 | Exile and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany and Austria, 1919-1933 Subjects: INTELLECTUALS -- HUNGARY -- HISTORY -- 20TH CENTURY; INTELLECTUALS -- GERMANY -- HISTORY -- 20TH CENTURY; INTELLECTUALS -- AUSTRIA -- HISTORY -- 20TH CENTURY; HUNGARY -- EXILES -- HISTORY -- 20TH CENTURY; GERMANY -- EXILES -- HISTORY -- 20TH CENTURY; AUST; Bauhaus designer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy spoke of fighting the Nazis with his art. Sociologist Karl Mannheim sought a path from alienation to community. Art critic Erno Kallai viewed the surrealists Arp, Ernst and Klee as Jungian ``bioromantics.'' Georg Lukacs sketched a Marxist theory of literature. All were Hungarian exiles who fled their homeland in WW I's aftermath for Germany or Austria, where they played a pivotal role in creating Weimar culture. In a rich, complex intellectual and social history, Congdon portrays a group of exiles who, cut off from their Budapest home, attached themselves to larger families: the Bauhaus, the international avant-garde, the Austrian Social Democratic Party, the Roman Catholic Church, etc. Their attempt to create a wider world of shared values was shattered by the failure of postwar revolutions, leading many of these exiles to hope for the transformation of human consciousness through a long, slow process of education. Congdon is a history professor at James Madison University in Virginia. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved |
