Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture [Paperback]

John Lukacs (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0802132502 | ISBN-13: 978-0802132505 | Publication Date: February 1, 1994

"Lukacs's book is a lyrical, sometimes dazzling, never merely nostalgic evocation of a glorious period in the city's history. . . . {His} true sympathy lies . . . not with the famous expatriates, but with the writers and intellectuals who lived and died at home: the poets Endre Ady and Mihaly Babits; the novelists Ferenc Herczeg, Sandor Hunyady, Frigyes Karinthy, Dezso Kosztolanyi, Gyula Krudy, Kalman Mikszath, and Zsigmond Moricz; the political essayist DezsoSzabo; the playwright Erno Szep; the literary historian Antal Szerb; and others. . . . {John Lukacs} sets out to explain Hungarian literature to English-speaking readers. Though I have no idea whether or not he will succeed, few interpreters of Hungarian literature have made a more touching and eloquent attempt." -- The New York Review of Books

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

During the period 1896-1906, Budapest, in contrast to its twin capital Vienna, was an optimistic, self-confident, less neurotic, relatively new city, characterized by both virile provinciality and urbane Magyar sensitivity. Lukacs, who has written histories of 20th century Europe and the U.S., here presents a portrait of Budapest's physical and material conditions, its people and politics, their achievements, troubles, art and culture, both around the year 1900 and later, with the rise of nationalism and of anti-Semitism. Budapest's class-conscious society had a tremendous respect for intellectual achievement and an impressive outpouring of talent, but because the Hungarian language is little known beyond its borders, few of its major literary figures achieved prominence elsewhere. Still, an astonishing number of Budapestians have become famous abroad, especially in America, among them Bela Bartok, George Lukacs and Arthur Koestler. This is a reliable account of a beautiful city at the zenith of its prosperity, with a brief final chapter describing the subsequent 80 years. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (February 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802132502
• ISBN-13: 978-0802132505
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,730 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #33 in Books > History > Europe > Hungary
  • #39 in Books > History > Europe > Austria

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read Most of the Time, August 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture (Paperback)

Having spent a summer in Budapest as a student, I was particularly interested in its history after my return. This book really fills in many of the details about the city that I never knew when living there. It's full of factiod information on population, language, architecture, etc. The problem with it; however, is that it doesn't effectively integrate these topics and treats them as rather separate phenomena (which of course they aren't). Still, it's the best history of Budapest that I've found and that's commendable.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Souring of Nationalism, January 1, 2004

By 

Buce (Palookaville) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Budapest, 1900: Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture (Hardcover)

This is another book that deserves to be put back into print. Throughout a long and productive career, John Lukacs has taken pride (sometimes bordering on preening) in his penchant for defining things his own way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just a distraction. But no subject is better suited to his mix of talents than this "historical portrait" (as he puts it) of this the capital of his native country.

The book is a nostalgia trip in part, but it is a good deal more. Lukacs also undertakes to to situate Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in particular, in contrast to its great partner, Vienna -- it's remarkable even today how these two cities, so close together on the map can seem so far apart.

But perhaps the best part of the book is in his chapter on "Seeds of Trouble," when he undertakes to show how liberal nationalism went sour and headed down the road to anti-semitism and the destructive hyper-nationalism that wracked us all through so much of the 20th century. Liberal nationalism had always contained the seeds of its own undoing. Discerning politicians as disparate as Disraeli, Bismark and Napoleon III had already grasped how the liberal impulse could be harnessed to conservative ends. But through Lukacs' eyes, you can see just how quick and subtle -- and disastrous -- the shift can be. Probably the point is that Lukacs was never a good liberal to begin with. So he can look on with unblinkered eyes as the liberal vision crumbles in his hands.

For all of Lukacs' aristocratic disdain, it is possible for a reader less austere than the author to see this shift as a disaster. Perhaps a good pairing for this book would be Gordon A. Craig's "Triumph of Liberalism" about Zurich in a slightly earlier time: there you can be reminded (if you need reminding) of just how refreshing the rise of liberalism could be.

Lukacs has a final chapter called "Since Then," but it's perfunctory. There's certainly a story to be told about 20th Century Budapest, but you wouldn't come here to find it. On the other hand, as an exercise in archaeology -- of the substrate that underlies our more recent battles -- this book is hard to beat.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK (but only OK) if you are interested in Budapest around 1900, December 18, 2007

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture (Paperback)

In many of his books, Lukacs sets out to write a multi-disciplinary history (drawing on economics, psychology, sociology, and political theory) of a narrowly circumscribed subject during a relatively thin slice of time (e.g., "Five Days in London, May 1940" and "June 1941: Hitler and Stalin"). Here, the object of Lukacs' rather idiosyncratic approach to history is the city of Budapest around 1900, which, according to Lukacs, was the city's zenith as a cultural and commercial center of (Eastern) Europe. Unlike reading many of Lukacs' books, however, reading BUDAPEST 1900 is tough going. Lukacs does make an impressive case for the significance of Budapest and its many notable literary, artistic, and intellectual figures around the turn of the century, but he burdens that case with page after page of tedious chamber-of-commerce data: miles of railroad track, water consumption per capita, number of mailboxes, number of gymnasiums, theater seats per capita, etc., etc. Further, it is not readily apparent which pages or paragraphs to skip. To get to the wheat, one must necessarily sift through a lot of chaff.

I read this book as background and in preparation for reading some of the works of Gyula Krudy, and I looked forward to it because over the years I had enjoyed a number (at least six) other books by Lukacs. But this is not as well-written nor as intrinsically interesting as were the other books of his that I read, and the prickly and grandiloquent (an adjective that is used far too often in the book) side of Lukacs is a little too evident. Despite numerous informative and insightful passages, I had to force myself to stick with this book to the end, and having reached the end I am not sure it was worth the effort.