The following is an adapted version of an article written by Lázár Pap, originally published in Hungarian in Magyar Krónika.

America—the new world, the land of opportunity, the land of the free. In the 19th and 20th centuries, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians left their former lives behind to cross the Atlantic and try their luck Far Far Away, that is, ‘Beyond the Óperencia’, as Hungarian fairy tales go. In its series, Magyar Krónika looks at the meeting points of America and Hungary through the Hungarian diaspora living in the US. This part will explore how Americans perceived the arrival of Eastern and Central European immigrants as a chaotic phenomenon, a Babylonian disorder.

The ethnic composition of immigrants from the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy, and within it from Hungary, arriving in the United States around the turn of the century was extremely diverse, and this caught the eye of the American press as well. If we look at the data for the period between 1899 and 1913, we can see that Poles left the Monarchy in the largest number, while Slovaks and Hungarians had the highest proportion of those coming from Hungary.

The diversity of immigrants from multinational countries was also noted by the New York daily The Sun. The article ‘The Unspeakable Turk’*, published on 4 October 1896, also dealt with this topic. The author primarily discussed the people of the Ottoman Empire but also mentioned other ethnic groups. He noted, for example, that those who came from the Russian Empire were automatically considered Russian, without even trying to differentiate between them. Starting from this line of thought, he arrived at the definition of the nationalities coming from Hungary.

‘Far fewer immigrants of Hungarian nationality arrived in the country than the various newspapers claimed’

According to the author, the adjectives ‘Hun’ and ‘Hungarian’ were used without distinction for all immigrants coming from beyond the Lajta River. He then noted in relation to the word ‘Hun’ that the real Huns lived many hundreds of years earlier and did not leave much trace behind them, so the name ‘Hun’ had no meaning in the 19th century. He then stated that the term ‘Hungarian’ could only be correctly applied to the dominant nationality of the territories beyond the Lajta River, the Hungarians. He continued his argument by saying that just as the Russians rarely leave their homeland, so do the Hungarians. In contrast, the Slovaks and Jews living in Northern Hungary do so much more often. The members of the Hungarian Society in New York are almost all Jews, too, he emphasized.

It was rare in the American press at the turn of the century for a newspaper to accurately portray the ethnic relations of the Monarchy. The author of the article correctly recognized that far fewer immigrants of Hungarian nationality arrived in the country than the various newspapers claimed.

If we divide those arriving from Hungary to the United States into two large groups, Hungarians and non-Hungarians, we will see that non-Hungarians were in the majority. Nevertheless, it is an exaggeration to say that Hungarians rarely emigrated from Hungary, since they made up roughly one-third of those emigrating from our country.

On the Trail of the Immigrant

An excellent source for understanding the American image of Hungarians is Edward A Steiner’s work On the Trail of the Immigrant, published in 1906. The chapter entitled ‘Little Hungary’ contains a description of the Hungarians, which also highlights their relationship with the Slavs, Jews, and Gypsies.

He portrayed the Hungarians as the ruling nation of Hungary, whose members consider it an insult to be referred to as Slavs, claiming there is no kinship between them. He further added the one-sided assertion that the Hungarians rule over part of the Slavic population and unanimously despise them. From Hungarian history, he emphasized their Western orientation and German influences, which he deemed insufficient to tame their still-discernible Asian nature. According to the author, this nature was most evident in their love of horses and wine.

In the book, the origin of the Hungarians and their relationship to the Slavs is followed by the clarification of their role in the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy. In this regard, we can read a strong opinion: the Hungarian nation, despite being numerically one of the smallest, plays a dominant role in the life of the empire and determines its policy. Of course, the latter statement, according to which the Hungarians are one of the smallest peoples in the empire, did not stand up to scrutiny.

Steiner also spoke about one of the largest Hungarian–American communities, which settled in Cleveland. Here, in contrast to the negative attitude towards Slavs, he mentioned that Hungarians are particularly tolerant towards Jews and Gypsies. He highlighted that Cleveland Jews like to be considered Hungarians, and Hungarians see them as their compatriots.

‘The distinction…of Slavs and Hungarians was a recurring theme in articles dealing with Central European immigrants’

He presented Gypsies as both excellent musicians and parasitic thieves. Nevertheless, he portrayed their relationship with Hungarians as particularly harmonious.

The distinction or identification of Slavs and Hungarians was a recurring theme in articles dealing with Central European immigrants, just as the hatred between Hungarians and Slavs was also regularly mentioned in the American press. The latter phenomenon was presented more as a mutual dislike rather than as a Hungarian peculiarity. This was somewhat counterbalanced by the frequent occurrence of articles presenting the excellent relationship between Jews and Hungarians.

The idea of the definite oppression of the Slavs and the overestimation of Hungarian influence within the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy later became common during the peace negotiations that ended World War I. Of course, based on the text, we can see that these opinions had already been present in America at the turn of the century.

The chaos appearing in the columns of The Sun perfectly illustrates that neither American society nor the press could accurately interpret the ethnic relations of those arriving from Eastern and Central Europe.

Social Darwinism

In our previous article, we described how the increasing number of immigrants arriving after the 1900s alarmed the American intellectuals and political elite. The image of Hungarians, which was still so positive when the Kossuth emigration arrived, began to deteriorate steadily. The image of the chivalrous, heroic soldier fighting for national independence was replaced by that of the poor immigrant ‘hunky’.

According to the Americanized version of social Darwinism, the Anglo-Saxon race that founded the United States was seen as being endangered by intermixing with immigrants from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe. This theory claimed that these incoming ‘alien races’ lacked the linguistic and intellectual capacities that had made the country great.

*The phrase ‘the unspeakable Turk’ in the title of the article roughly translates to ‘the Turks who cannot be spoken of in a civilized manner’. William E Gladstone, a British liberal politician who served as Prime Minister four times, wrote his later famous pamphlet about the atrocities committed by the Turks against the Bulgarians, titled Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, in 1876. The politician, who was then in opposition, intended to attack the pro-Turkish policy of the Disraeli Government with the pamphlet. With his writing, Gladstone successfully undermined the view that British interests in the region could only be asserted through the Ottomans. The phrase ‘the unspeakable Turk’ therefore suggested that the Turks were barbarians and cruel, about whom it was difficult to speak in a civilized manner.

Read the previous parts of the series below:

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