and caricatures aimed to defend the honor and reputation of Jews as a collective. Black humor was mainly about the integrity of the body and soul of the individual; in contrast, antidefamation humor served to defeat the antisemitism and anti-Semites, who wanted to harm Jews, reverse the achievements of Jewish emancipation, and reinforce old and construct new social, cultural, and emotional barriers. In contrast to the more private black humor, antidefamation jokes sought to sway public opinion and inf luence political decision-making. Black humor was mainly about psychology; antidefamation

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224389-3

100  Antidefamation Humor

humor, however, used language and stereotypical images—as well as politics and the power of the microphone—to win the hearts and souls of listeners. It was, in brief, about Deutungshoheit, that is, about the power to interpret and explain public events and recent developments, rule the airwaves, dominate discussions, and decide the outcome of ideological and political debates. Ultimately, it was not only about the past but also the present and the future of Jews in Hungarian and European society.

The Topos of Jews as Shirkers of Their Military Duties The function of antidefamation jokes was to refute new and more pernicious stereotypical images, which spread like wildfire after the war. Each of these new stereotypes posed a serious threat to the Jewish community. They were more than rumors and innuendoes, which passed quickly without doing much damage, but grave accusations and charges that changed attitudes and informed policies. The first of these new stereotypes described Jews as the merchants of death and as war profiteers; the second implied that Jewish men did not pull their weight in the war and that many, indeed, the majority, had failed to do their military duty. Accusations of war profiteering appeared in newspapers and political speeches after the early losses and in the context of exposed corruption and bottlenecks in the war economy already during the first year of the war. Newspapers, not only the Christian Socialists press but also Jewish-owned liberal dailies, regularly published the names of companies that had supplied the troops with poorly made supplies. The large majority of these companies were in Jewish hands. The newspapers’ obsession with the religious and ethnic background of “merchants of death” fulfilled an important political function, which in various forms remained part of the public discourse on the war in the last three years of the Great War and in the smaller regional and internal conf licts that followed. While not without a kernel of truth, these facts, without the discussion of their context, concealed more than they explained. Because of belated industrialization, and in the absence of a strong native entrepreneurial class, Jews came to occupy important positions in the Hungarian economy in the second half of the nineteenth century. On the eve of the First World War, Jews were overrepresented among the owners of companies that supplied the troops as well as in virtually every branch of industrial and commercial activities. The heavy focus on “Jewish” suppliers helped divert attention and anger away from the “Magyar” political and military elite, who had ushered the country into war and had been responsible for its conduct during the conf lict. The discourse on the “Jewish merchants of death” in the press helped conceal a secret about the transformation of Hungary’s capitalist economy under the stress of war: the rise of a mixed economy in which private enterprises took over the functions of the state and the reliance on businessmen, merchants, and bankers to carry out government policies. Paradoxically, the

Antidefamation Humor  101

merger of state and commerce did not increase efficiency and transparency; if anything, the marriage between capital and the state only magnified the structural problems in the Hungarian economy. It both increased distrust toward the state and its representatives and fueled the hatred of workers and the public toward private enterprises and capitalists, especially those directly involved in the supply of troops. The rise of the mixed economy did not reverse social polarization; on the contrary, the growing state intervention in the economy, in the form of government contracts, for example, made the rich richer and the poor poorer. The same elite failed to mitigate people’s suffering though a successful social policy, i.e., the rapid expansion of the welfare state. The state’s failure to look after the most vulnerable members of wartime society including disabled war veterans, families of active soldiers, and widows and orphans could only increase public frustration, some of which found an outlet in antisemitic agitation.1 Jews were ready-made targets because they were overrepresented among the modern entrepreneurial class. They were also noticeable among peddlers, tavern keepers, and the owners of small shops such as local bakeries and groceries, and many of these small merchants also loaned money on interest to farmers and the local poor. That recent immigrants—mainly Orthodox and Yiddish-speaking Jews from Galicia—joined groups of black-marketeers in large numbers after 1915 out of desperation and the need to survive in a strange land only increased the visibility of Jews among social groups that normally took the brunt of public anger in the time of wars, revolutions, and epidemics.2 The second accusation, namely that Jewish men had failed to do their military duties, too, emerged soon after the outbreak of the hostilities. Like many of the stereotypical images discussed in this chapter, the claim that Jews had been cowards, wild-eyed pacifists, and potential traitors was also a foreign import. The charge was first raised in the Russian Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century under the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (the same ruler who helped the Habsburgs put down the Hungarian revolution and end the War of National Liberation in 1849). In 1825, Nicholas I ordered the conscription of all Jewish males older than 12 into the Russian imperial army. Jewish recruits became the target of abuse by officers and non-Jewish soldiers in peacetime and were used as cannon fodder during combat. Although they were better educated than any other ethnic group, with the possible exception of the Finns, Jewish recruits could not be promoted to the rank of officers. The worst abuses took place during the Crimean War of the 1850s, when government officials and soldiers kidnapped Jewish teenagers to serve in frontline units. With the rise of anarchism in the second half of the nineteenth century, Tsarist officials came to regard Jews not only as bad soldiers but also as potential troublemakers and revolutionaries. But Russian civil servants were not the only ones holding grudges against Jews: Polish nationalists, too, harbored strong prejudices against the same ethnic and religious minority. The role of Jewish leaders in the Polish nationalist

102  Antidefamation Humor

uprising in 1864 has remained controversial. However, it is clear that in many places Jewish community leaders, fearing that the breakdown of law and order might lead to pogroms by Polish and Ukrainian peasants, took the side of the imperial administration. The chasm between Polish nationalists and the imperial government, thus, also widened the emotional gap between Poles and Jews and gave rise to a new stereotypical image that characterized Jews as cowards, spies, and agents of foreign powers.3 In Hungary, the relationship between the majority society and the Jewish community, and particularly between the Magyar elite and the culturally more Hungarian-oriented Neolog (Reformed) Jews, was very different than the Russian case. During the Revolution of 1848, thousands of Jews (and ethnic Germans) came out to support the liberal and nationalist cause—some financially, others, especially young men, with guns in their hands. The majority of Neolog Jews became even more patriotic after the defeat of the uprising in 1849. While other ethnic minorities, with the exception of the German, came to oppose forced assimilation, Hungarian Jews (even the majority of the Orthodox) switched from German and Yiddish to Magyar as their first language; frequently changed their German family names to more Hungarian-sounding ones; and adopted the habits and lifestyles of the dominant Magyar group. After 1895, Jewish intellectuals began to express doubts about the viability of assimilation and the righteousness of the Hungarian liberal and nationalist cause. As a substitute for Hungarian patriotism, a minority embraced either cosmopolitan ideologies, such as socialism and anarchism, or joined the Zionist movement. Jewish intellectuals also played a vital role in the pacifist movement in Hungary and Central Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How important pacifism among middle and lower-middle-class Jews was in the period remains unknown, however. It seems that the Jewish segment of the Hungarian middle class, like the majority society, had become more rather than less militaristic before the war. Admittedly, the level of militarism is a difficult measure. But the fact that the number of Jewish high-school graduates who opted for careers as professional soldiers increased in the two decades prior to the outbreak of the Great War could be described as a reliable indicator. Jews continued to be underrepresented among professional soldiers. However, by 1911, there had already been 23 Jewish or Jewish converts to Christianity that had served as generals in the Austro-Hungarian army; this might serve as a measure of the talent and commitment of those Jews who sought a career in the military, as well as a sign of their successful assimilation and greater acceptance by their colleagues. Jews were even more likely to serve as reserve officers: On the eve of the Great War, one out of five reserve officers, in fact, came from a Jewish background. That a significant share of Jewish reserve officers was assigned to medical and supply units or worked as administrators and only a strong minority served as infantry and artillery officers before the war had precious little to do with

Antidefamation Humor  103

Jewish pacifism or alleged Jewish cowardness. Rather, it had to do with the professional qualifications of the candidates and the survival of ethnic and religious prejudices among professional soldiers.4 Assimilated and middle-class Jews subscribed to the same European male ideal as their non-Jewish counterparts. This masculine ideal originated in Great Britain but spread to the continent in stages during the late nineteenth century. As was normal with every instance of cultural borrowing, the model underwent significant changes—some parts were lost and new elements were added—in the process of translation. The fin-de-siècle image of the perfect British gentleman was a reaction to what many believed was the corrupting inf luence of industrialization and modernization on tradition and morality and a result of the nationalist search for mettle. The two sides of the topos of the perfect Edwardian gentleman stood in sharp contradiction to each other. The first side, the character of the Christian gentleman, had its roots in the tradition of medieval chivalry. The Christian gentleman was supposed to behave like a knight in shining armor: he had to be brave, generous, gentile, courteous, respectful toward women, and protective of the weak. Such a man was to shun common conf licts, such as brawls and even duels, leaving such rough acts to social inferiors and the less sophisticated. Instead of open violence, he was expected to use his superior intellect, culture achievement, and rich vocabulary to ridicule, shame, and defeat his opponents. The modern fighter, the other face of the Edwardian gentleman, grew out of more recent historical developments such as industrialization, imperialism, and Social Darwinism. The image was associated with such qualities as hard work, emotional endurance, self-sacrifice, and self-control. In contrast to the Christian gentleman, the modern fighter not only accepted brutality as natural part of life but was expected to be skilled at practicing violence. As a boy, the fighter had to prove his mettle first in the school yards and dormitories; then, as a young man, he was to hone his skills in battle as an officer in the imperial army or colonial administrator, at home through the suppression of strikes and in official political intrigues. The Edwardian gentleman was to be healthy, sexually attractive, self-sufficient, and a good provider for his family.5 The Hungarian ideal of the perfect gentleman was also a reaction to modernity; its function was to preserve the cultural dominance of the traditional social and political elite, the nobility, and to increase the status of civil servants and military officers. As mentioned earlier, the ideal of the Hungarian male, coupled with Magyar virtus, permitted and indeed encouraged condescension and the display of arrogance toward social inferiors; it also served as the source of “rough acts” such as brawls and duels in response to real or imagined slights. The majority of assimilated and middle-class Jews seem to have fully embraced the Hungarian version of the modern gentleman, trying to follow it to the letter. As a sign of successful assimilation into the culture of the Hungarian middle class, upwardly mobile Jews were regularly overrepresented on the lists of people charged with violating the

104  Antidefamation Humor

statutes against dueling.6 It was also not by accident that fencing became one of the most popular sports among young Jewish men, and that about half of Hungary’s national and Olympic fencing champions before 1914 were Jews.7 Middle-class and Neolog Jews, of course, did not speak for the entire Jewish community: there were few Orthodox among professional soldiers, fencing champions, and duelers. The Orthodox, too, adopted many of the habits of the majority population and increasingly embraced Magyar as their first language before 1914. However, their attitudes toward the army, professional soldiers, and military violence continued to resemble those of their coreligionists in the Western parts of the Russian Empire. The majority of the Orthodox would have recognized themselves in the protagonists of Joseph Roth’s classic novel, Hiób (the story took place in Galicia and New York). The main character, a teacher in the local Jewish elementary school, despised haughty army officers and dreaded drunken cavalry men, the infamous Cossacks, who periodically pillaged the houses, demolished shops, and raped women in his village.8 Classical Jewish jokes had their origins in the village and small-town settings of the east. Assimilated Jews continued to enjoy the humor of the people they otherwise were prone to ridicule, and of the world they claimed to have left behind long ago. In the new Western and urban environment, traditional Jewish jokes about the army and pacifism performed a double function. Anti-army jokes provided a modern critique of the outside world, especially the arrogance and stupidity of the military caste, one of the last bulwarks of both old-style conservatism and reaction. Such jokes denounced war and celebrated the courage of young men who tried to escape conscription, this traditional form of servitude ( Jokes 1–3). The best of Jewish jokes always functioned as a form of self-criticism and critiqued modernity, its values, and ideals. Jewish writers criticized both the antiquated norms of conservative and rural Jews and the moral and intellectual universe of their modern and urban counterparts. They ridiculed Jews who put comfort and financial gain above patriotism and male honor, who cleverly used every trick in the book to avoid military service: in short, those who behaved like Händler (traders), rather than Helden (heroes) (Cartoons 3.1 and 3.2, Jokes 4–6).9 1 People dread pogroms. Since the Cossacks not only kill but also rape women, girls, and young wives, women have to choose their hiding places very carefully. To their surprise, the escapees notice an elderly woman in their hideout. “Grandma,” one girl asks, “Why are you here? What are you afraid of?” “Why shouldn’t I be?” says the elderly woman, with hurt in her voice. “[Do you think] there aren’t any old Cossacks?”10 2 Elkish has a dilemma. “I don’t know what to do. I have to register my younger son’s date of birth with the army. Of course, I am going to say

Antidefamation Humor  105

Cartoon 3.1  Herkulsz-Abelesz.11 Colonel: Abelesz, you have carried yourself well. Now for your reward. You can choose between 100 forints and a medal. Abelesz: Please tell me, how much is the medal worth? Colonel: Its material value is 25 forints. Abelesz: You know what, my dear Colonel (ezredesleben)? Give me 75 forints, plus the medal!

that he is older than he is; still, it is possible (God forbid) that I won’t be able to protect him, and that even though he is frail and weak, he will be conscripted. I could also claim that he’s younger than he is; but they can still draft him even though he is already married and has a wife and children.” “Perhaps you should tell the truth and enter the correct information.” “What a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?!”12

106  Antidefamation Humor

Cartoon 3.2  Duel.13 Captain: See you tomorrow. Smokalesz: Yes, tomorrow at 4. a.m. If I don’t show, please start without me!

3 The Tsar is inspecting a regiment and asking his soldiers if they are happy. No one dares complain. But a young Jew gathers his courage and says: “Majesty, I am unhappy in Russia. I am not allowed to live and cannot even spend a night where I want. I’m not allowed to go to school. Then there are the pogroms. My family has been dying of starvation.” The Tsar sighs deeply: “Do you believe, Jankel, that my life is better? My ministers cheat and lie to me. People want to assassinate me. I feel very unhappy.” “You know what, Majesty,” Jankel proposes, “Why don’t you and I immigrate to America together?”14

Antidefamation Humor  107

4 Júme Nachnahm was summoned before the registration committee, which has determined that he is unqualified to serve (untauglich). He immediately visits [his girlfriend], Pepi Halbsohl, and asks for her hand in marriage. “Is it true that you couldn’t become a soldier?” asks Pepi’s mother, Sprince. “You must have a physical handicap, so tell us about it.” Nachnahm: “Ma’am, I have the same handicap as Mrs. Pepi. If she appeared before the committee, she would get the same answer.” Sprince runs to her husband, Palte Halbsohl, and begs him to find out what is going on. Palte pays a visit to Nachnahm asks him again about conscription. “I can only say,” said Nachnahm, “that if your daughter were to be brought, as a man, before the committee, she would be declared untauglich for the same reason.”15 5 Two people introduce themselves to each other in a train compartment. “Von Bredow: Lieutenant of the Reserve.” “Lilienthal: permanently disqualified (untauglich).16 6 In a train compartment, an officer notices a f lea, which he believes came from a Jew sitting across from him. He f licks the f lea back to the Jew with a remark: “Deserter.” The Jews f licks the f lea back to the officer: “back to the Army where you belong.”17 Traditional jokes about the army and about crafty Jews eager to avoid military service were funny; while not free of prejudice, they provided innocent fun for Jews and non-Jews alike. The same anecdotes, however, took on very different meanings after the outbreak of hostilities in 1914; what used to be harmless teasing before the war turned into dangerous accusations after August 1914, thus further widening the gap between the world of humor and reality. The majority of middle-class Jews in Hungary received the news about the outbreak of the Great War with relief, pride, and in some cases, even with joy. Both reformed and Orthodox Jews in Hungary shared the anti-Russian sentiments of the Magyar middle class and elite. Like the majority society, Jews regarded Russia as a hopelessly backward and despotic land: a country that oppressed its ethnic and religious minorities and had been hostile to Jews. The Young Zionists, the followers of Max Nordau and his idea of Muskeljudentum (athletic Jews), saw the war as an opportunity to prove that Jews, too, could become good soldiers. In contrast to the assimilated Jews, the Zionists were pound of, and idealized, Eastern Jews, and regarded their eastern brethren as the members of the same nation. The Zionists dreamed of liberating Galicia and Western Poland, where the majority of European Jews lived, from Russian servitude.18 Many Hungarian Jews, moreover, supported the war for domestic reasons; they hoped that victory and shared sacrifice would lead to the removal of the last vestiges of inequality and discrimination and would close the cultural and emotional gap between the two groups. However, the war failed to unify society or solve ethnic and social conf licts; if anything, it exacerbated the already existing tensions between the social and ethnic groups, thus hastening

108  Antidefamation Humor

the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy. The Great War mobilized Austro-­ Hungarian society; in the trenches as well as in the home front, it brought people together, who in peacetime would have never met or exchanged more than a few words with one another. The war displayed, and made even common soldiers aware of, the geographical expanse and cultural diversity of the Dual Monarchy. Those who entered the war wanted to defend the country against foreign aggression. Yet the war was also about the jostling for positions and improving the standing of one’s social and ethnic groups in the Dual Monarchy; making sure that one’s voice would be heard, his or her interests respected and plans realized after the guns had gone silent; the war was about the question of who and which groups would dominate society and political life.19 The accusation of cowardness, disloyalty and shirking one’s military duty emerged in the context of social positioning. The charge was informed by class antagonism, intense competition for status and power, and the growing tension among ethnic and religious groups. Jews were not the only, even the first, target: in fact, given their records of loyalty to both the Empire and the two dominant nations, Jews could feel reasonably safe and confident about public opinion. Unlike the Slavs, particularly the Czech, Serbs and Ruthenians, who sympathized with the idea of Pan-Slavism and hailed the Russian Army as a liberator, Jews could not expect anything good from the Tsar and his troops. If anything, Jews dreaded the Russians, who had oppressed their eastern brethren for decades. Slav soldiers were more likely to dissert the colors, or surrender to the Russian Army, than Jews. The paranoia about the disloyalty of Czech, Slovak and Ruthenian soldiers was not confined to the Magyar and German military elites. The Zionist officer, Avigdor Hameiri, too, was convinced that the Russian Army owed the success of its Brusilov Offensive in 1916 to the treachery and cowardness of Czech and ­Slovak ­servicemen.20 The politicization of the topic of wartime service reached a new height after the war. By 1919, the ethnic minorities had left Hungary – leaving only Jews and ethnic Germans as targets of accusation and scapegoats. Yet the charge of cowardness, disloyalty and shirking of one’s military duties ref lected not only rising ethnic tensions but social antagonisms in the armed forces, as well. The accusation of cowardness was thus customarily leveled against professional soldiers, especially General Staff Officers, by frontline troops during the war. Reserve officers, about a third of whom were of Jewish decent, too, harbored strong prejudices against the graduates of military academies. In his biographical novel, the ­Zionist reserve officer Hameiri, too, routinely described professional  soldiers as cowards, who had committed self-­mutilation to avoid frontline service; as dandies of German ethnic and noble and aristocratic social background, who cared only about their appearances - their shiny boots and freshly ironed uniforms - and regarded war both as entertainment and as an opportunity to make careers at the expense of common soldiers. The postwar charge of Jewish cowardliness

Antidefamation Humor  109

thus ref lected the wartime tension between the two social groups: between the group of bourgeois and often Jewish reserve officers, on the one hand, and professional soldiers who had either descended from the old feudal caste or who were commoners, but had internalized the atavistic values of the nobility, on the other. The hatred that professional soldiers felt for Jewish soldiers and reserve officers thus mirrored, and were, in part, informed by the envy, fear and contempt that the old social and political elites harbored toward the modern and modernizing segments of the bourgeoisie.21 But it was not only professional soldiers who resented and even hated ­Jewish reserve officers. The charge of Jewish cowardness could also come from non-Jewish reserve officers in the veterans’ organizations, the nationalist parties and patriotic associations and the nationalist press corps after the war. This sentiment also had its roots in the war. Professional soldiers treated better, and often even accepted, non-Jewish reserve officers, particularly those of peasant and urban petty bourgeoisie background, as their quasi-­ equals; this was rarely the case with Jewish reserve officers. The upstarts were also more prone to embrace the values, including antisemitism, and imitate the behavior, of the regular officers.22 The war not only failed to bridge the cultural and emotional gaps between the two groups; if anything, it increased tensions between common soldiers of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Jewish soldiers suffered from alienation and ostracism because of their religion, lifestyle, different habits, and values. Jewish dietary laws and religious practices remained a source of constant irritation among Gentile soldiers and reinforced their prejudices. Many devote Jews self-segregated as a form of protection. Jewish soldiers were, in general, more family-centered; they drank and gambled less often and spent more time reading books (perceived by semi-literate recruits as an insult) in solitude than their Christian counterparts. Combined with the long tradition of antisemitism, these “peculiar habits” only widened the emotional gap between the two groups, leading to ridicule and social isolation at best, and open discrimination and violent assaults, at worst, during the war. Age-old prejudices and misunderstandings, combined with diverging interests, made the appreciation of Jewish heroism and the acknowledgment of Jewish sacrifices difficult. The war veteran and highly decorated officer Avigdor Hameiri was convinced that Jews displayed more courage on the battlefield than the members of any other group. At the eastern front, where he served, every major defense position was allegedly defended by units commanded by Jewish officers. Moreover, Jews took more Russians captive and captured more weapons and equipment than their Gentile comrades. Their exploits became a source of envy and embarrassment, particularly among Austrian officers, who hated their Jewish colleagues for their heroism even more. Their hatred often took concrete forms, leading to discrimination: in Hameiri’s autobiographical novel, the authorities disciplined ­Captain ­Neumann, who, with his unit, had captured a Russian colonel,

110  Antidefamation Humor

several cannons and a large amount of ammunition, for “unnecessarily wasting too much ammunition.”23 But it was not only Jewish reserve officers who distinguished themselves on the battlefield. One of Hameiri’s friends and subordinates, the Orthodox Jew “Uncle” Österreicher, who attracted attention and respect with his piety and courage, had lost two sons in one week in the first part of the war. The Zionists in particular saw the war as an opportunity to prove their courage and military talent. The members of the Zionist Makkabea Student Association volunteered for service in Budapest in the first months of the conf lict. Jewish athletes formed a separate unit during the war, which was allegedly responsible for “miracles” on the Russian front. Jewish courage, often bordering on recklessness, was rooted, according to Hameiri, in their despair over the undying prejudices and intense hatred of their fellow Gentile soldiers. Jewish heroism, Hameiri argued, was a form of suicide: Jews decided that it was better to die as heroes, thus proving their enemies wrong, than continue living as pariahs. A Magyar officer in the novel, Lieutenant Szmrecsányi, located the source of Jewish heroism in history, rather than current events. Jewish immigrants, who did not have a state for 2,000 years, had come to identify their new homeland, Hungary, with the lost Jerusalem, and attached their ancient longings to the new nation state. Jewish courage, thus, had to do with religion and citizenship, rather than with biological factors and discrimination. The Hungarian state and political elite were smart to grant Jews the right to become reserve officers, thus giving the newcomers the chance to prove their patriotism and martial talents.24 The military conf lict enriched the English and European ideal of a gentleman with a new element, by merging the prewar cult of youth with the image of front-line soldiers. Propaganda posters portrayed the new conscripts and young volunteers as pure and Christ-like figures ready and willing to sacrifice their lives for the nation. The death of innocent young men, in turn, gave each nation the right not only to defend its existence, but also to claim more power and territory after the war.25 Simultaneously, the military conf lict put self-restraint, as one of the main characteristics of the ideal gentleman, to the test. In violation of this ideal, soldiers turned to intoxicants to cope with stress of battle and preserve their sanity and composure; many ended up alcoholics and drug addicts. Millions became shell-shocked, lost their limbs or eyesight, suffered serious facial injuries, or became mentally ill. Seriously injured and disabled veterans no longer conformed to the ideal of masculine beauty; even worse, permanent injuries also meant that many wounded veterans could not work, remain independent, or provide for their families. Postwar states and societies did not fully appreciate soldiers’ sacrifices; neither did they entirely understand veterans’ problems or show enough sympathy for their plight. Shell-shocked veterans were often described by doctors and political commentators as effeminate and were accused of faking their injuries to obtain an early discharge. Disability implied a decline in social status, the restriction

Antidefamation Humor  111

of mobility, and the loss of privacy. Soldiers and war veterans were forced to surrender control over their bodies: they had to undergo regular medical examinations to determine if they were fit for service; after the war, doctors scrutinized their health and examined their injuries to classify their disabilities and determine their eligibility for state support. All these implied a loss of self-control and independence, which had been hallmarks of the dominant male ideal.26 The socio-economic and political and crises aside, Hungarian society thus also experienced a crisis of masculinity after the war. The catastrophic military defeat shocked and infuriated the social elite and the middle class, which in turn favored the search for scapegoats and the rise of enemy stereotypes “perceived as a threat to societal values and interests.”27 Jews fitted the role of the scapegoat perfectly for religious reasons: the general public was least likely to equate them with the Christ-like image of the Magyar soldiers. To many Gentiles, Jews simply could not become good warriors and act as patriots. Acknowledging Jewish sacrifices would have amounted to the tacit admission that Jews could be heroes, and, therefore, they should be treated as fellow Hungarians. Soon after the conclusion of the armistice in 1918, Magyar Statisztikai Szemle (Hungarian statistical review), a state publication edited by highly respected professionals, published a disturbing report. It claimed that 378,000 Hungarian soldiers had fought in the Great War, out of whom 155,799 or 41.1 percent were killed; according to the same statistics, 24,500 Hungarian Jewish soldiers had been conscripted, of which only 5,116 or 21.8 percent died. Jewish leaders rejected these figures outright as malicious fabrications; they produced evidence to show that in Budapest alone, 4,000 Jewish soldiers had lost their lives; on the basis of these numbers, they deduced that Jewish losses had been twice as high as those cited in the official sources. In the fall of 1919, the liberal Pesti Hírlap regularly published statistics, supplied in part by Jewish organizations, to prove that proportionally more Jews than Gentiles had lost their lives during the First World War.28 But no other medium fought harder to refute the pernicious rumors about Jewish behavior than the mouthpiece of the Neolog community of Budapest, the weekly Egyenlőség (Equality). Egyenlőség and the Neolog Community of Pest collected statistical information to prove that Jewish casualty rates surpassed or at least matched those of other ethnic and religious groups. In lengthy articles, Jewish authors listed the names of people who received medals for bravery during the war and praised the families who lost several members. The Jewish community made significant financial contribution to the war effort by purchasing more war bonds than Gentiles relative to its size in the general population. Jewish women collected clothing and food; they ran soup kitchens, helped refugees find accommodation and work, and volunteered their time as nurses in military hospitals.29 Infuriated by the charges of disloyalty during the counterrevolution, Lajos Szabolcsi, a poet and the editor-in-chief of Egyenlőség, took to court Dr. Elek Avarffy, an antisemitic

112  Antidefamation Humor

parliamentarian, and one of the founders of the eugenics movement in Hungary who claimed that only a few hundred Jews had fallen during the war. Although the trial ended with a full victory for the plaintiffs, the Avarffy affair, unlike the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial in the early 1880s, failed to yield the full rehabilitation of Jews in the eyes of public opinion.30 The antidefamation campaign was not limited to liberal and Jewish newspapers but also conducted in the parliament. To counter baseless accusations in the august chamber was a hopeless undertaking, however. The handful of Jews who sat in the parliament as representatives of the liberal parties did everything in their power to refute antisemitic propaganda and prevent the passage of anti-Jewish legislation, such as the numerus clausus. Between the fall of 1919 and 1922, the parliament was dominated by Christian Socialist and peasant parties, and fanatical anti-Semites, such as László Budaváry, András Csilléry, Béla Fangler, and Károly Wolff, represented an inf luential minority. The liberals could accomplish little: their passionate arguments and appeals to reason and basic decency were normally drowned out by the jeers, curses, and crude remarks of their opponents.31 The use of jokes and caricatures to reduce hostility and def late hate was not without its contradictions. Jewish intellectuals cultivated the image of their fellow believers as pacifists for decades before the war; the stereotype of Jews as bad soldiers, too, had long been the staple of many jokes and anecdotes. Even after 1918, Jews continued to poke fun at the ignorance of professional soldiers ( Joke 1) and praise pacifist sentiments during the First World War and its aftermath ( Jokes 2 and 3). However, the newer jokes also painted a reliable picture of worsening relations between Jews and Gentiles in the trenches and the increasing social isolation and ostracism of soldiers of Jewish faith ( Joke 4). They targeted demagogues, such Avarffy, who spread lies about Jewish war veterans and assaulted the honor of the Jewish community. They exposed anti-Semites as hypocrites and neophytes who had only recently changed their German names to ones that sounded Magyar, and mocked demagogues who tried to overcompensate for their lack of patriotic credentials and their feelings of inferiority by telling blatant lies about and assaulting members of another minority ( Joke 4). 1 One-year volunteer Katz: “I respectfully request a furlough, Sergeant.” Sergeant: “Grounds?” Katz: “Enrollment in university (matriculation).” Sergeant: “These Jews and their damned religious holidays!”32 2 Before the battle, the commander holds a speech before his troops. “Now it will be mano a mano!” Infantryman Rubin: “Please, show me my man! Perhaps we can come to an understanding.”33 3 A Jew has just been assigned to a frontline trench. An enemy patrol is nearing the trench. His comrades begin firing at them. The Jewish recruit screams: “Stop the shooting! Don’t you see those people running around in front of you?!”34

Antidefamation Humor  113

4 Laib Halbgewachs has just come home from the war and announces that he is going to write a book, which everyone is going to buy. “Are you meshugge (nuts)? Who is going to buy your book? Anyhow, what will its title be?” Four years among the Goys. Their mores and customs. How could anyone not buy it?35 5 Pesti Fogrend. “Miklós Avarffy (Andor Adler) said that only five hundred Jews fell during the war, and the rest were shirkers. Mr. Avarffy seems to care [about this issue, ], which is nice. He also seems to resent the fact that not every Jew has died; [to which we may answer, BB] that, too, he has failed to die… And if every Jew had fallen, would there even be a Race Defense today? And if there were no Race Defense, where would we be then?”36

The Portrayal of the Jewish Threat in Right-Wing Novels and Newspaper Articles The most potent of all the new stereotypical images that emerged after the war equated Jews with communists. This new image stood at the center of the myth of a Judeo-Bolshevik world conspiracy, which spread like wildfire from east to west, from Russia to the United States, and from north to south, from Sweden to Argentina. The myth of Judeo-Bolshevism was accepted at face value by politicians of different persuasions: Conservative Churchill and the Liberal William Mackenzie King of Canada were as convinced as the right-radical Horthy and the socialist Pilsudski of Poland that Jews were poised to take power and impose their rule on the rest of the world.37 The mythology served as a source of anti-Jewish violence in Russia which had descended into a civil war as well as in those countries of Central and Eastern Europe which were among the losers of the Great War. The Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy also played an important role in ethnic and class conf licts in countries that emerged from the war as victors: it became an integral part of not only the “cultural of defeat” but also that of “the culture of victory.”38 While not baseless, middle-class fear was also exaggerated and manipulated to achieve goals, which had either no or only a distant connection to the Bolshevik threat. Anticommunism and the equation of Jews with left-wing radicals helped undermine the power and destroy the credibility of the working-class parties, break strikes, and justify violent assaults on workers from Britain and France to Czechoslovakia. In the United States, the Red Scare was used as a pretext by semi-fascist militias, such as the American Legion, to attack workers, immigrants and racial minorities; by the state to expand police control over the population; and by xenophobic groups in the Senate to pass ever more restrictive anti-immigration laws.39 In Europe, too, rising antisemitism and the spread of new stereotypes gave the governments of both victorious and defeated states the opportunity to deport helpless Jewish

114  Antidefamation Humor

refugees from the east with impunity. The unholy alliance between anti-­ Bolshevism and antisemitism and the shared bourgeois desire to stem the tide of “Jewish communism” informed the actions of the Entente powers to get involved on the Polish side in the Polish-Soviet War. It also contributed to the intervention of the Western imperialist states and Japan in the Russian Civil War, provided the rationale for the military and logistic support given to the invading Romanian, Czechoslovak, and Yugoslav armies against the Soviet Republic in Hungary; and last but not least, the Western, especially French, support for the Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak territorial demands at the peace negotiations in Paris. In Hungary, too, the stereotypical image of Jews as communists were tied to domestic and foreign-policy agendas. The conviction that the October Revolution was the work of Jews helped to delegitimize the democratic experiment. It served to hide the fact that initially both the Jewish and non-Jewish segments of the middle and upper classes supported the democratic revolution, and that at least until June 1919, the Soviet Republic, too, had the backing of almost the entire population. During the counterrevolution, middle-class discourse on Jewish material and political support given to the Soviet Republic delegitimized not only communism but also social democracy, weakened the trade union movement, annulled the social and political reforms introduced since October 1918, and set back the development of a comprehensive welfare state for at least two decades. The conservative and right-radical narrative about the Red Terror was meant to justify, trivialize, or deny altogether the existence of the crimes committed by the right-wing militias and the police. Finally, the discourse on the Red Terror diverted attention from the horrific losses and the responsibility of the political and military elite for both the origins and outcomes of the war, the loss of territories, the Romanian occupation, and the disastrous peace treaty. The polemic about communist Jews was a transparent attempt to shift the blame for the economic and social collapse on a religious minority, undermine the achievements of Jewish emancipation, and facilitate the passing of discriminatory legislation designed to restructure the job market along ethnic lines. Finally, the antisemitic narrative about Jewish culpability for the communist dictatorship became one of the pillars of the ideology of the new counterrevolutionary regime and a key element in the emerging Horthy myth. Thousands of people from all walks of life, from priests and journalists to novelists and social scientists, were involved in the creation and dissemination of antisemitic images. However, three texts in particular, penned by a historian and two novelists, made a stronger impact on the Hungarian mind and contributed more to spread of new antisemitic stereotypes among members of the middle classes than anything else. These included Gyula Szegfű’s, Three Generations and What Follows (Három Nemzedék És Ami Utánna Következik) (1920–1921); Cecile Tormay’s An Outlaw’s Diary (Bujdosó Könyv) (1920), and Dezső Szabó’s The Swept-Away Village (Elsodort falu) (1919).

Antidefamation Humor  115

The  neo-­conservative Szegfű traced the collapse of the Dual Monarchy, the disappearance of historical Hungary, and the communist dictatorship to the pernicious inf luence of nineteenth-century liberalism: its impact on the economy, social classes, and, most importantly, the mindset and morality of the Hungarian political elite. Szegfű blamed the tragedies that had befallen Hungary after 1918 on liberalism and capitalism; the unbridled individualism and greed of the social elite; the short-sightedness of the political class; the misguided immigration policies of the successive liberal governments that facilitated the inf lux of hundreds of thousands of culturally alien Jews from the east; and secularization, urbanization, and cultural modernization. In contrast to Szegfű, who did not use explicitly racist stereotypes, Tormay (a self-­ declared fascist of the first order, Horthy’s friend and favorite author, and an admirer of Mussolini) regarded Jews both as traitors/communists and as a seed of destruction, a deadly virus and a biological threat. Szabó also played on ancient fears and prejudices masked in more recent, pseudo-­sacrificial garb. In his celebrated novel, which an entire generation of nationalist students regarded as their political Bible, Jewish women and men took on unmistakably Semitic features: women reminded the readers of the Biblical Judith and medieval witches; men, on the other hand, were a mixture of the Roman Faun and the European Devil. As projections, the images of the f lirtatious belle Juive and the perverted Jewish seducer stood for what the majority of Europeans had been missing in their lives: their hidden wishes and forbidden desires. In their antisemitic imagination, Jews led carefree lives: they did not have to work hard, follow orders, accept subordination, worry about the future, kill their dreams, or suppress their desires. Jews were everything the Gentiles were not and did what Gentiles lacked the courage to do. They had and enjoyed, in Lowenthal’s words, all “the forbidden fruits.”40 Szabó was an admirer of French culture and modern literature, and his views on Jews and their pernicious inf luence on public life mirrored the antisemitic stereotypes in the writing of his favorite authors such as the early fascists Auguste-Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras. But the text that bore the closest resemblance to Szabó’s novel was penned by a German writer by the name of Arthur Dinter. There is no proof that the two men knew each other or that Szabó had read Dinter’s work: the overlap between the two only underlines the international nature of postwar antisemitism. First published in 1918, Dinter’s short story “Die Sünde wider das Blut” (Sin against the Blood) was reprinted several times during the Weimar Republic and became required reading in Nazi Germany. In the novel, a young man named Hermann proposes marriage to a pretty woman named Johanna. She tells him she had a child out of wedlock and that her child died shortly after birth. Hermann still marries Johanna and promises that he will never ask any questions about her past. The new couple fails to find happiness even though Johanna tries her best to become a good wife. Only her pregnancy brings joy into the couple’s life for a while. The delivery is successful, and both mother and

116  Antidefamation Humor

child are healthy; yet, to Hermann’s surprise (both he and his wife and their ancestors were “northern German blonds”), the infant has curly dark hair and dark skin and eyes: in short, the baby looks like “a real Jewish boy” (ein echtes Judenkind). Johanna breaks down and finally tells Hermann the whole story: as a young woman she was seduced by a Jewish reserve officer, and it was this Jew who was the father of her first child. The writer explains that according to the law of biology, if “a woman of noble race” (ein edelrassiges Weibchen) becomes impregnated by a man of lower racial value, her whole organism is ruined forever: she will always give birth to children of lower racial value. He also confides to his readers that thousands of Gentile women are seduced by Jews every year, causing enormous damage to the German nation and race. Hermann is able to track down the Jewish seducer and challenges him to a duel. The cowardly Jew, even though he is already a captain in the military, does not accept the challenge but orders his manservant to throw Hermann out. The enraged Hermann then shoots the seducer to death. He returns home only to find his young wife and her son dead: she poisoned both herself and the boy with morphine.41 Dinter did not work in an intellectual vacuum; his novel, in fact, put in literary form many of the pseudo-scientific ideas elaborated by his contemporaries. A few years before the publication of Dinter’s novella, the Austrian mystic from Vienna, Joseph Adolf Lanz von Liebenfels, whose works Szabó might have read, claimed that German women preferred men of inferior races or “half monkeys” to German males because of the greater virility of the former. Lanz was also convinced that once a woman had been impregnated by the semen of a “half monkey,” the children from future partners would display the same features and moral qualities as her first lover.42 In his most celebrated novel, Az elsodort falu, which, paradoxically, was published with the financial support of the Soviet Republic in the summer of 1919, writer Dezső Szabó told the tragic story of a small Transylvanian-Hungarian community destroyed during the war. He blamed this tragedy on the short-sighted Hungarian liberal elite; the hateful, scheming, and sadistic Romanians; and the always calculating and heartless Jews. The novel played on and exploited the most important themes and stereotypes of the day: Jews as unscrupulous businessmen who measured everything and everyone by their market value; foreigners and snobs too distanced from the soil and too immoral to understand the Hungarian soul and native culture; cowards who shirked their military duty during the war; cliquish aliens who cared only about the interests of their own race, and troublemakers and born revolutionaries who knew how to ridicule, tear down, and destroy but could not build anything of lasting value. The novel owed its lasting success to the contemporary paranoia about sexual relations with Jews. The radical nationalist poet depicted in the novel, Miklós, whom Szabó modeled on the famous poet Endre Ady, contracts syphilis either from his Jewish girlfriend or a prostitute in one of the Jewish-run brothels of Budapest and Paris. Judit, the beautiful, smart, and ambitious daughter of an alcoholic Protestant pastor and Miklós’

Antidefamation Humor  117

sweetheart back in Transylvania, meets a similarly tragic end. Bored and restless like her fiancée, she moves to Budapest hoping to find more meaning, easy success, and happiness in the capital. Having run out of money and seduced by urban pleasures, she becomes first the lover of Gutman, a middle-aged and ugly Jewish industrialist. When Gutman, whom she despises, is exposed as a crook, Judit sells her charms to a second lover. By then, she has reached the point of no return: the jaded and quickly aging Judit ends up a common prostitute, plying her trade in one of the working-class neighborhoods in Budapest.43 While the most inf luential, the three texts represented only the tip of the iceberg of the mountain of antisemitic texts that appeared in newspaper editorials, political pamphlets, pseudo-scientific books, poems, jokes, paintings, and cartoons. In right-wing newspapers, the image of communist Jews normally appeared side-by-side with older stereotypes, such as those portraying Jews as freemasons, socialists, and greedy. These materials blamed Jews for historical failures, omissions, and failed development; thus, according to the nationalist Szózat (Appeal), Jews, as capitalist entrepreneurs, were responsible for the poor construction of the tenement houses in Budapest.44 Furthermore, Jews were not only overrepresented among real-estate speculators and slum lords; as pimps and brothel owners, Jews helped to destroy the lives of countless young women and, by facilitating the spread of venereal diseases, men. Jewish journalists spread lies and destroyed morality; they stoked the f lame of conf lict between the generations and the sexes, and through the use of urban jargon, they undermined the purity of the Hungarian language. Jewish attorneys defended and helped free thieves and murderers; by buying and advertising the work of avant-guard artists, Jewish painters, sculptors and art dealers corrupted the taste of millions of Hungarians.45 The Christian Socialist tabloid, Virradat (Dawn), for example, claimed to have discovered Jews behind the attack on the reputation of the Hungarian Academy of Science and the organization of conservative writers, the Kisfaludy Association (Kisfaludy Társaság).46 Right-radical papers described white-collar criminals as “typical Israelites”: skinny men with dark hair and eyes, crooked noses, hanging lower lips and stooped backs, who talked too fast, gesticulated wildly and incessantly, and were more likely to suffer from speech impediments.47 Radical politics broadly conceived were attributed to Jews, as well. Feminism, too, was supposed to be a Jewish invention; its most prominent advocates, Sári Fonyó and Róza Bédi-Swimmer, had been active in the Galileo Circle, an organization of radical leftist students and young intellectuals before 1919; in the spring and summer of 1919, radical feminists allegedly backed Béla Kun’s Communist regime.48 Paradoxically, conservative and right-wing journalists also described Jews as hyper-nationalists; they claimed that with their jingoist rhetoric, Jewish neophytes undermined the allegedly good relationship between ethnic minorities and the majority population before the war.49 Russian Jews were seen as the driving force behind both the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and all the revolutionary upheavals and communist coup attempts in

118  Antidefamation Humor

central and east-central Europe after the war (Munich, Berlin, Budapest).50 During the communist dictatorship in Hungary, communist Jews supposedly waged a war on Christianity and Christian institutions, particularly Catholic and Protestant elementary and high schools. As the enemies of private property, Jews nationalized large estates, factories, and banks and stole peasants’ farms and requisitioned grain and farm animals. The Red Terror was supposedly their work: the Red militia detachments, led entirely and manned mainly by Jews, terrorized the Hungarian population for months, killing thousands of innocent people. Jews betrayed the country to the Russians in March 1919; communist Jews also continued to follow the orders of their boss Lenin even in exile after the collapse of the communist dictatorship in Hungary in August 1919. At home, Jews allegedly collaborated with the occupying the Romanian Army in the fall of 1919 and even tried to convince the Entente powers to prolong the Romanian occupation of the hapless country. Jewish journalists and politicians both at home and abroad continued to spread rumors about the so-called White Terror as a transparent attempt to undermine the reputation of the National Army and its leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy.51 In sum, newspapers and other media contained a multitude of antisemitic arguments and stereotypical images, most notably that of Jews as communists. Antisemitism in these right-radical, and often even conservative, texts transcended traditional xenophobia and religious hatred, and functioned as a “cultural code”: a prism through which to view the world and to select and interpret facts about the citizenry and modern society with all its contradictions, and thus a means to make sense of the world.52 Antisemitic texts were composed in what the Canadian linguist Northrop Frye called “rhetorical mode.” Rhetorical mode was (is) recognizable by the writer’s and speaker’s preference for short sentences and figurative language; the frequent use of similes and allegories, acronyms, and foreign words. Delivered in the form of monologues, the text creates rigid roles that define the behavior of both the speaker (active, dominating, and loud) and the listener (passive, submissive, nodding in approval). The audience remains silent, but the speaker can raise his or her voice, curse, or resort to ad hominem attacks to make the desired impact. All of these techniques are put to use to dismiss conf licting ideas, forestall debates, prevent compromises, and delegitimize opponents.53 The same techniques help the speaker and their listeners vent their frustration and channel their violent impulses toward a carefully selected group of scapegoats.54 Thus, the greatest illusionary trick in the history of the world history has begun. Jewish imperialists relied on pretense and fake idealism to advance their cause. Their imperialism is the most original and, at the same time, the most extreme form of all imperialisms because it feeds on real grievances and forges the people’s dissatisfaction [with their lives] into a powerful weapon. Jews screamed freedom only to enslave others [culturally and] intellectually; they mouthed the slogans of idealism and

Antidefamation Humor  119

democracy only to establish the most materialist of all societies and the greediest of all capitalist worlds. They preached revolution only to grab power and [create a dictatorship]… And who will be in charge of this new dictatorship? Who will be its brain, hands, and pockets? I will tell you who: the Jew, the Jew, and, again, the Jew. Because liberalism, internationalism, critical thinking, human rights, freedom, revolution, and democracy are nothing more than [slogans], tricks, and instruments in the hands of Jewish imperialists. Once in power, the Jew will dispense with all the frills: he will destroy liberalism root and branch; he will put an end to democracy and the freedom of expression and will end the revolution. I am going to say this loud and clear so that everyone, even the most gullible among you, will understand and draw the right conclusion: antisemitism is not a sign of backwardness; it is not a reactionary cause and obsession of people with limited intelligence and no spiritual life. On the contrary: antisemitism is the guiding principle and the indispensable mental tool of every true revolutionary; of anyone who still believes in freedom, wants to create a society and a world based on ideas of human rights, democracy, and progress. It is we, true revolutionaries who have suffered the greatest humiliation and disappointment, who can never be undone… One can serve humanity only through his race. Mixing with the Jews would bring certain death to all of us. Full separation and departing ways of life—this can be the only reasonable course of action. We welcomed them as brothers; we believed in them; we were liberals who wanted to march arm-in-arm with them toward universal happiness. But they stepped on us; they destroyed our beliefs and betrayed liberalism and all of our ideals. It is for the sake of these ideals that we have now become revolutionaries; in the name [of these ideals], we are going to take on Jewish imperialism and fight against their merciless counterrevolution. If we succeed in inspiring the people with our pure intentions, we will become invincible again.55 The text, which appeared as an editorial in the Christian Socialist tabloid Virradat, exemplifies the features that Frye considers as typical of “rhetorical mode.” It is full of superlatives (“the greatest illusionary trick;” “the most original and extreme form of imperialism;” the most gullible, “the most materialist of all societies and the greediest of all capitalist worlds,” “the greatest humiliation”) and strong adjectives that cannot be further intensified: “total,” “universal,” “fanatical,” “merciless,” “indispensable” and “invincible.” The term “world history” stretches the comparison to its limits both vertically and horizontally. The need to act is highlighted by the use of dynamic verbs such as “scream,” “yell,” “grab,” “dispense,” “destroy,” “put an end to,” “march,” “step on,” “extinguish,” “betray,” “fight,” and “infuse.” The ubiquity of superlatives and dynamic words suggests that the writer could barely control his emotions and tongue, and that he had lost his ability to assess situation

120  Antidefamation Humor

objectively, draw valid comparisons, and make good decisions.56 As the use of words such as “certain,” “full,” “completely separate,” and “only reasonable course” indicate, the journalist had made up his mind; he could think only on a large, indeed universal scale and had lost his taste and appreciation for local events, common people, and microhistory.57 The lack of respect for everyday situations seems to have gone hand-inhand with a disregard and indeed contempt for the individual, who in the text exists only as the member of a group. In the text, the word “Jewish” no longer functions as a neutral term but as a negative adjective that can be attached at will to any object, individual, group, and/or set of ideas one does not like.58 The collective singular “the Jew” plays a similar role: it reduces the individual to a single dimension: his or her membership in a disliked group.59 Having treated every Jew as the member of a hostile group as well as a mortal threat, the text comes to the logical conclusion that “mixing with the Jews brings certain death on us” and that only complete separation via the emigration and the removal of Jews could ensure the revival of the nation after defeat and the survival and restoration of the historical borders of the Hungarian state. At the cradle of its independence, the new country was presented with a coffin as well! Overwhelmed by joy, Hungary dreamt only of becoming an independent republic; it dreamt of democracy and being finally able to run its own affairs. But the unsavory band of Socialist-Communists, like vipers lurking in the bush, were already poised to attack. The Károlyi’s camarilla wanted to use the newly gained freedom to dig the grave of independent Hungary… Who made up this camarilla? Oszkár Jakobovics-Jászi, Zsigmond Kohn-Kunfi, József Diener-Dénes, Pál Krámer-Kéri, Henrik Steiner-Simonyi, and József Schwartz-Pogány, who joined a few days later; all Socialist-Communists from tip to toe. No real Magyar ever became a member of Károlyi’s camarilla… The National Council, the executive branch of the new government, and the municipal council [in Budapest] were filled with Socialist-Communists; two hundred young Jewish men, all Socialist-Communists and members of the Galilei Circle, turned the state into their fiefdom. Total power and the future of the country fell into their lap… The same Bolshevik-Communists who later became part of Károlyi’s camarilla murdered the Prime Minister István Tisza; they hoped that the execution of the greatest Hungarian [statesman] would lead directly to the establishment of a communist dictatorship.60 The doubling (Socialist-Communist; Bolshevik-Communist) attributes (in the text suggests that the author was either unwilling or unable to see the difference between various liberal and leftist groups). At the same time, the coupling of open-ended or cluster terms most likely suited his intention to denounce and denigrate several phenomena and people at the same time. The

Antidefamation Humor  121

elaborate word structures, frequent repetition, and the adjective “Jewish” were meant to disclose hidden truths to conspiratorial minds. By revealing the earlier, often Jewish-sounding names of political opponents, the author used a sophisticated device to discredit entire political parties and movements and warn his paranoid readers about a hidden threat. Yet, contributors to Virradat and Új Nemzedék did not stop at the condemnation of social democracy and communism and the agents and supporters of such movements. With the wholesale denunciation of the prewar political system as un-Hungarian, Jewish, and liberal, the journalist shed doubt on the correctness of the path that Hungarian history had taken since 1848 and, thus, on the legitimacy of parliamentary institutions and liberal principles such as the rule of law and respect for individual rights.61 The linkage between freemason lodges and the Károlyi government, i.e., Jews and the aristocracy, and the portrayal of Count Mihály Károlyi as a dupe and “degenerate” served, in a disguised form, to pass judgment on the traditional elite as well.62 The tone of the majority of editorials and political pamphlets published during the counterrevolution was both serious and pessimistic. Many conservative liberal newspapers, such as Pesti Hírlap (Pest Daily), succumbed to the same mood. For example, one of its editorials compared the communist leader Béla Kun to Emperor Nero, who allegedly set Rome on fire to demonstrate his power, satisfy his hunger for fun and entertainment, and gain inspiration for his music.63 Right-wing publications painted the history of the short-lived Soviet Republic in Hungary as a global-historical event and an unprecedented catastrophe. The Christian Socialist Nép (The People) described “the victory of Judeo-Bolshevism” in apocalyptic terms. Then the Golem from the East arrived. The monster extinguished people’s faith in God; it murdered noble desires and abolished the idea of brotherhood. Communism turned political leaders into dictators, social superiors into petty tyrants, and people into slaves… It turned workers into machines and their hands into lifeless tools and machine parts that could easily be replaced… Because they did not recognize the existence of the soul, the communists treated workers as pieces of iron… The new rulers, the People’s Tribunes, the Kun-Neros, and the Lenin-Caesars, entered the stage of history. Blood f lowed like rivers, and in the cellars of Saint Petersburg and in the alleys of Budapest, Jewish-Bolsheviks, with an evil grin on their faces, tortured and murdered Christians with impunity.64 The editorials in right-radical newspapers rarely operated with only one metaphor and antisemitic stereotype; the image of the Jews as communists appeared alongside and in combination with other, often older, images that identified Jews as aliens, enemies of the true faith, conspirators, and carriers of contagious diseases. Each metaphor stood at the center of word clusters that expanded its boundaries and gave it depth and additional meaning.

122  Antidefamation Humor

The image of Jews as aliens, for example, was imbedded in a cluster made up of adjectives, verbs, and phrases such as “foreigner,” “pagan,” “Christ-killer,” “arsonist,” “ugly,” “f lat-footed,” “bow-legged,” “skinny,” “hooked-nosed,” “black and curly hair,” “stooped back,” “caftan,” “sideburns,” “filth,” “nervous,” “hysterical,” “sly,” “gesticulating,” “calculating,” “ghetto,” “large sexual appetite,” “kosher” and “goose.” The image of Jews as a physically and morally repulsive, culturally alien, and ethnically inassimilable group was linked to a second key metaphor, “the conspirator,” which gave traditional xenophobia and religious prejudice a new political dimension. This metaphor, in turn, stood at the hub of a new word cluster which included terms such as “capitalist,” ‘international,” “cosmopolitan,” “liberals,” freemasons,” “Jewish business,” “Jewish invention,” “gold,” “wealth,” “greed,” “devious,” “secretive,” “bloodsuckers,” “vampires,” “arsonists,” “treason,” “agitators,” “bastards,” “crooks,” “murderers,” “assassins,” “criminals,” “monsters,” “slavery,” “rape,” “ferret out,” “unmask,” “expose,” “decipher,” and “explain.” The third metaphor, which tied Jews to calamities, natural disasters, and epidemics attracted words such as “f lood,” “river,” “tides,” “fire,” “vultures,” “wolf,” “snakes,” “vipers,” “locusts,” “bloodsuckers,” “vampires,” “swarm of locusts,” “parasites,” “bacilli,” “rats,” “ mental illness,” “human waste,” “decline,” “rotting” and “dark recesses.” Employed interchangeably and often in the same texts, these auxiliary metaphors and word clusters reinforced the power of the key metaphor, the stereotypical image of Jews as communists after 1918. The names Cecile Tormay and Dezső Szabó, the idols of right-wing university students and violent student militias, were on the lips of every educated nationalist and anti-Semite during the counterrevolution. Whereas both Tormay and Szabó held propaganda speeches before large audiences after August 1919, the shy Szegfű avoided the limelight and relied mainly on the written word to spread his ideas about the pernicious inf luence of liberalism and capitalism and the negative role of Jews in the two revolutions. Posters and f lyers that preceded antisemitic meetings and pogroms (thus forming a link between ideas and motives, on the one hand, and action, on the other), used many of the stereotypical images and language one encountered in the writings of these three authors and in the editorials of long-forgotten journalists. The journalists and illustrators who produced posters and f lyers either worked for the state as professional soldiers, normally in the propaganda division of the National Army) or were members of right-wing patriotic and veterans’ organizations such as the ÉME and MOVE. Propaganda material was distributed by regular soldiers touring the countryside in army vehicles, and by local policemen and political activists, including priests, teachers, and the leaders and rank-and-file of local Christian Socialist parties. The images and texts were explicit about the political views and intentions of their authors. Many of the texts referred to Jews as “shameless,” “immoral,” “traitors,” “cowardly,” “bloodsucking,” and “murderous.” They accused members of this religious minority of every crime; assured readers and viewers that

Antidefamation Humor  123

“revenge is coming,” and recommended that “Jews, move along with your luggage (zsidók vigyék a batyujukat).” The texts frequently ended with the battle cry of East European pogromists: “strike the Jews!” (Üsd a zsidót).65 Images were even more potent and threatening. The caption of one poster, which showed peasants chasing Jews out of their communities, read: “Go to Palestine!”66 Another portrayed an older Orthodox man carrying a money bag under his arm and two soldiers in National Army uniforms with crane feathers attached to their caps. One soldier destroys the money bag; the other stabs the elderly man in the heart with his bayonet. A third poster depicted a bearded man dressed in the traditional Jewish overcoat, the kaftan, washing blood off his hands in the Danube. The famous Szamuely placard was the most effective: on one cross hangs a bourgeois man and on the other cross a peasant; beside them stands a gloating Jew. The caption reads: “Christians! Join the Awakening Hungarians! We will do our job promptly and effectively.” The first image below portrays a Jewish terrorist in Red Army uniform hanging peasants in front of a burning church (Figure 3.1). The caption reads “We have fought for this?” The most infamous of all antisemitic posters features a naked beast with unmistakable “Jewish” features washing its bloodied hands in the Danube in front of the parliament building (Figure 3.2). The caption of the poster reads: “They are cleansing themselves.” The stereotypical image of the communist Jew was new; however, its elements had been around at least since the late nineteenth century. Romantic

Figure 3.1 Pogromist Placard Reading “Is This What We Fought For?!” (MNL-PKG 1919 0032)

124  Antidefamation Humor

Figure 3.2 Pogromist Placard Reading “They Wash Themselves Clean.” (MNLPKG 1919 0018)

poets, writers, and artists in the early nineteenth century created the national characters as manifestations of allegedly unique ethnic essences. Until the late 1870s, the national characters displayed mainly positive features. However, in the age of imperialism, increased ethnic rivalries within the empires

Antidefamation Humor  125

and nationalizing states, heightened tensions in the international system, and with the arrival of racism as an ideology in the late nineteenth century, national caricatures increasingly took on negative and threatening features. The comic weeklies, which reached the zenith of their popularity before 1914, both capitalized on and reinforced this trend. The stereotypical images in the comic weeklies and political commentaries ref lected the gravity of the threat that the rarefied essence posed to nationalizing states and the dominant majorities within them: in Hungary, too, the “stupid Slovak” was seen as less dangerous than the “violent” (Serb), the “treacherous and ungrateful” Croat, or the “barbarian” Romanian. The nature of the Jewish stereotype was more complicated. Ethnic minorities and traditional Jews were instantly recognizable by their strange customs and attire, and by their different language or accent. The poor, low, and lower-middle-class non-Hungarian ethnic groups lived in compact communities on the periphery and semi-periphery of the country. On the other hand, assimilated Jews participated in and were an integral part of the economic, cultural, and social life of the country: they lived in the center rather than the periphery; hailed from the middle classes and elite; and in attire, language, customs, and behavior, they were virtually indistinguishable from other members of their social class. Unlike other ethnic minorities, Jews were insiders, and, as such, they represented a hidden and more insidious threat. To identify this grave threat, vigilant nationalists and “defenders of the race” moved the ethnic markers from dress to the body. In the comic weeklies before the war, Hungarian men were portrayed as tall, strong, and handsome, and Hungarian women were depicted as healthy and beautiful. The image of Jews, then, was the antithesis of the portrayal of Hungarians: Jewish women were portrayed as fat and ugly. The Jewish man was depicted as small in stature, with f lat feet, short and bowed legs, enormous hands, disproportionately long arms, and a hunched back, walking like a monkey. His head was too big, his ears were hairy and stuck out, he had bulging dark eyes, his lips were large and f leshy, his teeth were large and decayed, and his lose was long and hooked. His face was ugly, and his smile was treacherous and cruel. The distorted facial features of a Jews mirrored the nature of his soul and marked an entire race as different. Jews were seen as animalistic and subhuman, repulsive both physically and morally, and a grave threat to his immediate surroundings and the rest of humanity.67 The third poster makes explicit the connection between religion and modern antisemitism on the one hand, and between racism and political manipulation on the other. The caption reads: “That is the way they have worked!” (Figure 3.3). The f lyers’ texts were intended to reinforce the posters’ messages. Slogans like “the traitor and scumbag Jew incites”; “the immoral Jew bribes”; and “the bloodsucking Jew pillages” transported viewers to the realm of fantasy. The word “Jew” in the text always appeared in the company of negative adjectives: “the cowardly Jew;” “the dirty Jewish agent”; “the crooked Jewish speculator”; “the traitor Jewish drone”; “the instigator and assassin Jew”; and

126  Antidefamation Humor

Figure 3.3 Pogromist Placard Reading “This is How They Work!” (MNL-PKG 1919 0057)

Antidefamation Humor  127

“the lowly Red Jew.” The f lyers described communism as “the Jewish Eldorado” and relayed to the public that Jews were out to destroy the “Christian nation state”; that they collaborated with the Romanian Army; spread lies about “Christian” politician and soldiers; agitated against the National Army, failed to do their duty, and continued to evade conscription. Jews allegedly acted as black-marketeers and speculators, and they brought “us nothing but lice and cockroaches.” Jews, the authors of one of f lyers reasoned, would never become good Hungarians because “a leopard never changes its spots” (kutyából nem lesz szalonna; literally “bacon can never be made of dogs”). It was a mistake to treat them humanely. “Better late than never! The day of reckoning is coming! (ami késik nem múlik),” one f lyer promised.68 Unfortunately, one of the most infamous f lyers of the period entitled “The Ten Commandments of the Christian Hungarian Man” survived only in contemporaries’ descriptions. The first commandment read: “only if you love your country and religion can [Hungary]), destroyed by Jews, be resurrected. [Therefore] vote and support the only Christian party in the country.” The second commandment admonished the readers: “respect the thousand-year history of your land, and do not forget that it was destroyed by Jewish immorality.” The third commandment urged them: do not lose hope, lest it lead to the return of Red Jewish rule. Remain united; do not forget that there are only two parties in the land today: the first is Christian and patriotic; the second is immoral, internationalist, and Jewish. The fourth commandant asked readers to maintain discipline and support the National Army. The rest of the commandments demanded the removal of Jews from high positions and called for boycotts of Jewish stores and Jewish professionals, such as doctors and lawyers. It warned readers not to buy their “dirty” newspapers and books and entreated Gentiles to not let Jews “enter your house, your club, or political party.” Every commandment ended with the refrain: “Strike the Jews!”69 With the decline of antisemitic violence and the consolidation of the counterrevolutionary regime, the anti-Jewish posters and f lyers also began to disappear from walls and billboards. One of the last f lyers, produced sometime in 1921, warned Hungarian women to “not to give life to boys who would then become the slaves of Jews and to girls [who would then become] the objects of Jewish lust!” 70

Communism in Satires and Jokes The image of Judeo-Bolshevism as a global calamity and the communist dictatorship as a national tragedy in the bourgeois press normally left little room for humor. However, not everyone viewed the recent past through such a dark lens. Modern dictatorships are both based on, and heightened, contradictions (between intention and result; propaganda and reality, for example). People’s

128  Antidefamation Humor

sense of vulnerability and helplessness in the face of the overwhelming power and the brutality of the state, too, favors the rise of political humor as a form of resistance. Jews and the political left had no monopoly on jokes. Rightwing political pamphlets and newspaper editorials depicted the short history of Soviet Republic as a serious and world-historical event (thus, paradoxically agreeing with the communist assessment) after its collapse in August 1919. On the other hand, at least some liberals and many social democrats described the dictatorship of the proletariat not only as a historical accident, but also as a farce. The social democrat Simon Szerényi, who had been a member of the left-radical Galileo Circle in 1918 and who later edited the Hungarian-language publication Szinház és Mozi Újság (Theater and Movie News) in New York in the 1920s, was one of the earliest advocates of this, admittedly minority point of view. Only a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Republic, Szerényi, while working for the periodical Az Ember (The Man), which was edited by social democrat Ferenc Göndör in Vienna, published an inf luential political pamphlet entitled Escape of the People’s Commissars from the Frontline and Other Sensational Reports from the Time of the Soviet (1919). In it, Szerényi described the dictatorship as the greatest “swindle” (humbug) in history and a farce whose theme and “content was death.” The communists, in his opinion, were nothing more than con artists, soldiers-of-fortune, and common criminals who claimed to fight for a better and more egalitarian world. In reality, they amassed power and accumulated wealth only for their own benefit: the communist elite lived in hotels, gorged themselves on fine food, and lived in luxury while the general population starved and refugees from the detached provinces froze to death without shelter.71 The Communist dictatorship reminded the journalist Oliver Nagy Sasvári, too, of a farcical event and a carnival, during which everything was turned on its head: the poor pretended to be wealthy, simpletons played the role of the wise, and criminals took over the reins of power from the educated and the just. Communism, “a satire with a tragic end,” had to collapse, the conservative liberal Sasvári argued, because it was based on the foolish idea of equality, which could be realized only by using extreme force.72 Sasvári, like the majority of liberal commentators, came from the world of entertainment and journalism. This group normally had a sharp eye for spotting contradictions and was skilled in the use of sarcasm to deliver their devastating critiques. Károly Lovászy, who penned the best—or at least the most humorous—anticommunist pamphlet entitled the Lame Soviet (Gyenge Szoviet, 1920), already made a name for himself as a satirist before 1914. During the counterrevolution, he worked for Imre Nagy’s Az Ojság. The humor of Lovászy and his comrades was not free of arrogance and elitism. Liberal authors were prone to mock the communists and social democrats who held power during the Soviet interlude as illiterate peasants, semi-educated blue-collar workers, lower-middle-class upstarts, and failed intellectuals who mimicked the mannerism and tried, unsuccessfully, to imitate the lifestyle of their social superiors. Liberal texts portrayed the communists as incompetent outsiders: even

Antidefamation Humor  129

noble goals such as the expansion of the franchise and democratic elections were bound to produce only negative and farcical results if advanced by such pretenders to power.73 In contrast to the right-radical and antisemitic authors, liberal journalists either overlooked the Jewish background of communist functionaries or described it as a minor factor. This was even truer for social democrats, who also had a more realistic perspective on the Red Terror and the characters and motives of is perpetrators. The conservative social democrat, Sándor Csizmadia, who was held under house arrest during the dictatorship, described the two Red detectives who had kept an eye on him as well-­ meaning and incompetent bunglers: the first suffered a heat-stroke while the second was so lazy and inept that Csizmadia, the captive, had to protect him from the wrath of his superiors. It was, ironically, the incompetence of low-level communist functionaries and the basic decency of members of the Red Guards that spared lives and saved the country from complete destruction.74 The charge of communist incompetence and corruption was also a constant theme in right-radical and antisemitic newspapers during the counterrevolution. In contrast to the texts of their liberal counterparts, the tone of the editorials and investigatory reports published in these publications remained serious, expressing indignation and conveying threats. As a result of the four months of communist misrule, the Christian Socialist daily Új Nemzedék told its readers that wine production in the Tokay region plummeted and was set back at least one generation.75 According to the right-radical Szózat, political hacks appointed at the end of March 1919 ruined Margaret Island, including its world-famous spa.76 After taking power in March 1919, communist soldiers-of-fortune filled the upper and middle echelons of the state bureaucracy with their friends, relatives, and fellow Jews: with “the dregs of Terézváros and Erzsébetváros.” 77 During the short-lived communist dictatorship, the denizens of ghettos and slums moved into the urban mansions of the aristocracy and ruled the country from historic public buildings. The leaders lived in luxury while the rest of the population experienced only cold and starvation. The tables were packed with Italian wines, champagnes, and liquors. From Hungarian wines, only the best of Tokay was ordered. The party must have cost at least fifteen thousand koronas. And what a party it was! Anything one could have wanted: tasty white bread, real coffee, and cheese, was to be had. Like locusts in the fields, the family members of communist bigwigs swarmed the great hall. They gorged themselves on the best food. Suddenly, a group of protesters, emaciated proletarian women demanding bread, appeared. They arrived at the right time: the waiters had just begun serving the main course in the great hall. The workers’ daughters and wives only wanted bread, but the People’s Tribunes filled their bellies with cakes, and got drunk on champagne.

130  Antidefamation Humor

But this was typical of them. The arrogant and repulsive wives of the communists did, of course, did much more than just eat their fill at the party… In short, the communists preached restraint and patience, but they lived in luxury and committed the worst kinds of sins.78 Sensationalist accounts of communist misrule were meant to both expose and suppress certain aspects of the recent past. The right-wing narrative about communist incompetence and corruption served to divert attention away from the responsibility of the political elite and their allies for the outbreak of the war and its disastrous outcome. The topos of communist nepotism, thus, built on the progressive discourse concerning Hungary as a “the swampy land of relatives, acquaintances, and panamas” and trivialized its weight and denied its relevance when it came to pre-1919 events.79 The watered-down and distorted topos about corruption dominated the pages not only of the right-radical tabloids, political pamphlets, and recently published memoirs; a less obviously antisemitic version of the same image found its way into Borsszem Jankó, the social elite’s traditional choice of a comic weekly. The anticommunist jokes published in the journal, like elsewhere, painted the history of the Soviet Republic as a world in which everything had been turned topsy-turvy: where heartless brutes were allowed to push their social betters around ( Joke 1). In a country well known for its restricted franchise, voter intimidation, and gross manipulation of election results before the war, conservative and liberal journalists were too quick to denounce the spring elections held under the new law that had extended voting rights from 6 percent to more than 80 percent of the adult population as un-free ( Joke 2). Even the more progressive Az Ojság did not miss the opportunity to make fun of the failure of incompetent Soviet administrators to feed the urban population ( Joke 3). 1 At the Technical University, the ever vigilant Red detectives were searching for counterrevolutionaries. One comrade paid a visit to the rector and yelled at him in typical communist style: “What are you?” “I am the rector.” “I did not ask who you are, yelled the ignorant, but what you are!”80 2 During the infamous Soviet election, people used to tell me this joke: this election is so secret that no one knows who the candidate is.”81 3 Report from Vienna. Béla Kun is going to make an appeal to the people of Budapest and ask them to create a new holiday to commemorate the squash and pearl barley (gersli) feast of last year.82 Both the right-wing political pamphlets and the liberal comic weeklies saw extreme violence as the very essence of communism; typically, they portrayed the leaders of the Soviet Republic as assassins, pathological liars, and born criminals. They identified Tibor Szamuely, the head of the political police, with General Haynau, who had ordered the execution of 13 Hungarian generals in Arad in October 1849 (Cartoon 3.3). Making fun

Antidefamation Humor  131

Cartoon 3.3  In Hell: Haynau to Szamuely.83 Please Young Man. Take my seat. You deserve it more since you have hanged more Hungarians.

of communist cruelty was not easy, however. As we have seen, traditional Jewish jokes preferred witty remarks to rough acts and passive resistance to violent reaction. Jokes born after the collapse of the Soviet Republic ran counter to this old tradition. They not only lacked the linguistic sophistication of Jewish humor but were also petty, malicious, and outright cruel

132  Antidefamation Humor

( Jokes 1, 2, and 3). The deliberate blurring of boundaries between Jewish and non-Jewish humor may have served a political goal: the anticommunist jokes published in Borsszem Jankó, the comic weekly of choice for both the Jewish and non-Jewish segments of the upper-middle class and elite, might have sought to overcome the distrust that had been produced and bridge the emotional gap that had been opened up between the two groups in the previous four months. 1 Bored with life, a counterrevolutionary decides to hang himself. He climbs up a pole; on the top he found a piece of paper that reads: “Sorry. This place is reserved for the People’s Commissars.”84 2 The Court of Law & Cheating. During the communist regime of horror, János Bloodsucker (Vérszopó) plucked out the eye of one of his victims. Having finished his gruesome act, he noticed that the victim had glass eyes. The terrorist, therefore, denounced the victim for cheating to the Revolutionary Tribunal, which then sentenced the victim to death. The Budapest Court of Justice is expected to announce its verdict in János Bloodsucker’s murder trial in the next few days.85 3 A Communist agitator furnished his apartment with stolen goods. Among them was a monumental portrait of Béla Kun, which he hung on the wall. The agitator showed off the painting to his comrades. One of the guests remarked: “yes, it indeed looks exactly like Comrade Béla Kun, but perhaps he should be hanged a little bit higher.”86 The right-wing tabloids and political pamphlets were obsessed with the communist leader Béla Kun. They described him as a demonic figure: an unscrupulous, amoral, pleasure-seeking, and corrupt individual; a hard-driven careerist ready to do anything to succeed; an uprooted man and soldier of fortune; a professional revolutionary; and a sworn enemy of tradition and the three things that decent people everywhere held dear: family, nation, and private property. To right-wing commentators, Kun embodied every physical, moral, and intellectual feature associated with the mystical Jew.87 As Kun’s recent biographers have shown, the dictator simply did not possess many of the features attributed to him; his contemporaries also tended to exaggerate the nature of his weaknesses and faults. His biographer, György Borsányi, describes Kun as a fascinating individual and moderately talented politician. Kun apparently had a quick mind and an insatiable curiosity about the world; in Borsányi’s opinion, he “was among the best-informed people about politics in Hungary.”88 The future leader of the Soviet Republic displayed courage as a soldier and officer in the war and significant talent as an agitator and organizer working for the Bolsheviks in revolutionary Russia in 1918. Kun’s stoicism under torture while in prison in February 1919 earned him the sympathy and respect of blue-collar workers in Budapest, even those who otherwise rejected his party and what it stood for. Kun was a charismatic speaker, a good organizer, and tireless networker. He worked well with people who

Antidefamation Humor  133

did not share his political convictions. The communist leader judged potential coworkers and collaborators on the basis of their usefulness. Despite his Jewish background, Kun as a Machiavellian politician was prepared to use antisemitic slogans and narratives to discredit his social democratic opponents in early 1919. Kun, however, lacked Lenin’s political talent, especially the Bolshevik leader’s sense of timing; many times, he misjudged the situation and his opponents. The Political Commissar of Foreign Affairs was ready to sacrifice his life for the idea of a world revolution and proletarian dictatorship; yet, he was also prepared to sacrifice others to reach his goal. Unlike Lenin, Stalin, and leaders in the left-wing of his party in Hungary, such as Tibor Szamuely, Ottó Korvin, and Mátyás Rákosi, Kun was generally opposed to arbitrary action and extreme violence. However, under the pressure of circumstances and fearing a counterrevolutionary coup, he came to accept the use of terror as a political instrument by early July. Still, even as a convinced revolutionary, he did not cling to power; recognizing the hopelessness of the situation and admitting defeat, he resigned from his position as the de facto leader of the Soviet Republic at the end of July 1919.89 Middle-class contemporaries cared little about such fine distinctions: they were more interested in demonization than in a balanced evaluation of Kun as a politician and private individual. Even the liberal comic weekly Borsszem Jankó, tried to score points with its readers by making fun of Béla Kun’s physical appearance ( Joke 1). Az Ojság, the favorite comic weekly of urban progressives, made an allusion to his family background as an Orthodox Jew from the eastern part of the country; it also blamed him for the country’s general misery, corruption, and the Red Terror ( Joke 2) 1 Even in Esperanto, people made fun of the Soviet leader. Here is one such joke: beautiful in Esperanto means bella; ugly is unbella; hideous is kunbella.”90 2 The Trial of the People’s Commissars—Day 56,000—from our own “Jewporter” (tudózsidónktól): Having finished with the questioning of the majority of People’s Commissars, who are in custody, the President of the Court orders Béla Kun to take the stand. The ex-People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs enters the courtroom in Baron Adolf Ullmann’s fine jacket; his face displays a rosy complexion normally produced by the conditions of the socialist economy. He is led to the stand by two prison guards, followed by the gaze of a large audience. PRESIDENT: What DEFENDANT: My

is your name? honest Hungarian name was originally Kohn. Later I changed it to J. Kun. PRESIDENT: What does J. Kun mean? DEFENDANT: Jassz [Thug] Kun. PRESIDENT: When were you born?

134  Antidefamation Humor DEFENDANT: In year 2. PRESIDENT: Please do not joke. What DEFENDANT: With the unification of

does year two mean? the proletariat of the world under my

rule, a new calendar has started. PRESIDENT: Then you were born in year one and DEFENDANT: In year two. We divided the first

not two. year equally between the

proletariats of the world. PRESIDENT: Religion? DEFENDANT: Protestant.

To the President’s further question, Kun tells the court that he does not feel guilty and that the position of the People’s Commissar came to him as a surprise, and that he accepted it only to protect the citizens’ jewelry and other possessions. PRESIDENT: And then what happened in the DEFENDANT: I think the whole jail business

jail (gyüjtőfogház)? was based on a misunderstanding. When I and my colleagues were imprisoned, I asked the warden as a believer in the law whether he had a permit to collect (gyűjt). When he could not produce it, I became angry and sent a message to Miksa Károlyi to solve this complicated legal problem, or at least find a way to get me out of there. Miska was not as dumb as he looked but much, much dumber; so, instead of letting me out, he jumped out of the boat and out of his skin (kiugrott a bőréből) and handed power over to me and to my comrades on a newly confiscated golden plate. PRESIDENT: Then what did you do? DEFENDANT: I immediately turned my attention to rebuilding the country’s economy. In a hurry, I set up pearl barley (gersli) production, nationalized the land devoted to squash production, and sent the best political minds and economic experts of the country to the bottom of the Danube to prepare river-regulation plans. PRESIDENT: You have betrayed your land. DEFENDANT: You are wrong once again. Already on the first day of the reign of terror, I announced “Extra Hungariam non est vita” and then moved immediately into [Hotel] Hungaria, where, indeed, life was better than anywhere else in the world. PRESIDENT: Did you know Lenin personally? DEFENDANT: Lenin? Who is that? This is the first time I have heard this name. PRESIDENT: Really? How about Szamuely, Korvin Klein, Csernyi? DEFENDANT’S ATTORNEY: I am sorry to interrupt. Since the police investigation has already concluded that my client knows neither God nor humanity (nem ismer se Istent, se embert), I regard these questions superf luous. PRESIDENT: You brought lot of money with you from Russia. DEFENDANT: Compared to what I took later, it was really not much.

Antidefamation Humor  135 PRESIDENT: You and your gang pillaged the land. DEFENDANT: Yes, because I sought to revive an

old folk custom, I set up spinning bees ( fosztóka) here and there. PRESIDENT: You and your gang have hanged a lot of people. DEFENDANT: Yes, and with it we made many people wealthy! An old proverb has it that the rope of a hanged man will bring you a fortune (szerencsét hoz). In contrast to the People’s Commissar for nationalization, I regarded the rope as the key to the wealth and happiness of the population. PRESIDENT: Do you believe in a good life for all? DEFENDANT: I not only believe in a good life, I have lived it. PRESIDENT: After the dictatorship, you escaped. DEFENDANT: I did not emigrate, but only traveled to Austrian for one or two renner. PRESIDENT: Do you love Hungary? DEFENDANT: In part. PRESIDENT: Which part? DEFENDANT: I love its mountains but hate its plains (prónái) [allusion to the White Terror by Pál Prónay’s troops]. PRESIDENT: Then tell me this, why didn’t you take all the jewelry you confiscated with you? DEFENDANT: It is an old socialist truth that whoever tries to grab (markol) too much will keep only a little (keveset fog). PRESIDENT: Were you not afraid that you would be shot? DEFENDANT: No, not even a thousand bullets can kill me. Even in jail, where I faced physical abuse, I kept my calm knowing full well I wouldn’t die. PRESIDENT: Why? DEFENDANT: Because I am a Jew from Máramarossziget. PRESIDENT: And so? DEFENDANT: No Jew from Máramarossziget has ever died that way. They were all hanged. The court has concluded the testimony of Béla Kun, and the President closed the session.91 The topos of the communist Jew was omnipresent in right-wing political pamphlets and newspaper editorials in the immediate postwar period. The same stereotype appeared far less often in the Jewish-owned and edited comic weeklies. It is doubtful that the majority of jokes and anecdotes that uncritically equated communism with Jews had been penned by Jewish authors; those that did appear in Jewish comic weeklies like Borsszem Jankó belonged to the category of self-deprecating humor ( Jokes 1, 2, 3, and 4). The jokes about peasants’ hostility to Jews and “Jewish Communism” not only ref lected real tensions between the two groups but also served to divert public attention away from the White Terror in the countryside and justify pogroms, which were staged for the entertainment of hundreds of farmers and the rural poor in the fall and winter of 1919.

136  Antidefamation Humor

1 Why was Garbai elected to the Commissars’ Council (népbiztosok tanácsában)? There has to be someone who can sign orders on Saturday. 2 Have you heard that there was a big party yesterday in the Soviet House? Why? The older brother of one of the People’s Commissars had a Bar Mitzvah. 3 On the highway to Dömsöd, a giant Jeep is traveling with high speed. At an intersection, the car stops, and a young man jumps out. On the side of the highway, on the dirt road, a local Hungarian approaches him slowly. The young man addresses him: would you tell me, my friend, which road leads to Budapest? This one, Sir Commissar, answers the Hungarian, shifting his pipe from the left to the right corner of his mouth. The young man looks at the farmer with astonishment. Do you know me? No, Sir, I do not! So, how do you know that I am a People’s Commissar (népbiztos). For this, the Hungarian takes the pipe out of his mouth. He spits first before answering the question: “Well, Sir, you are driving a car, you are also young, snot-nosed, and a Jew, so you have to be a People’s Commissar!” 4 A provincial Soviet delegate visits the capital and takes a stroll on the Boulevard. He stops and asks a young passer-by, who is clearly in a hurry: “Could you please tell me, Comrade Commissar, where the Soviet House is?” The young man gives directions and then asks, “why do you call me commissar? I am not a commissar.” “I am sorry, Sir”, says the elderly man from the province. “I thought, since you are from Budapest, are young, snot-nosed and a Jew, you must also be a commissar.”92 Irrespective of their political and religious orientation, Jewish leaders rejected the equation of Judaism and Jewish history and tradition with Communism. József Schönfeld—a lawyer by training, one of the founders and the ex-president of the Jewish student fraternity the Maccabee Circle (established in 1903), and the editor of the Zionist Zsidó Szemle ( Jewish ­Review)— regarded the accusation that Jews used Communism to grab total power in the country as preposterous. He also argued that Jews had suffered more than any other group, and that the radical leftist regime had singled out Jews as its main enemy. Schönfeld admitted that many leaders of the Soviet Republic had been of Jewish descent. However, he asserted that they did not qualify as Jews because they had abandoned Judaism and had not embraced the Zionist cause: they were neither practicing Israelites nor Jewish nationalists. Schönfeld blamed failed Jewish assimilation, i.e., Hungarian society’s refusal to accept Jews as equal members and fellow Magyars, for the radicalization of the Jewish intelligentsia. Disappointed with assimilation and unable to recognize Zionism as a possible solution to their problems, the politically radicalized segment of the Jewish intelligentsia put their hopes in internationalist ideas and political movements such as social democracy and

Antidefamation Humor  137

communism, which promised them equality, emancipation, and the smooth and full assimilation into the majority society. In contrast to internationalism, Schönfeld preached Jewish nationalism as an answer to and a way out of the assimilationist trap. Jew should develop a strong national identify as a means to combat antisemitism in Hungary; as Zionists, they should enter into an equitable alliance with the Magyar nationalist parties and movements against cosmopolitans and internationalists until the time comes for Jews to leave Hungary for Palestine.93 Vilmos Krausz, the chief rabbi of the Orthodox community in Debrecen, argued along a similar line. Krausz was convinced that Jews, particularly small merchants, had suffered more than their non-Jewish counterparts during the communist dictatorship. Judaism and communism represented two different moral and spiritual universes. Communism ran counter to Judaism and the Ten Commandments, which denounced greed, envy, and class resentment as sins. The communists, he argued, were converts and traitors to the faith: lost sheep who, because of their moral confusion and cultural disorientation, posed a grave threat to the survival of the religious community. The best solution would be to cut ties completely with converts and agnostics. Nothing would be lost, Krausz mused; if anything, after the removal of sickly branches and the culling of dead trees, the Jewish tree and forest would grow ever stronger.94 Liberal newspapers such as Pesti Hírlap, which was owned and edited by Jews, admitted that men of Jewish origins had been overrepresented among the leaders of the Council Republic. However, none of these communists were practicing Jews or had any meaningful ties to Jewish religious or social organizations. The liberals recognized the need to “punish the guilty” but warned against revenge and overreaction, which could lead to pogroms.95 The Neolog weekly Egyenlőség echoed these sentiments Egyenlőség rejected the idea of collective responsibility as intellectually hollow and morally unfair. Neolog leaders saw no tension between Judaism and Hungarian nationalism and demanded, on the basis of shared history and sacrifice, equal treatment as citizens and patriots.96 Eager to prove their patriotic credentials, the inf luential among the Neolog community told the public that Jews not only kept their distance from the Bolshevik regime in the spring and summer of 1919 but also supported the counterrevolution from the start. Jewish non-commissioned officers, Egyenlőség advanced, were among the first to join the National Army in the spring of 1919.97 Jews were also overrepresented among the notables taken hostage by the communists in April and May 1919. According to Egyenlőség, Jews could be found in significant numbers, both as organizers and foot soldiers, in every counterrevolutionary uprising from Szolnok to Budapest; their share among the imprisoned and executed exceeded their proportion in the general population. It was mainly Jews who gave money to the counterrevolutionary government and the National Army. “We can say this without exaggeration,” Egyenlőség boasted in early November 1919: “without Jews

138  Antidefamation Humor

there would have been no counterrevolution.”98 Assimilated Jews supposedly remained loyal to Horthy and the counterrevolutionary regime after August 1919, the Jewish weekly continued, and at least one Jew, a 22-year-old college student from the town of Eger named Imre Klausz fell in the Battle of Budaőrs while fighting for Horthy and his regime during the second royalist coup on October 23, 1921.99 Zionist and Orthodox leaders and liberal and Neolog journalists were not alone in their rejection of the equation between Jews and communism. The comic weeklies, too, were determined to fight against the spread of this dangerous stereotype. Jews, they argued, had been opposed to communism at least since the Paris Commune of 1871 ( Joke 1). Communist ideas and political practices ran counter to the teachings of Judaism, Jewish customs, and the Jewish way of life ( Jokes 2 and 3). Jews not only remained untouched by communism: they also resisted, tooth and nail, the single-party state and its totalitarian pretensions during the Bolshevik interlude ( Jokes 4–6). 1 At a Communist meeting during the Paris Commune, an angry man with a dark beard jumped on the podium and screamed that one should take and distribute all the possessions of the wealthy. The onlookers, all good-for-nothings, voiced their approval loudly. Rothschild, who was also present, went up to the speaker at the end of the meeting and said: “look, my wealth is worth 400 million francs, and there are 40 million people in the country.” Each will get 10 francs. Here are your 10 francs, and now please leave me alone.100 2 In a small provincial town, two pious Jews debate whether the big-mouthed communist commissar József Pogány was a Jew. Because they fail to agree, the two friends decide to visit the local rabbi and ask him to arbitrate. After a short pause, the wise rabbi rendered his verdict: the People’s Commissars are neither Jewish nor Christian, he said, because they are all pogány [pagan].”101 3 I am not that the same person. “I hereby declare that I am not the same person and, therefore, should not be confused with my distant relative Dr. Stern (Star) Communist.” Please note that my family star has six (and not five) points. Respectfully, Dr. Dávid Mögen, common star and meteorite.102 4 A Budapest Jew once said the following about the government in German: “es wird sich nicht halten [It will not last],” which in Jewish jargon sounds like this: Vacah nicht halten [vacak means garbage or shit in Hungarian]. After that, the Jews called the Bolshevik regime the vacahnix regime. 5 This happened at the beginning of Communism, when Vacak nicht halten became a slogan and a form of greeting among citizens in the capital. Two Jews meet in front of Király Café. Their handshakes and lip movement betray what they are going to say. They haven’t even started talking when a car stops, a stranger jumps out, pats both on the shoulder,

Antidefamation Humor  139

and with a smile on his face says: “Vacak doch halten! [shit does last].” With fear and astonishment, the two Jews recognize Béla Kun as the stranger. 6 A joke from Dob Street or perhaps from Szabadság Square. First there was the Bach era [a prime minister in the 1850s associated with repression after the revolution of 1848, BB]; the Bach era was followed by the rebach era, and the present period is called the nebach era. For the majority’s [non-Jews] sake, rebach means profit, and nebach means pathetic. One of the functions of Jewish jokes was to warn community members about the dangers posed by the spread of rumors and antisemitic stereotypical images. The nationalist public was convinced that Jews were born revolutionaries and that they supported both the democratic revolution and the communist dictatorship. Such jokes reminded the readers that wealthy Jewish bankers such as Simon Krausz also provided loans to the new counterrevolutionary governments and underwrote the modernization of Admiral Horthy’s ­National Army, which has been responsible for the White Terror ( Joke  1). The jokes drew attention to the spread of antisemitic stereotypes among the uneducated rural population ( Joke 2). The new regime equated communism with democracy, Prime Minister Mihály Károlyi with Béla Kun, and supporters of democracy with the agents of communist repression. Official propaganda claimed that democratic politicians had betrayed the national cause in 1918 and early 1919 and that exiled democratic politicians continued their subversive activities under the protection of the hostile Czechoslovak government ( Joke 3). Az Ojság highlighted the plight of civil servants fired in connection to their political activities during the democratic and communist interludes and the climate of political paranoia, which promoted the spread of rumors and denunciations and fed the violent fantasies of the bourgeois public ( Jokes 4–6). 1 Simon Krausz [wealthy banker who provided Horthy and the National Army with loans, BB] was encouraged by his friends to start a third revolution. “You always demand the impossible from us Jews,” he responded. “It is not enough that we made the October Revolution for the bourgeoisie and the March Revolution for the working class. Now you want us Jews to start a third revolution, which will surely lead to a pogrom.”103 2 School news. In a small village on the other side of the Tisza River, a teacher asks his pupil, Andris Hörcsög Kovács: “what is a republic?” The little Hungarian answers: “a republic is where the Jew is king.”104 3 Stamp collection. Rare stamps! The news has been spreading like wildfire on the international stamp market that Mihály Károlyi & Co. have been stamped as traitors. For these rare stamps, the passionate collectors are prepared to pay good money.105 4 Explosion experts (aknamunkások) are needed in our mines. High wages and good benefits. Inquire by Mihály Károly in Prague.106

140  Antidefamation Humor

5 New routes. In political and business circles, more and more people have realized that new routes should be opened for air travel. Already, existing plans will be put into practice soon. According to our sources, civil servants who were appointed during the revolutions will be the first to learn how to f ly.107 6 Advertisement: Against treason, rope is the best medicine!108

The Image of Jews as Refugees and Dangerous Aliens The counterrevolution witnessed the birth of new images such as Jews as communists as well as the revival and transformation of older stereotypes, such as the one that treated Jews as foreigners and hostile aliens. The stereotypical image of Jews as aliens had its origins in the medieval depiction of “the wandering Jew.” Cursed by God for his refusal to acknowledge Christ as the Messiah, this ancient figure evoked both disdain and pity. In contrast, modern images that associated Jews with peddlers, tramps, refugees, and professional revolutionaries fed on modern fears: on the hostility of the relatively well-to-do toward outsiders, the uprooted, and the downtrodden. The image of Jews as refugees and migrants helped to prepare a release of banned instincts against banned people; a psychological bridge is constructed between the need of resentment against repression and the resentment against the people without a country. He who has no home does not deserve one.109 The demonized figures of the Jewish banker, wholesale trader, and department store owner capitalized on the rise of the anti-capitalist movement and ideologies, as well as the envy and resentment of the relatively poor toward the wealthy. In both cases, Jews were regarded as unwelcome aliens, intruders, troublemakers, thieves, exploiters, and parasites who lived on the fruits of other people’s labor. The image of the Jewish immigrant as cultural outsider and as a threat to the national community had a long pedigree: it first appeared in the press, political speeches, and documents in the 1840s. However, they became a recurring a topic and a staple of national discourse only in the 1870s. In his emotional interpellation in parliament in early April 1875, Győző Istóczy, a member of the governing Liberal Party, demanded that the government take immediate action to stop inf lux of Jewish migrants. Istóczy described his antisemitism as form of “national self-defense.” Unlike his liberal contemporaries in Hungary and elsewhere in Central and Western Europe, Istóczy did not distinguish between assimilated and unassimilated, Neolog and Orthodox, Jews but regarded every Jew as a member of “the aggressive caste” and a threat bent to destroy Christian Hungary and enslave its native population. All this talk about division in the Jewish community, Istóczy argued, was only a ruse to conceal shared interests and common intentions. Assimilated

Antidefamation Humor  141

Jews represented the vanguard of an invading Jewish army, Istóczy continued; their task was to make themselves both indispensable and culturally and emotionally acceptable to the Gentile. The vanguard only prepared the ground for the mass invasion of traditional, Orthodox, and “hardcore Jews” and their complete takeover of the country. Istóczy was also one of the first anti-Semites in Europe to raise the issue of Jewish emigration and advocate their return to Palestine. Unlike radical anti-Semites in the twentieth century, however, the liberal Istóczy still rejected violence as a solution to what he otherwise regarded as a serious problem.110 In the 1870s, Istóczy failed to convince his fellow parliamentarians to pass a new law to change the country’s immigration policy. The problem refused to go away, however; if anything, with the massive inf lux of Jewish refugees and immigrants from the Russian Empire due to pogroms and growing misery, it became more pressing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. County administrators, under pressure from the local population, submitted petitions to the Hungarian parliament demanding the immediate closure of the borders with Russia. The tabloid press, edited and partly written by Jews, also warned about the continued invasion of ethnically and culturally alien outsiders.111 Social reformers, such as the Protestant intellectual Miklós Bartha, gained a massive following at the turn of the century by blaming the dire poverty and backwardness of the rural population on their exploitation and mistreatment by Hungarian nobles, arrogant administrators, and Jewish tavern keepers, usurers, and peddlers. The latter, Bartha argued, were recent immigrants or the children of immigrants from the east. Like Istóczy, Bartha advocated the closing of the borders to Jewish migrants. However, his entreaties, like Istóczy’s pleas, fell on deaf ears: before 1914, the Hungarian government repeatedly refused to treat Jewish migrants from Galicia and Bukovina as illegal aliens, and the parliament, too, refused to pass any restrictive legislation aimed at Jews. Their inaction combined with the continued inf lux of migrants from the East favored the rise of antisemitic parties and movements and increased tensions not only between Jews and Gentiles but also between the culturally assimilated urban and more rural Jews.112 In the wake of the Russian invasion of Galicia and Bukovina in August 1914, hundreds of thousands of people f led to Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Lower-Austria, and Vienna. At the end of 1915, the Ministry of the Interior put the number of refugees at 385,645 in Austria; according to its calculations, almost half (57,630 or 41 percent) of these newcomers were Jews. The majority ended up in Vienna and the Czech provinces, but about 30,000 people sought refuge in Hungary in the first year of the war. Because of the changing fortunes of the war in the east, many of these refugees were able to return home by the end of 1915. A year later however, in the summer of 1916, the Brusilov Offensive ignited a second wave of migration from the same regions. As a result, in 1917, there were 200,000 Jewish refugees in the Dual Monarchy. Only a small minority, about 20,000 people according to

142  Antidefamation Humor

Marsha Rozenblit, settled in Hungary, however.113 Between 1916 and 1919, Jewish migrants entered Hungary in three waves: during the summer of 1916 came the Galiciáner; they were followed by Orthodox Jewish refugees from Transylvania and a group of Jewish returnees from Palestine at the end of the year. After the October Revolution and the start of the Civil War in early 1918, tens of thousands of Russian Jews crossed the border into the Dual Monarchy to escape pogroms. Since many of these new refugees had entered the country illegally and were constantly on the move to find jobs and shelter, the authorities could only estimate their numbers. Like earlier migrants, the majority of new refugees continued their journey west. Because of their early departure, there could not have been more than 5,000–7,000 Jewish refugees living in Budapest in 1920.114 Recent events did not favor the large-scale migration of traditional Jews into Central and Western Europe. The First World War, runaway inf lation, grinding poverty, and shifting borders poisoned relations between social classes and ethnic and religious groups. Despite obvious problems, the treatment of refugees continued to vary greatly in Europe in general, and in Austria-Hungary in particular. In Lower-Austria, the government and the public seem to have treated refugees better than in Bohemia and Moravia. As a sign of growing public hostility, in early 1917, the municipal government in Prague forbade Galician and Bukovinan refugees to use streetcars and trains. The authorities described the ban as a hygienic measure: foreign Jews, they argued, had been responsible for the spread of many epidemics, such as typhus. Whereas the new ban was soon rescinded, the government and the public at large continued to display a hostile attitude toward foreign Jews. The right-wing press both in Vienna and Prague blamed increasing prices, growing unemployment, and the lack of living space on refugees. The Czech authorities began to deport foreign Jews immediately after the war. However, in the new Austria, local governments often permitted the refugees to remain in the country on humanitarian grounds.115 The situation was equally bad in Germany, where the various Länder continued to deport foreign Jews well into the 1920s. Violent attacks on Jews also became more common in the cities of Central Europe after the war. Unlike in Poland, Hungary, and R ­ omania, there were no major pogroms in ­Germany, but minor attacks on Jewish merchants and refugees became common in the postwar period. The worst of these anti-Jewish riots took place in the heavily Jewish Scheunenviertel in central Berlin on November 6, 1923, where a mob ransacked Jewish stores; their attacks left dozens of innocent people injured.116 The situation in Hungary and the attitude of local governments and the public toward Jews bore a closer resemblance to that of situation in Bohemian and Moravian than that of Lower-Austria. The tabloid press in Budapest continued their agitation against Jewish refugees (describing them as smugglers, black-marketeers, usurers, currency speculators, pimps, and petty thieves) in the final year of the war. After October 1917, politicians warned about the threat of Bolshevik infiltration. Neither the democratic revolution

Antidefamation Humor  143

in October 1918 nor the Bolshevik takeover of power had anything to do with Jewish migration and refugees from the east. Yet, the image of Jews as black-marketeers did contain a kernel of truth (even if by far the largest group of black-marketeers were peasants). Both the democratic Károlyi government and the Soviet Republic deported foreign Jews,117 but the pressure to increase the volume of deportations increased considerably after the counterrevolution in August 1919. As a sign of public hostility, the police arrested and incarcerated hundreds of Jewish refugees into hastily constructed internment camps in the next 12 months. On October 3, 1920, under pressure from the right-wing press and parliament, the Teleki government ordered the arrest, interment, and deportation of foreigners who had entered the country since the outbreak of the war. The order coincided with the passage of two equally controversial pieces of antisemitic legislation that same year: the numerus clausus law, which limited the number of Jewish students at institutions of higher learning, and the reintroduction of lashing for black-marketeers and speculators. At least 2,000 Jewish refugees, many of whom in fact had lived in Hungary for decades, were arrested during the next three years. Dozens if not hundreds of undernourished and poorly clothed “illegal aliens” died or were tortured to death by antisemitic guards in internment camps. The deportation of Jewish refugees continued until 1924.118 It comes as no surprise that the right-wing press became obsessed with Jewish immigration during the counterrevolution and beyond. Even the many Jewish-owned and edited liberal newspapers remained hostile toward the refugees. Like its conservative and right-radical counterparts, the liberal Pesti Hírlap supported the detention and deportation of “illegal aliens” in the early 1920s.119 THE GALICIANS. THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS DECIDED TO EXPEL GALICIAN IMMIGRANTS FROM BUDAPEST. Before the war, we did not see this type of Jew here. The long caftan had long been regarded as exotic dress; only those who lived in the eastern and northern counties of Hungary or traveled there frequently were familiar with it. As Galicia became a battlefield during the war, such Jews, like swallows in springtime, appeared in the city, and it did not take long for the whole f lock to arrive. True, they quickly took off their caftans, but the Jews remained. These aliens not only survived here, but many, in fact, had made a fortune and had become unbelievably rich. How could they do that? Certainly not through hard, honest, and productive work; they used age-old tricks and conducted their business in the traditional manner following Shylock’s recipe. When it came to business, they showed no decency and no responsibility for others. They became rich by exploiting every chance and every opportunity offered by the market. Under the conditions of war, this meant profiting from other’s misery and turning their fellow men’s poverty into wealth. The most profitable business, of course, remained speculation: buying cheap

144  Antidefamation Humor

and selling goods at an exorbitantly high price. While hundreds of thousands of people went hungry in the city, they waited for the price to rise so they could sell their goods at a profit rate of a thousand percent… The Council of Ministers did the right thing when it decided to free us from these leeches; it finally followed the policy that Pesti Hírlap has been advocating for a long time. Because of the war and the revolutions, the population of Budapest has increased rapidly. The old structure is no longer able to contain within its walls the ever-increasing mass of people. And the inf lux continues even though there are not enough apartments and we are short of food. True, the majority of newcomers are no longer Galician Jews but people of our blood, hapless refugees from Transylvania and southern and northern Hungary. We cannot leave these unfortunate people without shelter and food. At a time when Hungarian administrators, the servants of our state, are forced to live in cattle cars because the city is not able to provide them with accommodation, we are no longer obliged to take care of aliens, who have abused their rights as guests. We have to show them the door in order to provide shelter and food for our hapless brothers who became refugees only because they did not want to serve the tyrannical regimes of foreign nations.120 The demand to deport refugees was not new. In the winter of 1914, tens of thousands mainly Orthodox Jews, who had f led Galicia from the invading Russian Army, found temporary refuge in Hungary. The Hungarian political class saw the refugee issue as Austria’s problems, and advocated deportation. The state thus began to repatriate Jews to Galicia in early 1915, even though peace had not yet returned. Both the Neolog and the Orthodox leadership swam with the tide by openly supporting the removal of “illegal aliens.”121 The native Jews’ hostility toward the refugees only increased in the second half of the war. The Neolog weekly Egyenlőség, too, continued to agitate against “the unrestricted immigration from the east.” According to Raphael Patai, the son of the Zionist leader, József Patai, Neolog leaders privately advised the various governments to block the inf lux of Galician refugees after 1917. Only the tiny group of Zionists spoke up against the forced removal of Ostjuden migrants from Hungarian soil after the war.122 While Neolog leaders were opposed to immigration, Jewish organizations and individual Jews from both camps continued to provide support for the homeless and the hungry. Both the liberal Pesti Hirlap and the ­Jewish Egyenlőség denounced the inhumane conditions and protested against the mistreatment of foreign Jews in the internment camps.123 The Hungarian National Israelite Education Association (Országos Magyar Izraelita ­Közművelődési Egyesület or OMIKE) set up soup kitchens for penniless migrants. ­M iddle-class Jewish women visited prisons and brought food and clothing to the “illegal aliens” awaiting deportation in the early 1920s. Liberal and Jewish parliamentarians protested against the arrest and deportation of Hungarian Jews or immigrants who had lived in Hungary for decades.124

Antidefamation Humor  145

The Neologs, in brief, did their religious duty without fully identifying with or showing undue sympathy for eastern and Orthodox Jews. Contemporary jokes ref lected the mixed feelings that assimilated Jews in the capital felt toward their allegedly more backward coreligionists from the east. Building on the traditional Jewish trope of the loveable small-time crook (a figure that we have already encountered in the chapter on black humor), the jokes drew attention to the plight of the newcomers; they also took pride in the determination and survival skills of the Jewish migrants, especially when it came to outfoxing the authorities ( Jokes 1, 2, and 3). Even more jokes were concerned with the spread of new stereotypical images; the attempt of right-wing journalists and politicians to channel public frustration over the rising prices, runaway inf lation, and the lack of food toward hapless migrants; the tendency of the authorities to overreact by arresting and punishing native Jews under the guise of fighting illegal immigration; and the constant violation of the liberal principle of freedom of movement ( Jokes 4 and 5). The migration jokes also contained veiled criticism of members of the Jewish middle and upper-middle-classes, who worried more about their summer holidays that the plight of their coreligionists ( Joke 6). Finally, the jokes took aim at the right-radical and peasant politicians who owed their fame and careers to the rise of violent antisemitism. But it was not only rightwing politicians but also counterrevolutionaries who used antisemitic narratives to hide their intellectual and moral bankruptcy ( Joke 7). 1 A Viennese joke. Haven’t you been expelled? Of course, would I be here if I hadn’t been deported?125 2 Ready to exchange my old country for a new one, even at a loss. Offers sent to “the Galician.”126 3 In the last century, sometime in the 1840s, Zemplén county decided to stop Jewish immigration from Galicia. So, it was announced that no Galician Jew could enter the county. The news hit Ájzigl Schnüpetzer hard because he lived in Új Szanden on the other side of the border and sold his goods on the market in Mezőlaborc. Schnüpetzer got baptized, thinking that the border guards would not bar converts, and shortly after his baptism, he decided to try his luck. The border guard saw him coming and already tasted the pleasure of his torment. “What is your name,” the immigration officer asked. “Ájzigl Schnüpetzer,” the hapless man responded. “Religion?” “Roman Catholic” said Ájzigl, f lashing his new baptism certificate. “Occupation?’ “Handlé Jew from Új- Szandec,” Ájzigl responded with pride.127 4 Headlines: “The wandering Jew has been detained! He is accused of currency speculation and smuggling!” “This is a gross violation of the ancient right of Jews to wander aimlessly!”, Pál Sándor protests in parliament. Chief Rabbi, internationally renowned scientist, language expert, and author of many important travelogues, Jakob Ashaver, have been arrested by the police on the charge of currency speculation. The rabbi

146  Antidefamation Humor

has been interned in the camp in Hajmáskér. The Hungarian government did what no other government had been able to accomplish in history: it arrested the [legendary] wandering Jew! The accused was caught red-handed on Dob Street, the haven of currency speculators, hoarders, and smugglers. The affair created uproar in the international press. Further charges are expected! Pál Sándor demands the immediate release of the prisoner and the restoration of the ancient Jewish right to wander [aimlessly].128 5 Herr Adonau has risen! Our sources tell us that the notorious immigrant from Austria has appeared early today before the Price Control Committee (Árvizsgáló Bizottság). The above mentioned illegal alien claims that the sudden increase in prices is due to the spike in shipping fees and propeller prices. The Price Control Committee rejects the argument and decrees Herr Adonau’s immediate deportation.129 6 Jews are immigrating in large groups to Budapest! Defense is hopeless! The Jewish threat, instead of diminishing, grows by the hour. In the last couple of days, thousands of Jews have migrated into the Hungarian capital. They come not only from the surrounding regions but also from Lake Balaton and even [from the distant] Carlsbad. Parliament is not in session when we need it most. And we cannot think of defense because the invaders claim that they have only been on holiday. Horrible! And at the beginning of the summer, we hoped they were leaving Budapest for good.”130 7 The regime (kurzus) is Jewish. “Everything is the Jews’ fault: the war, the revolution, communism; even the present regime.” “How come?” “Well, if there had been no war started by the Jews, then there would be no speculators and black-marketeers, and Budapest has not been f looded by Eastern Jews. Everything would have remained the same. The Liberals, the Independents, and the Democrats would still be in power; there would be no need to regulate the film industry and re-introduce lashing. István Haller would not be a minister; László Budaváry would have remained an elementary school teacher; [Győző] Drózdy131 would not have started a newspaper, and [István Szabó, BB] Nagyatádi would not have remained state secretary. In brief, everything would have remained the same. Therefore, we owe everything, including the current regime, to Jews. The Jew is the cause of everything; thus, anyone who is fighting the current antisemitic regime is also fighting the Jew!”132

The “Dirty Jew” as an Outsider and a Biological Threat To most people, strangers always look, sound, and smell funny. One of the main narratives in travelogues and descriptions of European cities from the early modern period to the twentieth century deals with the repulsion and disgust that non-Jewish administrators, doctors, and travelers in London,

Antidefamation Humor  147

Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw, and Saint Petersburg felt when confronted by the sights, sounds, and odors of Jewish neighborhoods. The link between the sensitivity to smell and ethnic prejudiced has been long recognized by social scientists.133 The mythical Jew, Leo Lowenthal argues, seems to have come from “a suspicious geographical region; he is a criminal who inhibits a reprehensive moral region; he is a degenerate who derives from a disgusting biological region.” Bad odors evoked fear and released sadistic impulses, while the image of Jews as viruses, insects, rodents, and reptiles—as creatures of the underworld—“invited the idea of extermination.”134 The prejudice that Jews smell badly, too, had has been a staple of both antisemitic and Jewish jokes since at least the early ninetieth century. While some of these “dirty” jokes clearly had antisemitic origins, the vast majority unmistakably belonged to the category of Jewish humor. Indeed, some of the funniest and smartest Jewish jokes could be described as self-deprecating humor. While entertaining, these dirty jokes, whether they were told by Neologs about the Orthodox, urbanites about rural people, or Gentiles about Jews, tended to have a critical edge: whether they were meant to insult others or intended as insults always depended on the circumstances. The content of dirty jokes was secondary to their format and ability to evoke laughter. As is normal with insults, the charge they contained was skewed at best, and completely false at worst. After all, Judaism required the faithful to wash their hands daily and take baths regularly. In medieval and early modern Spain, Jews who had converted to Christianity but continued to practice their ancient rites secretly (conversos) were identified by their daily washing routines. Those who still possessed a bathtub were automatically arrested and expelled or killed.135 The gap between Jews and non-Jews regarding hygienic standards, if anything, became wider after the arrival of syphilis and the closure of bathhouses in Christian Europe in the sixteenth century. Urban Jews in East-Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were generally better off than their non-Jewish counterparts; middle-class Jews followed higher hygienic standards (hygiene always has both cultural and financial dimensions) than lower-class Gentiles. Rural Jews may have looked dirty and disorderly to the occasional urban visitors, but for religious reasons, they must have paid a bit more attention to cleanliness than the non-Jewish population of the same social class. Cleanliness was, in any case, a relative concept, and it did not neatly follow the East– West divide. As one American visitor remarked in the 1920s, the Orthodox and Hasidic communities in Eastern Europe were neither poorer nor more backward or dirtier than the small towns and isolated farmsteads in many parts of the United States.136 Classic “dirty” jokes worked on at least on three levels. On the first level, this kind of joke made fun of the alleged backwardness of Orthodox and rural communities. Equally important was to ridicule the mindset of critics. At the more abstract level, these jokes ridiculed not only poor Eastern Jews but also those who made fun of them: arrogant Western and urban coreligionists, and

148  Antidefamation Humor

their obsession with cleanness and Gentile norms, their conformity and eagerness—bordering on desperation—to gain acceptance among Gentile middle-class society. Last but not least, “dirty” jokes criticized the world of the bourgeoisie, their rigid norms, the shallowness of their culture, and their lack of tolerance of the poor and the lifestyles of rural communities (Cartoon 3.4 and Jokes 1–5).137 1 Two Jews are discussing bathing. “I have a bath every year, said one of them, whether I need one or not.”138 2 A Jew noticed food stains on his friend’s beard. “I can tell you what you ate yesterday.” “Well, then tell me.” “Lentils.” “Wrong: It was the day before yesterday.”139 3 Two Jews met in the neighborhood of the bathhouse. “Have you taken a bath?” “Why? Is one missing?”140 4 Father and son go together to a Turkish bath. “Shame on you; your feet are dirty,” says the father. “But, Dad, your feet are even dirtier!” the son exclaims. “How can you compare the two?” “I am thirty years older than you are!” says the father.141 5 Receptionist at the cash register of a spa. “When you buy a yearly pass with twelve tickets, you will get a discount.” Kloppstein in a melancholic voice, “Well, who knows where I will be in twelve years.”142 6 At the edge of the city’s swimming pool. “Schmul, are you going into the water?” “Why should I? I have already pissed and cannot swim.”143 7 An early spring day in a café. “Mr. Rebstock, I ask you what is going to happen in the summer.” “What is going to happen?” says Mr., Rebstock, “I and my family will leave for the countryside, and the price will increase a little bit.” “But, no, I am asking you, Mr. Rebstock, what is going to happen in the summer?” Mr. Rebtock interrupts: “What is going to happen? The Budapest Orpheum will have a new program, and Mr. Lausiter will go bankrupt.” “But, please let me finish my question! I mean what will happen in the summer since your feet already stink now?”144 8 Teacher: “Herr Lilienblum, no student wants to sit beside your Little Móritz. No one can take it for long. Your little Móritz has to take a bath.” Lilienblum: “Why do you care? I have sent you my son to get an education, not so you can smell him. He is not a rose, you know.”145 Classical Jewish jokes were funny because of their lightheartedness and linguistic brilliance: both the storyteller and his/her listeners knew that no serious insult was intended, and that the jokes were mainly about entertainment. However, in counterrevolutionary Hungary, the expression “dirty Jew” became a battle cry of the radical Right, and the stories about Jewish hygiene acquired an additional meaning and a political dimension. The new jokes served to def late an old stereotype; they were meant to lay bare the

Antidefamation Humor  149

Cartoon 3.4  Mistake.146 Peddler: Please, these are nice and elegant summer trousers! Buyer: Yuk! But they stink! Peddler: I am sorry, but you are mistaken. It is not the trousers that stink, but me!

bigotry and maliciousness behind the Right’s new campaign against Jews and create sympathy for those who had to endure physical and verbal attacks ( Jokes 1–3). Yet, the lightheartedness and sarcasm so typical of Jewish jokes

150  Antidefamation Humor

did not completely disappear during the counterrevolution: “dirty jokes” did not become taboo. On the contrary, the fact that the fascists chose black as their color provided the opportunity to both ridicule the new political movement and use its trademark color in self-depreciating humor: to continue to tease fellow coreligionists and friends ( Jokes 4 and 5). 1 “Why are you wearing so much perfume, Móricka?” “Because I do not want to be a stinky Jew anymore.”147 2 Trade Advertisement: “Want to buy a perfume factory immediately? Contact: Stinky Galician.”148 3 Recent Trial. The public trial in a small town in Dunántúl has attracted much attention. The plaintiff, a perfume manufacturer by the name of Rozenduft, took Csirizi (Mr. Glue), a shoemaker, to court because he had allegedly called him a “stinky Jew.” Csirizi told the court that it was Rozenduft who had called him a “stinky shoemaker” first. The court has requested the help of perfume experts (szagértők) to tell us who was right.149 4 Liebe Az Ojság! In the Orczy café, one man says to the other. “Samu, you would make a good fascist.” “Why?” “Your shirt is black enough.”150 5 Short Rhymes (Versikék) The fascists are frugal, And this impresses me a lot. Think how much they save By not giving their shirts a wash.151 The war and the postwar chaos favored the spread of stereotypes based on pseudoscience. However, new images and narratives merged easily with traditional arguments, as well as deep-seated antipathies and condescension toward ethnic minorities, such as the Slovaks. One of the main functions of the defamation campaign in the early 1920s was to redicule the stupidity of antisemitic stereotypes, which attributed certain physical characteristics, like a long nose or f lat feet, to Jews. The jokes served to expose famous scientists and “racial experts” like Mihály Kmoskó or the German Botanist Alfred Brehm as dangerous charlatans. Jewish humor also made fun of paranoid anti-Semites who spotted Jews everywhere, even on the moon’s surface, and believed that Jews were ready to take over the universe ( Jokes 1–5). The jokes published in Az Ojság did not draw sharp distinctions between old and new and culturally and scientifically based antisemitism and racism; rather, it considered politicians, like Istóczy, Lueger, and Friedrich, and writers, such as Otto Weininger and Dezső Szabó, as members of the same group of hate-mongers. The last joke is particularly interesting because it shows that at least some of the anecdotes were the result of cooperation, and that in addition to the editor of the comic biweekly Endre Nagy, major writers like Lajos Nagy and satirists such as Frigyes Karinthy participated in their creation ( Joke 6).

Antidefamation Humor  151

1 Why do the Jews have long noses? What does the Talmud say? From our local Jews. For centuries or even days, Islamic and Christian (nazárus) public opinion in our country has been obsessed with the question: why do Jews have such long noses? Since our natural scientists, even after many serious experiments, were not able to give us the answer, we have been compelled to consult the source of all scientific knowledge, the Talmud. There we found an entry that Rabbi Dr. Mihály Kmoskó, the famous Talmud manufacturer, has interpreted in the following way: No surprise that the Jews have grown big noses since Moses led them by their noses around the desert for 40 years. From Alfred Edmund Brehm (1829–1884), world-traveler, zoologist, and author of the popular text entitled Brehm’s Tierleben (Brehm’s animal life).152 2 Exchange. I would swap my totally f lat feet [lúdtalp, literally means goose feet] for an oversized goose liver. Inquiry sent to Untauglich.153 3 Correction. We would like to replace the old proverb “potato is not a dish, and a Slovak is not a human being” with a new one: “Sólet is not a dish, and a Jew is not a human being.”154 4 The [ Jewish] Race is on the march. With incredible speed, the Race has been spreading and stealing jobs from natives. Nothing is more telling about the plight of our land than the fact that the entire baking business has fallen into the hands of the Kohnita Order. To show their newly gained power, the Race put up a new business sign, written in the Hebrew alphabet, that says Kohnditerei. Konditerei in German means pastry shop/café.155 5 Jews on the Moon. Cable from Paris. After extensive research, Flammarion, a world-renown astronomer has concluded that humans could be found not only on Mars but on the Moon as well. With a large telescope, he was able to scan the moon’s surface and spotted humans there. People who live on the moon go about their daily life completely naked. Almost certainly—and this is not the scientist’s but our conclusion—the moon’s only inhabitants are Jews. Only Jews can be so brazen as to walk naked on the moon’s narrow streets in full view of the entire universe. But we are going to teach them manners soon! We can barely wait for regular f lights to the moon!156 6 The somewhat crazy entry in a natural science book (or what has been left out of Brehm’s great work): the Jew belongs to the category of mammals. He walks upright; he is about 1.5–1.8 meters tall; uses his hands to gesticulate; his hair is either red or black; he normally sports a long, curly, thick beard, which many Jews shave off in order to hide their identity and confuse the public. Jews ( Judaeus odoratus Linné or “Stinky Jews”—Friedrich) can be found today in every part of the globe; however, only in domesticated form. Its most common subspecies include the Polish Jews and the Jews of Máramaros, Galicia, America, Spain, and Pest. Even though they can be found on the North Pole and in the tropics in small numbers, Jews normally prefer a temperate climate; this

152  Antidefamation Humor

can be observed through the fact that in the winter, they heat their rooms (if they have heating material), and in the summer, they like to sit in the shade of the balcony of Café Abbázia. Jews have individual names; many are called Kohn or Weisz or Schlesinger. In our country, some call themselves Kiss or Kovács; those who want to f launt their Jewish identity (due to the fear that the public might think they are Germans because of their original names, such as Schwarz or Schön) have “judified” their names to the more Hungarian-sounding Ságodi or Sólymos. The list of the names of natural scientists who have devoted their entire lives to the study of Jews and to the description of their habits and characteristics include (just to mention the most famous): Győző Istóczy, Károly Lueger, István Friedrich, Otto Weininger, and Dezső Szabó. (Dezső Szabó also thoroughly examined the Jew under a microscope). These excellent scientists published the results of their life-long research in books and articles or shared their conclusions via speeches and occasionally even by deeds… Jews have many qualities unique to them, and there are decent and indecent Jews. This is a vital difference since, as everyone knows, the members of other races are all decent people (except those who are not). There are about ten million Jews in the world. Ten million Hungarian koronas may not be too much, but when it comes to Jews, ten million is way too many. Yet, we can also be glad that we have enough to share with the other nations. There is a little bit of tension between the antisemitic point of view and the Hungarian national perspective; however, our Jewish expert, Dezső Szabó, a man skilled at reconciling the greatest of contradictions, will surely find the right solution to this problem. The life expectancy of Jews varies from one region to the next. In America, for example, it lasts from birth to death; in Russia, on the other hand, it lasts from birth to the next pogrom. Nagy Lajos (others, Karinthy).157

Jews as Exploiters and Parasites The accusation of uncleanness activated feelings of revulsion and disgust; it functioned both as a warning to keep away from Jews as a call for ­active defense. In wake of the Spanish f lu, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in Budapest alone, image of the dirty and virus-carrying Jew served to politically mobilize the public and stir up hate against refugees, unwanted migrants, ethnic minorities, social outsiders, and the desperately poor. The stereotype that associated Jewish immigrants with dirt and viruses and portrayed them as exploiters and parasites was very old. The father of modern antisemitism in Hungary, Győző Istóczy, first attracted public attention in the 1870s with his oft-repeated remark that the “Jews brought us nothing but lice and cockroaches.” The characterization of Jews as parasites, Egyenlőség reminded its readers, “has been with us ever since.” To take the wind out of the sails of antisemitic agitators, liberal and Jewish publications

Antidefamation Humor  153

sought to draw attention to Jewish contributions to the economic, social, and cultural modernization of Hungary. What would history as a discipline be today, Egyenlőség mused, without the Jewish historian Henrik Marczali?; philosophy without Bernát Alexander?, music without the contributions of the aesthete Géza Molnár and the composer Leó Weiner? What would mathematics be without Lipót Fejér, or Islamic studies without the works of Ignác Goldzieher? Would Budapest have ever become a great European city without the money of Jewish bankers and their ties to foreign financial institutions, or without the knowledge and diligence of Jewish architects and engineers? Could modern Hungarian culture actually exist without Jews?158 The narrative about Jewish intellectual contributions often appeared in books and articles written about the backwardness of Hungary, or in the context of verbal assaults and physical attacks on Jews, which were allegedly motivated by ignorance and resentment. Indeed, what anti-Semites hated the most, writer Lajos Nagy declared, were not Jews but modernity and European culture. Nagy, who was believed to be an illegitimate son of a local Jewish merchant, recalled how peasant children had mocked him as a Jew simply because he wore shoes, trousers, and a navy shirt around the village. Years later, anti-Semites continued to call him a Jew because “I am an enlightened freethinker of European culture and humanist convictions.” They hate me because I am a real writer ( Jew! Jew! Jew!); because my soul mate is not Dezső Szabó but Flaubert, my spiritual relative is not László Budavári but Shaw; because I regard Maxim Gorki and not Andor Kozma as my colleague; because my favorite author is Anatole France, and I love math, and my favorite opera is Aida, and my favorite painting is Rafael’s Sixtus Madonna.159 Jewish journalists took a special pride in the contributions of their coreligionists to the rise of Hungary as a major power in Europe sport. Jews, indeed, had been indeed overrepresented among top athletes, including national and Olympic champions, and they had even come to dominate certain fields such as fencing and swimming before the war. However, with the spread of mass sport their inf luence declined, and they became less visible in Hungarian sport after 1918.160 Increased discrimination, which had led to the most prestigious fencing clubs to close their doors to young Jewish men, and the growing popularity of Zionist sport clubs and scouting organizations, such as the Fencing and Athletics Club (Vívó és Atlétikai Club or VAC), Keren Kayemeth, and Kadimah, reinforced this trend.161 Jewish jokes highlighted the contributions of their coreligionists to the modernization of Hungary and Hungarian successes in sport ( Jokes 1 and 2). They also mocked Neolog leaders’ tendency to overstate their case. Az Ojság, with tongue-in-cheek, claimed that every famous politician from ­Clemenceau (alias Kohn) and Mitterand (alias Müller) to the British Prime Minister Lloyd George was, a Jew. Every famous politician including Clemenceau (Kohn),

154  Antidefamation Humor

Millerand (Müller), and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Az Ojság claimed, was a Jew. Lloyd George’s father was, allegedly, a rabbi in the Jewish teaching academy in Pressburg. The young Lloyd George, like his father before him, had been originally trained as a kosher butcher. The real winners of the war, Az Ojság continued, were not the French and English but Jews who could realize their dream to physically humiliate the noble Hungarian nation.162 But it was not only the leaders of the Entente powers but also the famous Turkish military commander and founder of modern Turkey, Atatürk, who was rumored to be of Jewish decent ( Joke 3). 1 Sport-Ojság. Dilemma. “A monologue before the MAFC 100-meter dash. I do not know whom I should root for: Gerő or Ábrahám. Both, you know, are, whatever (izé); or should I root for the third runner, Kurunczynak, who has recently joined the MTK [which was widely regarded as a “Jewish” club]… Damn it, why isn’t there is at least one true Magyar like us among them.”163 2 On the spectators’ benches on Üllői Street, two men are discussing sports. “Listen, these English guys look awfully familiar. Is this a joke? One is called Lőw, the other Ábrahám.” “Can it be?” “Of course, it can! Echt London, c’on! But [how were we able to buy them] at today’s exchange rate?”164 3 Pasha Kemal is Jewish. In general, everybody is a Jew. I report with a heavy heart that the indomitable Turkish hero, Pasha Mustafa Kemal, is also, you know what (izé). Here are his biographical details. He was born in 1875 in Budapest, where his parents raised him on watermelon. At six, he was enrolled at a rabbinical institute. In his first book, he proved that Menyhárt Kiss was not a good poet.165 Later, he learned how to make a living by selling arms; after this, he also opened a kosher store which sold chicken. Always dissatisfied, his restless blood drove him forward. He finally turned his back on his old country when the korona dropped on the Zurich market. As a correspondent for both the Zsidó Szemle ( Jewish review) and A Nép (The people), he then traveled to Turkey. His news reports soon came to an end because Pasha Kemal had discovered an even more lucrative business in the territories recently occupied by the Greeks. We take no responsibility for any of the information in this report.166 The war and two revolutions favored the politicization of the cabaret, including the playrights, the performers, and their audiences. Contemporaries were well aware of the close link between the democratic revolution and Jewish humor. As one writer László Lakatos put it at the time: The leadership and talent behind the Hungarian revolution were the people themselves: people from the streets, cafés, and markets of Pest; soldiers from Józsefváros, sailors of Old Buda; the journalists of the Home Debate Society, and the students of the Galileo Circle. It was an unpretentious revolution. It neither imitated nor plagiarized the Latin,

Antidefamation Humor  155

French, or Russian example. Its nervous heartbeat and sarcastic mindset were pure Budapest. Brief ly put: this revolution was the victory of Pest humor, cleverness, satire, and the irreverent and incorruptible rationality that had been present in the press, cafés, revues, and theaters for two decades, liberating and revolutionizing people’s thoughts.167 The majority of writers, actors and actresses had welcomed the October ­Revolution and supported the two democratic governments in the fall and winter of 1918; an influential minority played an active role in the Soviet experiment as well.168 After the collapse of the Soviet Republic in August 1919, many writers associated with cabaret culture, such as Andor Gábor, were forced into exile, while others, such as Béla Pásztor, remained in the country and faced arrest and prosecution.169 In a campaign of revenge, the right-wing paramilitary groups and patriotic association responsible for the majority of violent assaults on Jews during the White Terror targeted cabarets, theaters, cafés, and restaurants in business and entertainment districts of the capital. In the fall and winter of 1919, the right-wing fanatics regularly interrupted the shows of the Intim Cabaret, the Royal Orpheum, the Winter Garden, and other famous clubs. A group of young officers even tried to assassinate Béla Zerkovitz, one of the most famous composers of popular music in the interwar period.170 World-renown writers associated with the cabaret world, such as Ferenc Molnár, were either forced to go into hiding or laid low for months. Endre Nagy, too, gave up his establishment, and temporarily turned to journalism (Az Ojság) to vent his frustration. Caberet writers and directors were not the only targets of rightwing violence: young officers and students pelted Jewish actors, actresses, and directors, such as Erzsi Paulay, Oszkár Beregi, and Sándor Hevesi, with rotten onions and eggs in the National Theater in early October 1919.171 Six months later, the same groups interrupted a performance by the famous singer Lajos Rózsa in the Opera House.172 Some of the cabaret actors and actresses, such as Gyula Kőváry, were fired from their job. Other lost their positions because their cabarets had closed down. By the end of 1919, the number of cabaret in Budapest had been reduced from six to three. The cabarets also had to labor under strict censorship during the counterrevolution. Many times, the authorities proscribed the skits and the songs for their alleged political content or violation of decency laws.173 After November 1920, the number of assaults on Jews and cultural institutions in the capital declined rapidly. Yet, isolated attacks on theaters, cafés, club and restaurants associated with Jewish culture in the capital continued well into 1924.174 Unlike the war, the White Terror was able to muzzle any criticism expressed in the cabaret skits. The comic weeklies, especially those which appealed to small clientele, such as Az Ojság, thus took on many of the role of traditional branches of entertainment. Jokes published in the comic weeklies thus did not hesitate to describe the horror of the White Terror; they also testified to the cruelty and stupidity of the perpetrators—members of the right-wing paramilitary groups and urban mobs (Joke 1). The journalists who created these jokes took distinct pride in the accomplishments of famous Jewish writers such as Ferenc Molnár, Sándor Bródy,

156  Antidefamation Humor

and Lajos Biró ( Jokes 2 and 3). They regarded the emigration of Jewish intellectuals as an unmitigated tragedy and as a harbinger of a new and barbarous age ( Jokes 4 and 5). Jewish humor remained self-critical: the jokes poked fun at the eagerness of well-to-do entertainers to abandon the faith of their ancestors ( Joke 6). 1 Béla Zerkovitz’s couplets have more beats (ütemesebbek) lately.175 2 Vanished. A few months ago, Ferenc Molnár disappeared from his f lat at Irodalom Square 8. Molnár is 42 years old and a writer of Israelite religion. Since then, neither his family members nor his many debtors have learned his whereabouts. The last time he was spotted, he still displayed all the characteristics of his race, and he was wearing a monocle.176 3 Boycott. At the end of their joint meeting, the National Alliance of Christian Paper and Stationary Businesses and the Alliance of Protestant Ink Producers have issued a solemn declaration: they told us that in the future, they are going to sell neither paper nor ink to Ferenc Molnár, Sándor Bródy, and Lajos Biró.177 4 National Theater News. The Directors of the National Theater have just published the fall program of their establishment. The original list of the shows included two plays from Shakespeare, Julius Caesar and King Lear. However, they cannot be performed because a liberal newspaper in New York told the world that Sekszpir’s original name was Schlesinger. Until the question is not settled, the theater remains closed.178 5 Movie theaters. Today, as usual, the show in the Royal Apollo begins at 5 p.m. The weekly program includes the premier of an excellent film called Arrival of the Hungarians followed by a three-part comedy entitled the Departure of Jews.179 6 Opera News. Next Wednesday, The Jewess will be on stage, however, the show has run into a serious problem: no one is qualified to play the leading role anymore. Everyone has converted.180 While traditional Jewish jokes shunned violence and generally avoided maliciousness commentary, a small percentage became less gracious toward their enemies due to rising political antisemitism and the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial in 1883 ( Joke 1). After the war, Jewish jokes attacked not only “fake news” and hostile stereotypical images but also those who created and spread false information and insulted Jews in the public domain. They were especially hard on the Christian Socialist firebrand and new mayor of Budapest Károly Wolff, who tolerated violent attacks on Jews during the counterrevolution. Jewish jokes expose denounced antisemitic agitators such as the dentist András Csilléry, ÉME stalwarts like László Budaváry and Béla Dánér, and paramilitary leaders such as Iván Héjjas and Gyula Gömbös as cowards, opportunists, and political adventurers ( Jokes 2–6). Jewish authors recognized the connection between paramilitary violence and fascism early on ( Joke 7). Egyenlőség pillaried the hypocrisy of

Antidefamation Humor  157

intellectual  luminaries such as the writer Dezső Szabó and the writer/poet Dezső Kosztolányi. As regular contributors to the f lagship of the progressive movement in Hungary, the literary journal, Nyugat (West), both intellectuals started their careers in the “Jewish-liberal” camp. Both Szabó and Kosztolányi supported both the democratic revolution and the communist dictatorship after the war. Szabó’s bestseller, Az elsodort falu (The swept-away village) was, in fact, published for the first time in the summer of 1919 with the financial and political support of the Soviet Republic. Both were quick to change their ideology, political stance, and friends after the collapse of the communist experiment in early August 1919. During the counterrevolution, Szabó frequently appeared in the company of antisemitic students, rabble-rousers, and bloodthirsty officers. In his stump speeches, editorials, and commentaries published mainly in the right-radical Virradat (Dawn), he called Jews “cannibals,” “barbarians,” and “murderers” and praised the agents of violence as patriots. ­Szabó lent credibility to the charge that only a handful of Jewish soldiers lost their lives during the war; agitated against moderate Jewish leaders such as the liberal Vilmos Vázsonyi; accused Jewish leaders of organizing “pogroms” against peaceful Christians; described the Councils Republic as a Jewish creation; and denied that it had persecuted both Christians and middle-class Jews. In the many commentaries, he published in right-radical newspapers such as Új Nemzedék, the poet and novelist Dezső Kosztolányi declared war on the “Jewish domination of Hungarian culture” and advocated for the expulsion of Jews from the cultural realm and many professions.181 1 Oroszlánházy, the chief sheriff (Főszolgabiró) was a rabid anti-Semite. But he lost his sight in old age. Walking down the street with the help of his medical assistant, he meets his Jewish neighbor Menáse. “How do you do my good Sir,” asked Menáse. Oroszlánházy, who recognizes Menáse’s voice, responds: “my dear neighbor! I have recognized your voice. See what has happened to me? What a curse!!” “You should console yourself,” said Menáse, “that the dear Lord has listened to your prayer. You used to wish that you would not see any Jews around you anymore. Your wish has come true.”182 2 Lessons from our wise rabbi. “Which is better, oh wise rabbi: to pour water into the wine or wine into the water?” “It is always better if one pours wine into water because if you pour water into wine, it becomes worse, but if you pour wine into water, it becomes better.” “Should a Jew be allowed, oh wise rabbi, to eat pork and kiss a Schiksa?” “He is not. Yet, it is still better than to eat the Schiksa and kiss the pork.” “What do you think, oh wise rabbi, of the statement that the ancestors of Károly Wolff came to our country with the ancient Hungarians?” “I do not care, my son, when he has come. I am more interested in when he is going to leave.” “What is, oh wise rabbi, the favorite fruit of Károly Wolff?” “I believe it is the watermelon because it is both red and white, has a rind (Héjjas), and is round (Gömbös).”183

158  Antidefamation Humor

3 Medical news. “Dr. András Csilléry, the famous dentist [and antisemitic agitator] successfully filled Leó Zipper’s cavity.”184 4 Announcement. To combat the rumor and blatant lie spread by my political enemies, I hereby state that I and the Viennese doctor of suspicious origins Dr. Steinach is not one and the same person. Dr. Csilléry, doctor of teeth and politics (fog- és politikai orvos).185 5 A new import-export company has been founded. “László Budaváry, Béla Dánér, and Jenő Gunda [antisemitic politicians] have founded a trade company. The new firm wishes to develop close contacts with Galicia and Palestine [to deport Jews].”186 6 Budapest Horse Race Association News. The latest results. 1st run (futam). First place: Horse: the Jewish Question—Jockey: László Budaváry. 2nd place: Horse: Jewish Patriotism—Jockey: Pál Sándor. 2nd run: 1 place: Pagan stubbornness (Szittya Dacc)—Jockey: István Friedrich; 2nd place: Horse: Tisza-Affair—Jockey: Count Imre Károlyi; 3rd run. 1st place. Horse: the Smallholder’s Interests—Jockey: Goszton Gaál; 2nd place: Consumers’ Interests—Jockey: József Szabó (distant second).187 7 From our Roman correspondence. When Miklós Mussolini (Andor Müller) became prime minister, the first thing that he did was to order that every fascist take off his old black shirt and put on a fresh one. The fascists will never come to power in this country for a simple reason. Who has two shirts nowadays?188 8 Chameleon. “In a school in Pest, this story took place.” “Who knows how to say ‘chameleon’ in Hungarian?” Dezső Szabó: “it is me, me!”189 9 Public Notice. “I hereby notify my acquaintances, friends, relatives, writers, and Elemér Császár that I am only partially identical to Dezső Kosztolányi, who also publishes in Nyugat. Signed by Dezső Kosztolányi, a contributor to Új Nemzedék.”190 It is relatively easy to detect the rise of new narratives and stereotypical images in the media and public speeches, identify their forms, and explain content. More difficult is to tie these narratives and images to concrete events and ascertain whether, how, and to what extent they informed the actions of individuals and served as a source of violence. But perhaps the most difficult is to assess the impact of narratives in jokes of denunciation which were meant to counteract and defeat new prejudices. On the one hand, the main function of Jewish humor was to preserve the dignity of the individual, and the comments as a whole were meant to provide solace, helped to maintain and restore self-respect. The second function of the antidefamation campaign was to destroy hostile narratives and undermine the credibility of the agents of antisemitic violence and the preachers of hate. The campaign was conducted in newspapers, periodicals, books and parliamentary speeches, as well as in liberal and Jewish comic weeklies. The

Antidefamation Humor  159

defenders of Jewish emancipation and full equality used rational arguments, buttressed by statistics, to prove that Jews had done their military duty during the war and that they had suffered disproportionately under the communist dictatorship. Proponents used both emotional appeals as well as paradoxes, sarcasm, and ridicule to expose the intellectual mediocrity and moral bankruptcy of their opponents. Black humor was meant to promote the dignity of individuals; antidefamation jokes served to demonstrate the determination of the ( Jewish) community to preserve the achievements of emancipation, protect the interests and social status of Jews, and restore the honor of the religious and ethnic group. Black humor was about passive resistance, whereas antidefamation campaigns also included active Widerstand: not only absorbing blows but also hitting back hard. That, in the end, the antidefamation campaign proved to be less successful than its agents hoped does not take away from the courage of supporters and the righteousness of their cause. The antidefamation campaign failed to break down the wall of ethnic and religious hatred and dissipate self-imposed ignorance simply because the Jews and their friends did not have enough power. Jews were not the only ones to use statistics, seemingly rational arguments, emotional appeals, and even jokes to prove their points and rally public support. Anti-semites could afford to lose individual arguments and even battles during the counterrevolution because time and power were on their side. They were almost destined to win because the state and its institutions supported their position. Jews had reason to believe that, after the onset of economic and political consolidation, the liberal, and in confessional matters neutral, state would be, with minor modifications, restored. That this belief did not come to fruition, and that more serious trends would set in after 1933, could not be predicted at the high point of the antidefamation campaign in the early 1920s.

Notes 1 Péter Bihari, Lövészárkok a hátországban, pp. 99–100, 104–105. 2 János Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon. Politikai eszmetörténet (Budapest: Osiris, 20001), pp. 96–98. 3 See Norman Davies, God’s Playground. A History of Poland, vol. 2, 1795 to Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 4 Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, pp. 90–92. 5 John Tosh, “Masculinities in an Industrializing Society, Britain 1800–1914,” Journal of British Studies 44 (2005), pp. 330–342. 6 The share of Jews convicted of dueling rose from 13 percent (already twice as high as the percent of Jews in the general population) in 1885 to 50 percent the 1920s. Rachel Druck, “The Dueling Jews of Budapest,” The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot, accessed October 1, 2018, https://www.bh.org. il/the-dueling-jews-of-budapest/. 7 Leonard J. Greenspoon, Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2012).

160  Antidefamation Humor 8 See Joseph Roth, Hiob. Roman eines einfachen Mannes (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930). 9 This remark is a reference to the famous book by Werner Sombart, Händler und Helden (1915), which describes the Germans as idealists and heroes, and the English as greedy and narrow-minded businessmen. 10 Salcia Landsmann, Jüdische Witze. Der Klassiker von Salcia Landsmann (Munich: Deutschen Taschenbuch, 2010), p. 191. 11 Adolf Ágai, Salamon Seiffesteiner, Abrincs: 150 Jordány Vicz (Budapest: Az Athenaeum R. Társ. Könyvnyomdája, 1879), p. 71. 12 Ibid., p. 192. 13 Ibid., p. 77. 14 Ibid., p. 191. 15 Ágai, Abrincs!, pp. 4–5. 16 Landsmann, Jüdische Witze, p. 183. 17 Ibid. 18 János Kőbányai, Szétszálazás és újraszövés. A Mult és Jövő, a Nyugat és a modern zsidó kultura megteremtése (Budapest: Osiris, 2014), pp. 274–276; János Kőbányai, “A Nagy Háború mint a Magyar Társadalom Háborúja,” in Avigdor Hameiri, ed., A Nagy Őrület (Budapest-Jeruzsálem: Múlt És Jövő Könyvek, 2009), pp. 349–370, here p. 352. 19 Kőbányai, “A Nagy Háború mint a Magyar Társadalom Háborúja,” pp. 349–351. 20 Hameiri, A Nagy Őrület, pp. 252–254. 21 Kőbányai, “A Nagy Háború mint a Magyar Társadalom Háborúja,” pp. 354–355. 22 Ibid., pp. 357–358. 23 Hameiri, A Nagy Őrület, pp. 130–131. 24 Ibid., pp. 219–221. 25 Amanda Brian, “The First World War and the Myth of the Young Man’s War in Western Europe,” Literature & History 27 (2018), pp. 148–166, here 149. 26 Anthony Fletcher, “Patriotism, the Great War, and the Decline of Victorian Manliness,” History 99 (1014), pp. 40–72. 27 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 1. 28 Pesti Hírlap, October 12, 1919. 29 The truth, according to modern historians, may have been somewhere in the middle. However, unlike their nationalist contemporaries, modern historians explain the lower casualty rates among Jewish recruits with social factors such as the higher social status and education level of Jewish soldiers. The bulk of the armies on both sides, especially the infantry and artillery units that did most of the fighting, were composed of semi-educated peasants. The majority of Jewish officers and many rank-and-file soldiers, on the other hand, hailed from the cities and the middle and lower-middle classes. Many were doctors or possessed skills, like the ability to speak German, which were badly needed and best utilized behind the front lines. Modern historians do not question the courage and patriotism of the Jewish religious minority. Both in the trenches and behind the front lines, the vast majority of Jewish soldiers served to the best of their abilities: there were many families who sent seven or eight sons into the army; thousands of Jewish soldiers were decorated for valor demonstrated in the heat of the battle; 187 Jewish doctors received gold and silver Crosses of Merit during the war, and an unknown number fell into captivity or sustained lifelong injuries. See István Deák, Volt egyszer egy tisztikar. A Habsburg-monarchia katonatisztjeinek társadalmi és politikai története 1848–1918 (Budapest: Gondolat, 1993), pp. 245–246; Patai, The Jews of Hungary, p. 460; Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, pp. 92–95.

Antidefamation Humor  161 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38

39 40

41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

György Kövér, Tiszaeszlári dráma: Társadalomtörténeti látószögek (Budapest: Osiris, 2011). Krisztián Ungváry, A Horthy-Rendszer Mérlege. Diszcrimináció, Szociálpolitika és Antiszemitizmus Magyarországon (Budapest: Jelenkor, 2012), pp. 86–110. Landsmann, Jüdische Witze, p. 183. Ibid., p. 186. Ibid., p. 187. Ibid. It means a set of teeth or the order of teeth; the work plays on the idea of law and order ( jogrend); it also implies that one can easily lose his teeth in Budapest. Az Ojság, November 11, 1922. Paul A. Hanebrink, A Specter Haunting Europe. The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Harvard: Belknap Press, 2018); Eliza Ablovatski, Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe. The Deluge of 1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2021); Robert Gerwarth, “Bolshevism as Fantasy: Fear of Revolution and Counter-Revolutionary Violence, 1917–1923,” in Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, eds., War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 40–51. Rudolf. Kučera, “Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat: Uniformed Violence in the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria 1918– 1922,” Journal of Modern History 88, no. 4 (2016), pp. 827–855; Perstti Haapal and Marko Tikka, “Revolution, Civil War and Terror in Finland,” in Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, eds., War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 72–84. Wolfgang Wippermann, Faschismus. Weltgeschichte vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2009), pp. 182–203. Leo Lowenthal, False Prophets: Studies on Authoritarianism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), pp. 36–38; Lars Rensmann, Kritische Theorie über den Antisemitismus: Studien zu Struktur, Erklärungspotential und Aktualität (Berlin: Argument, 2001), pp. 96–98. Artur Dinter, “Die Sünde wider das Blut,” in Walther Killy, ed., Die Deutsche Literatur, Vol. 7: 20. Jahrhundert. Texte und Zeignisse, 1880–1933 (Munich: C.H. Bech’sche Verlagbuchhandlung), pp. 1110–1113. Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna. A Dictator’s Apprenticeship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 218–219. Dezső Szabó, Az elsodort falu: regény egy kötetben (Debrecen: Csokonai Kiadó, 1989). The book was originally published in Budapest by Genius Kiadó in 1919. Szózat was founded in 1919 by lawyer Ferenc Ulain, who was one of the leaders of the right-radical conspiratorial organization Eteltköz Alliance (Etelközi Szövetség). The list of the contributors reads like a who-is-who in the radical-right camp, and it includes Endre (later Bajcsy) Zsilinszky. Szózat, October 23, 1919. Virradat, November 7, 1919. Virradat, June 15, 1920; Virradat, June 10, 1920. Új Nemzedék, January 30, 1920. Új Nemzedék, October 12, 1919. Új Nemzedék, July 6, 1920. Virradat, November 16, 1919. Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitismus als kultureller Code,” in Jüdisches Leben und Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1990), pp. 13–36. Northrop Frye, The Words With Power: Being a Second Study of the “Bible and Literature” (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1990), pp. 1–30. Gerhard Bauer, Sprache und Sprachlosingkeit im Dritten Reich (Cologne: Bund Verlag, 1988), pp. 25–27; 49–50; Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third

162  Antidefamation Humor

55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Reich: LTI–Lingua Tertii Imperii. A Philologist’s Notebook (London: the Athlone Press, 2000), esp. pp. 17–24; 46–73; 97–102; 129–147; Michael Beisswenger, Totalitäre Sprache und textuelle Konstruktion von Welt am Beispiel ausgewälter Aufsätze von Joseph Goebbels über “die Juden” (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2000), pp. 42–43. Virradat, December 29, 1920. For a description of Nazi rethoric, see Johannes Volmert, “Politisches Rhetorik des Nationalsozialismus,” in Konrad Ehrlich, ed., Sprache im Faschismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), pp. 149–158. See Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 1, Women, Flood, Bodies, History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). Beisswenger, Totalitäre Sprache und textuelle Konstruktion von Welt, pp. 19–20. Peter von Polenz argues that the collective singular is an abstraction. It was first used by biologists in the second half of the nineteenth century to ascertain the special features of different types of animals and plants. See Peter von Polenz, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Berlin: de Guyter, 1978), p. 169. Virradat, October 31, 1919. Virradat, November 6, 1919. Virradat, May 16, 1920; Új Nemzedék, September 11, 1920. Pesti Hírlap, November 25, 1919. A Nép, December 28, 1919. Tibor Zinner, Az Ébredők Fénykora (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1989), pp. 31–34; János Pelle, A gyűlölet vetése: A zsidótörvények és a magyar közvélemény, 1938–1944 ( Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó, 2001), p. 24. Anonymous letter to Pesti Izr. Hitközösség Jogvédő Irodája, Budapest, January 15, 1920, 1920, MZSL, 1919-es fehérterror jkv-ek, 3110/3. A pesti Izr.Hitközösség Jogsegítő Irodájának felvételei. Péter Hanák, “Polgárosodás és etnikai előítélet a magyar társadalomban a 19. század második felében,” in A kert és a műhely (Budapest: Gondolat, 1988), pp. 81–90; 109–112; Sander L. Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 98; cited by Kati Vörös, “Judapesti buleváron. A zsidó fogalmi konstruciója és vizuális reprezentációja a magyar élclapokban a 19. század második felében,” Médiakutató 4 (Spring, 2003), pp. 19–43, accessed June 8, 2019, https:// mediakutato.hu/cikk/2003_01_tavasz/02_ judapesti_bulevaron). Egyenlőség, December 23, 1919. Egyenlőség, November 2, 1919. Bodó, The White Terror, pp. 196–200. Egyenlőség, March 4, 1922. Simon Szerényi, A népbiztosok futása a frontról és egyéb szenzációs reportok a kommün idejéből (Budapest: Katai Albert Kiadása, 1919), cited in Péter Csunderlik, A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig.’ A Tanácsköztársaság a Korai Horthy-Korszak Pamflet—És Visszaemlékezés Irodalmában (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2019), p. 27. Oliver Nagy Sasvári, Kun Béláék rémuralmának története hiteles okmányok alapján (Budapest: A Bolshevik Elleni Liga Kiadása, 1920), cited in Csunderlik, A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig,’ pp. 28–29. Csunderlik, A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig, pp. 204–206. Sándor Csizmadia, Hol voltam a diktaturában? (Budapest: “Pirkadás” Kiadó, 1919), pp. 5–7, 12–23, 30, 57, cited in Csunderlik, A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig,’ pp. 31–33. Új Nemzedék, October 25, 1919. Szózat, October 22, 1919. Szózat, October 4, 1919. Kecskeméti Közlöny, October 11, 1919. The slogan “Magyarország a rokonok és a panamák lápvilága” came from the novel of the famous writer Zsigmond Móricz. See his novel Rokonok.

Antidefamation Humor  163 80 Borsszem Jankó, September 21, 1919. 81 Ibid. 82 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Squash and pearl barley are basic, rather poor, foodstuffs that characterized the diet of the time. Today we might say something like “bread and butter.” 83 Borsszem Jankó, September 1, 1919. 84 Borsszem Jankó, September 28, 1919. 85 Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. 86 Borsszem Jankó, September 14, 1919. This joke had a very long history. With small modifications, it reappeared during the Stalinist era in the early 1950s. The famous comic actor allegedly entered the stage with a huge Rákosi portrait and screamed: “But where should I hang you, where should I hang you?” 87 Péter Csunderlik, A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig.’ A Tanácsköztársaság a Korai Horthy-Korszak Pamflet—És Visszaemlékezés Irodalmában (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2019), pp. 157–164. 88 Borsányi, The Life of a Communist Revolutionary Bela Kun, p. 99. 89 Ibid., 139–141; 180–185; 191–192; 254–256. 90 Borsszem Jankó, September 14, 1919. 91 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. 92 Jokes taken from Borsszem Jankó 1919/28–35 and Szinházi Élet 1919/33–34. See Boldizsár Vörös, “A rabbi tehát elmegy Kunfi közoktatásügyi népbiztoshoz.” Zsidó figurák a Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaságról szóló 1919–es viccekben.” Szombat 3 (2009a), https://www.szombat.org/ politika/3846-a-rabbi-tehat-elmegy-kunfi-kozoktatasugyi-nepbiztoshoz. 93 Dr. József Schönfeld, Vissza a gettóba? Egy zsidó jegyzetei a diktatura alatt (Budapest: A szerző kiadása, 1919), pp. 4–5, cited by Csunderlik, pp. 93–94. 94 Vilmos Krausz, Hitehagyás és kommunizmus, Ünnepi hitszónoklat 5679 (Debrecen: Hegedűs Sándor Irodalmi és Nyomda Rt, 1919), pp. 4–7, cited in Csunderlik, A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig,’ p. 94. 95 Pesti Hírlap, October 12, 1919. 96 Egyenlőség, October 3, 1919; October 12, 1919; February 21, 1920. 97 Egyenlőség, October 25, 1919. 98 Egyenlőség, November 2, 1919. 99 Egyenlőség, November 6, 1921. 100 Adolf Ágai, “Seiffensteiner Salamon adomái,” Borssszem Jankó, February 2, 1920, pp. 127–128. 101 The joke plays on the last name a communist bigwig, József Pogány. His last name means pagan. Borsszem Jankó, September 21, 1919. 102 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. 103 Borsszem Jankó 1919/28—35 and Szinházi Élet 1919/33—34. Boldizsár Vörös, “A rabbi tehát elmegy Kunfi közoktatásügyi népbiztoshoz.” Zsidó figurák a Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaságról szóló 1919-es viccekben,” Szombat 3 (2009a), https://www.szombat.org/politika/3846-a-rabbi-tehatelmegy-kunfi-kozoktatasugyi-nepbiztoshoz. 104 Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid. 109 Lowenthal, False Prophets, pp. 56–60. 110 Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction. Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 237. 111 Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, pp. 275–277. 112 Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, pp. 76–79.

164  Antidefamation Humor 113 Marsha L. Rozenblit, Reconstructing A National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 66. 114 In 1910, there were 203,687 Jews (23.0 percent of the population) in Budapest. In 1920, the authorities counted 215,560 Jews in the capital; they constituted 23.2 percent of the city’s overall population. We do not know how many of these newcomers were foreigners: I think that they make up no more than half of the surplus Jewish population. We do not know how many illegal/unregistered persons lived in Budapest either; given the eagerness of the authorities to track down illegal Jewish migrants, I doubt that their numbers were high. See William O. McCagg Jr., “The Jewish Position in Interwar Central Europe: A Structural Study of Jewry at: Vienna, Budapest and Prague,” in Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, eds., A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry (New Brunswick, NJ: Translation Publishers, 1990), pp. 47–81, here 51–52. 115 Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity, pp. 66–81. 116 Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987), pp. 158–161. 117 Pál Hatos, A Rosszfiúk Világ forradalma. Az 1919-es Magyarorszáagi Tanácsköztársaság Története (Budapest: Jaffa, 2021), pp. 180–182. 118 Gratz, A Forradalmak Kora, pp. 334–335. 119 Pesti Hírlap, December 6, 1919. 120 Ibid. 121 Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, “Budapest Jewish Community’s Galician October,” in Marsha L. Rosenblit and Jonathan Karp eds., World War I and the Jews. Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle Est and America (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2017), pp. 112–130. 122 See Patai, The Jews of Hungary, pp. 451–455; Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, pp. 95–98. 123 Egyenlőség, July 15, 29, 1922; August 12, 1922. 124 Egyenlőség, February 4, 1922. 125 Borsszem Jankó, November 16, 1919. 126 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. 127 Ágai, “Seiffensteiner Salamon adomái,” pp. 103–104. 128 Az Ojság, June 4, 1920. 129 This joke is as much about playfulness and grammar as about content. Ár in Hungarian means both price and f lood. Adonau can be a German/Jewish surname but it also refers to the German name of the Danube (Donau). Az Ojság, September 25, 1920. 130 Az Ojság, September 3, 1921. 131 Győző Drózdy was a peasant (Smallholder Party) politician who took a stand against antisemitic violence in the early 1920s. 132 Az Ojság, October 1, 1921. 133 Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954). But not only every ethnic group but also every epoch and political system is associated with a certain smell or group of odors. Even today, the perfume Red Moscow evokes the memory of the Soviet Union. Yet, the Soviet experiment smelled of refined perfumes as well as gulags, labor camps, overcrowded trains and apartments; cabbage, and cheap food. Karl Schlögel, Der Duft der Imperien. Chanel No. 5 und Rotes Moscau (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2020). 134 Lowenthal, False Prophets, pp. 64–67. 135 Landsmann, pp. 100–101. 136 See Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (Boston: Houghton Miff lin, 1997).

Antidefamation Humor  165 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147

1 48 149 150 151 1 52 153 154 1 55 156 157 158 159 160 161

1 62 163 164 165 1 66 167

Landmann, Jüdische Witze, p. 76. Freud, Jokes and Their Relations to the Unconscious, p. 84. Ibid. Ibid., p. 55. Landmann, Jüdische Witze, p. 305. Ibid. Ibid., p. 307. Ibid., p. 306. Ibid., p. 307. Ágai, Abrincs!, p. 111. Gyula Galantai, Pukkadjanak meg az ellenségeim. Anekdoták és zaftos viccek. Karinthy Frigyes előszavával (Budapest: Jókai Nyomda, 1926), p. 11; Endre Nagy, A bölcs rabbi tréfái (Budapest, 1925), p. 77, cited in Kertész, Gitli néni tésztája, p. 108. Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. Az Ojság, November 11, 1922. A fasisták igen takarékosak, és ezzel tesznek rám hatást. Már azzal is mennyit nyernek ha megspórolják az ingmosást. Az Ojság, November 11, 1922. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920, pp. 1, 4. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Sólet is a Hungarian version of the Cholent, a traditional Passover dish. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Az Ojság, September 25, 1920. Az Ojság, 15, July 1920. Ibid. Egyenlőség, November 15, 1919. Lajos Nagy, “Első találkozásom az antiszemitizmussal,” Múlt és Jövő 36 (1921), pp. 162–163. Mihály Kálmán, “Miért volt olyan sok zsidó olimpiai bajnok magyar?” Szombat (November 4, 2016), accessed June 7, 2019, https://www.szombat.org/ tortenelem/miert-volt-olyan-sok-zsido-olimpiai-bajnok-magyar. Géza Komoróczy, ed., Jewish Budapest: Monument, Rites, History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 339–340; Patai, The Jews of Hungary, pp. 383–385. On the contribution of Jewish athletes, see Robert Bíró, “Magyarországi zsidó sportolók,” in Anna Szalay, ed., Hágár Országa. A magyarországi zsidóság- történelem, közösség, kultura (Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 2009), pp. 218–222; Andrew Handler, From the Ghetto to the Games: Jewish Atheletes in Hungary (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1985). I would like to thank Mihály Kálmán and his highly informative article entitled “Cutting the Way into the Nation: Hungarian Jewish Olympians in the Interwar Era,” “Cutting Their Way to Success: Hungarian Jewish Sportsmen in the Interwar Era,” in Leonard Greenspoon, ed., Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2012), pp. 125–176. Nagy, Így Irom Én az Ojságot, pp. 51–52. Az Ojság, September 30, 1922. Ibid. Menyhárt Kiss (1880–1934), a notable poet and writer as well as a high-ranking civil servant and antisemitic politician in the early 1920s. Az Ojság, September 30, 1922. Anna Szalai, Entertaining between Worlds. Béla Pásztor (1895–1966) and His Era (Budapest: Zafra Books, 2018), p. 39.

166  Antidefamation Humor 168 Albert Dikovich, “Die Intellektuellen und die Räterepublik,” in Christian Koller/Matthias Marschik, eds., Die Ungarische Räterepublik 1919. I­ nnenansichten— Außenperspektiven-Folgewirkungen (Vienna: Promedia, 2018), pp. 103–116. 169 A film critic, mogul, and director, Pásztor’s career spanned over six decades, four countries (Hungary, Germany, Israel, and the United States), and three continents. Pásztor, as a young student and highly decorated war veteran, attracted attention in the fall and winters of 1918 as an actor, theater and film critic, poet, and cabaret writer. His political career began first as 1 of the 12 members of the Soldiers’ Council in Budapest during the revolution in November 1918. Soon he became the personal assistant and secretary to Prime Minister Mihály Károlyi. Pásztor wrote several articles in Szinházi Élet (Theater World) in support of the democratic government. He sympathized with the Soviet Republic but played no active role in the communist experiment. After the collapse of the radical leftist regime, he was arrested as Károlyi’s supporter and as a member of the defunct Soldiers’ Council. However, thanks to the intervention of a friend, the wealthy merchant Gyula Mezey von Mezőcsatányi, who was also a Jewish convert to Christianity, he was soon released from captivity. Pásztor was detained several more times and remained in captivity in February on suspicion that he had participated in the assassination of Prime Minister István Tisza at the end of October 1918. Released from prison and having been cleared of all charges, Pásztor reentered the world of entertainment and business in early 1920s. His career rose very quickly from then onward: first, he became a screenwriter for the Stár Film Corporation; then he directed his first film Robbin (Vörösbegy); he wrote film and theater reviews and articles for the democratic journal Világ (World), and even served as an instructor at the Szidi Rákosi’ popular drama school. Still in his early twenties, he took over the management of the Hungarian-Austrian Film Corporation, Tó (the Lake), and the Corvin movie theater. In September 1924, he added the Royal Orpheum Music Hall to the list of his management responsibilities. Thanks to his talent and friendships with the famous Weimar director Fritz Lang, Pásztor was appointed as the Budapest representative of the German UFA film cooperation, which had just purchased the Corvin and Uránia movie theaters. In Janaury 1926, Regent Horthy and several members of the Bethlen government attended the UFA theaters’ grand openings. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he moved back and forth between Berlin and Budapest, playing an important role in the film industry of both counties. In Hungary, he became known as the producer of popular films with strong nationalist tones such as Hungarian Rhapsodies and Csárdás Princess. He provided work both in Germany and Hungary and sponsored the careers of many important Jewish and non-Jewish actors and actresses including Gitta Alpár, Pál Ábrahám, Miklós Brodszky, Joe Pasternak, Pufi Huszár, Ernő Verebes, Rózsi Bársony, Oszkár Dénes, János Székely, István Székely, Franciska Gaál, Andor Zsoldos. In the late 1920s, he also worked as the advisor to Adolph Zukor’s Paramount Pictures. Upon his return from Berlin to Budapest in 1933, he leased Metro Goldwyn’s outlet in the capital, the Radius movie theater. After the war, he also played a major role as a director, manager, and film critic in the cultural life of the newly established Israel. Anna Szalai, Entertaining between Worlds. Béla Pásztor (1895–1966) and His Era (Tel Aviv: ­Zafra Books, 2018). 170 Dr. Géza Dombováry to Belügyminiszter [?], Pesti Izr. Hitközösség Jogvédő Irodája, Budapest, February 17, 1920, MZSL, 1919-es fehérterror jkv-ek, 3110/3. A pesti Izr. Hitközösség Jogsegítő Irodájának felvételei. 171 Új Nemzedék, October 8, 1919.

Antidefamation Humor  167 1 72 Virradat, April 20, 1920. 173 Bános, A Pesti Kabaré 100 Éve, pp. 71–78. 174 In January 1923, the proto-fascist organization, the ÉME tried and failed to blow up the Operetta Theater during a performance. BM, Csongrád Megyei Rendőrfőkapitányság Politikai Nyomozó Osztálya (Csongrád County Police Headquarters, Department of Political Investigation). V. Alosztály (Fifth Sub-department). Összefoglaló Jelentés (Summary Report), Szeged, November 13, 1959, ÁBTL, 4.1 A-881, 422/20, pp. 42–46. 175 Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. 176 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920, 1, 4. 177 Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Az Ojság, 15 August 1920. 181 Egyenlőség, November 4, 1922. 182 Ágai, Seffensteiner Salamon adomái, pp. 106–107. 183 Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. 184 Az Ojság, March 20, 1921. 185 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. 186 Az Ojság, January 7, 1922. 187 Az Ojság, September 25, 1920. 188 Az Ojság, November 11, 1922. 189 Borsszem Jankó, April 4, 1920. 190 Nagy, Így Irom Én Az Ojságot, p. 84.

4 The Love Affair with the Nobility

A common theme in Jewish humor after the war was the broken relationship between the Jewish middle and upper middle classes and the nobility and peasants. Jokes and cartoons from this period represented an attempt to find the causes and understand and explain the consequences of these rifts. Jewish humor provided solace to victims of violence; it helped those who had been abused to cope with the consequences of physical and verbal attacks. The level of aggression inherent in Jewish humor varied on the basis of the social status of the opponent and their historical relationship with Jews. Jokes were generally more deferential toward nobles than commoners, civilians than officers, members of the middle classes than workers, and the urban population more than peasants. The respect shown to aristocrats and the gentry was rooted in the history of assimilation in the region. “Magyarization” and “Polonization,” historian Péter Hanák argued, not only opened up “the road for careers and profitable relationships” but also “provided [ Jews with] the opportunity to be real gentlemen.” The Jewish bourgeoisie was not the only social and ethnic/religious group that wanted to assimilate into the nobility. The famous composer Franz Liszt, who spoke very poor Hungarian and visited the country only occasionally as an adult, could still claim with pride that “I, too, belong to this ancient race; I, too, am a son of this unruly nation swelled with vital force, destined to a better future.” Pest banker Moric Ullman, textile manufacturer Samuel Goldberger, and tens of thousands of middle-class and wealthy Jews in Hungary shared Liszt’s feelings and aspirations.1 Because the Jewish elite and middle classes stood closest to the aristocracy and the common nobility with regard to their level of income, it was natural that they would want to assimilate into noble culture and seek their full acceptance. Assimilation into the ancient warrior class, however, was far from easy. In contrast to Western Europe, where Jews sought to join the urban middle classes, in Eastern Europe, George Schöpf lin argues, it was the historically more exclusivist nobility, particularly the reactionary gentry, who set the terms of assimilation. The criteria for full acceptance were not fixed but changed on the basis of cultural trends and the shifting political and socio-economic interests of the dominant groups in Hungarian society.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224389-4

The Love Affair with the Nobility  169

The progressively more stringent criteria of acceptance led to confusion on both sides, and they were also responsible for many of the behavioral anomalies among both Jews and Gentiles, which provided the basis for many of the jokes and caricatures in the 1920s and 1930s.2 The Hungarian noble, Israeli historian Raphael Patai writes, was an úriember, or brief ly an úr, an untranslatable term similar in meaning to the English ‘gentlemen’ but simultaneously both more restricted and more comprehensive, designating a person whose very demeanor proclaimed that he embodied such valued traits as scrupulous propriety, courtesy, decency, honor, helpfulness, and pride and was suffused by the inner conviction that, being an úr, he was greatly superior to everybody who did not have the same good fortune of birth.3 Only a son of a noble was an úr, and wherever his fate took him, he always remained an úr—at least in his own mind; as the Hungarian proverb goes, a “gentleman remains a gentlemen even in hell” (az úr a pokolban is úr). The gentleman was a gift from God; the son of a merchant, worker, or peasant, whatever his merits and achievements, could never become a gentleman. Nobles considered talent and merit far less important than friendship and family ties. Their exclusiveness and ingrained prejudices made Jewish, and to a lesser extent German, Slovak, and Romanian assimilation difficult, if not outright impossible.4 Still, middle-class Jews continued to court these “unchallenged lords of creation, a very special race of human beings, enveloped in a mystique of their own and endowed with an assortment of traits that made the rest of the population willingly accept their superiority.” “If there ever was an unrequited love not in the personal realm but on the social level, this was it.” The Jewish desire to assimilate into the nobility was, Patai continues, a classical case of the persistent and irresistible attraction of an unattainable social embrace. In vain did sober critical observers remind them of the truth of the old proverb: ‘Don’t run after the wagon that won’t give you a lift.’ Run they did, and the carriage never stopped for them. In vain, Jews tried to change their names, “put on aristocratic airs, hobnobbed only with magnates, completely identified with their manner and customs, and exemplified total assimilation to the mores of society they yearned to be members of.” Many incurred huge debts in card games and horse races; proportionally more Jewish than Christian Magyars fought in duels; thousands Magyarized their names, acquiring noble-sounding surnames. All of this was in vain: the wagon “failed to give them a lift.”5 Patai’s pessimistic conclusion about the results of assimilation ref lected the opinion of his father, who was a noted Zionist leader before 1914. However, Zionism had attracted few followers in Hungary before the Great War, and it did not become a mass movement even in the interwar period. In the

170  The Love Affair with the Nobility

1870s, many liberal commentators took the success of Jewish assimilation and eventual merging of the Jewish and Gentile segments of the elite and middle class for granted. Even though the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial in the early 1880s and the rise of political antisemitism dampened expectations, many progressive contemporaries, such as the poet Endre Ady, still saw such a fusion as the only hope for Hungary and Hungarians to survive and prosper in the modern world. In the late nineteenth century, the fusion of the two groups was more than a pipedream. Industrialization, urbanization, popular culture, and political democratization tended to break down cultural and religious barriers. The nobility gradually opened its ranks to newcomers. More than 300 Jewish families entered the nobility and 26 Jewish families and about 50 individuals received the title of baron between 1874 and 1918.6 The newcomers imitated the lifestyle of the traditional elite: they purchased landed estates, joined country clubs and casinos, and dressed, on festive occasions, in traditional Magyar garb (díszmagyar). The majority of new aristocrats converted to Christianity, and a few even married their daughters and sons off to the children of “blue-blood” aristocrats. While physical segregation remained, many wealthy Jews sought to set up residence in the traditionally noble parts of town. “The most typical dream in Lipótváros today is to live in the Castle District in Buda,” writer Ferenc Molnár told his readers before the war. “In the finest and most antisemitic district in the city, my darling, and not on Nádor Street.” 7 The social gap and cultural differences between the two segments of the aristocracy remained not only in Hungary but in the western half of the Dual Monarchy as well, as Robert Musil’s novel Man without Qualities (1930) shows. These divisions, however, were not unbridgeable. Jews and Gentile aristocrats sat together on the boards of directors of major companies; however, few Jews received invitations to hunting parties on noble estates, nor were their children asked to attend the soirées of the traditional aristocracy. The two segments of the elite moved in different social milieus; lived in different parts of town; spent their holidays at different resorts; and had different consumption patterns: for example, wealthy Jews bought more books and (especially modern) art and gave more to charitable organizations than their Gentile counterparts. Politically, both groups were liberal and liberal conservative before 1914. However, “blue-blood” aristocrats also played a leading role in the antiliberal and antisemitic Christian Socialist and agrarian movements, both of which embraced social reforms before the war. The sons and daughters of many liberal and Jewish industrialists, such as Lajos Hatvany, György Lukács, and Anna Lesznai, exchanged their parent’s liberal and conservative commitments for more modern ideologies including bourgeois radicalism, socialism, anarchism, and, after 1917, communism. The First World War, the two leftist revolutions, and the counterrevolution in their aftermath strained the relationship between the two segments of the elite even further. Although

The Love Affair with the Nobility  171

both groups were opposed to the Soviet Republic and suffered tremendously during the dictatorship, and although Jewish bankers and manufacturers supported the counterrevolution financially, and Jewish reserve officers joined the first officers’ detachments in significant numbers, Christian segments of the political and social elite blamed the entire Jewish community for the calamity that had befallen the country during the Soviet interlude. Dozens of young aristocrats joined the right-wing death squads in the summer and fall of 1919 while their parents provided material, moral, and political support to the right-wing officers’ detachments during the hot phase of the counterrevolution.8 In early 1920, the old elite began to distance itself from the radical paramilitary groups and their members, and with few exceptions, quickly rediscovered its conservative roots. The relationship between the Jewish and non-Jewish segments of the social elite improved dramatically in 1920 and 1921. Yet, the full union of the two groups was no longer on the agenda during the interwar period.9 The relationship between the Jewish middle class and elite with lesser nobles (the so-called gentry) deteriorated faster and with more dramatic consequences. The gentry supported the “assimilationist social contract” for both ideological/sentimental and financial reasons. The owners of mid-sized noble estates both exploited and saw an ally in the Jewish tavern-keepers, millers, and wholesale merchants who paid rent, bought their produce, and provided badly needed loans. Jewish merchants and commercial farmers played a major role in the modernization of agriculture and the Hungarian countryside in the final decades of the nineteenth century. However, the very success of the newcomers coincided with the bankruptcy of many noble estates and the decline of the gentry as a social class. As often happens in such circumstances, those who lost ground because of such developments searched for scapegoats, which they found in their successful competitors, who happened to be Jewish.10 Having lost their land, rural nobles gravitated toward high-status jobs in the civil service and free professions in the cities. Since jobs in the fields of medicine, engineering, law, and, to a lesser extent, journalism had already been promised to and were largely filled by Jews and other ethnic outsiders (especially Germans) on the basis of the “assimilationist social contract, “ their challengers began to demand that the state get involved and put an end to the “Jewish conquest of space” (zsidó térfoglalás) by closing the borders to immigration from the east and either expelling—or at least drastically limiting the presence of—ethnic outsiders in the modern professions. But it was not only the declining gentry who had become disappointed with the outcome of modernization; the ambitious sons and daughters of the Jewish middle class, too, came to resent continued social discrimination and their virtual exclusion from high-status jobs in the civil service. By 1914, both parties came to regard the terms of the original “assimilationist social contact” as no longer binding. Besides conf licting economic interests, there was also a moral and even a psychological dimension to the increasing tension between the two groups.

172  The Love Affair with the Nobility

In the west, political scientist István Bibó argued after the Second World War, the assimilation of ethnic outsiders into the mainstream culture remained a spontaneous and politically neutral process—a natural outcome of capitalist modernization. In Hungary, conversely, Jewish assimilation became, very early on, infused with sentimentalism, patriotic fervor, and nationalist fantasies. The assimilant, who had accepted and internalized society’s demands, saw rapid integration and acculturalization as their patriotic duty, a sacrifice he had to make at the altar of the nation. In exchange for their loss, they expected not only full rights but also special attention from the elite and recognition and gratitude from the entire nation. The main problem with this sort of sentimentalism, according to Bibó, was that there were no national standards because of the deep divides between the classes into which the newcomers could assimilate. In place of national values, the assimilant could adopt the values and conform to the lifestyles of their social group and profession, which however, did not necessarily mean acceptance. Their second option was to join political movements and parties that welcomed ethnic and religious outsiders. That many Jews entered and then played an important role in socialist, anarchist, and communist organizations was the direct result of continued discrimination and the absence of a strong national culture.11 Instead of the Jewish newcomers, the declining gentry found allies in upwardly mobile sons and daughters of the German and Slavic middle and lower middle classes and, to a much lesser extent, in Magyar peasants, shopkeepers, and artisans. By the turn of the century, these groups had come together to create a new social stratum, the so-called “Christian and gentile middle class” (keresztény úri középosztály). Jobs in the lower and the middle strata of the expanding state bureaucracy, in particular, functioned as a conduits of social mobility for talented and ambitious social and ethnic outsiders. By the outbreak of the First World War, the majority of civil servants hailed from commoner rather than noble backgrounds.12 The newcomers remained deferential toward their social superiors, who continued to set the norms of polite conversation and behavior. The neophytes adopted the values, embraced the lifestyle, and mimicked manners of the gentry, as well as took over the ideology and self-definition of the nobility as the “guardians of the nation” (nemzetfenntartók) and “defenders of the constitution” (alkotmányvédők) against political, social, and ethnic outsiders such as organized workers, radical peasants, and Jews.13 The adopted and internalized values included the deep dislike of Jews and the rejection of Jewish emancipation, which became a litmus test of the political reliability of the newcomers and one of the cohesive forces that held the members of the Christians middle class together. Like the gentry, the new Christian and Gentile middle class came to identify Jews with the negative effects of modernity and modernization and began to regard the defeat of the “Jewish spirit” as well as a drastic reduction of Jewish inf luence in economic, cultural, and political life as necessary for the survival of the Hungarian nation.14

The Love Affair with the Nobility  173

Jewish-Noble Relations in Literature and Jokes The topos of the fully assimilated kálomista zsidó (Calvinist Jew), who behaved like a nobleman or a rich peasant, was the creation of the editor of Borssszem Jankó Adolf Ágai. First appearing in the journal Magyar Izraelita (Hungarian Israelite) in 1862, the character of the kálomista zsidó ref lected contemporary optimism about Jewish emancipation and cultural assimilation. In one of Ágai’s short stories A menyegző falun (The rural wedding), Marci Virág, the handsome son of a local Jewish businessman, leads the local wedding procession at the head of his peer group. Dressed in the traditional garb of the petty nobility and wealthy farmers—a short-coat (dolmány), a cap adorned with a long crane feather, and the sunlight breaking on the spurs of his shiny boots—Marci dances the masculine verburg and commands the bands of Roma musicians with the authority of the gentry. “Even though a Jew, he is also a true Magyar lad, a son of the Puszta; through the good air, he has absorbed what is best in the Jew and the most beautiful in the Magyar.”15 In their popular plays (népszínművek), Ágai’s Gentile contemporaries such as Péter Kóródy, Károly Monostory, and Sándor Lukács also painted an idealized image of the fully assimilated rural Jew and his relationship with the provincial elite in the two decades after the 1867 Ausgleich. As late as 1892, the conservative poet Andor Kozma described the Jewish character Salamon bácsi (Uncle Solomon) as: “Hungarian except for his faith; He speaks no alien language, even on weekdays. His speech is clear and fully Hungarian; His manners are like those of Hungarians.” In his idealized village scenes, the Protestant pastor, local physician, and the rabbi sit around their Stammtisch, eat kosher food, savor kosher wine, and play cards, smoke tobacco from their long pipes, and exchange anecdotes after dinner. Uncle Salamon lives peacefully in his village until one day, the newspapers begin to stir up trouble. Their lies and heated rhetoric have a serious impact on the poor and angry peasants desperately looking for a scapegoat and ready to lash out at anyone. A gang forms out of the riffraff of local society and soon threatens to attack the Jews. The community and its leaders do not tolerate mob violence; however, and in the end, the village secretary orders the gendarmes to protect Uncle Salamon’s house around the clock. The mob dissolves as quickly as it formed, everything goes back to normal, and the villagers greet Uncle Salamon in the morning as if the whole incident was only a bad dream.16 By the time Kozma’s ballad was published, the image of Jews and their relationship with the rural elite had changed dramatically. While in the népszínművek of the 1860s and 1870s, Jews had been portrayed as overwhelmingly positive characters, novelists in the 1880s and 1890s such as László Inczédy, Lajos Bartók, and Lajos Tolnai cast upwardly mobile Jews and their relationship with the traditional elite in a more negative light. This period witnessed the rise of a new stereotype in literature: the Jewish parvenu, who was also a convert to Christianity and a potential criminal. One of the first (and perhaps the most successful) images of the social climber appeared in Lajos Tolnai’s

174  The Love Affair with the Nobility

novel, Báróné Ténsasszony (Baroness, My Lady, 1882). In the book, Gustav Hunyadi (alias Svindler), is a poor immigrant physician from Galicia, who cheats his way into polite society to become a baron and a wealthy man. In contrast to post-1918 literature, however, respectable Jewish characters continued to appear in novels and poems. In his book Atlasz Család (Atlasz family, 1890), for example, Gergely Csiki described the Jewish patriot, the elderly Atlasz, not only as a stingy but also a good-hearted and decent man (similar to Père Goriot in Balzac’s famous novel); Atlasz was far more likable than his snobbish daughter, a convert and parvenu, and her shallow friends. In Hungarian literature before 1914, culturally conservative, poor, and Orthodox Jews normally appeared as fundamentally decent and positive characters; agnostics, converts, and wealthy Jews, however, were portrayed as cold, arrogant, snobbish, double-faced, unreliable, and dangerous. There was still a limit to the demonization of Jewish characters; thus, in the novels of contemporary writers such as Emil Kazár, István Toldy, and Kornél Ábrányi, wealthy Jewish landowners appeared as exploiters and ignorant snobs; but their arrogance and cruelty paled in comparison to the haughtiness and stupidity of historical aristocrats and common nobles. The novelists of the pre-1914 had not yet been touched by racism: they still considered the marriage between nobles and Jews morally permissible and politically desirable.17 One can observe the same trend in Adolf Ágai’s Borsszem Jankó in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, there was only one Jewish character in the comic: Itzig Spitzig, “the well-known patriot and pater familias” (üsmeretesch hazaphi és tscholádapa). Spitzig’s character both personified and mocked the Jewish immigrant, who was overly eager to assimilate into the Hungarian nobility. Like a member of the gentry, Spitzig sported a huge mustache, smoked tobacco from a long pipe, wore boots adorned with spurs, tight pants, a dolmány, and the traditional hat of rural nobles. Itzig introduced himself in broken Hungarian to the readers of the Borsszem Jankó in the late 1860s: “Dear Editor, sir, I am a Jew, a Hungarian Israelite, and I am proud of that, because even if I weren’t proud, I would be still a Jew” (Én, kérem, vagyok egy zsidó, egy Magyar izraelita és én erre büszke vagyok, mert ha nem valnék is büszke, mégis valnék egy Zsidó).18 The second Jewish character first appeared in 1878: Spitzig’s brother-in-law Salamon Seiffensteiner, “a shopkeeper from Three Drums Street in Theresaville (Terézváros),” who later, due to the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial and the rise of political antisemitism, changed his name to Szappankövy. Both Spitzig and Seiffensteiner were super-patriots even though they did not speak Hungarian as their first language (typically, Spitzig named his first-born son Árpád Spitzényi after the leader of ancient Hungarians, who conquered the Danubian Basin in the ninth century). Spitzig and Seiffensteiner were endearing characters who enthusiastically espoused religious reform and cultural assimilation and consistently sided with the Magyar nationalists against Austria and the ethnic minorities. In the comics, as in novels and popular plays, Jewish characters multiplied and became more complex in the late nineteenth century. While Spitzig

The Love Affair with the Nobility  175

and Seiffensteiner represented social types, the new cartoon figures—the estate manager Dániel Tojáss (“Egg”), the wealthy Jewish landowner Dávid Vöröshegyi (Von Rothill), the industrial entrepreneur Áron Gyári (“Manufacturer”), the broker Mór W. Börzeviczy (Von Stockmarket), the crooked lawyer Kóbi Blau, the snobbish wealthy woman and early feminist Reneé Lipótvárosi, and the Jewish representative of the antisemitic Christian Socialist Party Áron Minden (Anything-You-Want)—were at best ambivalent characters. Ágai added only one fully positive character to his weekly list of Jewish stereotypes: Reb Menakam Cziczeszbejszer. Dressed like an Orthodox rabbi, Cziczeszbejszer voiced progressive opinions on a whole range of political and social issues. The new characters were meant to give a more detailed and truthful vision of Jewish life in turn-of-the-century Hungary. The new stereotypes ref lected the results of economic modernization, political emancipation, and the social diversification, but they were also intended to educate the majority society about Jews. By exposing and ridiculing their real or alleged shortcomings and peculiarities, the comic weeklies and its Jewish characters sought to dispel the aura of strangeness around members of this ethnic and religious minority. The cartoon figures made Jews look weak and faulty but also more human and, thus, less threatening to the public. The second function of the new characters was to draw attention to the negative effects of modernization on Jewish society such as greed and the obsession with titles, money, and professional success, thereby encouraging readers to practice self-criticism and seek individual and communal improvements and reform. Last but not least, such jokes and caricatures drew attention to the negative sides of emancipation and assimilation and the loss of identity for the Jewish community.19 Borsszem Jankó was interested not only in Jews; its editor and contributors wanted to paint a full picture of Hungarian society. By the 1890s, the comic weekly had 33 regular characters from different social groups and various professions: Monokles (the empty-headed aristocrat), Hétszilvási Bukovay Absentius (the drunkard and lazy student from a gentry background), Ruczaháti Tarjagos Illés (the patriotic, provincial, and utterly corrupt nobleman, who loved to give long, sentimental and meaningless speeches), and, most importantly, Mokány Berci (the ignorant, lazy, drunk, superficially liberal but at heart reactionary gentry; an inveterate womanizer who loved to eat, hunt, and make coarse jokes). In its portrayal of aristocrats and provincial nobles, Borsszem Jankó followed contemporary topoi recognizable from contemporary newspapers and popularized by such famous novels as Ferenc Herczeg’s A Gyurkovics-fiúk (Gyurkovics Boys, 1895) and Kálmán Mikszáth’s A Noszty Fiú Esete Tóth Marival (The Noszty Boy’s Affair with Mari Tóth, 1908). The Hungarian portrayal of déclassé nobles, in turn, followed international models. The corrupt, alcoholic, violent, criminally ambitious, and petty or declasses nobles were common figures in eastern and east-central European literature from Hungary to Russia and from Poland to Romania. In one of the earliest examples, Nikolai Gogol’s Death Souls (1842), neither

176  The Love Affair with the Nobility

the main character, Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, nor any of his noble contemporaries could be regarded as role models: they were all either weak or completely faulty characters. Hungarian poets and writers from Sándor Petőfi to Kálmán Mikszáth were far more forgiving. In the comic weeklies, too, the gentry, with its idiosyncrasies and character f laws, remained a positive figure (Cartoon 4.1). The comic weekly also made fun of upwardly mobile Jewish industrialists and merchants, who tried, with little success, to pass for echte aristocrats and real gentlemen (Cartoon 4.2 and Joke 1). The jokes showed that “blue-blood” aristocrats kept their distance from Jewish newcomers (Cartoons 4.3 and 4.4). On the other hand, successful Jews regarded themselves as vastly superior, intellectually speaking, to the traditional social elite ( Joke 2), and they could barely hide their contempt for the impoverished gentry (Cartoon 4.5). 1 A doctor has been called to deliver the baroness, who was recently converted to Christianity. He arrives and tells the family members and friends gathered for the occasion that the time has not yet arrived and suggests that the company move to the salon and play cards. Soon, they hear the frightful scream of the baroness: “Oh, mon Dieu, que je souffre!” The husband jumps up, but the doctor calms him down: “It’s nothing; let’s sit back down and continue with our play!” Soon they hear the wife’s scream again: “Istenem, Istenem, minő fájdalom!” (My God, what a pain!). “Aren’t you going to go in, Herr Professor?”—asks the baron. “No, it’s not yet the right time.” Then they hear an unmistakable cry from the bedroom: “Ojvé, Ojvé, Jaj nekem!” The doctor drops his cards, and says: finally, the time has come!20 2 Dangerous relations. “Tell me Weisz, why are you so sad?” “Oh ( jaj), you shouldn’t even ask! My wife has had an affair with the count.” “Well, I am really sorry.” “On the other hand, I have seduced the countess.” “Good, then you have no reason to be angry; you two are even.” “But how could we be even? I can only lose on the business: we may get a dumb goy child, while they could get a smart Jew.”21 Although the war and the social and political upheaval in its aftermath are generally regarded by historians as an important turning point M ­ agyar-Jewish relations, the jokes published in Borsszem Jankó and Az Ojság during the counterrevolution suggest that there were continuities in the relationship between the Jewish middle class and elite and the traditional Magyar nobility. Jewish humor continued to make fun of the existence of social and psychological barriers, exemplified, among other things, by membership in elite social clubs ( Jokes 1 and 2). Nobles continued to look down on Jewish newcomers even though the latter had a glorious history and their historical pedigrees matched those of the oldest aristocratic families ( Joke 3). The opinion of the gentry and the Jewish elite about the so-called Jewish question and the prospect of full cultural and ethnic assimilation had not changed: only representatives of

The Love Affair with the Nobility  177

Cartoon 4.1  In the Flea Theater.22 Berczi Mokány: “Why are you scratching yourself so much, my dear Danyi?” Dani Czibaki: “The primadonna is f lurting with me!”

the so-called Christian middle class and the new and political parties on the right believed that there was a “Jewish Question” and sought to solve it the most radical manner ( Joke 4). 1 What is the National Casino? “Tele-gráf and Tele-fon.” “And what is the Lipótváros Casino?” “Tele-khon!”23 2 The Lipótváros Casino at its last meeting passed an important resolution to reduce tensions between religions. The resolution says that in the future, every wealthy Israelite, irrespective of his religion and race, can

178  The Love Affair with the Nobility

Cartoon 4.2  On Sunday.24 Aladár Aranyvölgyi (Mr. Goldvalley): “Hey driver! Take me to the City Park! But quickly! You know me!” Driver: “Yes, Sir. Of course, I know you. You are the f lour Jew from Király Utca!”

become a member. If only other organizations would follow this praiseworthy example!25 3 The family tree. In a café, an aristocrat and a Jew get into an argument. The insulted Jew screams at the aristocrat: “you cannot talk to me like this! My family tree goes back to the time before Christ?” “Really? What is your name?” “Kohn.”26 4 Relevant opinions. Berci Mokány: Everything can be solved, including the Jewish question. You need nothing else but the most beautiful among the roses of Hebron, and the complete exclusion of the public [from the wedding]. I am of the opinion that life is best when we Hungarians, mingle. Baron Dávid Wewrewsheggy, idem de eadem: Why are you gentlemen asking me? I solved, in my own way, the Jewish question ( juif kérdéscht) a long time ago. My son Árpád is one hundred

The Love Affair with the Nobility  179

Cartoon 4.3  Introduction.27

My Lord, May I introduce myself. I am Móricz Spitzer.—I see.

percent Christian ( fajkeresztény); he plays ferbli (poker) in the casino all day; I have spent a fortune on his appanage. This shows that I have cut all my ties (connexions) to Jews (zsvivekkel). If I add that I do not read any Hungarian books, then every true aristocrat has to believe that my blood, too, has turned blue. Reneé Lipótvárosi: “mix, mix continuously, and mix even more: this is the only solution.” István Friedrich [antisemitic prime minister of Hungary in 1919]: “Finding a solution to the Jewish question is, in my opinion, simple. Its timing depends on how many empty wagons the Hungarian Railway has at its disposal.”

180  The Love Affair with the Nobility

Cartoon 4.4  The Next Morning.28 Arszlánvölgyi (Mr. Lionvalley): Vilmus, did you have fun at Szarvasmezei’s (Mr. ­Stagmeadow) party? Vilmos: Let’s see. Was I there at all?

Reb Manáchem Cziszeszbeiszer: “I wish only one thing for all antisemitic gentlemen: that they reach the age of 120. Collectively.” Béla Fangler [antisemitic politician]: “I only want one new law to be passed: that circumcision should be made one centimeter deeper.” Jakab Bleyer [ethnic German politician and anti-Semite, BB]: “Only a Jew can be so arrogant as to convert. Show me just one Christian conceited enough to do that!”29 In contrast to the editors and contributors of the comic weeklies, who continued to have mixed opinions about and had not completely lost their faith in Jewish assimilation, novelists took a more negative and pessimist view on the issue. Sexual relations between wealthy and middle-class Jews and the rural elite was one of the main themes in the most inf luential interwar novel, Dezső Szabó’s Az elsodort falu (1919). In the novel, which has already mentioned in the previous chapters, every contact between the two groups represented a disaster for the Magyar party. A visionary and a patriot, Miklós,

The Love Affair with the Nobility  181

Cartoon 4.5  Close Attention.30 Herr von Spitzbauch: “Yes, my gentlemen. The Gypsies are going to provide the music at my party tonight. And do you know why I have chosen the Gypsies? Because, my gentlemen, if, by chance, the silver spoons go missing, no one will blame you!”

182  The Love Affair with the Nobility

whom Szabó modeled on Endre Ady, contracted syphilis either from his Jewish girlfriend or from the prostitutes in the Jewish-run brothels of Budapest and Paris. Judith, the beautiful and ambitious daughter of an alcoholic Protestant pastor and Miklós’ lover back home, met a similar fate. She moved to Budapest to escape the narrow confines of life in her hometown only to become a high-class prostitute in the sinful capital. Her fate was sealed, however, after she had accepted the money and the gifts and became the lover of a Jewish industrialist, Gutman. After her lover, whom she despised and mistreated, had been exposed as a criminal, Judith rapidly lost her charm and fortune. Socially ostracized, the once beautiful, talented, and innocent Judith ended up working as a common prostitute, plying her trade in one of the working-class neighborhoods in Budapest.31 Szabó had become a paranoid anti-Semite by 1919. However, it was not only writers of his ilk but also politically liberal novelists such as Zsigmond Móricz who had begun to have second thoughts about the desirability of Jewish assimilation. In his highly acclaimed novel Kivilágos kivirradtig (Revelry until dawn, 1924), Móricz told a story that he had allegedly witnessed in his native Szabolcs county before the war. The main character in the novel, Dr. Imre Pogány, owns 600 yokes of good farmland; this makes him the richest man in the county, after the local count. He is young, handsome, and well-educated, but he suffers from a “small deficiency” (kis szépséghiba): he is Jewish. Pogány is in love with Panni, the daughter of the local estate manager, and he wants to marry her. A party is held at Panni’s house a day after Christmas, which is attended by the local notables and their adult children. Pogány is also there, trying to curry favor with his future in-laws. His efforts apparently pay off. The guests think of him as a gentleman and a very nice young man “even though he is a Jew.” Pogány is successful and perfect, perhaps too perfect: his jokes are a little bit too funny; his folksongs are, in reality, urban hits, and he sings them too loudly and slightly off key. Pogány makes fun of the guests behind their backs and shares his witty observations with Panni. The girl finds him pretentious and unattractive: a weak substitute for her ex-lover, the young count. The young aristocrat had been Panni’s lover for a while—a secret to which everybody except Pogány seems to have been privy. Panni has no choice but to marry Pogány: her father, the estate manager, had been recently fired by the young count, and the family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Around midnight, the estate manager also learns the reason for his dismissal: the count has leased his estate to two Jewish wine merchants, Adolf and Ármin Lichtenstein from Vienna. Angered by the news and in need for a ready scapegoat, Panni’s father then turns to the unfortunate fiancée: “There is nothing more to say here, Herr Pogány. Your relatives are coming (gyünnek a rokonai).” “My relatives, Herr estate manager?” “Yeah, all of you are related. Liscsány… Don’t you have a relative called Liscsány? Lichtenstájn…” Imre Pogány went pale as they attacked his Jewishness.

The Love Affair with the Nobility  183

He lifted his head in defiance. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Well, they have a daughter called Szálika or Rosika.” Imre Pogány found the situation intolerable. He felt that everything was lost. The beautiful girl, who a moment ago had been only an arm’s distance away, became separated from him by an ocean: the age-old sea of racial division. He backed down and said in a quite gentlemanly yet sharp voice: “thank you very much… Goodbye, my lady, Annuska…” And as he left, someone screamed into the frozen and terror-stricken night: “Play, Gypsy! The air is cleared! Play until dawn!”… And outside the dogs were howling like devils as a rider, leaning on the neck of his horse, left the yard and disappeared, along with the winter morning.32 Móricz, who in the interwar period, took over the editorship Nyugat, collaborated with Jews all his life; yet, like Babits, he could never fully overcome his prejudices. However, it was not only Gentile writers, but also their Jewish counterparts who testify to the widening emotional and cultural gap between provincial nobles and well-to-do Jewish commercial farmers and professionals. In his novel, the Land along the Szamos River (Szamosmenti táj) (1930), Dezső Szomory, whose family came from the town of Mátészalka in Szatmár County (also the home province of Móricz) painted a highly idealize picture of rural administrators, non-Jewish teachers, doctors, and priests, who lived in perfect harmony with Jews. Yet the novelist had only envy and hatred for the local baron and his wife (who invited him, the well-known writer from Budapest) to hunt. Szomory admitted that he looked down up the aristocrats with the same indifference and contempt, with which a old peasant drive had treated him at his arrival at the railway station a few days earlier.33 Even more critical of Jewish-Hungarian condominium in the interwar period was the writer, Baron Lajos Hatvany, whose family sponsored Nyugat. In his bestknown novel Urak és Emberek (Gentle folks and the rest, 1927), Baron Lajos Hatvany, the son of one of the wealthiest Jewish manufacturers in Hungary, painted a rather unf lattering picture of the assimilates and the aristocracy and gentry. In the novel, Herrmann, an astute agrarian entrepreneur and the father of the main character, Zsiga, has regular dealings with aristocrats. The relationship between his aristocratic acquaintances and business partners can be best described as korrekt (cold and businesslike). One day, Hermann, who has done well in business, purchases the large rural castle and estate of an old aristocratic family. In spite of his wealth, newly acquired real estate, and successful business career, Hermann remains an outsider: a Jew and venture capitalist, who seems to violate the norms of genteel society at every turn: for example, he cares more about his short-term profits than the long-term viability of his enterprise or the well-being of his employees. The nobles, his business partners, fear and deeply dislike him, and he fails to gain the respect of his middle-class employees, the local peasantry, and the estate servants: he is truly alone. But Hermann does not care much about the opinion of the majority. Aware and strangely proud of his status as an outsider, he advises

184  The Love Affair with the Nobility

his son, the idealistic and patriotic Zsiga, that he should behave like white settlers in the African and Asian colonies. “They will never accept you, no matter how wealthy you become,” he confides to his wide-eyed offspring. To Hermann’s disappointment, neither Zsiga, a lover of Hungarian culture and literature, nor his déclassé daughters follow his advice (one of his daughters, in fact, marries a crude, impoverished, and antisemitic gentry man). By rejecting their father’s advice, the children pave the way for the decline of the family’s fortune. Hatvany’s message could not be louder or clearer: cultural and ethnic assimilation, in the opinion of a Jewish baron, was both an illusion and failure because the cultural and emotional gap between Jews and traditional elite could never be bridged.34

Peasants In the late nineteenth century, the Jewish opinion of Hungary was that of a second Jerusalem: a land of plenty and a place of unlimited opportunity and tolerance.35 Compared to Romania and the Russian empire, particularly its western borderlands (what is today Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania), such praise was not without merit. In contrast to many of its neighbors, which had experienced several waves of pogroms before 1914, Hungary remained a relatively peaceful and safe place for Jews. There were anti-Jewish riots in several towns and regions in the aftermath of the Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial in 1883; yet, these attacks resulted in far fewer lives lost and caused less damage than their Russian and Romanian counterparts. As we have seen, contemporary writers painted a highly idealized picture of the relationship between the rural elite and Jews in the 1860s and 1870s. Although the public view of the same relationship became more complex after 1882, liberal contemporaries had not lost their faith in Jewish cultural and ethnic assimilation. They were less concerned with and harbored less hope for Jewish assimilation into peasant culture, however. This comes as no surprise since relatively few Jews were engaged in small-scale agricultural production. Although there are few studies that deal with peasants’ attitude to Jews, scattered evidence does suggest that the rural poor were more hostile to Jews in the first half of the nineteenth century. Before the emancipation of serfs in 1848, peasants saw immigrant Jews, who rented mills and taverns from local nobles, as exploiters and political allies of the traditional elite. On the one hand, poor peasants were both envious of, and harbored resentment toward, middle-class Jews; on the other hand, Christian peasants and artisans treated destitute Jewish peddlers with a mixture of contempt and fear. Their attitude toward Jews became more complex and, in contrast to the nobles, somewhat more positive after 1867. Peasants’ increasing acceptance of Jews had to do, in part, with secularization, the spread of liberal ideas in the countryside, and the modernization of cultural and educational institutions. But even more significant than these cultural factors were the shared economic and even political interests of the two groups. By the late nineteenth century, peasants had come to appreciate

The Love Affair with the Nobility  185

the presence of middle-class Jews in their communities. Local merchants and commercial farmers employed many poor Gentiles as day laborers, wagoneers, harvesters, and domestics. They bought up their surplus grain, wine, and livestock at reasonable prices. Local grocers carried everything from food items and cleaning supplies to pesticides, and they allowed peasants to buy on credit. Jews built and managed mills, which not only ground the peasants’ corn but also offered employment to the rural poor. The newcomers established distilleries, build brick factories, and opened sweatshops for unemployed garment workers. Jews worked as physicians, pharmacists, veterinarians, notaries for poor persons, and elementary school teachers. Unlike rural administrators, who wielded power over peasants and tended to treat them as subjects, Jewish merchants and modern professionals served their clients. Both their interests and the moral codes of their professions demanded they treat their clients with respect and decency. It was not accidental that many Jewish professionals played a major role in the democratic revolution and the rural councils in 1918 and 1919; in the councils, they often shared power with poor peasants, who were equally interested in the destruction of the remnants of feudalism and the creation of a more egalitarian world with fewer social prejudices. Modernization brought improvement in the relations between Jews and peasants in Hungary. The situation was similar in the Polish part of Russia, which had a much stronger antisemitic tradition than Hungary. Even though Polish and Ukrainian peasants remained suspicious of ethnic and religious outsiders, they favored occasional contact with Jews. For this reason, Gentile farmers customarily visited Jews during Christmas and the New Year because they believed that Jews brought good luck, fertility, and wealth for the coming year. Peasants demonized Jews as the killers of Christ; yet, they also respected them as witnesses to Christ’s passion and as living proof of the veracity of the Gospel. Jews, superstitious farmers believed, possessed supernatural abilities that could be both harmful and beneficial. In times of trouble, they therefore sought out the advice not only of their priests but also of famous rabbis living in the same community or in nearby towns and villages; typically, peasant women burned candles in both the local church and the local synagogue. The economic and social modernization of the countryside also heightened competition and increased tensions between the two groups. Many peasants envied the wealth of Jewish merchants; at the same time, they admired Jews’ business acumen and success, accepted their advice, and tried to imitate their example. It was not unusual for Jewish merchants and Gentile farmers to become business partners and even friends. A sign of improving relations, sexual relations between Jews and Gentiles (which rarely translated into marriage), became more common in the Polish countryside in the second half of the nineteenth century.36 Noticeable improvements notwithstanding, the invisible walls between the two groups remained. The best of the local studies, such as György Kövér’s work

186  The Love Affair with the Nobility

on Tiszaeszlár Blood Libel Trial in the early 1880s, shows that even though the majority of local Jews spoke Hungarian well and their culture and lifestyle were barely distinguishable from that of their neighbors, distrust between the two groups persisted.37 Zsigmond Móricz, one of the most important Hungarian writers of the interwar period who also boasted a peasant background, painted a similar picture about Jewish-Magyar coexistence. In a conversation with the Jewish intellectual Aladár Komlós in the 1930s, Móricz conceded that as a child growing up in a small village in Szatmár county in the more backward eastern part of the country at the turn of the century, he did not know any Jew personally; however, he said that the sight of Orthodox Jews and Jewish peddlers who occasionally came through the village scared him and his playmates.38 Gentile peasants, who continued to harbor strong prejudices toward Jews, did not necessarily adopt the same prejudices as their social superiors. Political antisemitism came to the village from the cities and took root in the countrywide among peasants only gradually. At the level of politics, peasant and Jewish politicians had much in common: both represented groups that had been traditionally treated as pariahs in Hungarian society. Ignác Acsády, an intellectual from a Jewish background who devoted his entire life to study of the history of Hungarian peasants, considered the two groups to be natural allies against reactionary nobles and the authoritarian state. “Only peasants can remember the yoke of centuries of slavery, the decades of exploitation, the bitter days of the recently buried past as well as the Jews,” Acsády argued.39 In recognition of their shared interests, the newly established agrarian socialist parties also rejected antisemitism both as an ideology and a political technique to gain votes. They sought to establish good relations with lower middle-class Jews in order to advance the process of democratization.40 Jewish politicians and socialist and radical bourgeois politicians from Jewish backgrounds were equally forthcoming toward the peasant parties. While the liberal and the moderate democratic parties watched peasants’ fight for greater equality from the sidelines, the small group of bourgeois radicals did not hide their sympathy for poor peasants. The bourgeois radicals was the first urban and middle-class party in Hungary to advocate for radical land reform at the expense of the aristocratic and bourgeois owners of large estates before the First World War. It was no accident that the leader of the group, social scientist Oszkár Jászi, had come from a rural background. His father, a village doctor, was married to his profession and to making a difference in the lives of peasants in one of the most backward parts of the country. The son, too, remained an ardent supporter of land reform and a champion of peasants’ interests until the end of his life.41 Middle-class Jews treated Hungarian peasants with a mixture of admiration (idealization) and condescension – but rarely with hostility. Their attitude toward the rural Magyar population contrasted sharply with the fear and alienation with which their Polish or Ukrainian counterparts viewed local peasants. The Zionist officer Hameiri, too, regarded Polish, Ukrainian and Russian peasants as savages and murderers. In his wartime autobiographical

The Love Affair with the Nobility  187

novel, The Great Craziness, he paints the picture of a “village of the perverts,” located in Galicia, where every woman from the age of 10–60, became prostitutes. Since they all had contracted syphilis, peasant women posed a major threat to the occupying Austro-Hungarian troops. One of Hameiri’s subordinates shot a ten-year-old peasant girl who had offered him sexual favors. Elderly peasants blamed Jewish women: it was they, the peasants were convinced, who had introduced this vice to the innocent Poles and Ruthenians. Yet, as Hameiri noted, there were no Jews in the village, and only a handful could be found n the entire district. The troops were eager to leave the “village of the perverts” behind.42 The alliance between the two groups was never sealed, however. The lost war, the two failed revolutions, and the White Terror, if anything, led to the reversal of these favorable trends. At the front, millions of peasants were, for the first time, exposed to the political antisemitism of professional soldiers. It was the officers who, with the help of radical journalists and writers, instilled new forms of hatred into the peasant recruits. In addition to the admiration of the uneducated peasant soldiers for their middle-class officers, there were also more prosaic reasons for the rural recruits to embrace new antisemitic stereotypes such as equation of Jews with shirkers. Peasants suffered more, both in absolute numbers and in relative terms than any other social group. The heavy loss of human life at the front went hand-in-hand with deprivation at home, made worse by increased state involvement in the economy, including setting food prices and requisitioning of grain, animal fats, and other agricultural products from farmers. In need of scapegoats, peasants became more receptive to the message of antisemitic agitators. As has been shown earlier, peasant women, disabled soldiers, teenagers, and the elderly played an important role in bread riots, which in many places degenerated into pogrom-like events in the final two years of the war. The disintegration of law and order in the countryside during the summer and autumn of 1918—a manifestation of the larger process of state retreat and the diminished efficiency of the government—provoked attacks on Jews as well as the social elite.43 Such attacks forced the new democratic government to take strong measures, including calling on the army to restore law and order in villages and isolated farms. In ethnically mixed areas, peasant riots often took on the characteristics of ethnic conf licts. Notwithstanding their ethnic background, the so-called Greens shared one passion and political profile: they all disliked Jews and considered them easy prey in the context of postwar chaos.44 The last peasant revolution in modern Hungarian history demanded the lives of hundreds of people, which paled in comparison to the civil war in Soviet Russia, which cost the lives of at least 100,000 Jews. By the end of the year, law and order had been largely restored in what was left of Hungary, even if pogroms and other types of antisemitic violence continued under the cover of Red and White terror for another two years.45 Like many in the middle class, peasants tended to side with the democratic revolution, which they hoped would change property relations in the countryside

188  The Love Affair with the Nobility

and introduce other badly needed social and political reforms. The failure of the new democratic regime to halt economic decline, prevent social disintegration, restore law and order, and, most importantly, deliver on its promise to redistribute the estates of nobles and bourgeois landowners and the landholdings of the Catholic Church alienated peasants from the fledgling government. Given its short tenure and meager accomplishments, peasants did not mourn the demise of the new regime after its collapse in March 1919. What they could not foresee, however, was that the new Republic of Councils would be even more hostile toward them. The policies of the Hungarian Soviet Republic violated peasants’ interests and sensibilities at every turn: the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol, the re-introduction of conscription, the disenfranchisement of wealthy peasants and the rural middle class, the state campaign against religion and church institutions, and the requisitioning of agricultural goods predictably alienated peasants. By failing, like its predecessor, to divide the large estates among farmers and the agrarian poor, the regime missed its last chance to regain the sympathy of the rural poor and lower middle class. The violent suppression of peasant protests drove the rural masses, especially those in the center and western parts of the country, into the arms of the counterrevolution.46 The peasants’ reaction to the communist experiment was strong and immediate. Since many of the enforcers who had come to requisition peasants’ grain were city dwellers and Jews, peasants, under the inf luence of counterrevolutionary propaganda, quickly came to associate the Soviet Republic with members of this ethnic and religious minority and blamed them for their suffering ( Jokes 1 and 2). The images of communist Jews on posters published and distributed during the White Terror displayed in an exaggerated form all the negative characteristics familiar to readers of prewar antisemitic caricatures and texts. Many of the posters appealed to the religious sentiments of readers, including the bigotry and deep-seated antisemitism of the prospective viewers. The cover of Új Barázda (New Furrow), the daily of the peasant Smallholders’ Party, shown here portrays the communist Jew as the devil (Figure 4.1). The main function of Jewish humor in 1919 was to understand the world, decipher the meaning of recent events, and provide solace and direction in the postwar chaos. The liberal comic weekly Borsszem Jankó proved much less effective than the politically more radical Az Ojság in addressing these needs. Many jokes, especially those based on clever grammatical devices such as wordplay simply fell f lat ( Joke 1). The evocation of religious texts may have provided comfort to some; however, it neither satisfied the need for rational explanation nor did it promise, not to mention provide, justice ( Joke 2). Wordplay and scriptural references functioned as escapes from reality. The readers may have found the musings of Solomon Seiffensteiner funny and relevant before the war, but the same jokes failed to do justice to the horror associated with the pogroms organized by peasant bands during the White Terror. There was also something amiss in the way the cartoons portrayed

The Love Affair with the Nobility  189

Figure 4.1  Cover Page of Uj Barázda (MNL PKG 19190054)

190  The Love Affair with the Nobility

peasant antisemitism in the cartoons. Surely, there was more to the attacks on Jewish lives than simply peasants’ frustrations about the outcome of the war, their misery and moral disorientation, and their reaction to the shortlived communist dictatorship (Cartoon 4.6). Composed in the style of urban cabarets, the jokes misunderstood the nature and underestimated the depth of peasant antisemitism (Cartoon 4.7, Joke 3). 1 The musings of Solomon Seiffensteiner. Zalme Noch worked as an agent for the Viennese firm Flick and Pick. Once he met Zische Flaut on the train. “Servus Zalme. Where are you heading?” “I am going to Tiszadob.” “Why don’t you come with me to Tiszalök?” “Why should I go to Tiszalök?” “Because it is the same for you. If you go to Tiszadob, they will throw you out; if you go to Tiszalök, they will toss you out.” [The verb dob means to throw; lök means to toss/push].47 2 Isaac and Jacob. Dear Borsszem Jankó. In a Jewish elementary school in Pest, the teacher has been testing his students on their knowledge of the Holy Book. He asks little Aladár Grün, What do you know, my son, about Isaac? He answers: Isaak (Izsák) is a place in Pest County that sacrificed its Jacobs.48 3 Relevant Folk Song I am drunk, my rose, like a skunk To strike a Jew, the temptation is strong I like to scream too, so no one will know And to raise my music’s niveau. (Részeg vagyok Rózsám, mint a csap Ilyenkor az ember a zsidóra csap, Kurjongatok, hisz nem tudni ki vót Így emelem a zenei nívót).49 4 Folk Songs from Pure Sources (Tőrülmetszett Népdalok) Three Jews and a half Did I send with the rest, But you refused and you stuck, Only you know what you’ve got. (Három zsidó, meg egy fél, Kültelek, de nem mentél, Ha nem mentél, maradtál, Te tudod, hogy mit kaptál.) Jew, Jew, Moses Jew, Do you carry blush on you? If makeup is sold by you, You must be a Bolshevik-Jew. (Zsidó, Zsidó, Mózsi, Zsidó, Van a nálad pirosító? Ha van nálad pirosító, Bolsheviki vagy te, Zsidó!)50

The Love Affair with the Nobility  191

Cartoon 4.6  Mihály Magyar and the Jewish Question.

And in his desperation, what else could he do? He struck the… soundly with his stick.51

192  The Love Affair with the Nobility

Cartoon 4.7  The good villagers. “Listen to me, neighbor. If Moses returns, I am not going to lay a finger on him; if he doesn’t, I will break his back.”52

The attitude of Hungarian Jewish intellectuals to peasants was different, similarly condescending but less hostile from that of their Polish, Russian, or even Austrian counterparts. Indeed, one is hard pressed to find an example from pre-1914 Jewish literature that displays the same level of hostility toward peasants as Joseph Roth’s book Hiób. Roth portrayed peasants in his novel as cruel, venal, and stupid. The elementary school teacher, the main character in the book, sees it as his misfortune and an unfair punishment of God that his older son has befriended peasants and his daughter takes peasant soldiers as her lovers.53 Peasants demonized Jews in their fairy tales and ballads, too. However, traditional Jewish jokes ridiculed farmers and agricultural laborers as slow-witted, ignorant, and sly brutes. In Eastern Europe, abusive terms such as “gojische kopp” were constantly thrown at peasants behind their backs. Only Jews’ dislike of haughty nobles, corrupt rural administrators, and violent military officers exceeded their contempt for peasants in Eastern Europe before the war.54 The more negative depiction of peasants in Hungarian Jewish humor after the war was closely related to political changes. During the democratic interlude, the Smallholders’ Party, the main representative of peasants’ interests, did not jump on the antisemitic bandwagon. On the contrary, the party continued its prewar policy of promoting cooperation between peasant

The Love Affair with the Nobility  193

politicians and progressive Jewish intellectuals in the Bourgeois Radical Party. After the collapse of the Republic of the Councils in August 1919, party leaders including István Nagyatádi-Szabó changed course; over the next 12 months, they made one concession after another to the radical and antisemitic Right. Typically, Nagyatádi-Szabó conveniently excused himself from the parliamentary session during which the numerus clausus legislation in September 1920. The peasant leader’s wavering on the vital issue of Jewish equality came as a bitter disappointment to his Jewish friends and one-time allies. To make matters worse, István Szabó-Sokorópátkai, the leader of the second peasant party, attended the fateful session and cast his vote in favor of the proposed legislation. In 1921, conservatives and radical antisemites such as Gyula Gömbös began to infiltrate the leadership of the Smallholders’ Party. Subverted from within and having failed in its mission to pass radical land reform legislation, the party temporarily disappeared from the political scene in 1923. As a sign of worsening relations between peasants and Jews, Az Ojság regularly depicted István Szabó-Sokorópátkai, who voted for the numerus clausus legislation, as a fat and brutish man with no sign of decency.55 The two comic weeklies also began to display hostility toward peasants by resorting to arguments and images that had been typical of Jewish humor in Poland and Russia. Jokes and anecdotes poked fun at every real or imagined fault of farmers: from their ignorance, venality, and opportunism to their subservience and greed ( Jokes 1 and 2). Jokes also expressed disappointment over the end of amicable relations between Jews and peasants and made a valiant attempt to understand, and come to terms with peasant antisemitism after the war ( Joke 3). 1 The incorrigible. Doctor says to the farmer: “Mihály, either you quit drinking or you will go blind. Choose.” “Well, Sir, I have already made my choice. I’d rather lose the window than the entire building.”56 2 The Question. “Whom are you going to vote for, András gazda (boss)?” “I don’t know yet… but if you give me a hundred forints, I will tell you right away.”57 3 The Mood of the People. “Tell me András, are you an anti-Semite?” “No, Sir. I am only the chief shepherd.”58 The comic weeklies were among the first to register an important change in peasants’ attitudes toward Jews. The relationship between the two groups continued to deteriorate in the 1920s and 1930s. Bombarded with antisemitic images and narratives at school, in the army, at party rallies, and in newspapers, peasants began to internalize middle-class antisemitic prejudice. Hostile propaganda alone was not able to destroy completely the trust built up between the two groups in the period of modernization. In the novel entitled Kiskunhalom written by the Marxist and allegedly half-Jewish author Lajos Nagy, peasant domestics continued to pay little attention to the ethnic and

194  The Love Affair with the Nobility

religious background of their female masters and judged them entirely on the basis of the treatment they received.59 Peasants, for their part, were too preoccupied with their own problems to pay much attention to the squabbles between urban and middle-class Gentiles and Jews. Destitute yet still enterprising farmers and agricultural laborers continued to leave their villages to find work in distant cities or overseas. Others gave up hope, escaping into alcoholism or religious fantasies spread by new Protestant sects. Still others joined the new fascist parties, which preached radical land reform at the expense of the Catholic Church, “blue-blood” aristocrats, and, most importantly, Jewish landowners and commercial farmers.60 In order to take the wind out of the fascist parties’ sails and also to undermine the more left-oriented movement of Populist writers (népi irók), the governments of Gyula Gömbös, Károly Darányi, and Béla Imrédy initiated wide-ranging and progressive social reforms during the interwar period, paid for mainly by the extra taxes imposed on Jewish industrial and commercial enterprises. Antisemitic agitation switched into even higher gear during the Second World War, as the government of Miklós Kállay and the rightwing parties competed to gain peasants’ support and prevent revolution in the countryside. The fourth “Jewish law,” passed under conservative government of Miklós Kállay in 1942, drastically changed property relations in the countryside at the expense of Jewish commercial farmers. The new law failed to def late fascist agitation and satisfy peasants’ demands; if anything, the land reform increased peasants’ appetite for even more Jewish land and property. The rural population watched the deportation of Jews from the sidelines with a mixture of fear, empathy, and indifference. While only a small minority participated directly, mainly as gendarmes, in the genocide, a much larger group of peasants profited from the tragedy by pillaging the houses and businesses and by taking over the properties of those who had been deported. Peasants’ participation in these crimes had many roots; however, the majority of these crimes would not have taken place without the alienation both groups experienced after the First World War. Jewish humor was concerned not only with prejudices and individual agents of antisemitic violence: it also tried to understand the reason behind the changing attitude of entire social groups toward this religious minority. Before the war, Jewish humor, particularly the jokes and anecdotes published in the urban and liberal Borssszem Jankó, were deferential toward the aristocracy. In contrast to its Polish and Russian counterparts, which were highly critical of the gentry, particularly noble officers, Hungarian Jewish humor continued to portray déclassé nobles as faulty but likable characters. Urban Jewish humor fully supported the assimilation of middle-class Jews into the culture of the nobility and even accepted the idea of the fusion of the two groups. While the Gentile segment of the middle class and elite rejected ethnic assimilation almost completely, and they came to harbor doubt about the viability and desirability of cultural assimilation after 1918, modern Jews, as many of the jokes and cartoon have shown, sought to restore the prewar relationship between two groups. Their

The Love Affair with the Nobility  195

highly idealistic view of Jewish life in the countryside and the absence of strong antisemitic currents among peasants contrasted sharply with Jewish humor in the Russian empire, which remained highly suspicious of and even hostile to the Christian and rural poor. Jokes after 1918 painted a reliable picture of increased hostility of villagers toward Jews. Yet, they did not dig deep enough to unearth the real sources of rural violence. Jewish humor considered increased peasant aggression to be a reaction to wartime deprivation, the lost war, and two revolutions, but they also blamed it on the inf luence of outside agitators. The comic weeklies shared the opinion of Jewish leaders that with the restoration of law and order, the intensity and quality of the relationship between Jews and peasants would also return to its prewar levels. That this did not happen was mainly due to the decision of political and social elites to abrogate the idea of full Jewish emancipation. The second, equally important cause of continued peasant hostility was the long-term impact of the First World War and the revolutions and counterrevolutions in its aftermath. This included the rise of new and more pernicious prejudice among peasants directed toward members of the Jewish minority. While many of the new images were products of elite and urban culture, especially the image of the communist Jew, they seem to have corresponded to peasants’ experiences at the local level. The rise of a new peasant middle class that competed with Jewish commercial farmers, ongoing democratization, and the interwar political mobilization of the lower middle classes only reinforced these trends. Peasants’ indifference to the fate of Jews, and, in many places, their participation in the genocide during the Second World War was not only the product of two decades of intense state propaganda; it was also the result of the First World War, postwar chaos, communist dictatorship, and the social and cultural developments within the peasantry in the interwar period.

Notes 1 Péter Hanák, “Jewish Assimilation in Austria-Hungary,” in Pat Thane et  al., eds., The Power of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 235–251. 2 George Schöpf lin, “Jewish Assimilation in Hungary: A Moot Point,” in Béla Vágó, ed., Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 75–88. 3 Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2015), p. 373. 4 Nathaniel Katzburg, “Central European Jewry Between East and West,” in Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, eds., A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry (New Brunswick, NJ: Translation Publishers, 1990), pp. 33–44, here p. 39. 5 Patai, The Jews of Hungary, pp. 374–378. 6 Still the best book on the subject on Jewish success is William O. McCagg, Jr., Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1986).

196  The Love Affair with the Nobility 7 Ferenc Molnár, “A zsúr-apacs,” in Hét ágú síp, Tréfák, karcolatok, tárcák (Budapest: Franklin-Társulat, 1911), p. 7, cited in Miklós Konrád, Zsidóságon innen és túl: Zsidók vallásváltása Magyarországon a reformkortól az első világháborúig (Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, 2014), p. 52. 8 Béla Bodó, “Hungarian Aristocracy and the White Terror,” Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 4 (October 2010), pp. 703–724. 9 Levente Püski, “The Long Farewell. Aristocracy in Hungary in the 20th Century,” The Hungarian Quarterly 49, no. 191 (2008), pp. 115–132. 10 On the role of Jews in the modernization of agriculture, see Julianna Puskás, “Zsidó haszonbérlők a magyarországi mezőgazdaság fejlődésének folyamatában” (Az 1850-es évektől 1935-ig),” Századok 1 (1992), pp. 35–59; see also Gábor Gyáni and György Kövér, Magyarország társadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második világháborúig (Budapest: Osiris, 2006), pp. 226–227. 11 István Bibó, “Zsidókérdés Magyarországon 1944 után,” in Péter Hanák, ed., Zsidókérdés, assimiláció, antiszemitizmus. Tanulmányok a zsidókérdésről a huszadik századi Magyarországon (Budapest: Gondolat, 1984), pp. 139–293, here pp. 248–255. 12 According to Andrew C. János, the number of gentry landowners declined from about 30,000 in 1867 to between 10,000 and 12,000 by 1902. The size of the state bureaucracy increased by more than one-third (from 60,776 to 97,835 employees from 1892 to 1902). In 1890, 56.7 percent of the leading employees of four ministries came from gentry families, and 22.7 percent came from non-noble families. By 1910, the percentage of officials from gentry families declined to 45.9 percent while the share of non-nobles increased to 41.5 percent. In 1890, in the same four ministries, 71.8 percent of officials were of Hungarian, 23.7 percent were German, and 4.5 percent came from other (Slav, Romanian, etc.) backgrounds. By 1910, the share of Hungarians declined to 61.0 percent, while that of Germans grew to 26.4 percent, and that of others rose to 12.6 percent. The decline in the number of gentry and Hungarian officials was most likely more dramatic at the county level, especially in ethnically mixed regions of the country. Andrew C. János, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary 1825–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 110. 13 Miklós Szabó, Politikai kultúra Magyarországon, 1896–1986 (Budapest: Medvetánc könyvek, 1989), p. 160, cited in János Béri-Lichtner, Együttélés: A zsidóság szerepe Magyarország legújabbkori torténetében, 1790–1918 (Budapest: Argumentum, 1995), p. 325. 14 Szabó, Politikai kultúra Magyarországon, pp. 132–133, cited in János Béri-Lichtner, Együttélés: A zsidóság szerepe Magyarország legújabb történetében, 1790–1918 (Budapest: Argumentum, 1995), pp. 319–320; Nathaniel Katzburg, Zsidópolitika Magyarországon 1919–1943 (Budapest: Bábel Kiadó, 2002), pp. 14–24; Kovács, Zsidók a Duna-Tisza Közén, pp. 214–222. 15 Adolf Ágai, “Lakodalom,” in Az örök zsidó. Régi naplók, életképek (1862–1906) (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó, 2010), 156–164; Aladár Komlós, Ágai Adolf, “Zsidósága. Egy Magyar Zsidó a Múlt Században,” in Az örök zsidó. Régi naplók, életképek (1862–1906) (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó, 2010), pp. 221–228, here 223. 16 Cited by Tamás Ungvári, The Jewish Question in Europe: The Case of Hungary (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 72. 17 Aladár Komlós, “Az antiszemitizmus kitörése—zsidóábrázolások az irodalomban,” in Komlós, Magyar-zsidó szellemtörténet a reformkortól a Holocaustig, pp. 147–164. 18 Buzinkay, Borsszem Jankó és társai, pp. 35–37.

The Love Affair with the Nobility  197 19 See Géza Buzinkay, “Budapest Joke and Comic Weeklies as Mirrors of Cultural Assimilation,” in Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske, eds., Budapest and New York: Studies in Metropolitan Transformation, 1870–1930 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994), pp. 234–237; Aladár Komlós, “Ágai Adolf Zsidósága: Egy Magyar Zsidó a Múlt Században,” in Magyar-Zsidó Szellemtörténet a Reformkortól a Holocaustig, pp. 169–175. 20 Hernádi, p. 221. 21 Ibid., p. 347. 22 Ágai, Abrincs!, p. 41. 23 Graf means count in German. See Nagy, A bölcs rabbi tréfái, p. 77, cited in Kertész, Gitli néni tésztája, p.106. 24 Ibid., p. 108. 25 Nagy, Így Írom Én az Ojságot, p. 126. 26 Hernádi, p. 342. 27 Ibid., 101. 28 Ibid., 66. 29 Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. 30 Ágai, Abrincs!, p. 69. 31 Dezső Szabó, Az elsodort falu: regény egy kötetben (Debrecen: Csokonai Kiadó, 1989). The book was originally published in Budapest by Genius Kiadás in 1919. 32 See Zsigmond Móricz’ classic, “Kivilágos kivirradtig (Revelry until dawn),” in Zsigmond Móricz, ed., Regények, vol. 2 (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1975), pp. 515–641, here pp. 639–640. 33 Dezső Szomory, Szamosmenti Táj (Budapest: Múlt És Jövő Könyvkiadó, 2012), pp. 198–200. 34 Lajos Hatvany, Urak és Emberek (Budapest: Ulpius-ház Könyvkiadó, 2007). 35 This was also the opinion of contemporary Jews, who called Hungary the Country of Hágár, after the female servant of Abraham’s wife Sara and the mother of Ishmael. On the love of Jews for Hungary and their commitment to Hungarian culture, see Elie Wiesel, “Beköszöntő,” in Anna Szalay, ed., Hágár Országa. A magyarországi zsidóság –történelem, közösség, kultúra (Budapest: Antall József Alapítvány/Kossuth Kiadó, 2002), pp. 6–7. 36 Kai Struve, “Gentry, Jews and Peasants: Jews as Others in the Formation of the Modern Polish Nation in Rural Galicia during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in Nancy M. Wingfield, Austrian Studies, vol. 5, pp. 103–122, here 106–107. 37 György Kövér, Tiszaeszlári dráma: Társadalomtörténeti látószögek [Tiszaeszlár Drama: Social History Perspectives] (Budapest: Osiris, 1980). 38 “Móricz Zsigmond a zsidókérdésről írásban és szóban,” Aladár Komlós, Magyar-zsidó szellemtörténet a reformkortól a Holocaustig. vol. 2. Bevezetés a magyar-zsidó irodalomba (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek, 1997), pp. 332–336. 39 Aladár Komlós, “Az antiszemitizmus kitörése—zsidóábrázolások az irodalomban,” in Aladár Komlós, Magyar-zsidó szellemtörténet a reformkortól a Holocaustig, vol. 1, A magyar zsidóság irodalmi tevékenysége a XIX. században (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek, 1997), pp. 147–164, here 161–162. 40 See Péter Hanák et al., Magyarország Története, vol. 7/1, pp. 132–137, 195–204; Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, pp. 62–63. 41 See György Litván, A Twentieth-Century Prophet: Oscar Jászi, 1875–1957 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006). 42 Hameiri, A Nagy Őrület, pp. 104–108. 43 Lajos Szabolcsi, Két emberöltő: Az Egyenlőség évtizedei, 1881–1931. Emlékezések, dokumentumok (Budapest: MTA Judaisztika Kutatócsoport, 1993), pp. 228, 237– 244; Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, pp. 99–100. See also Ignác Romsics, A Duna-Tisza Köze Hatalmi Viszonyai 1918–19-ben (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982), pp. 28–36; Bihari, Lövészárkok a hátországban, pp. 99–100.

198  The Love Affair with the Nobility 44 Jakub S. Beneš, “The Green Cadres and the Collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918,” Past & Present, 236/1 (August 2017), pp. 207–241. 45 Pál Hatos, Az Elátkozott Köztársaság. Az 1918-as Összeomlás és Forradalom Története (Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó, Budapest, 2018); Tamás Révész, Nem akartak katonát láni? A magyar állam és hadserege 1918–1919-ben (Budapest: Bölcsésztudományi Kutatóközpont Történettudományi Intézet, 2019). 46 Romsics, A Duna-Tisza Köze Hatalmi Viszonyai 1918–19-ben, esp. pp. 73–80. 47 Borsszem Jankó, May 9, 1920. 48 Borsszem Jankó, November 7, 1920. 49 Borsszem Jankó, April 18, 1920. 50 Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. 51 Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. 52 Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. 53 See Joseph Roth, Hiob: Roman einer einfachen Mannes (Cologne: Anaconda, 2010); originally published by Gustav Kiepenheuer in Berlin in 1930. 54 This attitude is best captured by the following Jewish joke: When you tell a joke to a peasant, he laughs three times. First, when you tell him the joke; second, when you explain it to him; and third, when he understands it. The landowner laughs twice: first, when you tell the joke and second, when you explain it to him. But he never understands. The officer laughs only once. He does not let you explain, and he, of course, does not understand. The Jew does not even let you tell the joke. I have heard it already! Old stuff! And I also tell it better!” Schwara, Humor und Toleranz, pp. 118–119. 55 Az Ojság, September 30, 1922. 56 Borsszem Jankó, April 18, 1920. 57 Az Ojság, April 14, 1922. 58 Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. 59 Even in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as one of Lajos Nagy’s novels shows, peasants were much less antisemitic than members of the rural middle class. In his realist novel Kiskunhalom, a young servant girl describes her landlady, Mrs. Fleischer, as “ugly and fat Jewish woman.” Yet, she also admits that she is a good person. The servant is grateful for the gifts that she has received and hopes that Mrs. Fleischer will give her away and make her a domestic servant in Budapest. See Lajos Nagy, Kiskunhalom (Budapest: Osiris, 1999). The novel was first published in 1934. 60 Imre Kovács, A néma forradalom (Budapest: Cserépfalvi, 1937), pp. 56–65, 136–144.

5 Finding Humor in Factional Tension

The war and postwar chaos in Hungary increased tension not only between the majority society and the country’s ethnic and religious minorities; it also turned Jews against Jews. Indeed, during the postwar period a widening emotional and cultural gap appeared between different segments of the Jewish community: between religious and agnostic Jews, the Orthodox and the Neologs, and between urban and rural, poor and wealthy, and Hungarian nationalists and Zionist Jews. All these conf licts were interrelated. The oldest and most visible rift, that between the Orthodox and the Neologs, was, for example, overlaid with, and exacerbated by, the ongoing quarrel between ­agnostic and religious Jews. There was a direct correlation between secularization and the level of economic and social development on the one hand, and agnosticism and the success of Reform Judaism on the other. Religious Orthodoxy dominated agrarian and economically backward parts of Eastern Europe, where secularization of both Christian and Jewish populations lagged far behind their Western European counterparts. Reform Judaism became popular in the German lands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; on the other hand, in the underdeveloped Hungarian half of the Habsburg Empire, traditional Jewish life and culture survived almost untouched until the revolution of 1848.1 Reform Judaism had its roots in the Enlightenment, or rather in the attempt of Jewish scholars and community leaders to reconcile the teaching of the Enlightenment philosophy with their religious tradition. However, the success of agnosticism and Reform Judaism had a social and even economic dimension. Social and geographical mobility, urbanization, and industrialization posed a threat to traditional beliefs and lifestyles. Urban merchants, lawyers, and other modern professionals, for example, found it more difficult to follow customary laws and ancient customs than did provincial tavern-keepers or shopkeepers.2 Wealthy and socially well-connected individuals were also more likely to ignore traditional religious and social practices and violate rigid dietary rules.3 Yet, secularization did not necessarily destroy traditional forms of worship. Like Catholicism and Protestant Pietism, Jewish Orthodoxy experienced a revival in the mid-nineteenth century. Supported by

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224389-5

200  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

their followers, the majority of rabbis in Hungary continued to oppose even moderate religious reforms in the 1850s and 1860s. Admittedly, this revival had limits, but it did not stop or reverse the process of secularization. If anything, Jewish religious leaders’ complaints that the faithful, especially in urban centers, failed to observe the Sabbath, attend religious service regularly, participate in daily prayers, or follow dietary rules grew even louder in the second half of the nineteenth century.4 In addition to the process of secularization, the increasing power and ambition of the modern state also posed a threat to traditional communities. After the defeat of the revolution of 1848, the government in Vienna tried to prevent the assimilation of Jews into Hungarian society and culture by nationalizing schools and replacing Yiddish with German as the language of instruction. The educational reforms did not prevent cultural assimilation; however, they did lead to confusion and heightened tensions within the community, as the younger generation of children were no longer able to communicate with their elders in Yiddish, or fully understand Jewish tradition.5 According to Nathaniel Katzburg, “Hungary was the only country in Europe where the highest degrees of assimilation existed side-by-side with a considerable unassimilated Orthodox community, part of which was extremely traditional.”6 As Michael K. Silber has pointed out, Orthodoxy and ultra-Orthodoxy, as movements, were as modern as Reformed Judaism: all three were responses to the challenges of industrialization and social and cultural modernization: to the threat posed by these trends to tradition and identity. While the Neologs decided to break down the walls and embraced change; the Orthodox’s response to the same challenges was to reinforce the barriers and defend tradition with tooth and nail.7 The Orthodox saw themselves as the direct descendants of ancient Jews. They rejected modernity, emancipation, and assimilation for fear that progress would tie Jews down, indebt them to Christian society and, thus, postpone their return to the holy land and their redemption. Because of their intense Messionism, the Orthodox were prepared to accept second-class citizenship and put up with continued abuse in order to preserve religious purity. In 1843, in a petition to the king, the Orthodox Jews of Pressburg rejected emancipation on the grounds that Jews were not citizens of Hungary but of Palestine. The spiritual leader of the Hungarian Orthodox community, the Rabbi of Pressburg Moses Sofer described equality as “slavery in the midst of freedom.” He rejected liberalism and nationalism as modern-day heresies and continued to prefer the multiethnic yet conservative and feudal Habsburg state to the homogenous or at least homogenizing but modern and liberal Hungarian nation.8 In Hungary, one can speak of not one but least two Orthodox communities: one western and one eastern. The majority of the western Orthodox lived in Budapest and in the western part of the country. The eastern Orthodox Jews had come from Poland and Lithuania, spoke Yiddish as their first language, and dwelled mainly in the small towns and villages of the northern and northeastern counties (which were regarded by many as backward),

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  201

preserving many of the customs associated with the Eastern European shtetle. While both Orthodox groups were skeptical about modernization and rejected assimilation, they held diverging views on the issue of secular education and the use of local languages. The western Orthodox were willing to make concessions on both issues, while their eastern counterparts, who wanted to widen rather than narrow the cultural gap between the two Jewish camps and between Jews and Christians, continued to insist on Yiddish as their first language and guarded their educational privileges jealously. Hasidic (“pious”) Jews in the backward eastern counties idealized their religious and spiritual leaders as holy men, the source of all knowledge and moral authority; it was the famous rabbis, rather than the individual Hasid, they believed, who had direct contact with God. Hasidism as a religious movement remained a relatively minor force in Hungary and had almost no impact on Jewish public life in the capital.9 The split in Hungarian Jewry had its origins in the squabbles between the traditionalist and the progressive congregations in Pest in the early nineteenth century. Their debates concerned liturgical changes, the language of sermons, and innovations in architecture, interior design, ritual, and music. The progressives’ model was German Reform Judaism even though they were never able to accomplish as much as their German counterparts. Newly built temples such as the Dohány street synagogue, often called the “Jewish Cathedral” because of its size and significance, testified to the strength of their convictions. Consecrated in 1859, the Dohány temple, the largest synagogue in operation in Europe today (and the second largest temple in the world after the Emanu-El in New York—located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 65the Street) displayed all the modern amenities of its age. Its historicist Moorish style hid the reformist impulse best detected in the interior. In the new Dohány street synagogue, the rostrum for the reading of the Torah (bimah) stood in front of the Ark, not at the center as was the case in traditional buildings. The women’s gallery was not segregated by a lattice; the service was enriched by the use of organs and choirs—an unthinkable innovation as far as the Orthodox congregations was concerned. In progressive synagogues like the Dohány temple, German and Hungarian gradually replaced Yiddish as the language of sermons. The rabbis, dressed in robes similar to those of Lutheran pastors, and they came to resemble priests not only in appearance but function as well. While in traditional communities, the rabbi was first and foremost a legal scholar and theologian, in reform communities, he saw preaching as his main task. Other innovations, such as reorganization of the prayer book, ending the practice of knocking on members’ doors in the morning to call them to prayer, weddings held inside the synagogue rather than in the courtyard, and delayed burials (traditionally burials had to be held immediately after death), underlined modernizers’ radical break with the past. Not surprisingly, traditionalists vehemently rejected these changes, along with wearing modern clothes, changing their names to sound more Hungarian, and using Christian dates on letters.10

202  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

In Hungary, supporters of progressive Judaism were called Neologs (Hungarian spelling neológok). The word had its origins in the movement of language renewal in the late eighteenth century. The pioneers of modern Hungarian language, such as Ferenc Kazinczy, were called neologus, which loosely translates into “people using or creating new words.”11 Even though numerically they represented only a minority, the progressives saw themselves as the representatives of the entire Hungarian Jewry because of their political and economic power and cultural significance. The Neologs believed that Hungarian Jews were and had always been an integral part of the Hungarian nation. They considered Judaism a religion only; convinced that Jews had lost their ethnic identity, progressives described themselves as Hungarians of the Israelite confession (Mózes vallású Magyarok). Like the Orthodox, the Neologs lacked unity; they disagreed on many things including the role of religion in public life and religion as the defining element of Jewish identity. Ferenc Mezei took a more liberal position on these issues, while the editors of the Jewish weekly Egyenlőség, Miksa Szabolcsi and Lajos Szabolcsi, subscribed to the more conservative view. The Neologs embraced the romantic view of the Hungarian nation created by historians and poets in the early nineteenth century, according to which the vast majority of Magyars were freedom fighters, noble and generous in spirit, and opposed ethnic and religious discrimination. The so-called Jewish question, in the Neologs’ opinion, was a bogus issue invented by the small group of antisemites of mainly of German ethnic origins and by self-hating ex-Jews, especially those in the bourgeois radical camp. Antisemitism was a recent import (it entered the country after the infamous Tiszaeszlár blood libel trial of the early 1880s); it was a product of the recent economic downturn and was destined to disappear because xenophobia and religious hatred were incompatible with the Magyar national character. Fighting antisemitism and anti-Semites was the duty of every Jew: the battle could be won by drawing attention to the cruel and irrational elements of antisemitism and by appealing to the generosity and intelligence of the Hungarian elite and nation.12 The split between the Neolog and Orthodox communities was long in coming, and it finally took place in the late 1860s. In December 1867, the Hungarian parliament granted Jews equal civil and political rights. The emancipation law, however, recognized only one Jewish religion. A few weeks later, the government convened a conference to set up the organizational framework for Hungarian Jewry. Orthodox leaders resisted the creation of a central Jewish authority, which they knew would be dominated by their opponents. Eager to comply with the government’s wishes, Neolog reformers were able to exclude the rabbinate, the mainstay of Orthodox strength, from the preparatory conference, which, as a result, fell under Neologist control. The ensuing 1868 election for the establishment of a Jewish Congress further exacerbated tensions between the two communities. In the end, the Neologs won the election: they received 57.5 percent of the votes, while the Orthodox garnered 42.5 percent. In late 1868, the Jewish Congress was finally

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  203

convened to ratify the conference’s work. The Orthodox, however, refused to participate and set up their own organization. In the end, the state was forced to grant recognition to both groups. In 1868, the Hungarian Jewry split into two or rather three parties (the third section claimed to stand for the pre-1868 status quo, but, in reality, stood ideologically closer to the Orthodox group).13 The two factions were rather evenly matched. At the end of the nineteenth century, there were 315 Orthodox, 160 Neolog, and 60 unaffiliated (the so-called status quo) congregations in Hungary. The communities displayed great variation in size, political power, and cultural inf luence. The largest and most powerful congregations, including the Community of Pest with its 200,000 Jews, belonged to the Neologs. The Orthodox remained poorer and less inf luential than the Neologs. Many continued to use Yiddish rather than Hungarian as their first language; identified with the state rather than with the nation; and made no or only minor contributions to Hungarian culture. The Neologs, on the other hand, were proud Hungarians and became an integral part of the nation. According to Jacob Katz, the Neologs’ claim that “90 percent of the economic and cultural contribution of Jewry to the revitalization of Hungary was the work of its progressive wing was only a minor exaggeration.”14 The hostility between the Orthodox and Neolog communities in Hungary was, indeed, legendary. Religious difference was overlaid by social prejudice and the traditional contempt of city dwellers for their rural counterparts. Only about one-quarter of Jews in Budapest was Orthodox. With a few exceptions such as Miskolc, Debrecen, and Pozsony, all major provincial towns had a Neolog majority.15 The Orthodox regarded the Neologs as snobbish and arrogant urbanites and misguided reformers at best, and as traitors to the Jewish faith, at worst.16 The Neologs accepted and internalized the prejudices of the majority population toward “ghetto Jews,” particular the Hasids, who, in their opinion, were unable and unwilling to accommodate themselves to the modern world. Many, if not the majority, shared the opinion of Ferenc Mezei, vice chairman, and later chairman, of the National Israelite Office in Budapest, who in 1900 described Polish Hasidic leaders as the “lowest of people,” who, he argued, “should be exterminated like weeds (irtani kell ezt a gyomot).”17 The dislike between the two groups was not confined to Hungary. According to Albert S. Lindemann, by the mid-nineteenth century, the traditional division between Sephardics and Ashkenazis in western Europe, too, had been replaced by conflict between Western (Reform) and Eastern (Orthodox) Jews within the group of Ashkenazis. With the exception of small minority of mainly Zionist Jews who idealized Ostjuden, Western European Jews looked down on their rural and conservative Eastern European coreligionists as poor and backward religious fanatics.18 Their prejudices reflected Western attitudes toward the population of the less developed parts of the world. Western European Jews saw themselves as the winners of modernization. They internalized the values

204  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

and moral precepts of secular education, such as rational self-control and aesthetic refinement. The majority of Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, considered themselves the losers of industrialization and economic modernization. While Western Jews moved up the social ladder and entered the liberal professions in large numbers, the vast majority of their eastern coreligionists in the Russian Empire and Romania continued to eke out a modest—though often enough miserable—living as peddlers, artisans, subsistence farmers, and blue-collar workers. While in Western and Central Europe, Jews, with the exception of a small minority, reformed their religion, adopted the language of the majority, and sought to assimilate into the culture of their neighbors, the majority of Ostjuden, especially the followers of the Hasidic branch of Judaism, remained pietistic, mystical, and strongly anti-rationalist. The Ostjuden could not care less about the liberal values of individualism, self-reliance, and rationality; they also rejected cultural assimilation and continued to use Yiddish as their main language of communication. Western and Central European Jews considered their eastern brethren as backward and irrational; Eastern Jews, on the other hand, saw their Western coreligionists as cold, arrogant, cowardly, unimaginative, and vain, and as traitors who betrayed Jewish tradition and history for material comfort and acceptance.19 The rise of Zionism further divided the Jewish community in Hungary in the first half of the twentieth century. While its appeal increased significantly, especially among young Jews of mainly Orthodox background after 1918, Zionism was never able to conquer the hearts and minds of the majority of Hungarian Jews. Zionism was as much a cultural as a political movement in Hungary, especially before 1914. Like the assimilationists and the modernizers around the literary journal A Hét and Nyugat, Zionist intellectuals, such as József Patai, saw language and literature as the key to nation-building. In contrast to the assimilationists, however, they were interested in Jewish, rather than Hungarian, literature, culture (particularly medieval Hebrew literature) and identity. Both assimilationists and Zionists were western-oriented and modern; however, the followers of Nyugat had cast their lot with the state of Hungary and Hungarian culture, while the Zionists were interested in the creation of a modern Jewish culture, which would transcend state and linguistic boundaries. The assimilationists viewed Zionism as a political movement with suspicion, and even hostility, from the start; however, in the cultural realm, communication overlaps and even cooperation between the two groups remained common. Many Zionists admired and made a significant contribution to, Hungarian literature. Patai, by founding the literary journal Mult És Jövő (The Past and the Future), even tried to build the new, European and universalist Hebrew culture on a Hungarian linguistic foundation. The Hungarian Mult És Jövő, which attracted famous Jewish literary figures and social scientists from many countries, thus became one of the best Zionist journals in the world in the first decades of the twentieth century.20 The war hastened the secularization of Jews in Eastern and East-Central Europe. As Galicia, the home of Orthodox Jews, became a battlefield, tens

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  205

of thousands of Orthodox Jews migrated into the country’s interior. In the major cities of the Dual Monarchy, many lost contact with family and community members at home. Between one-third and half of the refugees never returned to their homeland: some stayed in Central Europe, while other continued their journey to the new world. A small minority of Orthodox Jews converted to Christianity; a bigger group embraced Reform Judaism; even more often, the migrants became simply indifferent to religion. Those who were conscripted into the various imperial armies underwent a similar process. The gap between Reform and Orthodox Jews thus became narrowed; as a response to the antisemitism of Christian soldiers, many became friends. Jewish chaplains in particular played an important role in overcoming religious differences and lowering emotional barriers between the Orthodox and Neolog soldiers.21 In the face of a common enemy, the emotional and cultural gap between the two groups narrowed somewhat during the war in Hungary, as well. Yet the tensions between Orthodox and liberal Jews failed to disappear, and continued to find an outlet in jokes. Since the texts were recycled for years and often decades, it is relatively difficult to distinguish between jokes born before and those created after the military conf lict. Still, a cursory reading of the comic weeklies suggests that prewar jokes and cartoons were less vitriolic, and more forgiving toward the Orthodox population (Cartoon 5.1). They show that Neolog Jews remained proud of their social and cultural accomplishments and continued to regard Budapest as an island of sophistication in the sea of Orthodox fanaticism and ignorance ( Joke 1). Agnostics and assimilated Jews continued to make fun of what they saw as the insatiable hatred of provincial Jews for the urban Neologs ( Jokes 2–4). Whether the charge that these jokes contained was true or whether it was based on innuendoes and prejudices seems to have escaped the “humor-mongers’” attention. However, the fact that at least some of the jokes were directed against the Neologs and the agnostics show that the writers were aware of the problem ( Joke 5). Recent events, such as the passage of the numerus clausus legislation of 1920, divided Hungarian Jews along class, religious, regional, and generational lines. The socially less mobile rural and Orthodox Jews, as well as converts-turned-antisemites paid far less attention to the numerus clausus law and other discriminatory legal measures aimed to punish Jews after the collapse of the Soviet Republic and remove unwanted competitors than did upwardly mobile and liberal Jews living the cities of Hungary ( Joke 6). 1 The teacher once asked Samuka in school why Budapest was the most modern city in the country. “Because the majority of Neologs lives here,” he responded.22 2 The Hirsch Boy, the son of pious Orthodox parents who had raised him according to the strict rules of their ancestors, left his birthplace to study at the university in Budapest. There, he soon discarded his long overcoat (kaftán), cut his curls (pájesz), and even shaved his face

206  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

Cartoon 5.1  Religion and income.23 Judge: You’re shameless. It’s bad enough that you steal, but do you have to do it on Saturday, your Sabbath? Prisoner: Sorry, but I am not Orthodox.

completely: in brief, he took on the appearance of a typical Goy. A few months later, he visited his parents for the holidays. The elderly Hirsch was shocked by his son’s appearance. Still, at first, he only shook his head and said nothing. In the afternoon, the son began to unpack his luggage, taking out everything, including his toiletries. First, he unpacked his lint brush. “What is this,” asked the suspicious old man. “This is a lint brush,” the son answered. “And this?” “A hair brush.” “And this?” “A toothbrush.” When it came to the nail brush, the elderly Hirsch finally broke down in tears. “You discarded your kaftán, cut your pájesz, and shaved your face. From this I already knew that something had gone wrong,” he said. “Then you unpacked the lint brush, the hair brush, the toothbrush, and the nail brush. Now, why are you still trying to skirt the problem? Cut to the chase, and tell us that you’ve converted.”24 3 A Jew from Máramaros left for Budapest to seek his fortune. His wife waited in vain for his letters and the money he promised: the husband disappeared without a trace. The wife could not be consoled; she was simply unable to accept what had happened to her husband. “I am sure he has become a Neolog,” she said, crying bitterly. “You don’t have to think the worst right now,” his brother-in-law exclaimed. “He may have only drowned in the Danube.”25

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  207

4 A wealthy Hungarian landowner decided to lease his land. One of his potential lesees was a Jew; the two decided to meet and talk business. The potential lessor, an Orthodox Jew, removed his hat before the meeting; he continued to wear a little cap, however. After the meeting, as they were ready to leave, the noble asked him why he kept the cap on. “You cannot be a bishop,” he told him; “but in Budapest only the bishops and other church dignitaries wear such head covering.” “Forgive me, Sire,” the Orthodox Jew responded, “but our religion requires that we cover our heads all the time.” “I do not believe you,” the noble man responded. “I have met many Jews in my life, and none wore such a head cover.” “That is possible,” the Orthodox Jew said. “But I assume that they were all Neolog and not Orthodox Jews.” “But who are the Neologs,” the noble man asked. “Pfuj, they are worse than the Christians,” the Orthodox responded.26 5 “My mother told me that I cannot play with you Samuka because you killed our God!” “Yes, but my mother told me that it was not us, but the Lőwys on the third f loor.”27 6 Numerus Clausus. In the corner of a café, three strangers are seated at the same table. Soon, they become engaged in a lively discussion about politics and religion. “I am,” said the first, “in favor of the numerus clausus.” “I,” said the second, “denounce it.” “My father denounces it, too,” said the third, “but I like it.”28

Name Changes Beside the tensions between the Neologs and the Orthodox concerning assimilation, name changes, conversion, and intermarriage inspired the most jokes related to assimilation and the fate of the Jewish community both before and after the First World War. Jews began to acquire family names in Habsburg Central Europe during the Josephine reforms in the late eighteenth century. Their names were not chosen freely but dispensed by Habsburg bureaucrats with little knowledge of—and even less respect for—Jewish tradition. The new names served to both identify and segregate and humiliate individuals and the Jewish community as a whole. In contrast to this early practice, Jews changed their names voluntarily in the nineteenth century; the new custom implied acculturalization, voluntary assimilation, secularization, and, to some extent, conversion. Name change in Hungary was embraced primarily by middle-class, urban, and Neolog Jews and was underwritten by a Hungarian liberal elite interested in the rapid assimilation of ethnic minorities and the survival of Magyar supremacy. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Neolog weekly Egyenlőség even ran a column entitled Magyarosodunk (We are becoming Magyars), which listed the names of individuals and families who had recently given up their German-sounding names for Hungarian ones. The campaign produced fast and tangible results: in 1900, for example, almost half of Jewish students enrolled at the two universities in Budapest had Magyar or Magyar-sounding first and last names.

208  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

As  a sign of their intense patriotism, Jewish parents often chose historical first names for their newborns, such as Árpád and Béla for boys and Emese, Csilla, and Katalin for girls. Admittedly, not everyone jumped on the bandwagon. The members of the Orthodox community, which represented about 60 percent of Hungarian Jews, rarely changed their family names. Even among Neologs and converts, particularly members of the capitalist elite, it remained a common practice to use one’s German-Jewish family name and prefixed with Magyar titles; thus, the families of Goldberger, Deutsch, and Weiss became Budai-Goldberger, Hatvani-Deutsch, and Csepeli-Weiss. This practice says a lot about the identity of wealthy Jews, who embraced cultural assimilation and imitated the customs and manners of the aristocrats; yet, in the confines of their homes, they continued to behave as bourgeois entrepreneurs.29 The trend not only continued but intensified after the First World War: according to Victor Karady’s calculation, 56 percent of Jewish converts to Christianity had Hungarian first and family names in the mid-1930s.30 The first generation of Jews who began to acquire Hungarian first and family names in significant numbers was born between 1811 and 1836. Giving the newborns Hungarian or Hungarian-sounding first names seems to have come easier to Jewish parents than changing their family names. Those who did change their family names normally did so as adults: the majority, in fact, changed their last names late, in 1881 and 1882, and at a relatively advanced age. About one-third of those who changed their family names among this generation also converted to Christianity. Before 1838, it was difficult to obtain the state’s permission to change one’s family name without converting first. Name changes and conversion were considered rites of passage: they were meant to advertise social success and cultural assimilation. These changes normally accompanied an important event, such as the granting of distinctions, awards, or noble status—in all these cases, the new name functioned as an “entry ticket” to high society. The changing of family names was also a product of voluntary assimilation and nationalism: the first great wave of cultural assimilation and family name changes occurred during the revolution of 1848/1849, when more than 50 Jewish officers took Hungarian names. In the Romantic era, people selected their new family names carefully; there were few repetitions, and the new names looked and sounded unique, historical, and noble (Ballagi, Arányi, Csatáry, Csemegi, Daróczi, Déry, Diósy, Hazay, Helfy, Herczecfy, Jóseffy, Keresztúry, Kohányi, Korányi, Kún, Légrády, Marczali, Mezei, Reményi, Vámbéry, etc).31 The biggest wave of name changes came after May 1881, when the government reduced the required fee for changing one’s last name by 90 percent. The new law was followed by an intense debate in the national parliament, during which the liberal defenders of the new measure stood their ground against a small, but vocal, group of skeptics and antisemites. After 1890, Jews tended to adopt common Hungarian family names (Kovács, Barna, Darvas, Kelemen, Pataki, Márkus, Révai, Révész, Rózsa, Szántó, etc). At the same time, it became fashionable to give newborns historical first names (Árpád, Jenő, Gyula,

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  209

Béla, Géza, etc.) or common Christian names (Ferenc, László, Sándor, Lajos, Miklós, Károly, etc.) at the expense of traditional German or Jewish names (Mór, Emil, Miksa, Samuel, József, Lipót, Adolf, Móric, Dezső, Ernő, etc.).32 Although such practices were tied to and were expressions of cultural assimilation, one can still discern attempts to preserve the Jewish past either in the form or meaning of the new name.33 Similarly, the Jewish tradition of including the father’s name in baptism documents (Eliser ben Farkas) survived well into the twentieth century. Another method to preserve the past was to register the newborn with a Hungarian name with the state, and with a Hebrew name in the synagogue. Attempts to keep the past alive notwithstanding, the willingness of Jews to conform to the norms of and culturally assimilate to Hungarian society remained high: Jews were ten times more likely to Magyarize their last names than any other ethnic group before the First World War.34 The readiness, indeed eagerness, to change one’s name became the topic of many self-derisive Jewish jokes before 1914. Until the 1880s, Jewish characters in the comics had German or German-sounding family names. Many were neutral (had no negative connotations) and barely functioned as ethnic markers. Some of the family names had to do with wild animals (Bär, Hirsch, Löw, Wolf ) or f lowers (Nelken, Rosenblüth, Tulpenblüh); others denoted objects (Morgenstern, Gold, Goldstein, Diamant, Silber, Silberstein, Epstein); still others referred to occupations (Kohn, Schumeier, Jaeger, Schneider, Schmitzig, Spitzer, Kaufmann, Baumgartner, Fischer) or common physical characteristics or colors (Klein, Gross, Roth, Blau, Braun, Gelb). Funnier and more important were names that had negative meanings and were meant to function as ethnic markers. These family names served to ridicule, stigmatize, and humiliate Jews (Mehlworm, Weinworm, Blinddarm, Schwindeles, Krachfeld, Zinzenfesser, Groschenfesser, Wanzenblut, Plattfusz, Gaensefusz, Flügelbein, Klatschmaul, Flohswanz, Stinker, Magenduft, etc.). Jewish or pro-Jewish comic weeklies, such as Borsszem Jankó and Az Üstökös, were just as likely to give Jewish characters insulting names as their antisemitic counterparts.35 It was a common practice both for pro-Jewish and antisemitic periodicals to add the original Jewish name to the current Hungarian designation (Berger-Bokányi, Blomensstock-Virágpálczai, Braun-Barna; Brézele-Bérczi, Deutschländer-Ditrói, Kaufmann-Kovács; Kohn-Kemény; Korányfi- Kún; Kohnberger-Kunhegyesy; Schwarz-Fekete). This practice was meant to expose the ethnic essence and questioned the patriotic credentials and commitments of individuals. Jewish comics also liked to give their characters Hungarian or Hungarian-sounding derogatory names, such as Aranykövy, Aranyvölgyi, Bájvölgyi, Kholbászi, Libamájvölgyi, Lilijomhedy, Kupeczfy, Rávágyi, Szomorúkövi, Uzsorási, Számitó, Kupeczy, Csalszberger, Henczegi, Kuporgatnoky, Rosszkorgyütt, etc. These names were meant to connote character faults considered common among Jews.36 Before the war, name changes implied identification with the Hungarian language, culture, and national interests; it was a voluntarily act encouraged by Neolog leaders. Unlike conversion, changing family names posed

210  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

Cartoon 5.2  After a long time.37 “Hi, I’m glad to see you again! I recognized you right away, Herr von Aranykövy!” “What do you want? What are you talking about? I am not Aranykövy, I am Grünspan!” “Merkwerdig! (Remarkable)! Even your name has changed!”

no threat to the community and reinforced, rather than weakened, ties between Jewish leaders and their followers. The practice was not without negative effects. The jokes ridiculed the social pretensions of the assimilant, who was not satisfied with acquiring a common Hungarian family name but, by adopting historical names ending with “y” or “I,” pretended to be nobles (Cartoon 5.2, Joke 1). Even before the war, name change did not necessarily lower social and psychological barriers; in many cases, it increased the distrust of members of the majority society ( Joke 2). After 1919, name changes implied fear, confusion, and a lack of confidence, rather than voluntary assimilation. According to Aladár Komlós, it exemplified an escape from individual responsibility.38 Until the war, they paled in comparison to what Jews had to

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  211

face after 1918. Before 1914, a name change was regarded as a joyful event often associated with distinction and patriotism. After 1918, name change was more often than not an expression of conformity and a sign of opportunism, and fear. The attitude of the majority society and representations of the state to the process and the assimilant changed as well. Unlike its prewar liberal predecessors, the counterrevolutionary regime after August 1919 did not support Jews in changing their family names; although the process remained legal in the interwar period, after 1919, the state seriously circumscribed its scope by limiting the range of surnames Jews could adopt. Jewish jokes tried to kill two birds with one stone by ridiculing both the assimilant and antisemitic politicians opposed to name changes ( Joke 4). In this example, judging by his surname and place of birth, the assimilant was an Orthodox Jew who wanted to take on the noble-sounding name of an antisemitic peasant leader, István Szabó Sorokópátkai. What makes this joke funny is the mixing of stereotypical images and the loosening of boundaries: the fact that an Orthodox Jew, frequently portrayed in Neolog publications as a poor, skinny, and pale man in rags, wants to adopt the last name of the antisemitic Transdanubian farmer and peasant politician, who was normally portrayed in Borsszem Jankó as an overweight peasant in shiny boots and with cheeks rosy from the immoderate consumption of alcohol. The peasant leader, despite his noble-sounding name, was only a commoner; thus, he was not much better than the Jew who wanted to adopt his identity. In the postwar world, the jokes suggest that the changing of one’s family name could produce only cosmetic effects ( Joke 5). The new administrative practice was, in any case, highly unfair and hypocritical. While many of the sponsors of antisemitic legislation had German origins and were encouraged to adopt Magyar names, the state not only hindered the assimilation of Jews but also sought to reverse the whole process by constantly reminding the public of the Jewish origins of loyal and patriotic citizens ( Joke 6). 1 Four strangers are seated together in a railway compartment. After an exchange of pleasantries, they introduced themselves: “Kővári,” said the first; “Kovács,” said the second; “Kárpáti,” said the third. “My name is also Kohn,” said the fourth.39 2 “Excuse me, are you by any chance named Bernát Lévy?” “No, I am not. Who told you that?”40 3 A man has just returned from a government office where he changed the family’s name. “So, what is our new name,” asks his wife. “Schweissloch” (sweaty hole). “For crying out loud! Couldn’t you find a more decent name?” “What do you mean? Adding the letter ‘w’ alone cost me extra twenty gulden!”41 4 Adolf Grünstein (born in Munkács; adult; religion: Pest; place of residence: Budapest) has changed his family name, with the permission of the Minister of the Interior, to Adolf Sokorrupátkai (Big nose von Pátkai).42

212  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

5 Health Advertisement. To make your Jewish facial features disappear in days, use Diana Rubbing Alcohol (Sösborszesz).43 6 Name Change. The Minister of the Interior, as we have learned, would, with pleasure, permit Sándor Ernszt to change his family name to Kőinоtay, István Friedrich to Fekete, János Huber to Havas, Gyula Rubinek to Rózsafi, Pál Sándor to Schlesinger, Sándor Pető to Póllácsek, and Vilmos Vázsonyi to Weiszfeld.44

Conversion Humor Jewish humor about conversion to Christianity in many respects mirrored jokes about name change. Making fun of converts had a long history in Central and East-Central Europe. In the early nineteenth century, the poet Heinrich Heine (himself a convert to Christianity) cynically remarked, “I don’t trust the sincerity of Jews who have converted to the religion of Jesus. No Jew can ever really believe in the sanctity of another Jew.”45 Baptism jokes in prewar Hungary portrayed the convert as an unbeliever (Cartoon 5.3) or as a Jew who remained loyal to his faith ( Jokes 1 and 2). Converts were seen as cowards and careerists at best, and as anti-social individuals who changed their faith out of snobbery, spite, or self-hate at worst ( Jokes 3–5). Converts were considered social climbers, snobs, and hypocrites who married their children off to baptized Jews ( Joke 7). In any case, the jokes suggested, baptism was useless: Jewish physical faults and moral characteristics and failings could not be purged or corrected by quasi-magical acts such as baptism ( Jokes 8–11). 1 The renegade. Two Jews meet on Main Street on Saturday. “Tell me, Mendel, is it true that you have betrayed our faith?” “Yes, it is.” “So, you no longer believe in our God.” “Let’s not talk about this, Weisz.” The next day the two meet again. “Mendel, I cannot accept what has happened. Tell me, do you still believe in God?” “No.” “But you could have told me this yesterday!” “Have you lost your mind? On the Sabbath?”46 2 Serious Question. Grün has converted to Catholicism. Still, he visits the rabbi in mid-December. “Rebbellében, I would like to ask for your advice.” “Go ahead.” “This year, Christmas falls on Saturday. I would like to know if I have to wait until the stars come up or I can light the Christmas candle earlier?”47 3 Serious problems. “I have two serious problems,” says Kohn to his friend. “First, my wife is Jewish.” “But you are a Jew, too!” “See, this is my second problem.”48 4 The convert. Kohn has been baptized—he has converted to Protestantism. His acquaintances are asking him why he did not become Catholic. Kohn’s answer: “because there are too many Jews among them.”49 5 Shared Problem. Ábrahám visits the rabbi. “Rebe, I have a big problem. My son has become a Christian.” “Come back tomorrow. I have to talk this over with God.” The rabbi next day: “I have bad news. God can’t do anything. He has the same problem.”50

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  213

Cartoon 5.3  Comfortable religion.51 Machl: You have converted again? Why did you do it, Svondrák? Svondrák: I’ll tell you why. When I was an Israelite, God saw me, but I didn’t see God. I didn’t like that. When I was a Catholic, I saw God, but God didn’t see me. Now I am a Calvinist. I don’t see God, and God doesn’t see me, either. So, we get along just fine.

6 Once is not enough. Schwarz converted to Protestantism. A year later, however, he changed to Catholicism. “Why didn’t you become a Catholic to begin with?” his friends ask him. “Because if anyone asks what my religion was previously, I can now say Protestant.”52

214  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

7 The greatest of desires. Gensf leisch, the Jewish banker, was baptized; then he arranged for his son’s engagement to the daughter of the textile merchant, Weisz. Weisz has just converted to Catholicism, too. “I have always wanted a son-in-law like him,” Weisz told his friends: “a nice Christian boy from a good Jewish family!”53 8 The elderly Weisz, the pawn shop owner, who recently converted to Catholicism, is dying. The priest delivers the last rites and offers him the golden cross for the final kiss. The old man opens his eyes, sees the golden cross, and says: “I cannot give more than three hundred for it.”54 9 In the spa. Kohn and Grün are sitting in the spa. Grün’s towel slips to the side. Kohn warns him: “Listen, Samu. Either straighten your towel or remove your cross!”55 10 A baptized Jew becomes friends with a hunch-backed professor in the spa and decides to make a confession. “Just between two of us, I have to tell you something about my origins: I am a Jew.” “Since you have been so honest to me, I have to tell you a secret as well: I am a hunchback.”56 11 Leib Kóvedhascher has suddenly lost his mind and converted to Christianity. On Friday, the local Catholic priest sees the new member of his congregation is eating a big piece of goose breast. The priest asks: “how could a Catholic eat goose on Friday?” Leib responds: “Highly respected Father, you are wrong. This is not a goose, but a tasty fish.” “How so?” asks the priest. Well, I used to be a Jew until you sprinkled me with holy water three times and said: You have been a Jew, and now you are a Catholic. So, I sprinkled the goose three times and said: you used to be a goose, but now you are a fish.57 Conversion, like Reform Judaism, was a product of economic and social modernization, increased social and geographical mobility, secularization, and assimilation. The decline of religious observance transcended social and geographical boundaries: it was not confined to wealthy businessmen and modern professionals but was quite present among the Jewish petty bourgeoisie of Terézváros as well. Budapest was not the only place where religious leaders complained bitterly about the decline of piety and the neglect of religious custom and ritual: the same trend was at work in provincial capitals and even in the larger villages in the middle and the western parts of the country. Religious leaders were especially disturbed by the behavior of Jewish women, who showed no interest in the faith of their ancestors. By the 1880s, religion ceased to be a major source of cohesion and identity for Jews; other factors such as belief in shared ethnic origins and history and concerns about the rise of antisemitism and antisemitic violence came to play an equally important role in forging a sense of identity and community.58 Secularization, of course, was not limited to the Jewish segments of the population; it was well advanced among members of majority population as well. Secularization

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  215

made conversion possible, but it also reduced its social, cultural, and psychological benefits. Baptism jokes fed on a paradox: after hundreds of years of persecution, Christian Europe, in the early nineteenth century, was finally prepared to accept Jews as full citizens on the condition that they renounce Judaism. By then, however, Christian Europe began questioning (and often stopped believing in, not to mention stopped living by) the precepts of its faith.59 Christians, too, were cynical and full of self-doubt: therefore, it comes as no surprise, then, that they questioned the sincerity of converts. In premodern and more religious times, mass conversion was rare; perceived as a religious act by the community, and experienced subjectively as a form of rebirth, the individual who took this drastic step cut ties with the world of their ancestors and entered the community of their choice. Secularization removed this mystical element from the process of assimilation. Conversion in the modern era, thus, became a “rationally conceived act, often more embarrassing than elevating. Neither the convert himself nor the witnesses of his act attributed a transmuting effect to it.” Society continued to see the convert as a Jew, adding only the unf lattering epithet “baptized.”60 The declining efficacy of conversion notwithstanding, the vast majority of “new Christians” experienced conversion as an act of liberation. Moritz Saphir, the Austro-Hungarian journalist, newspaper editor, satirist, and later superintendent of the Royal Theater in Munich, expressed the sentiments of millions of converts when he told his readers: fate condemned me to become a Jew; my parents that I become a merchant; my upbringing to become a village rabbi; my circumstances to be a poor devil; and fate to be a ball to be kicked around, but despite all this, I am now a sincere and decent Christian, as much as one can be an honest and decent Christian.61 In addition to voluntary conversion, outside pressure to conform also paid an important role in the rising rates of baptism among Jews in the nineteenth century. Historians such as Todd Endelmann and Jakob Katz see the increase in conversions as inversely proportional to the level of social acceptance and religious tolerance: the more accepting and tolerant the majority society was, the less one’s Jewish background represented a barrier to social mobility, and the lower the conversion rate. Conversely, the stronger the rejection, the more obstacles they faced, the more likely Jews were to convert to Christianity.62 Assimilationist pressure went hand-in-hand with the popularity and, indeed, late hegemony of liberalism as a political ideology and movement. The leader of the liberal revolution of 1848, Lajos Kossuth, made religious reform a prerequisite for social acceptance and emancipation in the 1840s.63 It was well known that Ágoston Trefort, a progressive liberal politician in the 1840s and 1850s and minister of culture in the 1870s and early 1880s, regarded religious Jews as superficial, vain, lazy, and dirty. He supported emancipation in the

216  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

1860s and conversion as a means to end backwardness and combat superstition. It was well known that the zealous liberal Trefort would block the appointment of any Jew who had not converted to Christianity to any position of importance, even the position of high-school principal.64 While always strongly felt, assimilationist pressure remained uneven in the Dualist era. It was more a force in cities than in countryside, and it weighed heavier on Neolog and secular Jews than their Orthodox counterparts and on the wealthy and ambitious than poorer segments of the Jewish community. Jews were not confronted with a list of what to do in the mid-nineteenth century: the Emancipation Law of 1867 did not tie liberation to any religious or linguistic criteria. The law recognized the right of Orthodox Jews to organize their lives on the basis of their religion and customs; while present, nationalist considerations took a backseat to respect for individual, including religious, rights. Assimilationist pressure did not lead to wholesale attacks on the Orthodox community and religion; it was its absence, according to Konrád, that allowed the Orthodox communities to live their lives in virtual isolation before the war. Hungarian nationalists were interested in linguistic rather than religious assimilation and conversion. Even convinced antisemites such as Miklós Bartha believed in the magic power of the Hungarian language to transform ethnic minorities into ardent Magyar patriots. He was not completely wrong: by the turn of the century, the majority of Jews had come to embrace Magyar as their main, and often only, language. As a result of pressure from the majority society and the voluntary cultural assimilation of Jews, German, and Slovaks, the share of the Magyar-speaking population increased in the country from less than 46 percent in 1867 to 51 percent in 1900 and 54.5 percent in 1910.65 Conversion remained a marginal phenomenon among Hungarian Jews in the Dualist era: between 1868 and 1914, for example, less than 2 percent of the Jewish population converted to Christianity (intermarriage was also well under 10 percent during the same period). These low numbers certainly do not explain newspapers’ and comic weeklies’ obsession with the phenomenon. Katz argues that the reaction of the Jewish community and its leaders to conversion was informed by a mixture of paranoia, class arrogance, and practical financial and political issues. Jewish leaders were concerned not only about the loss of revenue but also worried that the departure of their wealthiest and most prominent and powerful members would set a bad example for the younger generations, and, thus, their example would be followed by less successful, but equally ambitious, members.66 The Jewish community’s overreaction was also a product of cultural assimilation: a variation on the larger Hungarian obsession with national suicide and disappearance—a topic that had dominated Hungarian Romantic literature since the early nineteenth century and was revived with the debate over the custom of the single-child family (egykézés) in Transdanubia and the emigration of more than a million peasants from the country after 1880. Urban and Jewish equivalent of this debate was the controversy over “degeneration,” a concept introduced by

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  217

the Zionist physician and Theodor Herzl’s friend and comrade Max Nordau in 1892. By the outbreak of the First World War, the idea of degeneration had spread like wildfire among European intellectuals and politicians. Every group interpreted the idea according to its taste and interests: religious Jews in Hungary, for example, regarded converts and agnostics as degenerate. The irony about this intellectual development was that Nordau himself had married a Protestant woman and had had no meaningful contact with the Jewish community before the Dreyfus Affair. As a liberal, of course, he had nothing to do with the conservatives and the followers of the radical and antisemitic Right, who remained the main proponents of his concept.67 The debate over conversion and intermarriage was also part of the larger discourse within the Jewish community over the morality, psychological impact, and social consequences of assimilation. In the mid-nineteenth century, the question still had been whether Jews should assimilate into modern society at all; by 1880, the issue had changed: the question was no longer if Jews should assimilate but rather what forms the process should take and how far it should go. With the exception of most of the Orthodox, Jews recognized that they had to come to terms with modernity and adapt to their increasingly secular environment. They disagreed on the pace and forms of assimilation—on the removal or preservation of “identity markers.”68 As we have seen, both Orthodox and Neolog Jews had come to embrace linguistic assimilation in the second half of the nineteenth century; however, they failed to see eye-to-eye on the issue of religious customs and rituals. Both the Orthodox and Neologs rejected conversion and intermarriage, but they judged offenders differently. For the Orthodox, conversion and intermarriage with non-Jews meant social death; the offender was regarded as a traitor and was dead to his or her family and community. Neologs proved to be forgiving; they regarded offenders, especially if they had not denounced their origins and continued to maintain their ties with Jewish charities and cultural associations, as Jews. Community leaders were aware that it was mainly the wealthy and the best-educated elements that had accepted baptism or had found Christian spouses. Naturally, Neolog leaders did not want to lose their famous, inf luential, and successful members.69 The war, if anything increased the hostility of religious, especially Orthodox, Jews toward converts. The hatred is also palpable in the autobiographical novel of the Zionist officer, Avigdor Hameiri. In the Great Craziness, Hameiri had only negative things to say about converts: almost all the most antisemitic and violent of officers in the novel turn out to be Jewish converts to Christianity in the end. Hameiri and his fellow Jewish soldiers seem to have been obsessed with the alleged omnipresence of converts. Hameiri had only contempt for his superior, the “Jewish-faced” Lieutenant Jóni, who tried to overcompensate for his origins by sending Zionists and Orthodox Jews on deadly missions. People like Lieutenant Jóni were terrified by the thought that their superiors would find out the truth about their origins. Typically, Lieutenant Jóni dies in the battle with a bullet in his back – an incident which only reinforced Hameiri’s conviction that all converts were cowards.70

218  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

Conversion Jokes after 1918 The debate over conversion took on a different meaning and a new dimension after the First World War. As a reaction to rising antisemitism, attacks on Jewish life and property, and uncertainty about the future, Hungarian Jews decided to convert to Christianity in significant numbers for the first time in the modern era. The rise in the rate of conversion increased dramatically during the democratic and communist interludes between October 1918 and August 1919.71 But the spike both in absolute numbers and relative terms in the immediate postwar period paled in comparison to the surge during the counterrevolution between August 1919 and March 1920. In this period alone, more than 7,000 Jews abandoned their ancestors’ faith.72 These statistics bear out historians’ conclusions about the close connection between growing intolerance and the increasing rate of conversions. With the economic and political consolidation of the new counterrevolutionary regime and the dissolution of the main agent of antisemitic violence—paramilitary groups, the rate of conversion began to fall after 1921. Significantly, however, the relative decline did not signal a return to the peaceful coexistence of the prewar period. The rate of conversion to Christianity, in fact, remained high after 1921: more Jews were baptized every year in Trianon Hungary, a country of nine million, than in the prewar Kingdom of Hungary, which had more than 19 million inhabitants. The rate of conversion was dependent on and ref lected economic and social trends and political developments; thus, it declined in years of relative prosperity and political stability in the 1920s; rose radically after the onset of the Great Depression at the end of the decade, and spiked in the totalitarian 1930s to reach its zenith on the eve of the Second World War.73 The willingness of individual Jews to convert was directly related to the form of religion practiced, their place of residence, wealth, social status, level of education, and profession. For this reason, conversion rates remained low among poor, rural, and Orthodox Jews with only a few years of education; it rose to new heights among Neolog, urban, well-educated professionals, manufacturers, and wealthy merchants. Until 1918, only two of the seven wealthiest Jewish industrialists and bankers had been baptized. In the fall of 1919, at the height of the White Terror, 23 of the 27 aristocrats of Jewish faith abandoned their faith.74 The same trend could be observed in connection to intermarriage between Jews and Christians. The rate of intermarriage with non-Jews, while on the rise, remained low before 1914, hovering between 3.2 percent and 7.4 percent in the two decades before the war. These numbers increased to 14 percent during the First World War, and stood between 20 percent and 24 percent in interwar period. The willingness of Jews to marry outside their community hinged on the same factors and followed the same patterns observed in the case of conversion in terms of who was likely to enter into mixed-faith relationship.75 The rate of intermarriage was somewhat lower in Hungary than it was in Weimar Germany, but it exceeded the numbers of other countries

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  219

in east-central and southeastern Europe.76 Even though Jewish leaders continued to detest conversion and discouraged intermarriage, one in every six Hungarian Jews converted as a result of mainly outside pressures, and one in six was partnered in a mixed marriage by the outbreak of the Second World War.77 The jokes about converts had always been informed by antimodernist and anti-elitist sentiments widely shared by the members of the Jewish petty bourgeoisie. Always present, the same negative emotions reached their crescendo after the First World War. After August 1919, Jewish political and religious leaders, whose followers came mainly from the same social and cultural ­m ilieu, politicized the issue: not unlike many antisemites, they blamed the democratic revolution and the communist dictatorship on converts and agnostics. Their argument was also similar: secularization, Jewish religious leaders were contended, increased the isolation of individuals in modern society. Alienated from their families and communities, and cut off from their religious and cultural roots, some converts and agnostics became alcoholics; others chose criminality; still others committed suicide. A strong minority embraced radical ideologies and even joined revolutionary parties. It was no accident, ­Neolog leaders continued, that apostate and baptized Jews were overrepresented in anarchist groups such as the Galileo Circle before October 1918; supported the democratic revolution and government; and played a decisive role in the short-lived Soviet Republic. To prevent a repetition of such a disaster, Jewish religious and community leaders advised the faithful to follow religious rites closely and to devote more time to the study of the holy scriptures. Jews, they contended, should draw courage and solace from the fact that earlier generations, too, had not been strangers to suffering and still they had not lost their trust in God or gave up their culture, faith, and identity.78 As in antisemitic literature, converts came to function as scapegoats in the speeches of J­ewish leaders and in comedic scripts after August 1919. In 1922, the antisemitic Catholic bishop of Székesfehérvár, Ottokár Prohászka, was invited by the chief rabbi to a joint celebration. Prohászka, who was one of the sponsors of the antisemitic numerus clausus legislation, justified his refusal of the invitation by explaining to his Jewish counterparts that “every pastor should remain with his f lock.” The invitation was, indeed, a mistake, the Neolog weekly Egyenlőség contended: Jews should not humiliate themselves by currying favor with their sworn enemies. But paradoxically, the two parties did agree on one important issue. Prohászka, in a speech, called Jewish converts to Christianity “the scum of Jewry”; The Neolog leaders could not agree more with his assessment.79 Already before the war, Jewish community and its religious leaders had decried converts as antisocials, turncoats, hypocrites, opportunists, and traitors. After August 1919, they blamed both democratic incompetence and communist atrocities on agnostic Jews and the new converts to Christianity.80 Cartoons and jokes published in Borsszem Jankó and Az Ojság shared the views and exaggerated opinions of Jewish religious and political leaders. Both comics faulted wealthy converts for the rise of violent antisemitism

220  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

Cartoon 5.4  Because of them, we have antisemitism.81

after the war (Cartoon 5.4). The comics subscribed to the unfounded belief that wealthy Jews changed their faith and politics with the same ease as they changed their clothes (Cartoon 5.5). Jews, like Christians, continued to doubt converts’ sincerity (Cartoon 5.3). Some of the Jewish jokes drew on antisemites’ as well as on urban Jews’ aversion to the rural Ostjuden in order to denounce the cowardness and opportunism of converts ( Joke 1). At the same time, Jewish authors and storytellers took pride in the richness of their cultural and intellectual tradition through jokes and anecdotes ( Joke 2). Many Jewish jokes exploited positive prejudices, such as the alleged intellectual superiority of Jews to Christians and their mastery of logic and grammar, to convince their coreligionists not to abandon their ancestors’ religion ( Jokes 3 and 4). Potent religious symbols such as the Christmas tree, cemeteries, churches, and synagogues emphasized the gravity of the converts’ choices and the alleged injustice they had done or were going to do to the memory of their ancestors ( Jokes 5–8). Baptism humor continued to regard conversion as a highly offensive act, especially when the convert had come from the privileged classes ( Joke 9). While Jews from every walk of life faced increased hostility and exclusion after 1919, Jewish opinion-makers—often exploiting and, at the same time, ridiculing antisemitic prejudices—continued to paint the convert as a pariah who deserved his or her fate ( Joke 10).

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  221

Cartoon 5.5  On the shores of Lake Balaton.82 Why are you already here, Madam? You normally only come in July. Yes, but I finished shopping and was able to put my religious affairs in order earlier than expected.

1 Advertisement: The favorite perfume of wealthy Jews is Eau de Goj. It makes every Eastern odor disappear.83 2 Small Talk. Well, Mr. Link, have you ever had such a tasty stuffed goose neck? It was very good. And there are, can you believe, still people who want to convert? But what does baptism have to do with food? Nothing. But do you know any other religion that has produced such an excellent stuffed goose neck?84 3 Liebe Az Ojság! The son of my friends has recently converted. Yesterday, I met his father. “So, how is your son doing?” I asked. “He is a disappointment,” he answered. “I thought that with baptism, he would develop Gentile manners but keep his Jewish brain. And you know what happened? He kept his Jewish manners and got a Gentile brain.”85 4 The American Horovitz heritage. Can Jews accept the money of a convert? Thirty years ago, an Anglican priest by the name of Horovitz

222  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

Cartoon 5.6  The pious renegade.86 What’s on your mind, my Dolfi? I’m trying to remember which Jewish prayer I am supposed to say before baptism.

died. Before he immigrated to America, he had been a rabbi in Szinérváralja. He left behind 400,000 dollars. Among the lucky inheritors was József Gáspár, a popular dentist from Budapest, who, in his free time, was also a pious Jew and a diligent interpreter of the Bible. Gáspár was tormented by doubts: should he accept the money of a renegade Jew? He then paid a visit to a wise and holy rabbi and asked for his advice. The rabbi told him that money could always be accepted, especially when it served a holy purpose. Gáspár did not like this answer; he found reference to the holy purpose especially vague. So, in an anxious voice, he asked the rabbi: “What do you mean by holy purpose?” “Well,” said the rabbi, “I mean that the Jews will get it.”87 5 The tourist sites of Budapest. The Catholic cathedral: the pride of Lipótváros, where our ancestors used to convert. That is why they built it next to the Dohány Street Synagogue.88

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  223

6 Advertisement: Because of conversion, I would like to exchange my family plot (I bought it before communism) in the Jewish cemetery of Rákoskeresztúr for one in a Christian cemetery. Double the size and a better location.89 7 Advertisement. I would like to exchange my ancient Jewish family tree for a Christmas tree.90 8 A Small Difference. “Have you noticed so many Jews bought Christmas trees this year?” “Yes, I did. And I [bought one], too.” “You, the pious Jew? That is impossible!” “Yes, a whole wagon of them!”91 9 Job Advertisement. Persecuted Hanukkah Candle is looking for a place on the Christmas tree of a Jewish family in Lipótváros.92 10 The Citizens’ Circle (Polgári Kör). 1: A Jew. 2: An ex-Jew. 3: Worse than a Jew.93 11 The worst jokes of the week. “Have you heard? Freedom Square (Szabadság Tér) is getting a new name.” “And what will it be called?” “Feleki Tér (Half Square).” “Why Feleki Tér?” “While half ( fele) has already converted (kitért).”94 Conversion and name jokes and cartoons were highly popular among Jews and Gentiles alike. They owed their popularity to an ancient topic: the vanity and outright stupidity of pretenders and hypocrites and their exposure. Baptism humor fed on the envy and resentment of the poor toward the elite; the tension between rural and urban Jews, and, last but not least, the emotional and cultural divides and political disagreements between the Jewish petty bourgeoisie of Terézváros on the one hand, and the middle and upper-middle-class liberal professionals, manufacturers, and bankers of Lipótváros and Újlipótváros, on the other. These social and cultural divides had already existed before the war; however, the tension between these groups increased significantly after defeat, the two failed leftist revolutions, and the counterrevolution. Baptism jokes were mainly concerned with the issue of assimilation, preservation of tradition, and the power of the community over the individual: how should the balance between modernity and tradition be maintained; what is the purpose of assimilation; how far should assimilation and Jewish accommodation to the modern world go; what forms should assimilation and adaptation to the majority society take; and to what extent should individual Jews obey their religious and community leaders or follow their hearts and interests? The leaders of the Orthodox and the Neolog communities had different answers to all of these questions. Yet, both were opposed to conversion and discouraged intermarriage. The Neologs encouraged the adoption of Magyar family and Christian first names both as a means of integration into the majority society and as an expression of Jewish patriotism. Jokes exaggerated the scale of conversion, which remained a marginal phenomenon before the First World War. Prewar conversion jokes and cartoon were generally lighthearted (as a form of self-deprecating humor, it even employed antisemitic images and

224  Finding Humor in Factional Tension

stereotypes). The goal of their authors was as much to provide entertainment as to sensor offenders. Postwar Jewish humor was darker and more serious. Infused with panic and paranoia, the jokes and jokes often lashed out indiscriminately and without much consideration of the special circumstances and unique problems of individual converts. In prewar jokes, converts were portrayed as bunglers and opportunists; in postwar Jewish humor, they became scapegoats and traitors. Instead of placing the blame for the rise of violent antisemitism on the majority society, paramilitary groups, the right-wing press, and the conservative social and political elite, Jewish leaders and critics attributed all of society’s ills and the Jewish community’s problems—from the failure of democracy and the horror of communist crimes to general misery—onto the minuscule number of baptized Jews. Before the war, the boundaries between converts and the rest of the Jewish community were f luid; the leaders of the Neolog community and Jewish critics were forgiving. In the immediate post-war period, the boundaries between the converted and the faithful hardened, and the tone of Jewish publications, including the comic weeklies, became shriller and less forgiving. Assimilated Jews who had crossed the line increasingly found themselves in a cultural and social no man’s land. Those who converted paid the price for having opted for a solution to a problem, which was, in fact, no longer available. The converts’ motives were not as abhorrent as many of their contemporaries tended to believe. Conversion after 1918 remained a means to obtain first-class citizenship; it promised to preserve human dignity; stave off discrimination and hostility in professional life; ensure normalcy in everyday interactions with the majority society; and both during the counterrevolution of 1919 and the Second World War, protect life and property. On the other hand, making fun of converts not only functioned as a form of censorship and rebuke after 1918, it also became a desperate attempt to hold the community together, often at the expense of individuals. As part of this desperate attempt, conversion jokes helped shed light on the existence of a serious problem without, however, offering a viable solution.

Notes 1 Michael Silber, “The Historical Experience of German Jewry and Its Impact on Haskalah and Reform in Hungary,” in Jacob Katz, ed., Towards Modernity: The European Jewish Model (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), pp. 130– 132, cited in Miklós Konrád, Zsidóság Innen és Túl: Zsidók vallásváltása Magyarországon a reformkortól az első világháborúig (Budapest: MTA Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, 2014), p. 28. 2 Jakov Katz, Végzetes Szakadás. Az ortodoxia kiválása a zsidó hitközségekből Magyarországon és Németországban (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 1999), pp. 61–62, cited in Konrád, Zsidóság Innen és Túl, p. 29. 3 Michael Silber, “A zsidóság társadalmi befogadása Magyaroszágon a reformkorban,” pp. 113–141. 4 Konrád, Zsidóság Innen és Túl, pp. 32–33.

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  225 5 Katz, Végzetes Szakitás, p. 54. 6 Nathaniel Katzburg, “Assimilation in Hungary during the Nineteenth Century,” in Béla Vágó, ed., Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 49–56; here 49. 7 Michael K. Silber, “Az ultraothodoxia keletkezése avagy egy hagyomány kitalálása,” Magyar zsidó történelem másképp, pp. 211–282, in Kőbányai, Szétszálazás és újraszövés, p. 96. 8 William O. McCagg, Jr., Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1972), p. 91; Nathaniel Katzburg, “Assimilation in Hungary during the Nineteenth Centuty,” in Vágó, Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times, pp. 49–56; here p. 53. 9 Kinga Frojimovics, Jewish Budapest: Monuments, Rites, History, ed. Gábor Komoróczy (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), pp. 124–125; Nathaniel Katzburg, “Assimilation in Hungary during the Nineteenth Centuty,” in Vágó, ed., Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times, pp. 50–51. 10 Komoróczy, Jewish Budapest, pp. 107–123. 11 Ibid., p. 124. 12 János Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon: politikai eszmetörténet (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2001), pp. 226–232. 13 McCagg, Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary, pp. 92–93; William O. McCagg. Jr., “The Jewish Position in Interwar Central Europe: A Structural Study of Jewry at: Vienna, Budapest and Prague,” in Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, eds., A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry (New Brunswick, NJ: Translation Publishers, 1990), pp. 47–81; here pp. 63–65; Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction. Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 233–237. 14 Jacob Katz, “The Identity of Post-Emancipatory Hungarian Jewry,” in Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, eds., A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry (New Brunswick, NJ: Translation Publishers, 1990), pp. 13–33; here pp. 19–24. 15 Katalin Fenyves, Képzelt Asszimiláció: Négy zsidó értelmiségi nemzedék önképe (Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 2010), p. 192. 16 See Robert Nemes, The Once and Future Budapest (DeKalb: Nothern Illinois Press, 2005), esp. pp. 132–190. On the social and religious structure and identity of Hungarian Jewry, see Rolf Fischer, “Antisemitism in Hungary 1882–1932,” in Herbert A. Strauss, ed., Hostages of Modernization, Studies on Modern Antisemitism 1870–1933/39, vol. 3/2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), pp. 868–871. 17 Ferenc Mezei, A Közalap aktái. Évkönyv, 1900, pp. 93–94, cited by Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, p. 239. 18 Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). 19 Albert S. Lindemann, Esau’s Tears: Modern Antisemitism and the Rise of the Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 50–57. 20 Kőbányai, Szétszálazás és újraszövés, esp. pp. 185–226; 267–402. 21 Marsha L. Rozenblit, “The Europan Jewish World,” pp. 32–55. here p. 47. In Marsha L. Rosenblit and Jonatha Karp eds., World War I and the Jews. Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East and America (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2017). 22 See Nagy, A bölcs rabbi tréfái, p. 28. 23 Ágai, Abrincs!, p. 30. 24 Borsszem Jankó, November 16, 1919. 25 See Máté Csillag, Zsidó anekdoták kincsesháza (Budapest: Orpheusz Könyvek, 1991), p. 143.

226  Finding Humor in Factional Tension 26 See István Kertész, Gitli néni tésztája –avagy elmélkedés zsidó viccekről (New York: Ganon Books, 1993), pp. 90–91. 27 Kertész, Gitli néni tésztája, p. 44. 28 Imre Nagy, A bölcs rabbi tréfái (Budapest: Az Ojság, 1923), p. 67; cited in István Kertész, Gitli néni tésztája, p. 102. 29 Baron Zsigmond Kornfeld, President of the Hungarian Creditanstalt (Magyar Általános Hitelbank) and member of the Upper House, liked to dress in the traditional garb of the gentry, wore a sword, purchased a large noble estate, and even founded a Jewish church (thus, providing perhaps the only instance of Jewish church patronage in Europe). See Péter Hanák, “Jewish assimilation in Austria-Hungary,” pp. 245–246. See also Zsigmond Móricz, “Kornfeld Zsigmond,” Nyugat 17 (1931), http://epa.oszk.hu/00000/00022/00521/16261.htm. 30 Victor Karady, “Demography and Social Mobility: Historical Problem Areas in the Study of Contemporary Jewry in Central Europe (With special reference to Hungary),” in Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, eds., A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry (New Brunswick, NJ: Translation Publishers, 1990), pp. 83–117, here pp. 100–101. 31 Fenyves, Képzelt Asszimiláció, pp. 92–94. 32 Mihály Hajdú, Általános és magyar névtan (Budapest: Osiris, 2003), p. 550; Fenyvesy, Képzelt Asszimiláció, pp. 214–215. 33 For example: Karpeles/Karsai; Klein/ Kelen, Singer/Zsengeri; Stern/Szterényi; Mayer/Major: Back/Bak; Levi/Lévai/; Einhorn/Horn; Kohn/Kónyi. Adler/ Sas; Fischer/Halász; Stern/Csillag; Kohn/Pap; Gruenwald/Fenyvessy; Gruenfeld/Mezei, etc. 34 Fenyves, Képzelt Asszimiláció, pp. 84–85. 35 Ágnes Tamás, Nemzetiségek görbe tükörben. 19. századi nemzetiségi szereotipiák Magyarországon (Pozsony: Kalligram, 2014), pp. 213–215. 36 Judit Kozma, “Osztrák és magyar zsidók névváltozása a hosszú 19. században,” in Tamás Farkas and István Kozma eds., A családnév-változások történetei időben, térben és társadalomban (Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 2009), pp. 277–281, cited in Tamás, nemzetiségek görbe tükörben, pp. 218–221. 37 Ágai, Abrincs!, p. 102. 38 Aladár Komlós, “Különvélemény a Névmagyarositásról,” in Magyar-Zsidó Szellemtörténet a Reformkortól a Holocaustig (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó, 1997), pp. 27–31. 39 Kertész, Gitli néni tésztája, p. 49. 40 Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe, p. 195. 41 Landmann, Jüdische Witze, p. 68. Scheissloch means asshole. 42 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. 43 Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. 44 Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. 45 See Ziv, “Psycho-social aspects of Jewish humor in Israel and in the Diaspora,” in Jewish Humor, pp. 47–71, here p. 61. 46 József Köves, A zsidó humor aranykönyve (Budapest: K.u.K. Kiadó, 2003), p. 341. 47 Ibid., p. 349. 48 Ibid., p. 351. 49 Ibid., p. 342. 50 Ibid., p. 347. 51 Ágai, Abrincs!, p. 30. 52 Ibid., p. 351. 53 Ibid., p. 353. 54 Hernádi, A zsidó vicc világképe, p. 226. 55 Köves, A zsidó humor aranykönyve, p. 345.

Finding Humor in Factional Tension  227 Hernádi,A zsidó vicc világképe, p. 217. Ágai, Seiffensteiner Salamon Adomai, pp. 123–124. Konrád, Zsidóságon Innen és túl, p. 23–68. Landmann, Der Jüdische Witz, pp. 74–75, 98; Schwara, Humor und Toleranz, pp. 130–131. 60 Katz, “The Identity of Post-Emancipatory Hungarian Jewry,” pp. 14–15. 61 Moritz G. Saphir, Lebende Bilden aus meiner Selbst-Biogprahie, i. m. pp. 38–39, cited in Konrád, Zsidóságon innen és túl, p. 316. 62 Todd M. Endelman, “Conversion as a Response to Antisemitism in Modern Jewish History,” in Jehuda Reinharz ed., Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), pp. 56–83; Jacob Katz, “Judaism and Christianity against the Background of Modern Secularism,” in Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), pp. 49–60, cited in Konrád, Zsidóságon innen és túl, pp. 69–71. 63 Michael Silber, “Hungary Before 1918,” in David Herbert Gershon, The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vols. 1–2 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 770–782; here 776. 64 Fenyvesy, Képzelt Asszimilációi, p. 197. 65 Konrád, Zsidóságon innen és túl, pp. 75–78. 66 Katz, “The Identity of Post-Emancipatory Hungarian Jewry,” p. 26. 67 XXXX, accessed June 22, 2022, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view. jsp?artid=332&letter=N. 68 Victor Karady, “Demography and Social Mobility,” pp. 97–98. 69 Katz, “The Identity of Post-Emancipatory Hungarian Jewry,” p. 26. 70 Hameiri, A Nagy Őrület, p. 133 71 During the Károlyi regime, only 265 individuals converted: 253 men and 12 women; 122 came from Budapest, 143 from the provinces; 119 converted to Catholicism; 59 to Calvinism; 29 became Lutherans, and 5 became Unitarian (anti-trinitarian). During the Soviet Republic (March–August 1919), 903 Jews converted: 536 men and 367 women; 454 were from Budapest, 449 from the provinces; 367 converted to Catholicism; 168 to Calvinism, 169 to Lutheranism, 4 to Unitarianism, and 1 became Greek Catholic (Uniate). During the first phase of the counterrevolution (August and September 1919): 1,121 Jews converted: 738 men and 383 women; 450 came from Budapest; 671 hailed from the provinces; 522 converted to Catholicism; 288 became Calvinist, 197 Lutheran, 9 Unitarian, and 4 Greek Catholic. In October 1919 alone, 156 Jews converted; 105 men and 51 women; 55 came from Budapest, 101 hailed from the provinces; 84 Jews converted to Catholicism; 39 became Calvinist, 14 Lutheran, and 1 Unitarian. See Egyenlőség, November 22, 1919. 72 See Gyula Zeke, “Statisztikai mellékletek,” in Ferenc L. Lendvai, Pál Horváth, and Anikó Sohár, eds., Hét évtized a hazai zsidóság életében, vol. 1 (Budapest: Magyar Filozófiai Intézet, 1990), pp. 185–190. 73 Between 1922 and 1932, between 101 and 544 Jews converted to Christianity. The number climbed to 909 in 1933; 1,128 in 1934; 1,647 in 1936, 1,598 in 1937; 8,584 in 1938, and 6,070 in 1939; it declined to 3,245 in 1940 and to 3,662 in 1942. See Jehuda Don, A magyarországi zsidóság társadalom és gazdaság története a 19–20 században (Budapest, MTA, 2006), p. 32. 74 Miklós Konrád, “Vallásváltás És Identitás,” Századok 144, no. 1 (2010), pp. 3–47. 75 Ferenc L. Lendvai, Pál Horváth, and Anikó Sohár eds., Hét évtized a hazai zsidóság életében, vol. 1 (Budapest: Magyar Filozófiai Intézet, 1990), pp. 196–197; cited in Krisztián Ungváry, A Horthy Rendszer Mérlege: Diszkrimináció, szociálpolitika és antiszemitizmus Magyarországon (Budapest: Jelenkor Kiadó, 2013), p. 33.

56 57 58 59

228  Finding Humor in Factional Tension 76 In Weimar Germany, more than half of all marriages involving Jews were consecrated with Gentiles, and more than one thousand Jews abandoned the faith of their ancestors every year in the 1920s. See Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980). For an excellent survey of Jewish history in Germany, see Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany. A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743–1933 (New York: Picador, 2002). 77 Ungváry, A Horthy Rendszer Mérlege, pp. 34–35. 78 Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, pp. 236–238. 79 Egyenlőség, October 7, 1922. 80 Gyurgyák, A zsidókérdés Magyarországon, pp. 236–238. 81 Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. 82 Borsszem Jankó, June 13, 1920. 83 Az Ojság, March 20, 1921. 84 Az Ojság, November 11, 1922. 85 Ibid. 86 Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. 87 Az Ojság, September 30, 1922. 88 Az Ojság, January 7, 1922. 89 Borsszem Jankó, September 28, 1919. 90 Az Ojság, December 10, 1921. 91 Borsszem Jankó, January 11, 1920. 92 Az Ojság, November 11, 1922. 93 Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. 94 Borsszem Jankó, September 26, 1920.

Epilogue

Jewish humor was a response to World War I, the postwar socio-economic crises, the Red and White terrors, antisemitic pogroms, and the reversal of Jewish emancipation in Hungary after 1919. It was largely the culturally assimilated, middle and lower-middle class, predominantly Reform (Neolog) and agnostic Jews who authored and consumed the jokes and anecdotes published in the comic weeklies. These Jewish groups were not marginal to Hungarian society and culture: assimilated Jews were counted as co-founders of modern and urban culture in the Dual Monarchy. Budapest humor had been, to a large extent, Jewish humor before the war, and urban humor continued to display strong Jewish features both in content and form in the interwar period. Jewish contemporaries recognized and took pride in their contribution to Hungarian and urban culture; however, they also feared that their visible presence of Jews in the cultural domain might engender a paranoid reaction from nativists and antisemites. Urban and Jewish humor ref lected both pride and concern; it functioned as a means of self-ref lection and a tool to address economic, social, and political problems and promote modernization. In the midst of an intense debate among contemporaries over the direction and pace of modernization, urban and Jewish humor thus became a political problem. The war and socio-political crises were not only a source of innumerable tragedies and deep sorrow. The military conf lict and its “culture of defeat” also provided fertile ground for humor. Critical voices about the war could be heard as early December 1914; by by late 1915, the majority of European intellectuals had recognized the futility of the conf lict and turned against the war. However, only a minority had the courage to speak out against the war, and an even smaller minority dared to risk prosecution by criticizing the political and the military leaders who had mismanaged the conf lict. Jewish intellectuals could be found in both the antiwar/subversive and the prowar/ conservative camps. While a few had a foot in both or changed their positions over time, the majority of Jewish authors, however, seem to have cast their lot with the pacifist crowd early on.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224389-6

230 Epilogue

The subversive humor examined in the first chapter of this book remained urban and middle class and in a written form. In contrast, the jokes of common soldiers, most of whom had come from rural and peasant or urban and working-class backgrounds, were passed from mouth to mouth. Even though they may have inspired some of the stories in subversive novels such as Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk, soldiers’ humor was of a different sort and performed different functions. Common soldiers used jokes and anecdotes to kill time, deal with the stress of the war, and mock their immediate superiors: rarely did their stories target the political and social system, denounce the political and military elite, or make a clear statement about the meaning of the war. Soldiers’ humor was also, with few exceptions, situational humor. The wit of elite soldiers, the so-called stormtroopers, too, represented only a variation on the common soldiers’ situational humor. However, their functions were different. Unlike the wit of common soldiers, which was either neutral or at least tendentiously pacifist, the “heroic laughter” of elite stormtroopers was decidedly pro-war. Whereas army humor served to divert attention from, and indeed make combatants blind to, the unwanted proximity of death, heroic laughter encouraged the fighter, and the reader, to look directly into the death’s eyes. Army humor was fearful and escapist; heroic laughter invited and celebrated death. The situational humor in the trenches was the product of both cultural modernity and mechanized warfare. In some ways, the wit of soldiers complemented the humor, fun, and entertainment produced by the “cultural industry.” In both cases, “there was laughter where there was nothing to laugh at.” After decades of peace, war and violence became, once again, the hallmarks of Western civilization and a source of humor. Soldiers tried to humanize war by giving machine names; at the same time, the military conf lict turned humans into the cogs of the war machine. The situational humor of soldiers was predictable and unref lective: like a machine, it could be switched on and turned off at will. Unlike the humor of common soldiers, the heroic laughter of stormtroopers and the satanic joy of Freikorps officers such as Pál Prónay were highly ideological; they fed on political paranoia and stereotypical images of Jews, workers, and women. Soldiers’ humor was mainly about the defense of individuals. Heroic laughter and satanic joy, on the other hand, served to defend and reinforce group boundaries, strengthen hierarchy, promote subalterns’ blind obedience to and respect and love for their commanding officers, dehumanize opponents and potential victims, and break down inhibition to violence. Heroic laughter, in other words, oiled the machinery of destruction and justified the perpetration of atrocities. Heroic laughter was provoked by actions rather than words; it was part of an oral tradition and the culture of a small group of hardened veterans and right-wing political soldiers who prided themselves on their separation from mainstream and civilian society. In contrast, Jewish black humor was oral and written, civilian rather than military, and open rather than closed to the outside world. Jewish black humor was the product of assimilation; as

Epilogue  231

such, it was as much concerned with public affairs as with the well-being of Jews. It dealt not only with Jewish problems such as antisemitic violence and increased discrimination but also general concerns such lawlessness, hunger, lack of shelter, mob rule, and political instability. Black humor drew on an old Jewish and Eastern- European tradition; yet, it was also inf luenced by modern European and Hungarian literature, philosophy, and popular culture. While black humor in the East tended to be ideologically and politically neutral, for Hungarian Jews, liberalism never lost its appeal. In Russia, black humor was fatalistic; in Hungary, the majority of Jewish jokes did not completely lose hope in progress, even during the darkest days of the White Terror. Belief in reason, progress, and the rule of law continued to linger on in Jewish jokes; it manifested itself in, among other things, the barely concealed and always dangerous criticism of the militias and the military and political elites, whom the jokes blamed for the continued chaos on the streets and violent attacks on civilians. Black humor poked fun of the values, such as ethnic and national pride and militarism, of the majority society and dominant social groups including nobles and military elites. Jewish jokes advocated introspection, humility, tolerance, and self-improvement— values and ideals could not be more different from the perceived narcissism, conformity, class arrogance, religious intolerance, and cruelty of leaders and rank-and-file of the paramilitary groups and their civilian supporters. The offensive aspects of Jewish jokes became even more obvious in the case of antidefamation humor, which dominated the comic weeklies during the counterrevolution. This sort of wit became part of a campaign to defeat malicious rumors and prevent the spread of new and more pernicious antisemitic images that was waged in the national parliament and the major liberal and Jewish newspapers and periodicals. Some of new stereotypes and accusations were too painful to serve as the foundation of many successful jokes and cartoons, such as the belittlement of the Jewish contribution to the war and depictions of Jews as shirkers of their military duties. Also extremely dangerous were the accusations that Jews were to blame for the democratic revolution and even more the communist dictatorship and the Red Terror; these often portrayed Jews who came to Hungary as immigrants and refugees as the carriers of contagious disease. Jewish organizations rejected the charges, including the notion of collective responsibility for communist crimes. While the jokes and cartoons mocked the simplistic thinking and paranoia that informed these accusations, the newspaper editorials emphasized shared values, such as patriotism and religiosity, and class solidarity between the Jewish and Christian segments of the social elite and the middle classes. Jewish jokes attacked not only stereotypes but also the agents of modern political antisemitism: famous intellectuals such Dezső Szabó, Dezső Kosztolányi, Bishop Ottokár Prohászka, and Cécile Tormay, who stirred up hatred against Jews in their books, newspaper editorials and public speeches; parliamentarians who voted for antisemitic legislations such as the numerus clausus of 1920; government officials, famous politicians, right-wing parties

232 Epilogue

and patriotic associations, which aided and abetted the paramilitary groups or shielded them from prosecution, and the right-radical newspapers and journalists who either denied or tried to play down and justify the pogroms. The main purpose of the antidefamation campaign in the press and the comic weeklies was to bridge the emotional and cultural gap that had emerged between Jews and Christians after 1914. That they were unable to accomplish this task had nothing to do with the quality of jokes and the sincerity and professionalism of Jewish politicians and journalists. Thanks to the rise of the antisemitic press and the financial, political, and moral support they had received from the government and the political elite, Jews and their allies had no chance to win the battle for the hearts and minds of their readers. In the extremely fragmented media and political landscape of the immediate postwar period in Hungary, the liberal and Jewish press preached mainly to the already converted and was unable to reach, not to mention change, the minds of their enemies and the wider public. Assimilation jokes took two forms. The first type targeted aristocrats and nobles with whom the Jewish elite and middle class tried to merge and whose lifestyles, norms, and values they tried to adopt and internalize. The second type addressed the debate within the Jewish community about the desirability, viability, and morality of assimilation. The Jewish elite admired and sought to merge both culturally and ethnically with the members of the historical aristocracy. The problem was not only that Yet, the aristocracy remained closed not only to Jews but also—with the possible exception of the upper strata of the gentry—to the upwardly mobile members of every social group. The destruction of the Dual Monarchy, the disappearance of the court and the imperial administration, changing borders, the rise of nation-states in postimperial Europe, the democratization of political life, and land reforms seriously reduced the wealth, social inf luence, and political power of the aristocracy. The decline of the aristocracy in turn lowered the value of this social group as an ally. The new political elite in Hungary after August 1919 came mainly from the gentry, the officer corps, and the so-called Christian and noble middle class, all of whom had been hostile to Jews since the 1880s. Jewish jokes reinforced the message of the postwar the novels of both Gentile and Jewish writers such as Móricz and Hatvany: if assimilation into the aristocracy and gentry had been difficult before 1914, it became virtually impossible after the war. There had always been something forced, humiliating, and comical about the ways in which wealthy Jews and non-Jews tried to live up to the expectations and conform to the world of the traditional social and political elite. On the one hand, what had been funny before 1914 became ­incomprehensible after the war and the failed revolutions, forming the basis for many new and more strongly worded anti-assimilation jokes. Antipeasant jokes, on the other hand, had to do with financial and political interests rather than with assimilation into a social group the urban middle classes and the elite continued to treat as pariah despite their nationalist rhetoric.

Epilogue  233

However, for urban, and more importantly, for rural Jews, particularly those who were merchants and commercial farmers, peace with peasants became a security concern and a matter of survival after 1917. Jokes represented an attempt to understand the roots of rural violence; humor helped explain the motive and goals of peasants and served as a remedy for the problems and helped Jews deal with the consequences of pogroms and other types of violent attacks. Antipeasant humor represented a watershed in the relationship between Jews and peasants, the latter of whom many urban intellectuals had idealized before the war, in contrast to Jewish writers and joke-makers in Russia and Romania. Antipeasant jokes aired the newly found hostility of urban and middle-class intellectuals aimed toward the rural poor. At the same time, such jokes expressed Jewish intellectuals’ shock at the rise of violent antisemitism in the countryside and their disappointment about the behaviors of peasant politicians who failed to denounce pogroms and supported anti-Jewish legislation. The problem with antipeasant jokes was that they rarely reached the target of their sarcasm: at best, this form of humor satisfied an internal need, helping urban Jews understand the roots of rural violence, vent frustration, and channel their aggression toward an equally despised group in Hungarian society. Finally, Jewish jokes after 1919 served as an outlet for the increased religious, social, and political tension among Jews themselves: between the Orthodox and the Neologs, urban and rural Jews, the poor and the better-off, the traditionalists and the culturally assimilated, and Hungarian patriots and Zionists. The debate among these groups revolved around the issue of assimilation and the reversal of emancipation after 1919: how to react to anti-Jewish violence, legal discrimination, and increased hostility from the majority society. The three most typical reactions were name changes, conversion to Christianity, and intermarriage. Before the war, assimilation jokes had addressed a problem that barely existed: the rate of conversion and intermarriage. But conversions and intermarriage increased by leaps and bounds during the civil war; thus anti-assimilation jokes took a different tenor during the counterrevolution. They exposed a community in crisis; a diverse group at loggerheads over fundamental questions: is assimilation desire or shameful? What is the place and role of the Jewish community in Hungarian society? The chief audience of Jewish jokes, culturally assimilated, urban, Neolog or agnostic Jews, chose not to alter their positions on these issues in a substantive way in the early 1920s (and beyond): they continued to push for greater assimilation, more patriotism, and even stronger emotional identification with the majority society. Jokes confirmed and reinforced their identity as urbanites, secular intellectuals, pragmatic liberals, middle-class professionals, and, last but not least, Hungarian patriots. Aladár Komlós’ devastating critique of Jewish humor as empty entertainment, a diversion from serious issues, and willful oblivion to the approaching danger does not do justice to the complex roles and multiple functions of the jokes, anecdotes, and cartoons published in the immediate post-World War I

234 Epilogue

period. Jewish humor provided more than good (in my opinion, wholesome) entertainment; it also performed a palliative function, served as a shield against aggression and self-doubt and to defend individual and group identities. Unlike Jewish humor during the Holocaust, the jokes were meant to reach the majority society and change the hearts and minds of enemies and neutral bystanders alike. That they could not succeed in accomplishing this goal was not the fault of the jokes and their authors: they simply could not compete with right-wing newspapers and periodicals, as well as with the organs and servants of the state who had chosen antisemitism as one of the ideological pillars of the new counterrevolutionary regime. It was not Jews who kept their quiet but the majority society that had closed its ears, as well as its heart and mind to their appeals. Jokes did not pave the road to the genocide; the maliciousness of power brokers and the indifference of the majority population did.

Bibliography

Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals A Nép, December 28, 1919. Az Ojság, June 4, 1920. Az Ojság, July 15, 1920. Az Ojság, August 1, 1920. Az Ojság, August 15, 1920. Az Ojság, September 25, 1920. Az Ojság, March 20, 1921. Az Ojság, September 3, 1921. Az Ojság, October 1, 1921. Az Ojság, December 10, 1921. Az Ojság, January 7, 1922. Az Ojság, April 14, 1922. Az Ojság, April 29, 1922. Az Ojság, September 2, 1922. Az Ojság, September 30, 1922. Az Ojság, October 28, 1922. Az Ojság, November 11, 1922 Borsszem Jakó, November 16, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, September 1, 1919 Borsszem Jankó, September 14, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, September 21, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, September 28, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, November 16, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, November 17, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, December 7, 1919. Borsszem Jankó, January 11, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, April 4, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, April 18, 1920 Borsszem Jankó, May 9, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, May 23, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, June 13, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, July 4, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, July 11, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, September 26, 1920.

236 Bibliography Borsszem Jankó, November 7, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, November 14, 1920. Borsszem Jankó, November 21, 1920. Egyenlőség, October 3, 1919. Egyenlőség, October 12, 1919. Egyenlőség, October 25, 1919. Egyenlőség, November 2, 1919. Egyenlőség, November 15, 1919. Egyenlőség, November 22, 1919. Egyenlőség, December 23, 1919. Egyenlőség, February 21, 1920. Egyenlőség, November 6, 1921. Egyenlőség, March 4, 1922. Egyenlőség, July 15, 1922. Egyenlőség, July 29, 1922. Egyenlőség, August 12, 1922. Egyenlőség, February 4, 1922. Egyenlőség, October 7, 1922. Kecskeméti Közlöny, October 11, 1919. Pesti Hírlap, October 12, 1919. Pesti Hírlap, November 25, 1919. Pesti Hírlap, December 6, 1919. Pesti Napló, July 26, 1922. Szózat, October 4, 1919. Szózat, October 22, 1919. Szózat, October 23, 1919. Új Nemzedék, October 25, 1919. Új Nemzedék, January 30, 1920. Új Nemzedék, September 11, 1920. Új Nemzedék, July 6, 1920. Új Nemzedék, October 12, 1919. Virradat, October 31, 1919. Virradat, November 6, 1919. Virradat, November 7, 1919. Virradat, November 16, 1919. Virradat, May 16, 1920. Virradat, June 10, 1920. Virradat, June 15, 1920. Virradat, December 29, 1920. Archives Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára or ÁBTL) 4.1. A-738 Prónay Pál Naplója. 4.1. A-738/1 Prónay Pál, Ellenforradalmi naplójegyzeteim 1918–1921. 4.1. A-738/2 Prónay Pál, Tótprónai és Blatniczai Prónay Pál alezredes naplójegyzetei az 1921. év szeptember 1-től 1922. év végéig lefolyt fontosabb eseményekre vonatkozólag.

Bibliography  237 Memoirs/Contemporary Novels/Published Documents Ady, Endre. 1918. At the Head of the Dead (A halottak élén). Chronicle Song from 1918 (Krónikás ének 1918-ból), Budapest: Pallas Irodalmi és Nyomdai R.-T. Babos, Krisztina & Pintér, Tamás (eds.). 2016. Mesék a Nagy Háborúból. Kovács Györgyharctéri naplója, Budapest: Nagy Háború Kutatásáért Közhasznú Alapítvány Nagy Háború Könyvek. Balázs, Béla. 1916. Lélek a háborúban. Balázs Béla honvédtizedes naplója (Divéky József rajzaival), Budapest/Gyoma: Kner Izidor Kiadása. Bihari, Péter. 2014. A nagy háború száz éve. Személyes történetek, Budapest: Pesti Kalligram. Csillag, Máté. 1991. Zsidó anekdoták kincsesháza, Budapest: Orpheus Könyvek. Eco, Umberto. 1983. The Name of the Rose, New York: Harcourt. Ferenc, Göndör. 2018. A Szenvedések Országútján. Háborús Feljegyzések, Budapest: Atheneum. Gábor, Andor. 1971. “Helyreállott,” Bécsi Magyar Újság, 1920 március 25. In: 25 év ellenforradalmi sajtó, edited by Robetr Major, pp. 71–73. Budapest: Cserépfalvi. Gábor, Andor. 1971. Az igazi és az ál,” Bécsi Magyar Újság, 1920 Junius 12. In: 25 év ellenforradalmi sajtó, edited by Robetr Major, pp. 93–95. Budapest: Cserépfalvi. Hauptmann, Gerhart. 1924. Die Insel der großen Mutter oder Das Wunder von Île des Dames. Eine Geschichte aus dem utopischen Archipelagus, Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag. Hatvany, Lajos. 2007. Urak és Emberek, Budapest: Ulpius-ház Könyvkiadó. Héjjas, Aurél. 1999. A Rongyos Gárda harcai, 1919–1939: The Struggles of the Ragged Guard. Budapest: Magyar Ház. Héjjas, Dr. Jenő. 2006. A nyugat-magyarországi felkelés: kecskemétiek az 1921. Évi nyugat-magyarországi harcokban (The Uprising in Western Hungary: the People of Kecskemét in the Fights for Western Hungary in 1921), Budapest: Magyar Ház Kft. Hameiri, Avigdor. 2009. A Nagy Őrület, Budapest -Jeruzsálem: Múlt Es Jövő Könyvkiadó. Hemingway, Ernest. 1929. A Farewell to Arms, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. János, Horváth (ed.). 1942. Magyar versek könyve, Budapest: Magyar Szemle Társaság. Jünger, Ernst. 1996. The Storm of Steel. From the Diary of a German Stormtroop Officer on the Western Front, New York: Howards Fertig. Kertész, István. 1993. Gitli néni tésztája. Avagy elmélkedés zsidó viccekről, Budapest: Gazdasági Média Kiadói Kft. Kodolányi, János. 1975. Szép Zsuzska, Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó. Kosztolányi, Dezső. 2010. Édes Anna. Poszony: Kalligram. Kovács, Imre. 1937. A néma forradalom, Budapest: Cserépfalvi. Krausz, Vilmos. 1919. Hitehagyás és kommunizmus, Ünnepi hitszónoklat 5679, Debrecen: Hegedűs Sándor Irodalmi és Nyomda Rt. Molnár, Eszter Edina (ed.). 2015. «...az irodalmat úgyis megette a fene” – Naplók az első világháború idejéből, Budapest: Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum. Molnár, Ferenc. 1911. A zsúr-apacs. In: Hét ágú síp, Tréfák, karcolatok, tárcák, edited by id., pp. 6–16. Budapest: Franklin-Társulat. Molnár, Ferenc. 2012. A Nagy Háború. Haditudósitások I. (1914 november – 1916 június), Budapest: Atheneum Kiadó. Móricz, Zsigmond. 1918. Vérben, Vasban, Kis Képekben, Budapest: Légrády Testvérek. Móricz, Zsigmond. 1931. Kornfeld Zsigmond. Nyugat, 17: pp. 257–261. Móricz, Zsigmond. 1975. Kivilágos kivirradtig (Revelry until Dawn). In: Regények, Vol. 2, edited by id., pp. 515–641. Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó.

238 Bibliography Nagy, Endre. 1958. Egy város regénye. A kabaré regénye, Budapest: Magvető Kiadó. Nagy, Endre. 1921. Így Írom Én az Ojságot, Budapest: Ojság. Nagy, Lajos. 1921. Első találkozásom az antiszemitizmussal. Múlt és Jövő, 36: pp. 162–163. Nagy, Lajos. 1999. Kiskunhalom, Budapest: Osiris. Pölöskei, Ferenc. 1988. A rejtélyes Tisza-gyilkosság, Budapest: Helikon. Roth, Joseph. 2010. Hiob: Roman eines einfachen Mannes, Cologne: Anaconda. Sade, D.A.E. 1997. To Madame De Sade. In: Anthology of Black Humor, edited by André Breton. London/San Francisco, CA/Beirut: Telegram. Salomon, Ernst von. 1930. Die Geächteten, Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt. Salomon, Ernst von. 1938. Mein Buch vom deutschen Freikorpskämpfer, Berlin: Wilhelm Limpert-Verlag. Schmidt-Pauli, Edgar von. 1936. Geschichte der Freikorps, 1918–1924, Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Nachf. Otto Schramm. Schönfeld, József. 1919. Vissza a gettóba? Egy zsidó jegyzetei a diktatura alatt, Budapest: A szerző kiadása. Somogyvári, Gyula. 2004. És mégis élünk (And we are still alive), Budapest: Auktor Könyvkiadó. Szabó, Ágnes & Pamlényi, Ervin. 1963. A határban a Halál kaszál. Fejezetek Prónay Pál feljegyzéseiből, Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó. Szabó, Dezső. 1989. Az elsodort falu: regény egy kötetben, Debrecen: Csokonai Kiadó. Szabolcsi, Lajos. 1993. Két emberöltő: Az Egyenlőség évtizedei, 1881–1931. Emlékezések, dokumentumok, Budapest: MTA Judaisztika Kutatócsoport. Szomory, Dezső. 2012. Szamosmenti Táj, Budapest: Múlt Es Jövő Könyvkiadó. Tormay, Cécile. 2003. Bujdosó Könyv, Budapest: Gede Testvérek. Török, Sophie (ed.). 1945. Babits Mihály. Összes Müvei, Budapest: Franklin-Társulat Kiadása. Zanetti, Frank M. (ed.). 2009. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft: Schriften zur Ästhetik und Naturphilosophie, Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker-Verlag. Zilahy, Lajos. 1926. Két fogoly, Budapest: Athenaeum. Secondary Sources Ablovatski, Eliza. 2021. Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe. The Deluge of 1919, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Adorno, Theodor W. & Horkheimer, Max. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ágai, Adolf (ed.). 2010. Az örök zsidó. Régi naplók, életképek (1862–1906), Budapest/ Jerusalem: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó. Ágai, Adolf. 1910. Csicseri Bors. Ha’ SSzólljék. Dombszögi és Bugaczi Mokány Berczi Viselt Dolgai, Két Kötetben, Jankó János és Garay Ákos Rajzaival, Gyoma: Kern Izidor Nyomdája. Alpár, Ágnes. 1978. A cabaret – A fővárosi kabarék műsora, 1901–1944, Budapest: MSZI. Allport, Gordon. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. Arnbom, Marie-Therese and Wacks, Georg. 2009. Jüdisches Kabarett in Wien. 1889– 2009, Vienna: Armin Berg Verlag.

Bibliography  239 Aschheim, Steven E. 1982. Brothers and Strangers. The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Atlani, Aviva. 2014. The Ha-Ha Holocaust: Exploring Levity Amidst the Ruins and Beyond in Testimony, Literature and Film Beyond in Testimony, Literature and Film, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Western Ontario. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3776&context=etd; accessed on September 21, 2021. Balázs, Eszter. 2010. A sakktáblától a lövészárkok mikrovilágáig: az első világháború régiés új történeti megközelítései. Múltunk Politikatörténeti Folyóirat, 55/3: pp. 109–131. Bartov, Omer. 2000. Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity, New York: Oxford University Press. Bauer, Gerhard. 1988. Sprache und Sprachlosigkeit im Dritten Reich, Cologne: Bund Verlag. Beisswenger, Michael. 2000. Totalitäre Sprache und textuelle Konstruktion von Welt am Beispiel ausgewälter Aufsätze von Joseph Goebbels über “die Juden”, Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag. Berger, Arthur Asa. 1993. The Genius of the Jewish Joke, Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc. Ben-Amos, Dan. 1973. The “Myth” of Jewish Humor. Western Folklore 32/2: pp. 112–131. Berk, Stephen M. 1985. Year of Crisis, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms of 1881–1882, Westport/Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press. Béri-Lichtner, János. 1995. Együttélés: A zsidóság szerepe Magyarország legújabbkori torténetében, 1790–1918, Budapest: Argumentum. Bibó, István. 1984. Zsidókérdés Magyarországon 1944 után, In: Zsidókérdés, assimiláció, antiszemitizmus. Tanulmányok a zsidókérdésről a huszadik századi Magyarországon, edited by Péter Hanák, pp. 139–293. Budapest: Gondolat. Bihari, Péter. 2008. Lövészárkok a hátországban - Középosztály, zsidókérdés, antiszemitizmus az első világháború Magyarországán, Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó Kft. Biró, Robert. 2009. Magyarországi zsidó sportolók. In: Hágár Országa. A magyarországi zsidóság- történelem, közösség, kultura, edited by Anna Szalay, pp. 218–222. Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó. Blake, Hobby and Bloom, Herold (eds.). 2010. Bloom’s Literary Themes. Dark Humor, New York: Infobase Publishing. Bodó, Béla. 2006. The White Terror, Newspapers and the Evolution of Hungarian Anti-Semitism after WWI. Yad Vashem Studies, 34: pp. 45–85. Bodó, Béla. 2010. Hungarian Aristocracy and the White Terror. Journal of Contemporary History, 45/4: pp. 703–724. Bodó, Béla. 2010. Iván Héjjas: The Life of a Counterrevolutionary. East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est, 37/2–3: pp. 247–279. Bodó, Béla. 2010. Pál Prónay: Paramilitary Violence and anti-Semitism in Hungary, 1919– 1922, Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press/Carl Beck Papers. Bodó, Béla. 2019. The White Terror: Antisemitic and Political Violence in Hungary, 1919– 1921, London: Routledge. Böhler, Jochen. 2019. Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921. The Reconstruction of Poland, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Borsányi, György. 1993. The Life of a Communist Revolutionary Bela Kun, New York: Columbia University Press. Boyer, Jay. 1993. The Schlemiezel: Black Humor and the Shtetle Tradition. In: Semites and Stereotypes. Characteristics of Jewish Humor, edited by Avner Ziv and Anat Zaidman, pp. 3–12. Westport/Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press.

240 Bibliography Brian, Amanda. 2018. The First World War and the Myth of the Young Man’s War in Western Europe. Literature & History, 27: pp. 148–166. Buzinkay, Géza. 1983. Borsszem Jankó és társai: Magyar élclapok és karikatúrák a XIX. Század második felében, Budapest: Corvina Kiadó. Buzinkay, Géza. 1994. Budapest Jokes and Comic Weeklies as Mirrors of Cultural Assimilation. In: Budapest and New York: Studies in Metropolitan Transformation, 1870–1930, edited by Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske, pp. 224–247. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Kateřina Čapková. 2012. Czechs, Germasn, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia, translated by Derek and marzia Paton, New York: Berghahn Books. Carrette, Jeremy R. 1998. Male Theology in the Bedroom: Foucault, de Sade, and the Body. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 80/3: pp. 215–234. Clancy, Laurie. 1988. Running Experiments Off. An Interview. In: Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, edited by William Rodney Allen, pp. 46–56. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Cohen, Sarah Blacher. 1987. Introduction: The Varieties of Jewish Humor. In: Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor, edited by id., pp. 1–15. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cohen, Stanley. 2011. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, London: Routledge. Csunderlik, Peter. 2019. A ‘Vörös Farsangtól’ a ‘Vörös Tatájárásig.’ A Tanácsköztársaság A Korai Horthy-Korszak Pamflet –És Visszaemlékezés Irodalmában, Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó. Dalos, György. 2009. Világ Proletárjai, Bocsássatok Meg!: Vicces Búcsú a Létező Szocializmustól, Budapest: Corvina. Davis, Christie. 1993. Exploring the Thesis of Self-Deprecating Jewish Sense of Humor. In: Semites and Stereotypes. Characteristics of Jewish Humor, edited by Avner Ziv and Anat Zaidman, pp. 29–44. Westport/Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press. Davies, Norman. 1983. God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Volume II: 1795 to Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deák, István. 1993. Volt egyszer egy tisztikar. A Habsburg-monarchia katonatisztjeinek társadalmi és politikai története 1848–1918, Budapest: Gondolat. Dinter, Artur. 1967. Die Sünde wider das Blut. In: Die Deutsche Literatur, Vol. 7: 20. Jahrhundert. Texte und Zeignisse, 1880–1933, edited by Walther Killy, pp. 1110– 1113. Munich: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Don, Jehuda. 2006. A magyarországi zsidóság társadalom és gazdaság története a 19–20 században, Budapest: MTA. Ehrenreich, Barbara. 1987. Foreword. In: Male Fantasies. Vol. 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History, edited by Klaus Theweleit, pp. XIV–XVII. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Eilbirt, Henry. 1993. What is a Jewish Joke? An Excursion into Jewish Humor, Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc. Elon, Amos. 2002. The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany. A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743–1933, New York: Picador. Endelmann, Todd M. 1987. Conversion as a Response to Antisemitism in Modern Jewish History. In: Living with Antisemitim: Modern Jewish Responses, edited by Jehuda Reinharz, pp. 56–83. Hanover/London: University Press of New England.

Bibliography  241 Fenyves, Katalin. 2010. Képzelt Asszimiláció. Négy zsidó értelmiségi nemzedék önképe, Budapest: Corvina Kiadó. Fischer, Rolf. 1993. Antisemitism in Hungary 1882–1932. In: Hostages of Modernization, Studies on Modern Antisemitism 1870–1933/39, Vol. 3/2, edited by Herbert A. Strauss, pp. 868–871. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Fletcher, Anthony. 2014. Patriotism, the Great War, and the Decline of Victorian Manliness. History, 99/1: pp. 40–72. Frye, Northrop. 1990. The Words With Power: Being a Second Study of the “Bible and Literature”, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers. Fussell, Paul. 2013. The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gábor, Gyáni and György, Kövér. 2006. Magyarország társadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második világháborúig. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó Kft. Gatrell, Peter. 2010. War after War: Conf licts, 1919–1923. In: A Companion to World War I, edited by John Horne, pp. 558–575. Chichester: Wiley and Blackwell. Gerwarth, Robert and Horne, John (eds.). 2012. War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence after the Great War, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gerwarth, Robert. 2016. The Vanguished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923, London: Penguin. Gilmann, Sander L. 1991. The Jew’s Body, New York/London: Routledge. Gioielli, Emily. 2015. “White Misrule: Terror and Political Violence during Hungary’s Long World War I.” PhD diss., Central European University, Budapest. Gioielli, Emily R. 2020. The Many Lives of Mrs. Hamburger: Gender, Violence, and Counterrevolution, 1919–1930. In: In the Shadow of the Great War. Physical Violence in East-Central Europe, 1917–1923, edited by Jochen Böhler, Ota Konrád and Rudolf Kučera, pp. 65–89. New York: Berghahn. Gluck, Mary. 2016. A láthatatlan zsidó Budapest, Budapest: Múlt és Jövő Könyvek. Goffman, Erving. 1956. Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Social Science Research Centre. Goldsmith, Emanuel S. 1993. Sholom Aleichem’s Humor of Affirmation and Survival. In: Semites and Stereotypes. Characteristics of Jewish Humor, edited by Avner Ziv and Anat Zaidman, pp. 13–27. Westport/Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press. Gratz, Gusztáv. 1935. A forradalmak kora (Magyarország története 1918–1920), Budapest: Magyar Szemle Társaság. Greenspoon, Leonard J. 2012. Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Gyáni, Gábor. 2005. Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin de Siecle Budapest, New York: Eastern European Monographs. Gyurgyák, János. 2001. A Zsidókérdés Magyarországon: Politikai Eszmetörténet, Budapest: Osiris. Habeck, Mary R. 2000. Technology in the First World War: The View from Below. In: The Great War and the Twentieth Century, edited by Jay Winter et al., pp. 99–131. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Hanák, Péter. 1984. Jewish Assimilation in Austria-Hungary. In: The Power of the Past, edited by Pat Thane et al., pp. 235–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanák, Péter. 1984. Problems of Jewish Assimilation in Austria-Hungary in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

242 Bibliography Hanák, Péter et al. 1978. Magyarország története 1890–1918, Volume 7/1, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Hajdú, Mihály. 2003. Általános és magyar névtan, Budapest: Osiris. Haapal, Perstti and Tikka, Marko. 2012. Revolution, Civil War and Terror in Finland. In: War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, edited by id. and John Horne, pp. 72–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hamann, Brigitte. 1999. Hitler’s Vienna. A Dictator’s Apprenticeship, New York: Oxford University Press. Handler, Andrew. 1985. From the Ghetto to the Games: Jewish Atheletes in Hungary, Boulder, CO: East European Monographs. Hanebrink, Paul A. 2018. A Specter Haunting Europe. The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Harvard: Belknap Press. Hatos, Pál. 2021. A Rosszfiúk Világ forradalma. Az 1919-es Magyarorszáagi Tanácsköztársaság Története, Budapest: Jaffa. Hernádi, Miklós. 2015. A zsidó vicc világképe, Budapest: Gondolat. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1965. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. London: Norton Library. Hoffmann, Eva. 1997. Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews, Boston: Houghtin Miff lin. Horne, John (ed.). 2010. A Companion to World War I, Chichester: Wiley and Blackwell. János, Andrew C. 1982. The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary 1825–1945, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jelavich, Peter. 1996. Berlin Cabaret, Cambridge, MI: Harvard University Press. Judson, Pieter. 2016. The Habsburg Empire. A New Age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kálmán, Mihály. 2012. Cutting the Way into the Nation: Hungarian Jewish Olympians in the Interwar Era. In: Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics, edited by Leonard Greenspoon, pp. 125–176. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Karady, Victor. 1990. Demography and Social Mobility: Historical Problem Areas in the Study of Contemporary Jewry in Central Europe (With special reference to Hungary). In: A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry, edited by Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, pp. 83–117. New Brunswick, NJ/London: Translation Publishers. Katona, Csaba. 2017. Mit adtak nekünk a magániratok? Naplók, emlékiratok az első világháború kutatásába. Belvedere Meridionale, 29/3: pp. 99–110. Katz, Jacob. 1980. From Prejudice to Destruction. Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Katz, Jacob. 1986. Judaism and Christianity against the Background of Modern Secularism. In: Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation, edited by id., pp. 49–60. Philadelphia/New York/Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society. Katz, Jacob. 1990. The Identity of Post-Emancipatory Hungarian Jewry. In: A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry, edited by Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, pp. 13–33. New Brunswick, NJ/London: Translation Publishers. Katz, Jakov. 1999. Végzetes Szakadás. Az ortodoxia kiválása a zsidó hitközségekből Magyarországon és Németországban, Budapest: Múlt és Jövő. Katzburg, Nathaniel. 1981. Assimilation in Hungary during the Nineteenth Century. In: Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times, edited by Béla Vágó, pp. 49–56. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Bibliography  243 Katzburg, Nathaniel. 1990. Central European Jewry between East and West. In: A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry, edited by Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, pp. 33–44. New Brunswick, NJ/London: Routledge. Katzburg, Nathaniel. 2002. Zsidópolitika Magyarországon 1919–1943, Budapest: Bábel Kiadó. Kazecki, Jakub. 2006. Laughter in the Trenches: Humour and Front Experience in German First World War Narratives. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kertész, István. 1993. Gitli néni tésztája –avagy elmélkedés zsidó viccekről, New York: Ganon Books. Klein-Pejšová, Rebekah, 2017. Budapest Jewish Community’s Galician October. In: World War I and the Jews. Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East and America, edited by Marsha L. Rosenblit and Jonathan Karp, pp. 112–130. New York/Oxford: Berghahn. Klemperer, Victor. 2000. The Language of the Third Reich: LTI–Lingua Tertii Imperii. A Philologist’s Notebook, London: The Athlone Press. Kőbányai, János. 2014. Az elbeszélhetetlen elbeszélés. Az első világháború a magyar irodalomban, Budapest: Múlt és Jövő. Kőbányai, János. 2014. Szétszálazás és újraszövés A Mult és Jövő, a Nyugat és a modern zsidó kultúra megteremtése, Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. Kőbányai, János. 2009. A Nagy Háború mint a Magyar Társadalom Háborúja. In A Nagy Őrület, by Avigdor Hameiri, pp. 349–370. Budapest-Jeruzsálem: Múlt És Jövő Könyvek. Kőbányai, János. 2012. A Magyar-Zsidó Irodalom Története. Kivirágzás és Kiszántás. Budapest-Jeruzsálem: Múlt És Jövő Könyvek. Komlós, Aladár (ed.) 1997. Magyar-zsidó szellemtörténet a reformkortól a Holocaustig, Vol. I: A magyar zsidóság irodalmi tevékenysége a XIX. Budapest/Jerusalem: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó. Komlós, Aladár (ed.). 1997. Magyar-zsidó szellemtörténet a reformkortól a Holocaustig, Vol. II: Bevezetés a magyar-zsidó irodalomba, Budapest/Jerusalem: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó. Komlós, Aladár. 2010. Ágai Adolf Zsidósága. Egy Magyar Zsidó a Múlt Században. In: Az örök zsidó. Régi naplók, életképek (1862–1906), edited by Adolf Ágai, pp. 221–228. Budapest/Jerusalem: Múlt és Jövő Kiadó. Komoróczny, Géza et al. (eds.). 1999. Jewish Budapest: Monuments, Rites, History, Budapest: Central European University Press. Konrád, Miklós. 2014. Zsidóságon innen és túl. Zsidók vallásváltása Magyarországon a reformkortól az elso˝ világháborúig, Budapest: Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont. Konrád, Miklós. 2010. Vallásváltás És Identitás. Századok, 144/1: pp. 3–47. Kovács, József Ö. 1996. Zsidók a Duna-Tisza közén. Társadalomtörténeti esettanulmányok, XVIII–XIX. század, Kecskemét: Kecskeméti Lapok Kft-Kecskeméti Monográfia Szerkesztősége. Kövér, György. 2006. Seiffensteiner Salamon lidérces álmai, 2000. Irodalmi és társadalmi lap, (2006/07). http://ketezer.hu/2006/07/seiffensteiner-salamon-liderces-almai/, accessed September 18, 2020. Kövér, György. 2011. A tiszaeszlári dráma – Társadalomtörténeti látószögek, Budapest: Osiris Kiadó. Köves, József. 2003. A zsidó humor aranykönyve, Budapest: K.u.K. Kiadó. Kozma, Judit. 2009. Osztrák és magyar zsidók névváltozása a hosszú 19. Században. In: A családnév-változások történetei időben, térben és társadalomban, edited by Tamás Farkas and István Kozma, pp. 277–281. Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó.

244 Bibliography Kučera, Rudolf. 2016. Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat: Uniformed Violence in the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria 1918–1922. Journal of Modern History, 88/4: pp. 827–855. Landsmann, Salcia. 2010. Jüdische Witze. Der Klassiker von Salcia Landsmann, Munich: Deutsches Taschenbuch. Lendvai, Ferenc L. et al. (eds.). 1990. Hét évtized a hazai zsidóság életében, Vol. 1, Budapest: Magyar Filozófiai Intézet. Levi, Primo. 2017. The Drowned and the Saved, New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. Lindemann, Albert S. 1997. Esau’s Tears: Modern Antisemitism and the Rise of the Jews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Litván, György. 2006. A Twentieth-Century Prophet: Oscar Jászi, 1875–1957, Budapest: Central European University Press. Loewy, Hanno. 2006. Space, Time, and ‘Rites de Passage:’ Béla Balázs’s Paths to Film. MIT Press, October 115/Winter 2006: pp. 61–76. Lowenthal, Leo. 2015. False Prophets: Studies on Authoritarianism. Communication in Society, Vol. 3, London: Routledge. Lukacs, John. 1994. Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture, New York: Grove Press. Márkus, Béla. 1983. Szibériai garnizonok, lágerek népe. Rögtönzött jegyzetek Hadifogságról és az Irodalmáról. Tiszatáj, 1982/3: pp. 38–50. McCagg Jr., William O. 1972. Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary, Boulder, CO: East Europan Monographs. McCagg Jr., William O. 1990. The Jewish Position in Interwar Central Europe: A Structural Study of Jewry at: Vienna, Budapest and Prague. In: A Social and Economic History of Central European Jewry, edited by Yehuda Don and Victor Karady, pp. 47–81. New Brunswick, NJ/London: Translation Publishers. Mékis, János D. 2014. Hadi-esztétika, termékeny nyelvzavar. Első világháborús irodalmunkról. Bárka, 2014/3: pp. 84–89. Meltzer, Bernard N. 1972. Mean Social Psychology. In: Symbolic Interaction: A Reader in Social Psychology, edited by Jerome G. Manis and Bernard N. Meltzer, pp. 4–22. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. Miller, Carolyn. 1993. Are Jews Funnier than Non-Jews? In: Semites and Stereotypes. Characteristics of Jewish Humor, edited by Avner Ziv and Anat Zaidman, pp. 59–70. Westport/Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press. Mindess, Harvey. 2011. Laughter & Liberation, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Nemes, Robert. 2005. The Once and Future Budapest, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois Press. Niewyk, Donald L. 1980. The Jews in Weimar Germany, Baton-Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Noack, Paul. 1998. Ernst Jünger. Eine Biografie, Berlin: Fest. Paglia, Camille. 1990. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, New York: Vintage. Patai, Raphael. 1996. The Jews of Hungary, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Pastor, Péter. 1988. Revolutions and Interventions in Hungary and Its Neighboring States, Boulder, Colo.: Eastern European Monographs. Pelle, János. 2001. A gyűlölet vetése: A zsidótörvények és a magyar közvélemény, 1938– 1944, Budapest: Európa Könyvkiadó.

Bibliography  245 Peukert, Detlev. 1987. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, New York: Hill and Wang. Polenz, Peter von. 1978. Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, Berlin: de Gruyter. Pritz, Pál. 2017. Napló és történelem. Múltunk Politikatörténeti Folyóirat, 62/1: pp. 4–6. Puskás, Julianna. 1992. Zsidó haszonbérlők a magyarországi mezőgazdaság fejlődésének folyamatában” (Az 1850-es évektől 1935-ig). Századok, 1992/1: pp. 35–59. Püski, Levente. 2008. The Long Farewell. Aristocracy in Hungary in the 20th Century. The Hungarian Quarterly, 49/191: pp. 115–132. Raskin, Richard. 1992. Life Is Like a Glass of Tea. Studies of Classic Jewish Jokes, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Reik, Theodor. 1962. Jewish Wit, New York: Gamut Press. Rensmann, Lars. 2001. Kritische Theorie über den Antisemitismus: Studien zu Struktur, Erklärungspotential und Aktualität, Berlin: Argument. Richers, Julia. 2009. Jüdisches Budapest. Kulturelle Topographien einer Stadtgemeinde im 19. Jahrhundert, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. Richman, Jacob. 1939. Laughs from Jewish Lore, New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House. Romsics, Gergely. 2010. Az első világháborús magyar emlékezetkultúra. In: Magyarország az első világháborúban, edited by Ignác Romsics et al., pp. 179–196. Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó. Romsics, Ignác. 1982. A Duna-Tisza Köze Hatalmi Viszonyai 1918–19-ben, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Romsics, Ignác. 1999. Hungary in the Twentieth Century, Budapest: Corvina/Osiris. Romsics, Ignác. 2010. Hungary in the Twentieth Century, Budapest: Osiris. Rozenblit, Marsha, L. 2001. Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I, Oxford: Oxford Universtiy Press. Rozenblit, Marsha L. Fall 2013. “Jews, German Culture, and the Dilemmas of National Identity: the Case of Moravia, 1848–1938,” Jewish Social Studies, 20/1: pp. 77–120. Rosenblit, Marsha L. & Karp, Jonatha (eds.). 2017. World War I and the Jews. Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East and America. New York/Oxford: Berghahn. Schlögel, Karl. 2020. Der Duft der Imperien. Chanel No. 5 und Rotes Moskau, Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag. Schwara, Desanka. 1996. Humor und Toleranz. Ostjüdische Anekdoten als historische Quelle. Lebenswelten osteuropäischer Juden, Band 1, Cologne: Böhlau Verlag. Silber, Michael. 1987. The Historical Experience of German Jewry and Its Impact on Haskalah and Reform in Hungary. In: Towards Modernity: The European Jewish Model, edited by Jacob Katz, pp. 130–132. New Brunswick, NJ/Oxford: Transaction Books. Silber, Michael. 2008. Hungary Before 1918. In: The YIVO. Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, I-II, edited by David Herbert Gershon, pp. 770–782. New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press. Staub, Ervin. 1989. The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Struve, Kai. 2003. Gentry, Jews and Peasants: Jews as Others in the Formation of the Modern Polish Nation in Rural Galicia during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Centuty. In: Creating the Other. Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central

246 Bibliography Europe, edited by Nancy M. Wingfield, Vol. 5, pp. 103–122. Austrian Studies. Brooklyn NY: Berghahn Books. Tamás, Ágnes. 2014. Nemzetiségek görbe tükörben. 19. századi nemzetiségi szereotipiák Magyarországon, Pozsony: Kalligram. Tatar, Maria. 1997. Lustmord. Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Telushkin, Joseph. 1992. Jewish Humor. What the Best Jewish Jokes Say about the Jews, New York, Quill. Theweleit, Klaus (ed.). 1987. Male Fantasies. Vol. 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tosh, John. 2005. Masculinities in an Industrializing Society, Britain 1800–1914. Journal of British Studies, 44: pp. 330–342. Ungvári, Tamás. 2000. The Jewish Question in Europe. The Case of Hungary, Boulder, CO: Columbia University Press. Ungváry, Krisztián. 2013. A Horthy Rendszer Mérlege. Diszkrimináció, szociálpolitika és antiszemitizmus Magyarországon, Pécs: Jelenkor Kiadó Kft. Volkov, Shulamit. 1990. Antisemitismus als kultureller Code. In: Jüdisches Leben und Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, edited by id., pp. 13–36. Munich: C.H. Beck. Volmert, Johannes. 1989. Politische Rhetorik im Nationalsozialismus. In: Sprache im Faschismus, edited by Konrad Ehrlich, pp. 149–158, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Vörös, Kati. 2003. Judapesti buleváron. A zsidó fogalmi konstruciója és vizuális reprezentációja a magyar élclapokban a 19.század második felében. Médiakutató, 4: pp. 19–43. Waite, Robert G. L. 1952. Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918–1923, New York: W. W. Norton. Winter, Jay. 1995. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, Cambridge: University Press. Winter, Jay et al. 2000. The Great War and the Twentieth Century. London: Yale University Press. Wippermann, Wolfgang. 2009. Faschismus. Weltgeschichte vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute, Darmstadt: Primus Verlag. Zeke, Gyula. 1990. Statisztikai mellékletek. In: Hét évtized a hazai zsidóság életében, Vol. 1, edited by Ferenc L. Lendvai, Pál Horváth and Anikó Sohár, pp. 185–190. Budapest: Magyar Filozófiai Intézet. Zinner, Tibor. 1989. Az Ébredők Fénykora, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Ziv, Avner. 1997. Psycho-social aspects of Jewish Humor in Israel and in the Diaspora. In: Jewish Humor: Classics in Communication and Mass Culture, edited by id., pp. 47–71. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Ábrahám, Pál 13, 166n169 Abrincs!: 150 Jordány Vicz 63, 95n19, 98n100, 160n15, 165n146, 197n22, 197n30, 225n23, 226n37, 226n51 acculturalization 172, 207 admiral 22, 35, 37–38, 76, 118, 139 Adorno, Theodore xvii–xviii, xxivn26, 238 Ady, Endre 10, 51n16, 116, 170, 182, 237 Ágai, Adolf 60–61, 63, 67–68, 94n10, 94n12, 95n15, 95n16, 95n19, 98n89, 98n100, 160n11, 160n15, 163n100, 164n127, 165n146, 167n182, 173–175, 196n15, 197n19, 197n22, 197n30, 225n23, 226n37, 226n51, 227n57, 238, 243 agnostic xxi, 74, 137, 174, 199, 205, 217, 219, 229, 233 agnosticism 199 Aladár Komlós xviii, xxivn27, xxivn28, 53n31, 186, 196n15, 196n17, 197n19, 197n38, 197n39, 210, 226n38, 233, 243 Alexander II. 63 Alexander, Bernát 153 alienation xvii–xix, 11, 14, 24, 45, 109, 186, 194 Alley Cabaret (Fasor Kabaré) 13 Alliance of Awakened Hungarians (Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete or ÉME) 22, 81 All Quiet on the Western Front 2–3 American 53n42, 98n111, 147, 221 American Legion 113 anarchism 101–102, 170 anarchists 18 anecdotes xi, xix–xx, xxivn24, 2, 5, 7–8, 16, 23–25, 27, 29–30, 33, 37, 41,

44–47, 49–50, 61, 63, 68, 86, 91–92, 95n15, 99, 107, 111, 135, 150, 173, 193–194, 220, 230, 233 antidefamation xx, xxi, 99–100, 112, 158–159, 231–232 anti-Jewish xx, xxi, 46, 62, 99, 112, 127, 142, 184, 233 antisemit xi, xii, xvi, xviii, xx–xxi, 7, 14, 28, 34, 37, 39, 42, 55n73, 56n115, 62–63, 65, 67, 68–70, 74, 77–78, 81–82, 92, 95n24, 97n65, 98n97, 99, 101, 109, 111–115, 117–118, 119, 121–123, 125, 127, 129–130, 133, 139, 141, 143, 145–147, 150, 152, 156–158, 164n131, 165n165, 170, 175, 179, 180, 184–185, 187–188, 192–195, 198n59, 202, 205, 208–209, 211, 214, 216–220, 223, 229, 231–232, 239 antisemitic propaganda 99, 112 antisemitism xii, xvi, xviii, xx, 14, 42, 63, 67, 69–70, 74, 77, 92, 99, 109, 113–115, 118–119, 125, 137, 140, 145, 150, 152, 156, 161n40, 161n52, 170, 174, 186–188, 190, 193, 202, 205, 214, 218–220, 224, 225n16, 225n19, 227n62, 231, 233–234, 240, 241, 244–246 Antiszemitácsi 78 Arendt, Hannah 38 Argentina 113 aristocracy xxi, xxiii, 2, 40, 121, 129, 168, 170, 183, 194, 232 Aristophanes 40, 58 army 7–8, 13, 22–23, 25, 35–37, 42, 70, 76, 80, 81, 83, 101–104, 107–108, 118, 122–123, 127, 137, 139, 141, 144, 160n29, 187, 193, 230 Arrival of the Hungarians 156

248 Index Ashaver, Jakob 145 Ashkenazis 203, assimilant 172, 210–211 assimilation xi, xii, xv, xvi, xix, xxi, xxii, 14, 60–63, 66, 69–70, 74, 83, 102–103, 136–137, 168–177, 180, 182, 184, 194, 200–201, 204, 207–209, 211, 214–217, 223, 232–233 Attila, Szabó J. 78 Austria-Hungary 1, 64, 142, 195n1, 198n44, 226n29 Austrian xiv, xxiiin7, xxiiin8, 12–13, 30, 63, 93n9, 116, 135, 144, 166n169, 192, 197n36 Austro-Hungarian 7, 9, 42, 102, 108, 187, 215 Avarffy affair 112 Avarffy, Dr. Elek 111–113 Awakened Hungarians 22, 76, 81 Az elsodort falu (The Swept-Away Village) 116, 157, 161n43, 180, 197n31 Az Ember (The Man) 128, 190 Az Est (Evening News) 4, 62 Az Ofság 74 Az Ojság xii, 58, 74–77, 85, 97n60, 97n72, 97n75, 128, 130, 133, 139, 150, 153, 154, 155, 161n36, 163n82, 164n129, 176, 188, 193, 219, 221 Az Üstökös 209 Babits, Mihály 10, 51n16, 183 Bach 139 Backzahn, Nótl 83 Bain, Alexander 48 Balázs, Béla 11, 52n20, 52n22–23 Bálint, Dezső 13 Balkans 5 baptism 79, 145, 209, 212, 215, 217, 220–223 Bar Mitzvah 136 Baros, Lajos 14 Bartha, Miklós 141, 216 Barrès, Auguste-Maurice 115 Battle of Budaőrs 138 Bavaria 13 Beckmann, Max 1, 45 Becskerek 83 Bédi-Swimmer, Róza 117 Ben-Amos, Dan 59, 93n4 Beregi, Oszkár 155 Berger, Arthur Asa 59, 93n3 Berger, Izidor 73 Berlin 14, 20, 60, 63, 93n9, 118, 142, 147, 166n169

Bethlen, István 14, 23, 35, 37–38, 50 Bible 68, 115, 161n53, 222 Biró, Lajos 156 Blacher Cohen, Sarah 59, 93n7 Black Humor xi, xx, 5–6, 11, 57–93, 98n108, 99, 145, 159, 230–231 Blau, Kobi 68, 175 Bloom, Harold 58 Bohemia xxiiin9, 141–142 Bolond Istók (Crazy Steve) 62 Bolshevik xvi, 10, 12, 20, 113, 117, 120–121, 132–133, 137–138, 142–143, 162n72, 190 Bolshevism xxiiin11, 10, 113–114, 121, 127, 161n37 Borsányi, Gyorgy 132 Borsszem Jankó (Johnny Peppercorn) xii, xiv, 55n86, 58, 60–63, 66–69, 74, 94n12, 95n16, 97n65, 130, 132–133, 135, 174–176, 188, 190, 209, 211, 219 Bourgeoisie 2–3, 65, 67, 104, 109, 139, 148, 168, 214, 219, 223 Boyer, Jay 91, 98n108 Boys of Pál Street 5, 50n5 Braun, Aladár 77 Braun, Názi 81 Braun, Samu 85 Brehm, Alfred Edmund 151 Brehm’s Tierleben (Brehm’s Animal Life) 151 Breton, André 58 Britain 1, 18, 48, 103, 113, 159 British 76, 94, 103, 153, 154, 159 Bródy, Sándor 155–156 Brusilov Offensive 108, 141 Budapest xv–xvi, xxiin6, xxiiin7, 4–5, 12–15, 31, 34–35, 38, 44, 50, 52n28, 62, 67, 73–75, 77, 80, 82, 89, 93n8, 94n12, 95n16, 95n26, 95n28, 110–111, 116–118, 120–121, 130, 132, 136–138, 142–144, 146–148, 152–156, 158, 161n36, 164n114, 166n169, 182–183, 198n59, 200, 203, 205–207, 211, 214, 222, 227n71, 229 Budapesti Hirlap (Budapest News) 62, 95n16 Budaváry, László 80, 112, 146, 153, 156, 158 Budaváry-Lex 80 Bukovina 141 Cabinet of Doctor Caligari 2 Caesar, Julius 121, 156 Café Abbázia 152

Index  249 Calvinist 173, 213, 227n71 Capital City Orpheum (Fővárosi Orpheum) 13 capitalism xviii, 62, 115, 122 caricatures xix–xx, 44, 62–63, 95n16, 99, 112, 125, 169, 175, 188 Carlsbad 146 cartoon xviii, xx, xxii, 47, 49, 58, 61, 63–66, 70–73, 83–84, 86–89, 92, 95n16, 105–106, 117, 169, 175, 188, 190, 194, 205, 219, 223, 231, 233 The Case of Sergeant Grischa 2 catastrophe 111, 121 Catholic xiv, 10, 59, 62, 70, 81, 90, 118, 145, 188, 194, 199, 212–214, 219, 222, 227n71 censorship 6, 8, 60, 155, 224 Central Europe xiv–xvii, 2, 44, 58, 102, 118, 142, 147, 204–205, 207, 212 Chaim, Reb 83 children 2–3, 6, 13–14, 20–21, 35, 45, 52n21, 68, 78, 94n12, 105, 116, 141, 153, 170, 182, 184, 200, 212 Cholnoky, László 74 Christian xxi–xxii, 10, 37, 40, 43, 47, 58, 62–63, 65, 67–70, 74, 77–80, 100, 102–103, 109, 112, 117–119, 121–123, 127, 129, 138, 140, 147, 151, 156–157, 166n169, 169, 170–180, 184, 195, 199–201, 205, 207–209, 212, 214–220, 223, 227n73, 231–233 Churchill, Winston 18, 113 cinema 2 Clemenceau (Kohn) 153 Cohen, Sarah 75 Coliseum, Black Cat (Fekete Macska) 13 comic xiv–xv, xix, xxi, 3–4, 11, 17, 27, 32, 60–63, 67, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 94n12, 95n15–16, 99, 125, 130, 132–133, 135, 138, 150, 155, 158, 163n86, 174–176, 180, 188, 193, 195, 205, 209, 216, 219–220, 224, 231–232 communism xxi, 35–36, 38, 113–114, 121, 127–128, 130, 135–139, 146, 170, 223 communist xvii, xix, xxi, 6, 11, 18, 20, 22, 25–29, 35, 38–39, 44, 52n20, 54n68, 69, 76–77, 80–81, 113–115, 117–118, 120–123, 127–133, 135, 137–140, 157, 159, 163n101, 166n169, 172, 188, 190, 195, 218–219, 224, 231 communist regime xvii, 117, 132 communist revolutions 114 conservatism 104

conversion xix, xxii, 62, 74, 80, 93n9, 207–209, 212, 214–220, 223–224, 233 converts xxi, 7, 102, 137, 145, 174, 205, 208, 212, 215, 217, 219–220, 224 coreligionists 104, 145, 147, 150, 153, 203–204, 220 counterrevolution xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxii, 22–23, 25, 32, 33–36, 39–40, 42, 44, 69–70, 81–83, 111, 114, 119, 121–122, 127–130, 132–133, 137–140, 143, 145, 148, 150, 155–157, 159, 170–171, 176, 188, 195, 211, 218, 223–224, 227n71, 231, 233–234 Crimean War 101 Croats 62 Cserny Detachment 54n68 Cserny, József 39, 46, 134 Csilléry, András 34, 112, 156, 158 Csizmadia, Sándor 129 Czech 7, 63, 108, 141–142 Czechoslovakia 18, 22, 113–114, 139 Dánér, Béla 156, 158 Dankó, Pista 13 Dante 58 Danube 79, 123, 134, 164n129, 206 Defense League of Threatened Parts (Fenyegetett Részek Védelmi Ligája) 79 democracy 14, 114, 119–121, 136, 139, 224 Departure of Jews 156 Deutungshoheit 100 dictator xiii–xiv, xvi–xvii, xxi, 121, 132 dictatorship 69, 114–115, 118–120, 127–129, 133, 135, 137, 139, 157, 159, 171, 190, 195, 219, 231 Diener-Dénes, József 120 dignity xv, 17, 57, 59, 75, 83, 92, 99, 159, 224 Dindes (Gyöngyös) 83 Dinter, Arthur 115 disability 110, 111 disabled 1, 45, 101, 110, 187 discrimination xxi, 49, 74, 107, 110, 153, 171–172, 202, 224, 231, 233 Dobé, Nándor 31 Dob Street 139, 146 Dohány Street 85, 201, 222 Dohány Street Synagogue 85, 201, 222 Dohány Temple 201 Dollár Papa (Dollar Daddy) 80 Dömsöd 136 Drava 79 Dreyfus Affair 217

250 Index Drózdy, Gyösö 146, 164n131 Dualist Era 62, 69, 216 Dual Monarchy xii, xv, 2, 7, 11, 14, 36, 65, 108, 115, 141–142, 170, 205, 229, 232 Dunántúl 150 Eastern Europe xx, 1–2, 10, 63, 75, 113, 147, 168, 192, 199, 201, 203, 219, 231 Eastern Front 5, 12, 109 Ebergényi, István 41 economic xx, 99, 111, 114, 125, 134, 153, 159, 168, 171–172, 175, 184–185, 188, 199, 202–204, 214, 218, 229 economy 100–101, 115, 133–134, 187 Eco, Umberto 47 Edwardian 103 Eger 3, 138 Egyenlőség 111, 137, 144, 152–153, 156, 202, 207, 219 Eierschmalz, Mendele 83 Eilbirt, Henry 59, 75 emancipation xix, xxii, 1, 11, 61, 63, 65–66, 99, 114, 137, 159, 172–173, 175, 184, 195, 200, 202, 215–216, 229, 233 Emanu-El 201 ÉME (Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete) 22, 81–82, 156, 167n174 emigration 64, 120, 141, 156 empire xv, 59, 63, 101, 104, 108, 124, 141, 144, 184, 195, 199, 204 Endelmann, Todd 215 English xiv, 4, 36, 78, 110, 154, 160n9, 169 Enlightenment xviii, 47–48, 58, 199 epidemic xxi, 60, 101, 122, 142, 152 Erdősy, Dezső 74 Ereky, Károly 77, 97n65 Ergerberger Military Base 77 Erger-Berger-Schlossberger &Co 73, 77 Erger, Mór 73 Erzsébetváros 97n60, 129 Escape of the People’s Commissars from the Frontline and Other Sensational Reports from the Time of the Soviet (1919) 128 ethnic xiv–xvii, xix, xxi–xxii, 1, 5, 7, 11, 14, 18, 32–35, 39, 44, 58–59, 61–63, 65–66, 69, 75, 78, 100–103, 107–109, 111, 113–114, 117, 122, 124–125, 141–142, 150, 152, 159, 164n133, 168, 171–172, 174–176, 180, 184–185,

187–188, 193–194, 196n12, 199–200, 202, 207, 209, 214, 216–217, 231–232 Europe xiii–xvii, xix–xx, 1–2, 10–11, 36, 52n21, 58–59, 63–64, 95n16, 102, 113, 118, 140–142, 147, 153, 168, 192, 199–201, 203–205, 207, 212, 215, 219, 226n29, 232 European Devil 115 European liberalism 99 European society 100 Executive Committee of the Journalists’ Union 80 expansionism 5 Fangler, Béla 122, 180 fascist xiv, xvi, 18–19, 21–23, 39, 44, 52n18, 70, 81, 113, 115, 150, 158, 167n174, 194 Fejér, Lipót 153 feminism 117 femme fatales 42 Fencing and Athletics Club, (Vívó és Atlétikai Club (VAC)) 153 Fidibusz 13 Fin de Siecle xxiiin6–7, 103 First World War i, xv–xvi, 2–4, 8, 37, 48, 53n40, 57, 64, 69, 91, 100, 111–112, 142, 170, 172, 186, 194–195, 207–209, 217–219, 223 Fonyó, Sári 117 Főszolgabiró 157 France 4, 13, 113 France, Anatole 153 Freikorps 18–23, 39, 41, 44, 49, 230 French xiv, 2–3, 12, 17–18, 33, 42, 53n36, 77, 90, 114–115, 154 Freud, Siegmund xiv–xv, xviii, 75 Friedrich, István 34, 150–152, 158, 179, 212 Frye, Northrop 118–119 Füstölő (the Smoker) 62 Gábor, Andor 10, 13, 15–16, 80–82, 155 Galicia 76, 94n12, 101, 104, 107, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 151, 158, 174, 187, 204 Galiciáner 142, 143–145, 150 Galileo Circle 117, 128, 154, 219 Gárdonyi, Géza 3, 10, 13 Gentiles xxi, 111–112, 115, 127, 141, 147, 169, 185, 194, 223, 228n76 gentleman 24–27, 33, 44, 50, 103, 110, 169, 182–183

Index  251 George, Lloyd 153 German xiii–xiv, xvii, 2–3, 8, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21–23, 32–35, 39, 41, 45, 50n5, 53n36, 59–60, 90, 93n9, 94n12, 102, 108, 112, 115–116, 138, 150–152, 160n9, 160n29, 164n129, 166n169, 169, 171–172, 180, 196n12, 199–202, 207–209, 211, 216 Germany xiii, xvi–xix, 3, 16, 18–19, 45, 53n36, 115, 142, 150, 166n169, 218, 228n76 Géza Gyóni 10 Ghetto 79, 122, 129, 203 Gizella Square 81 Gogol, Nikolai 34, 175 Goldsmith, Emanuel S. 75 Goldzieher, Ignác 153 Gömbös, Gyula 23–24, 34, 50, 156, 193–194 Göndör, Ferenc 5, 128 The Good Soldier Svejk 2 Gorki, Maxim 153 Gosztonyi, Ádám 74 Grand Boulevard 70, 73 Great Britain 1, 103 Great Depression 218 Great War xix, 1, 18–19, 50, 100, 102, 107–108, 111, 113, 169 The Great War. War Reports (November 1914-June 1916) 4 Grosz, George 1, 45 Gun, Lajos 77 Gyóni, Géza 10 György Görgey 33 Habsburg Empire xv, 199 Hajmáskér 146 Hajmáskér internment camp 78 Haller, István 146 Hameiri, Avigdor 7, 108–109, 217 Hašek, Jaroslav 2 Hasid 201 Hasidic 147, 201, 203–204 Hasidism 201 Hauptmann, Gerhard 6 Héberen 74 hedonism 1, 16 Heine, Heinrich 59, 212 Heinz, Friedrich Wilhelm 18 Héjjas Detachment 76 Héjjas, Iván 23–24, 30–31, 44, 97n72, 156 Heller, Joseph 58 Heltai, Jenő 13

Herczeg, Ferenc 11, 13, 175 Herczeg, Jenő 13–15 heresies 200 Herkó Páter (Pater Herkó) 62–63 Herzl, Theodor 217 Hevesi, Sándor 155 hierarchies 16, 31, 49 Himmler, Heinrich 18 Hiób 104, 192 Hitler xiii–xiv, xvi–xvii, 19, 23, 52n20, 53n36 Hitthestinkyjew (Übsd –üssd büdzsid) 76 Hobbes, Thomas 47 Hobby, Blake 58 holocaust xiii, xvi, xviii, 19, 234 Holy Land 200 Horkheimer, Max xvii Horthy 22–23, 35, 37–38, 44, 50, 69, 76, 81–82, 113–115, 118, 138–139, 166n169 Horthy, Miklós 22–23, 35, 37, 118 Horthy myth 114 hostilities 101, 107 humor xiii–xxii, 2–17, 21, 24–26, 29–33, 37, 41, 43, 47–50, 57–63, 66–67, 70, 73–76, 78, 80–83, 85–86, 90–93, 99–100, 104, 107, 127–128, 131–132, 135, 145, 147, 150, 154, 156, 158–159, 168, 176, 188, 192–195, 199, 205, 212, 220, 223–224, 229–231, 233–234 Hungarian xiv, xvi, xviii–xx, xxii, 3–5, 7, 9–15, 18–19, 22–24, 27, 29, 32, 35, 39, 42, 44, 50, 60–63, 65, 67, 69–70, 73, 76–79, 81–83, 85, 93n9, 94n12, 100–103, 107–108, 110–111, 114–118, 120–121, 123, 125, 127–131, 133, 136– 139, 141, 144, 146, 152–154, 156–158, 164n129, 166n169, 168–176, 178–179, 183–184, 186–188, 192, 194, 196n12, 197n35, 199–205, 207–210, 215–216, 218–219, 226n29, 229, 231, 233 Hungarian Academy of Science 117 Hungarian National Israelite Education Association (Országos Magyar Izraelita Közművelődési Egyesület or OMIKE) 144 Hungarian Revolution 101, 154 Hungary xvi–xviii, xx, 1, 4, 6, 10–11, 16, 18, 21–23, 31, 33–38, 40, 51n15, 58–62, 64, 66–67, 69–70, 74, 78, 91, 93n9, 95n15, 100, 102, 104, 107–108, 110, 112, 114–115, 118, 120–121, 125, 127, 130, 132–133, 135, 137, 140–144,

252 Index 148, 150, 152–153, 157, 166n169, 168–170, 172, 175, 179, 183–187, 197n35, 199–205, 207, 212, 217–218, 229, 231–232 Hussars 5 ideological 24, 26, 70, 100, 171, 203, 230–231, 234 ideology xiv, xvii, 18, 39, 69–70, 114, 125, 157, 172, 186, 215 immigrants xxi, 63, 101, 110, 113, 141, 143–144, 152, 231 imperialism 5, 14, 48, 61–62, 103, 118–119, 124 imperialist wars 1 In Blood, Iron and Small Pictures 5–6 individualism 115, 204 industrialization 100, 103, 170, 199–200, 204 intermarriage xxii, 74, 207, 216–219, 223, 233 Intim Caberet (Intim Kabaré) 13, 155 Island, Margaret 129 Israel 166n169 Israelites 79, 88, 117, 136, 144, 156, 173–174, 177, 202–203, 213 Istóczy, Győző 140, 152 István, István Kiss 80 Italian 23, 129 Italy 18 Izsák 31, 77, 85–86, 89, 190 Jakobi,Viktor 13 Jakobovics-Jászi, Oszkár 120 Jankó, János 63 Japan 114 Jericho 77 Jerusalem Independence (Jeruzsálemi Függetlenség) 68 Jerusalem Yeshiva 78 Jesuits 68 Jewish communism 114, 135 Jewish community of Pest 80 Jewish humor i, xi–xix, xxii, 5, 7, 12, 58–62, 67, 73, 75, 81, 83, 86, 90, 93, 93n7, 96n53, 97n56, 97n59, 99, 131–132, 147, 150, 154, 156, 168, 176, 188, 192–195, 212, 224, 226n45, 229, 233–234 Jewish Orthodoxy 199 Jókai, Mór 3, 10, 95n15 jokes xiv–xvii, xix–xxii, 2–3, 7–9, 14, 16, 25, 30, 36, 48–49, 53n42, 57–63, 67–68, 70, 73–76, 78–79, 83, 85–86,

90–93, 95n16, 95n24, 97n60, 99–100, 104, 107, 112, 117, 127, 130–132, 135, 138–139, 145, 147–150, 153, 155–156, 158–159, 169, 173, 175–176, 182, 188, 190, 192–195, 205, 207, 209–212, 215, 218–220, 223–224, 230–234 Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious xv, 75 Josephine reforms 207 József Boulevard 77 Judaism xv, 54, 62, 66, 80, 136–138, 147, 199–202, 204–205, 214–215 Judenkind 116 Judeo-Bolshevism xvi, 113, 121, 127 Juj Nemzedék (the Pain Generation) 79 Jünger, Ernst 16, 53n36 Kabaré Ujság (Caberet News) 13 Kabos, Gyula 13 Kacsóh, Pongrác 13 Kadimah 153 Kaftan 76, 82, 123, 205–206 Kálmán, Imre 13 Kant, Immanuel 26, 48 Karady,Victor 208 Karinthy, Frigyes 13, 74, 150 Károlyi 23, 35–37, 120–121, 134, 139, 143, 158, 166n169, 227n71 Károlyi, Imre 158 Károlyi, Mihály 23, 35–36, 121, 139, 166n169 Károlyi, Miksa 134 Katzburg, Nathaniel 200 Katz, Jacob 203 Kayemeth, Keren 153 Kazinczy, Ferenc 202 Kecskemét 54n55, 69 Kendosz (Klein) 78 Keppich,Vera 42–43 Kiev 10 Killinger, Manfred von 20 King Lear 156 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig 1 Kis Élclap (Petty Comics) 13 Kisfaludy Association (Kisfaludy Társaság) 117 Kis Samu Jóska 6 Klausz, Imre 138 Klein, Korvin 39, 134 Kmoskó, Dr. Mihály 151 Kochba 78 Kodolányi, János 45 Kohn-Kunfi, Zsigmond 120 Komlós,Vilmos 13–14

Index  253 Konti, József 13 Korvin, Ottó 133 Kosher 37, 63, 122, 154, 173 Kossuth, Ferenc 14 Kossuth, Lajos 215 Kosztolányi, Dezső 23, 45, 157–158, 231 Kozma, Andor 153, 173 Krámer-Kéri, Pál 120 Krausz, Simon 79, 139 Krausz,Vilmos 137 Kun, Belá 29–30, 117, 121, 130, 132–133, 135, 139 Kun-Neros 121 Lakatos, László 154 Lake Balaton 51n15, 146, 221 Lame Soviet (Gyenge Szoviet, 1920) 128 Landau, Adolf Ábrahám 31 landlords 6 Lang, Fritz 2, 50n5, 166n169 László, Rózsi 13 Latin 154 Law, Bonar (Löwy) 78 Law of Reception 62, 67 Leberschmaltz, Joseph 79 Leberschmaltz, Zoltán 79 Leipzig 79 leisure class 1, 28 Lemberg 90 Lenin 39, 118, 133–134 Lenin Boys 39 Lenin-Caesars 121 Leni Riefenstahl 11, 52n20 Lepsény 25–26 liberalism xiv, 14, 60–62, 69, 79, 99, 115, 119, 122, 200, 215, 231 liberal party 140 Liebenfels, Joseph Adolf Lanz von 116 Lindemann, Albert S. 203 Lipótváros 170, 175, 177, 179, 222–223 literature xviii, xx, 1–2, 4, 10, 15–16, 21, 34, 44–45, 52n18, 57, 92–93, 94n12, 115, 173–176, 184, 192, 204, 216, 219, 231 Lithuania 184, 200 Little Police and Censorship Stories (Kis rendőrségi és cenzurtörténetke) 60 London 78, 95n16, 146, 154 Lourdes 90 Lovászy, Károly Lowenthal 74, 128 Lower Austria 141–142 Lueger, Károly 152 Lustmord 45 Lutheran 93n9, 201, 227n71,

Mackenzie, William 113 Mágnás Miska (Lord Miska) 80 Magyar 59, 86, 100, 102, 104, 107–108, 110–112, 120, 136–137, 154, 169–170, 172–174, 176, 180, 186, 191, 202, 207–209, 211, 216, 223, 226n29 Magyar Figáró 42 Magyarize 169, 209 Magyar Kabaré (Hungarian Caberet) 13 Magyarosodunk 207, Magyar Statisztikai Szemle (Hungarian Statistical Review) 111 Magyar supremacy 207 Magyar virtus 103 Máramaros 151, 206 Máramarossziget 135 March Revolution 139 Marczali, Henrik 153 Margit Island 70 Markovit, Rodion (Jakab) 11 Marxism 11 masculinity 111 Maulkorb, Ármin 76 Maurras, Charles 115 mechanized warfare 2–3, 230 Medgyaszay,Vilma 13 Messiah 140 Messionism 200 Metropolis 2 Mezei Ferenc 202–203 Mezőlaborc 145, 166n169 Mikszáth, Kálmán 5, 10, 175–176 Millerand (Müller) 154 Miller, Carolyn 59 Mindess, Harvey 75 Ministry of the Interior 141 minorities xxii, 1, 7, 62–63, 78, 102, 107–108, 113, 117, 125, 150, 152, 174, 199, 207, 216 Moczele 68 Modern Cabaret 13 modernization xv, 14, 60–62, 73, 103, 115, 139–140, 153, 171–172, 175, 184–185, 193, 200–201, 203–204, 214, 229 Modern Stage (Modern Szinpad) 13, 15 Modest Proposal 48, 58 Mögen, Dr. Dávid 138 Molnár, Ferenc xix, 4, 13, 15, 32, 155–156, 170 moral xiv–xv, xviii, xx, xxii, 8–9, 12, 16, 24, 28, 37–40, 45, 48, 50, 59–61, 70, 75, 82, 85, 91–93, 103–104, 115–117, 122,

254 Index 125, 132, 137, 145, 147, 159, 171, 185, 190, 201, 204, 212, 232 Moravia 141–142 Móricz, Zsigmond 5, 44, 182, 186 MOVE 22, 34, 122 Munich 12, 18, 41, 93n9, 118, 215 Munkács 83, 211 Musil, Robert 30, 170 Mussolini 22, 115 Mussolini, Miklós (Müller, Andor) 158 Nagy, Andor 74 Nagyatádi, István Szabó 35, 37, 146, 193 Nagy, Endre 10, 13, 15, 74, 150, 155 Nagy, Imre 128 Nagy, Lajos 74, 150, 153, 193, 198n59 Nagy Sasvári, Oliver 128 National Council 120 nationalism xv–xvi, 14, 18, 61–62, 90, 119, 137, 200, 208 nationalists xxii, 60–61, 81, 101–102, 117, 125, 136, 174, 216 National Parliament 97n65, 208, 231 Nazi Germany xvi–xvii, xix, 45, 115 Nazis xiv 3, 19 Nelkenstrausz, Izsák 77 Neolog Jews 14, 102, 104, 205, 207, 217 Neologs xxi–xxii, 62, 74, 140, 144, 145, 147, 199–200, 202–203, 205, 207–208, 217, 223, 233 neophytes 112, 117, 172 Nép 121, 154 Nero (Roman Emperor) 121 newspaper xv, xviii, xx–xxi, 2, 13, 15, 22, 31, 42, 76, 78–81, 93n9, 94n12, 95n16, 100, 112–113, 117–118, 121, 127–129, 135, 137, 143, 146, 156–157, 158, 173, 175, 193, 215–216, 231–232, 234 Nicholas I. 101 nineteenth century xiv, xix, xxi, 10, 48, 61, 94n12, 95n15, 100–101, 103, 115, 123–125, 162n59, 170–171, 174, 184–185, 199–203, 207, 212, 215–217 Nordau, Max 107, 217 North and Latin America 64 North Pole 151 Numerus Clausus 69, 73, 78, 112, 143, 193, 205, 207, 219, 231 Nyugat (West) 4, 6, 11, 74, 157–158, 183, 24 October Revolution 139, 142, 155 On the Highway of Sufferings. My WarTime Notes 5

orphans 101 orthodox xii, xxii, 43–44, 62, 74, 93n9, 101–102, 104, 107, 110, 123, 133, 137– 138, 140–142, 144–145, 147, 174–175, 186, 199–208, 211, 216–218, 233 orthodoxy 199–200 Ostjuden 144, 203, 220 Ostracism 24, 109, 112 Osztenburg Officers’ Companies 76, 81, 97n85 Otto Dix 1, 45 An Outlaw’s Diary (Bujdosó Könyv) 44, 114 pacifism 1, 102–104 pacifist xix, 3, 5, 8, 10, 86, 101–102, 112, 229–230 Paks 85 Palestine 68, 70, 76, 123, 137, 141–142, 158, 200 Pannonia 60 paramilitary 18, 22–25, 27, 32–33, 35, 37, 39–43, 47, 49–50, 57, 76, 80, 90, 96n31, 97n72, 97n85, 155–156, 171, 218, 224, 231–232 Paris 13, 15, 47, 93n9, 114, 116, 138, 147, 151, 182 Partisans 3 Pásztor, Béla 155 Patai, József 144, 204 Patai, Raphael 144, 169 patriotic xix, 4, 6, 10, 22, 69, 76, 81, 102, 109, 112, 122, 127, 137, 155, 172, 175, 184, 209, 211, 232 patriotism 6, 38, 102, 104, 110, 158, 160n29, 208, 223, 231, 233 Paulay, Erzsi 155 Paulini, Béla 74 Péncz, Gavrile 85 Pest-Buda 60 Pesti Hírlap 62, 95n16, 111, 121, 137, 143–144 Pesti Napló (Pest News) 13, 94n12 philosophy 57, 79, 92–93, 153, 199, 231 pietistic 204 Pilsudski 113 Pogány, József 120, 138, 163n101, 182–183 pogrom xx, xxii, 5, 38, 43, 46–47, 67, 69, 102, 104, 106, 122, 135, 137, 139, 141–142, 152, 157, 184, 187–188, 229, 232–233 Poland 18, 26, 107, 113, 142, 175, 184, 193, 200

Index  255 police 2, 25, 30, 34, 48, 69, 76, 81, 85, 113–114, 130, 134, 143, 145 Polish 18, 33, 63, 82, 101–102, 114, 151, 185–186, 192, 194, 203 Polish nationalist 101–102 Polish-Soviet War 114 political xv–xx, xxii, 1–6, 8, 14–16, 18–19, 22–26, 32–33, 35, 37, 40–41, 44–45, 47–50, 52n18, 53n36, 58–63, 65–67, 69–70, 74, 76, 80–81, 86, 94n12, 96n41, 99–100, 103, 107, 109–111, 114–115, 117, 121–122, 125, 127–130, 132–136, 138–140, 144, 148, 150, 155–159, 164n133, 166n169, 168, 170–172, 174–177, 182, 184, 186–188, 192–193, 195, 202–204, 215–216, 218–219, 223–224, 229–233 poor people (Szegény emberek) 6, 44 POW 3–4, 7, 9–12, 16–17, 51n15 Prague xv, xxiii, 2, 93n9, 139, 142 Preisztreiber, Ignác 77 Pressburg 93n9, 154, 200 Price Control Committee (Árvizsgáló Bizottság) 146 Prohászka, Ottokár xiv, 219, 231 proletariat 128, 134 Prónay, Pál 21–42, 44–47, 49–50, 54n68, 76, 81, 92, 135, 230 propaganda 12, 76, 100, 112, 122, 127, 139, 188, 193, 195 protestant 47, 70, 116, 118, 134, 141, 156, 173, 182, 194, 213, 217 Protestant Pietism 199 Putsch, Kapp 21 rabbi 27–28, 40, 98n111, 137–138, 145, 151, 154, 157, 173, 175, 185, 200–202, 212, 215, 219, 222 racial minorities 113 racism 43, 48, 125, 150, 174 Radó, Sándor 13 Rákosi, Jenő 62, 95n16 Rákosi, Mátyás 133 Red military detachments, 118, Red Scare 113 Red Terror xvi, xxi, 39, 114, 118, 129, 133, 231 reform xiv, xx, 14, 60–61, 65, 102, 107, 114, 141, 170, 174–175, 186, 188, 193–194, 199–205, 207, 215, 229, 232 Reform Judaism 199, 201, 205, 214 refugees xxi, 2, 42, 57, 67, 111, 114, 128, 140–144, 152, 205, 231 Reik, Theodore 75

Rejtő, Jenő 13 Remarque, Erich Maria 2–3 revolution xxi–xxii, 3, 12, 22, 38, 60–61, 70, 101–102, 114, 117, 119, 133, 139–140, 142, 144, 146, 154–155, 157, 166n169, 170, 185, 187, 194–195, 199–200, 208, 215, 219, 223, 231–232 revolutionaries 10, 18, 101, 116, 119, 139–140 Richman, Jacob 75 right xiv, xvi, xx, xxi, 6, 16, 18–19, 21–23, 32, 35, 39, 44–45, 50, 53n36, 57–58, 63, 76, 80–81, 91, 113–114, 117–118, 121–122, 128–130, 132, 135, 142–143, 145, 148–149, 155, 157, 161n44, 171–172, 193–194, 217, 224, 230–232, 234 riots 21, 63, 66, 69–70, 142, 184, 187 Roman Faun 115 Romania 142, 175, 184, 233 Romanian 18, 62–63, 114, 116, 118, 125, 127, 169, 184 Romanticism 11 Rome 68, 121 Roth, Joseph 104, 192 Rothschild 138 Rousseau 48 Rozenblit, Marsha 142 Rozenduft, Izidor 85 Rózsa, Lajos 155 Rubber Truncheon Street (Gummibot utca) 72 Russia xv, 1, 15, 18, 51n15, 52n20, 106–107, 113, 117, 132, 134, 141, 152, 175, 185, 187, 193, 231, 233 Russian xix, 3–5, 7, 9–12, 18, 23, 34, 51n15, 64, 73, 82, 101–102, 107–110, 117–118, 141–142, 144, 154, 184, 186, 192, 194, 204 Russian Civil War 114 Russian Empire 59, 63, 101, 104, 141, 184, 195 Sabbath 200, 206, 212 sacrifice 70, 78, 103, 107, 109, 110, 111, 133, 137, 172, 190 Saint Petersburg 121, 147 Salamon, Béla 13 Salm, Hermann 27, 28, 54n64, 97n85 Samuel, Krausz 80 Sándor, Pál 145, 146, 158, 212 Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb 215, 227n61, 60, 93n9 Schadenfreude xviii, 33, 47, 92

256 Index Scheunenviertel 142 schlemiel 91 schlimazel 91 Schlossberger, Izráel 73, 77, 96n43 Schmiertiegl, Palte 83 Schnitzler, Arthur 42 Schnüpetzer, Ájzigl 145 Schönfeld, József 136–137, 163n93, 238 Schwarz, Gyula 77 Schwarzkopf, Izidor 80 Second World War xvii, 19, 70, 172, 194–195, 218–219, 224 secularization xiv–xv, 60, 62, 115, 184, 199–200, 204, 207, 214–215, 219 Seiffensteiner, Salamon 67–68, 174 Sephardic 203 Serbs 62–63, 108 sexualized violence 44, 47 Shakespeare 156 Shtetle i, xv, 98n108, 101 Shylock 143 Siberian Garrison 11 skeptics 208 Slovakia 18, 22 Slovaks 63, 150, 216 slum 117, 129 Social Darwinism 103 socialism xvii, 23, 61, 102, 170, socialist 1, 5, 11, 18, 19, 22, 24, 62, 63, 70, 100, 112, 113, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 129, 133, 135, 156, 170, 172, 175, 186 Sofer, Moses 200 soldiers xvi, xix–xx, 2–12, 16–19, 21, 26, 28, 42, 44, 48–49, 50, 51n17, 53n42, 57–58, 81, 86, 101, 102–104, 106–112, 122–123, 127–129, 137, 154, 157, 160n29, 166n169, 187, 192, 205, 217, 230 Solmosi, Eszter 67 Sorokópátkai, István Szabó 211 The Soul in the War. The Diary of Corporal Béla Balázs 11 Soviet Republic 6, 30, 69, 80, 114, 116, 121, 128, 130–133, 136, 143, 155, 166n169, 171, 188, 205, 219, 227n71 Soviet Union 11, 164n133 Spain 147, 151 Spießbürgers 32 spies 3, 29, 102 Spitzig, Itzig 67–68, 174 stadium 70, 73 Stalin 11, 133 Steiner-Simonyi, Henrik 120

stereotype xvi, 14, 62, 69, 89, 99–100, 111–117, 121, 125, 135, 138–140, 148, 150, 152, 158, 173, 175, 187, 224, 231 stormtroopers 19, 230 suicide (öngyilkosság) Svejk xii, 2–3, 11, 15, 230 Sweden 113 The Swept-Away Village (Elsodort falu) 114, 157 Swift, Jonathan 48, 58 synagogue 85, 90, 185, 201, 209, 220, 222 syphilis 116, 147, 182, 187 szabadcsapatok 18 Szabadság Square 139, 223 Szabó, Dezső 114, 116, 122, 150, 152–153, 157–158, 180 Szabolcsi, Lajos 111, 202 Szabolcsi, Miksa 202 Szabó Nagyatádi, István 35, 37 Szamuely, Tibor 39, 130, 133 Szegfű, Gyula 114 Székesfehérvár 60, 219 Szép, Ernő 10, 13, 16 Szerényi, Simon 128 Sziget 83 Szinház és Mozi Újság (Theater and Movie News) 128 Szinházi Élet (Theater Life) 13, 166n169 Szirmay, Albert 13, 16 Szmrecsányi, György 81 Szomory, Dezső 3, 183 Szózat (Appeal) 117, 129, 161n44 Talmud 151 Teleki 37–38, 43, 143 Terézváros 129, 174, 214, 223 territory 12, 110 Tisza (River) 79, 139 Tisza, István 14, 36, 120, 166n169 Three Generations and What Follows (Három Nemzedék És Ami Utánna Következik) 114 Tokay 129 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich 8 Torah 201 Tormay, Cecile 11, 23, 37, 44, 114, 122, 231 totalitarian 138, 218 totalitarianism 38 Transdanubian 211 Transylvanian-Hungarian 116 Trefort, Ágoston 215–216 Trianon Hungary 218

Index  257 Tsar 63, 101, 106, 106 Turkey 154 Turkish military commander 154 Twain, Mark 58 The Two Prisoners 9 Újlipótváros 223 Új Nemzedék 78–79, 121, 129, 157–158 Új Szanden 145 Újváry 80 Ukraine 184 Ukrainian 7, 63, 82, 102, 185–186 United States (USA) 36, 50n5, 64, 113, 147, 166n169 University of Jerusalem 77 urbanization xv, 48, 115, 170, 199 Üstökös (Comet) 60, 62, 209 Vázsonyi,Vilmos 157, 212 veterans xx, 2, 17, 22, 25–26, 34, 45, 50, 86, 101, 109–112, 122, 230 victims xv–xvi, 9, 17, 21–22, 29–32, 44, 47, 49, 57, 75, 82, 92, 99, 132, 169, 230 Vienna xv, 12–13, 33–34, 36, 41, 43, 60, 79–80, 82, 93n9, 94n12, 95n16, 116, 128, 130, 141–142, 147, 161, 182, 200 Világ (Light) 10, 74, 78, 166n169 violation 17, 21, 63, 110, 145, 155 Virradat (Dawn) 117, 119, 121, 157 Vonnegut, Kurt 58 War of National Liberation 101 wars 1, 2, 3, 101 Warsaw 147 Weimar Germany 3, 218, 228n76 Weimar Republic 115

Weinberger, Samu 77 Weininger, Otto 150, 152 Weisz, Jakab 77 Western xiv, 2–3, 16, 22–23, 33, 46, 53n37, 54n55, 63, 69, 79, 93n4, 96n31, 96n54, 104, 107, 114, 140, 142, 147, 160n25, 168, 170, 184, 188, 199–201, 203–204, 214, 230 White Terror xix–xx, 22, 44, 47, 57, 69, 74, 76, 78, 81, 86, 99, 118, 135, 139, 155, 187–188, 218, 229, 231 Widerstand 159 widows 2, 101 Wiene, Robert 2 Winkler, Gyula 77 Wolff, Károly 112, 156–157 Wurttemberg, Horst 20 xenophobia 118, 122, 150, 202 Yiddish 14, 59, 86, 94n12, 101–102, 200–201, 203–204 Yugoslav 114 Yugoslavia 18 Zalaegerszeg 90 Zay, Miklós 39 Zemplén County 145 Zerkovitz, Béla 13 Zilahy, Lajos 9, 15 Zionist xviii, xxii, 7, 74, 102, 107–108, 110, 136–138, 144, 153, 169, 186, 199, 203–204, 217, 233 Zitterponem, Ezsajást 76 Zsidó Szemle 136, 154 Zweig, Arnold 2