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The Hungarian Government, the American Magyar Churches, and Immigrant Ties to the Homeland, 1903–1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Paula K. Benkart
Paula K. Benkart
Affiliation:
assistant professor of history inSaint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Extract

Before the political and scholarly rediscovery of ethnicity during the past decade, American observers tended to overlook the lingering homeland influences in the lives of this country's immigrant ethnic groups. Scholars here were the world's experts on the consequences which follow international migration: alienation, acculturation, and assimilation. But like their dean, Oscar Handlin, they stressed not the “roots” but the uprootedness of their subjects. According to this tradition, the migrants, torn suddenly from Old World surroundings, had been able to bring with them only a few flimsy pieces of “cultural baggage,” the equivalent of the fragile-looking wicker hampers and precariously bulging cloth bundles with which the newcomers were photographed at Ellis Island but with which they rarely were seen again.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 312 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1983

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References

1. Thistlethwaite, Frank, “Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Rapports 5, Eleventh International Congress of Historical Sciences (Stockholm, 1960), pp. 32–60.Google Scholar

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4. The best examples are the works of Rudolph Vecoli such as “Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted, ”The Journal of American History 51 (December 1964): 404–417;Google Scholar and “Cult and Occult in Italian American Culture,” in Immigrants and Religion in Urban America, ed. Miller, Randall M. et al. (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 25–47.Google Scholar

5. Included in the files are minutes of governmental meetings, intraministerial and interministerial memoranda, budgets for American work, receipts from the Hungarian General Credit Bank, and instructions to the agents and agencies of the Hungarian government in America. Papers from the United States include reports from official investigators, petitions and complaints from individuals and groups, newspaper clippings, articles of incorporation of congregations and societies, and the minutiae of mortgage financing such as promissory notes and exhaustively searched land titles. The files for the years 1903–1917 are available on microfilm at the Immigration History Research Center of the University of Minnesota (hereafter cited as IHRC).

6. Even the extensive investigation of the United States Immigration Commission seems to have missed the point and underestimated the scope of the program (U.S. Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, Emigration Conditions in Europe, 61st Congress, 3d sess., 1910–1911, p. 359).Google Scholar

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8. Reports of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, ibid., pp. 56–62.

9. Minutes of the meeting, 12 and 13 January 1903, Budapest, MOL, Reel 3, K-26/1904/XIX/1066, p. 1, IHRC.

10. Pal Szmrecsányi, bishop of Szepes, to the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, 18 March 1903, Budapest, MOL, Reel 21, K-26/1909/XXII/1170, p. 6, IHRC.

11. Minutes, pp. 11, 24, 28; Bishop Szmrecsányi to the foreign minister, 18 March 1903, Budapest, MOL, Reel 21, K-26/1909/XXII/1170, pp. 4–8, IHRC.

12. Unsigned memorandum to the minister of commerce, 3 March 1905, Budapest, MOL, Reel 25, K-26/1910/XIV/I 203, p. 16, IHRC; Booklet marked “Secret,” June 1906, Budapest, MOL, Reel 25, K-26/1910/XIV/1144, pp. 34–65, IHRC.

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14. Report from the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Washington to the foreign minister, 25 July 1904, ibid., pp. 455–456.

15. Director Kogutourics of the Hungarian Institute of Geography to Prime Minister Baron Géza Fejérváry, 3 October 1905, Budapest, MOL, Reel 17, K-26/1908/XXI/371, p. 157, IHRC; Prime Ministerial Counsellor Count Kuno Klebelsberg to the minister of religion and public instruction, 13 October 1905, ibid., pp. 159–160.

16. The Cleveland Magyar A. H. E. (Lutheran) Church Commission to the prime minister, June 1906, Budapest, Reel 7, K-26/1906/XIX/3815, pp. 10–11, IHRC.

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21. Memorandum, 26 November 1907, Budapest, MOL, Reel 15, K-28/1908/XXI/181, p. 1115, IHRC.

22. Conventus President Bánffy to Prime Minister Dr.Sándor Wekerle, 22 January 1907, ibid., pp. 487–488.

23. Komjáthy, p. 72.

24. One representative notice of an American appointment is Conventus President Bánffy to Prime Minister Wekerle, 7 November 1906, Budapest, MOL, Reel 14, K-26/1908/XXI/181, p. 364, IHRC. The correspondence about Fazekas's inability involved the Conventus President Bánffy, Delegate Bede, and Prime Minister Wekerle and included letters of 16, 21, and 23 January 1908, 3 April 1908, and 5 August 1908, Budapest, MOL, Reel 17, K-26/1908/XXI/371, pp. 423, 433, 437, 469, 512, IHRC. For the request for Bridgeport's insurance policy, see Conventus President Bánffy to the prime minister, 5 May 1905, Budapest, MOL, Reel 32, K-26/1910/XXI/632, p. 48, IHRC.

25. Andras Hodobay, apostolic protonotarius and visitator, to Prime Minister Wekerle, 8 May 1906, Budapest MOL, Reel 14, K-26/1908/XXI/181, pp. 163–164, IHRC. For a fuller discussion of the relationship between the Prime Ministry and the Greek Catholic Church, see Dyrud, Keith, “The Rusin Question in Eastern Europe and America, 1890–World War I” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1976).Google Scholar

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27. Rules for American Magyar Reformed Schools, 16 April 1912, Budapest, MOL, Reel 46, K-26/1913/XXI/386, pp. 82–84, IHRC.

28. The elders of the Detroit Magyar Reformed Church to the president of the Conventus,18 December 1912, ibid., pp. 165–168.

29. Minutes, p. 16.

30. Report of the chief lay curator of the Dunamellék church district, 17 November 1904, Budapest, MOL, Reel 19, K-26/1909/XXI/2491, p. 2, IHRC; Report of Conventus Delegate Antal, 4 December 1905, ibid., pp. 23–24.

31. The foreign minister's summary of the report of Ladislaus von Hengelmüller, Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Washington, 27 February 1907, Budapest, MOL, Reel 20, K-26/1909/XXII/555, pp. 95–99, IHRC; the minister of religion and public instruction to Prime Minister Wekerle, 13 July 1907, ibid., p. 108; Prime Minister Wekerle to the foreign minister, 2 August 1907, ibid., p. 109; report of the foreign minister, 21 September 1907, ibid., pp. 132–135.

32. Booklet entitled “Magyar Newspapers in the U.S.,” about 20 January 1905, Budapest, MOL, Reel 19, K-26/1909/XXI/2491, pp. 6–9, IHRC; report of the foreign minister,30 August 1908, Budapest, MOL, Reel 20, K-26/1909/XXII/555, pp. 215–216, IHRC;the foreign minister's summary for Prime Minister Wekerle of the report of Ambassador Hengelmüller, 28 October 1908, ibid., pp. 218–220; Komjáthy, p. 80; Memorandum,15 October 1909, Budapest, MOL, Reel 20, K-26/1909/XXII/555, pp. 296–297, IHRC.

33. Elek Csutoros et al. to the prime minister, 14 June 1903, Budapest, MOL, Reel 17, K-26/1908/XXI/371, pp. 8–13, IHRC; Csutoros et al. to Dr.Gyula Wlassics, minister of religion and public instruction, 20 January 1904, ibid., pp. 69–75.

34. Komjáthy, pp. 95–96.

35. John Madar to Prime Minister Wekerle, 3 August 1908, Budapest, MOL, Reel 20, K-26/1909/XXI/3763, pp. 13–16, IHRC.

36. The records of the American Action at the Immigration History Research Center are much less extensive for the period after 1914, although there are files for years up to 1917. Those documents, therefore, must serve as the final word on the Action's accomplishments and prospects.

37. Unidentified Magyar newspaper clippings, Budapest, MOL, Reel 61, K-26/1916/XXI/627, pp. 211, 215, IHRC. The description of the Hungarian Reformed school and “a kis magyar yankeek”was highly favorable.

38. Report of Ambassador Hengelmüller, 11 March 1914, Budapest, MOL, Reel 50, K-26/1914/XXII/1874, p. 5, IHRC.

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