Embroiled in the political events surrounding World War I and the failed Hungarian revolutions of 1918-19, a number of intellectuals fled Hungary for Germany and Austria, where they essentially created Weimar culture. Among them were Georg LukNBcs, whose History and Class Consciousness recast Marxism and challenged even those who repudiated its politics; Bela BalNBzs, who pioneered film theory and collaborated with film-makers G. W. Pabst, Leni Riefenstahl, and Alexander Korda; LNBszlc Moholy-Nagy, who codirected the Bauhaus during its heyday in the mid-1920s; and Karl Mannheim, whose Ideology and Utopia was the most widely discussed work of noncommunist social theory during the Weimar years. In this collective portrait combining intellectual history with biographical detail, Lee Congdon describes how Hungarian thinkers, each in a different way, passionately advocated the need for community in a Europe torn by war and revolution. Whether communist, avant-gardist, or Catholic convert, each thinker is examined within the vast tapestry of his works, his cultural and intellectual milieu, and his experience as an exile. Despite the ideological differences of these men, Congdon reveals how their personal destinies and social goals often merged. Since many were assimilated Jews, he argues that their thinking on society was inextricably intertwined with their youthful sensitivity to anti-Semitism in Hungary and with the isolating limitations of their lives in Germany and Austria.
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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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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