Part one

Other Options in Europe

Though Germany was certainly the most tempting and promising emigrant destination after World War I, Hungarian step-migration to the United States did not lead through Germany alone. Persecuted in or barred from their homeland, many young Hungarians, usually equipped with a good working knowledge of German (and German alone), moved to a number of other German-speaking countries.
Unlike Berlin, Vienna was disillusioned, uninspiring and lacking substance. Though many Hungarians lived there, they did not necessarily like it. The ambiance in the city was particularly bad after the revolutions of 1918-19. Karl Polanyi, who lived there for many years serving as the editor of the economic paper «Der österreichische Volkswirt», compared it to a «salt desert, where not even through loneliness can one get rid of the aggressive atmosphere of barrenness» [158]. He bitterly complained also in a letter to his mother:

To live here in Vienna is just nonsensical: It is expensive(!!), bad (!!), dusty (!!) hot (!!) dull, desolate, nervekilling and rash. Everybody escapes Vienna... [159]

Karl Polanyi became increasingly anxious to leave Vienna for Berlin and prepared to transfer his paper to the German capital [160]. «A hundred doubts, a thousand problems», a friend wrote to Michael Polanyi.

This doubt and restlessness tortures everybody and as people exchange their Deutschmarks into [U.S.] dollars, their dollars into [Swiss] francs, their francs into [Russian] rubles, they change their beliefs accordingly. Revolutionaries, monarchists, republicans, terrorists, religious errants, etc., etc. The road is loud of the army of the erring and mistaking, their word makes the world loud [161].

Many young people went to Czechoslovak universities. There were general and technical German universities both in Prague and in Brno; this, combined with the shared cultural heritage within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as well as the budding democracy of the new country, proved to be very attractive. «There was an entire colony of Hungarian students in Brno», remembered engineer Marcel Stein in an interview granted in New York in 1989.

I came from a Pozsony (Bratislava, Preßburg) family where the mother tongue was German. Most of us in Brno were not Communists, but members of the Jewish middle-class. For the holidays, students [like Mr. Stein] went to Pozsony rather than Budapest, but after graduation the majority returned to Hungary. Some of them continued their studies in Berlin-Charlottenburg and Karlsruhe in Germany, or, like the eminent engineer László Heller, in Zürich, Switzerland. Coming home to anti-Semitic Hungary was a real shock after the experiences in democratic Czechoslovakia [162].

The German universities of Czechoslovakia were very popular among the Hungarian-born citizens of that country. Though born in Nagyvárad (today Roumania), Kálmán Z. Istók was educated in Rim. Sobota (Czeschoslovakia), and received his medical degree in 1934 at the German Charles University in Prague. He practiced medicine in Czechoslovakia until early 1945 when he left for Austria to become a doctor at various Displaced Persons hospitals. He emigrated to the U.S. through the International Rescue Committee as well as the National Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Physicians in 1951 [163].

Several in the Hungarian community of Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) attempted to have their children educated in Germany. Some worked through Hungarian connections in Germany and, later, in the U.S., and sent these often very gifted students to German or American universities. This was the case of engineering professor Andrew Fejér whose parents desperately tried to send him to study with Theodore von Kármán in Aachen in 1930, and when that plan failed, joined him as a graduate student at Caltech in Pasadena in 1938 [164].
The Hungarian intellectual diaspora was huge and not confined to German-speaking Europe: it was scattered all over the Continent. The human geography of Hungarian intellectual migrations followed a complex pattern. Mathematician György Pólya married his Swiss professor's daughter and settled in Switzerland during World War I. He became a citizen of Zürich in early 1918 and ultimately, in 1928, a full professor of the reputable Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule of that city. It was at the invitation of his friend and co-author Gábor Szego, that he left Switzerland for Stanford University shortly after the outbreak of World War II [165].
Not even all of the eminent Hungarians who wished to go to Germany could go there. «There are enough physical chemists in Germany so it is hardly possible for me to get a job there. I don't even entertain such plans», prospective Nobel Laureate Georg de Hevesy (Chemistry 1943) wrote to Michael Polanyi in early 1920, as he settled in the institute of Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, Denmark [166]. Nevertheless, he maintained his scientific connections with Germany in subsequent years [167]. Life in post-War Copenhagen characteristically reminded Hevesy «of the good old times when there was a k.u.k. army and other nice institutions, and retired generals and others like them lived in Graz or Klagenfurt» [168].
On a sabbatical from the University of Budapest, psychologist Géza Révész left for Germany in 1920. Révész was the son-in-law of Professor Bernát Alexander, the celebrated Budapest scholar, who already had a central position in Budapest intellectual high society as a young man. Family connections also played a role in his unfolding career in Hungary, where he became a full professor in 1918. Nevertheless, he felt he had to go after the great upheaval of 1918-20. This was the time of remarkable growth in German psychology, and Révész tried to settle in Göttingen, where he had studied from 1902-06. In search of a job, he also visited Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Rostock, Munich, and Berlin. When it became obvious that there was no chance for him in Germany, he accepted an invitation from the University of Amsterdam in the spring of 1921. A year later he discontinued his job in Budapest; in 1932 he became Head of the Psychological Laboratory in Amsterdam, and subsequently a naturalized Dutch citizen. Though several of his relations did go to the United States, Révész never wanted to leave Europe. Unlike his brother-in-law, Franz Alexander, he considered the U.S. culture alien to him and his world. Thus, music and language psychologist Géza Révész became internationally acknowledged at the University of Amsterdam, where he was a full professor from 1939 [169].
Mathematician Marcel Riesz settled in Sweden, taught in Stockholm and in Lund until 1952 when he went to teach in the United States at Princeton, Stanford, the University of Maryland and the University of Indiana [170].
Some Hungarians who were not in a position to leave the country chose a special form of intellectual migration, that of publishing their books and articles in Germany throughout the 1920s and the early 1930s. Some of the politically motivated books by historians Gyula Szekfu and Elemér Mályusz were first published in Germany [171]. Non-political books were also taken to German publishers, such as the one on Hungarian geniuses by psychologist H. von Szirmay-Pulszky [172]. Theodore's brother Elemér von Kármán, an expert in correctional education, published his Einführung in die Kriminalpaedagogik in München in 1923 and was immediately contracted by the Berlin publisher Carl Heymann to write another book with two eminent German scholars, on Leitfaden für die Untersuchung verwahrloster und krimineller Kinder und Jugendlichen [173].
Similarly, important Hungarian singers such as Gitta Alpár, Piroska Anday, Mária Németh, and Koloman von Pataky were frequent guests of German and Austrian operas without actually leaving Hungary permanently. Authors such as Ferenc Molnár and Ignotus increasingly spent their time out of the country without it being considered an «emigration». Further research should illuminate how this kind of "overseas" publishing, musical activities, and lifestyles can be seen as important but hidden forms of intellectual migration.

Rescue Operations

January 30, 1933 brought a terrible end to Jewish-Hungarian presence in Germany. Emigration to other European countries and into the United States started immediately. The outward flow of eminent German-Jewish professionals resulted in one of the greatest intellectual migrations in world history and in one of the most tragic losses the German mind had ever suffered. But was it really the "German mind" alone that suffered from the Nazi take-over?

After Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, it took very little time for even the most optimistic or naïve Jewish-Hungarians in Germany to realize the terrifying urgency of escaping the country. They had several options: the most natural was to return to Hungary where the right-wing régime of Regent Miklós Horthy (1920-44) and Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös (1932-34) was friendly towards the new Germany but not yet adhering to its virulent anti-Semitism. Hungarian Jews enjoyed a decade of undiscriminating citizenship, from the late 1920s through the first anti-Semitic laws in 1938-39, and many who felt threatened in Germany returned, after some hesitation, to Budapest.
Another option was to leave for some other European country: many went to Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, countries which provided temporary asylum with the coming of World War II. A sizable group felt unsafe anywhere on the Continent of Europe and headed immediately towards Britain or the United States.
The international community of scientists and scholars showed a great deal of compassion for those being threatened by Hitler. They supported emigrating colleagues from Germany by providing the necessary organizational framework and material assistance [174], providing for some 6000 highly qualified professionals to leave Germany in quick succession [175]. A number of parallel initiatives emerged to bring about an effective framework for rescuing the community of German-Jewish scientists.
In May 1933, scientists in Great Britain established the Academic Assistance Council (first conceived as the International Board of Scientists and Scholars) with Nobel Laureate Lord Rutherford as President and Sir William [later Lord] Beveridge and Professor C.S. Gibson as Secretaries [176]. A few weeks later the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German (later Foreign) Scholars was established as the American counterpart of the AAC to provide grants or fellowships to immigrant scientists and scholars [177]. The main contributions to the Emergency Committee funds came from Jewish foundations and individuals [178].
Another support committee, the Comité International pour la Placement des Intellectuels Réfugiés, was formed in Geneva, offering positions to refugee professors from Austria, Germany, and Italy [179].

Jewish groups in Europe considered raising funds for a new university based on refugee faculty alone, an idea that originated in the mind of Albert Einstein who envisaged a Flüchtlingsuniversität, a refugee or emigrant university somewhere in Europe [180]. A longtime and valued colleague, Leo Szilard was able to convince Einstein «that this would not be an easy task», and that he should "concentrate on one promising effort» [181]. This is how Einstein began to support the idea of the Academic Assistance Council. Another suggestion was to raise more money for the Palestine University [182]. Immediately after the recession, however, there was not enough money for any of these projects to materialize. Instead, several agencies provided relief of some sort, such as the Jewish Relief Committee in Amsterdam.
Headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland [Emergency Society of German Scholars Abroad] was founded largely as a result of the efforts of a Hungarian-born scientist. «Professor Philip Schwartz», wrote Lord Beveridge in his A Defence of Free Learning,

Hungarian by birth but holding a Chair of General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy at Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany, was an immediate victim of Hitler's racial persecution and went in March 1933 to Zürich in Switzerland. There he founded at once the Notgemeinschaft and directed it for six months. ... For money it had to depend almost wholly on contributions from displaced scholars whom it had helped to re-establish. But by its personal knowledge of the scholars themselves and by using its contacts with universities everywhere, it [the Notgemeinschaft] rendered invaluable service [183].

These services included providing a list of nearly 1500 names of dismissed academics in Germany, which was published in 1936 with the assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation [184].
The first major success of the Notgemeinschaft was an agreement with the Turkish government to place 33 German professors at the University of Istanbul. Similar arrangements were discussed with Australian, Indian, South African, Soviet and U.S. authorities as well as with the Committee for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations.
Jewish-Hungarian Physicist Leo Szilard took on the enormous task of volunteering to head the bulk of the rescue operations throughout 1933 and the subsequent period [185]. Szilard, who was generally recognized as a man of extraordinary abilities and completely without selfish motives, may have been motivated to do this work because of his appreciation and gratitude to the German professors, colleagues, and friends who had helped him throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. As Professor Paul Ehrenfest of the University of Leiden said in a letter to Professor Donnan,

Szilard is a very rare example of a man because of his combination of great purely scientific acumen, his ability to immerse himself in and solve technical problems, his fascination and fantasy for organizing, and his great sensitivity and compassion for people in need. ... What I find so particularly enviable in him, is that he reacts to any difficulty which may arise with immediate action rather than depression or resignation. For even though this procedure is not always successful, an energetic reaction is still vastly more fruitful than a passive attitude. I feel deeply ashamed when I see how wonderfully energetically he immediately set about doing everything in his power to work for the Jewish-German scholars. ... he simply felt that, confronted with this great, wild catastrophe, his first duty was to use his special talents in organizing aid for a specific subgroup of scientists [186].

Also among fellow-Hungarians in Germany, Szilard was well-known as a man always ready to help. Philosopher Karl Mannheim, who worked with Szilard on the establishment of the Academic Assistance Council in 1933, remembered him as one who «belongs to that rare group of people who never demand something for themselves» [187]. Another friend and colleague, Eugene Wigner also had nothing but lavish praises for Szilard's unselfishness [188].
Perhaps more than anybody else, Szilard contributed to the foundation of the Academic Assistance Council in 1933. Escaping Berlin shortly after the burning of the Reichstag, he had accidentally met Sir William Beveridge in Vienna. Szilard persuaded Beveridge to form a committee in aid of refugee scientists and scholars and followed him to England [189]. He did the job worthy of an entire team but was on occasion viewed even with suspicion.[190] Leaving London in early May, he traveled for a month on the Continent.

What I am concerned with at the present is to co-ordinate the foreign groups which are already in existence, and to stimulate the formation of groups in countries where there are no suitable groups as yet,

Szilard wrote to Dr. Max Delbrück [191]. In Belgium he met the Rectors of all four Belgian universities, as well as Professor Jacques Errera of the University of Brussels and Hendrik de Man who assisted him in mobilizing Belgian colleagues to aid refugee scientists and scholars [192]. In Switzerland, he talked to Dr. Kullman of the Committee for Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations and Dr. Kotschnig of the International Student Service [193]. In Britain, Szilard met with university leaders and leading scientists such as Sir William [subsequently Lord] Beveridge, Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, Professor Frederick George Donnan of University College, London, Professor Gilbert Murray of Oxford, Chairman of the League of Nations Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, Sir John Russell, Professor G. H. Hardy (Cambridge), Nobel Laureates Niels Bohr (Physics 1922) and Archibald V. Hill (Physiology 1922), Lord Melchett, as well as Jewish leaders Neville Laski, Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore, Sir Philip Hartog, Chairman of the Committee of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the future President of Israel [194]. He worked in the office of the Academic Assistance Council headquartered in the Royal Society on the Piccadilly in London [195].
Oddly enough, despite all the relief work he did for others, Leo Szilard was himself in trouble in regard to his own future. In June 1933, he requested the support of Eugene Wigner: «Last, not least, someone must take care of myself, as I naturally can't do this myself and it would be incompatible with my current activities anyway» [196]. At this point, it seems, fellow Hungarian scientists rated Szilard rather poorly as a physicist. Wigner gave him his

complete appreciation for his directness and trustworthiness. His unselfishness is almost unparalleled among my acquaintances. He has an imagination that would be of extraordinary use to him and to any institution for which he works. I don't know if a purely scientific job would be the best for him, although this should be also considered [197].

Wigner thought of two possible jobs for Szilard, neither of them in academia. Likewise, Theodore von Kármán did «not think that the case of Szilard is a very strong one» [198], when asked for his comments on Szilard as a prospective U.S. visiting professor in 1934.
The Academic Assistance Council helped several Hungarian scholars get to Britain including Michael Polanyi’s brother Karl [199], and Szilard also considered mobilizing the Nobel Laureates in aid of the refugee scientists and scholars, but the plan failed to receive general approval and was soon dropped [200]. Himself securely on his way to Britain, Michael Polanyi tried to help some of his gifted students in Germany obtain a scholarship to Britain [201].
Szilard soon realized that a fellowship granted by the Academic Assistance Council would not necessarily result in a permanent appointment in England.
It is therefore important to take up every case as soon as possible with America and other countries in order to get a more uniform distribution as far as permanent appointments are concerned. A certain number of American scientists and scholars should in view of this problem be asked to act as correspondent members of the Academic Assistance Council [202].
The academic community in the United States was horrified to learn of what was happening in Germany. German-born Franz Boas was one of the first to receive an authentic report from Benjamin Liebowitz who had travelled throughout Europe collecting information and helping plan relief operations. «It is impossible to describe the utter despair of all classes of Jews in Germany», he wrote in early May 1933 to Boas.

The thoroughness with which they are being hunted out and stopped short in their careers is appalling. Unless help comes from the outside, there is no outlook for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, except starvation or the sleeping pill. It is a gigantic 'cold' pogrom. And it is not only against Jews; Communists, of course, are included, but are not singled out racially; social democrats and liberals generally are coming under the ban, especially if they protest in the least against the Nazi movement. Please note that I am not speaking from hearsay: I know people, friends in many classes - scientists, scholars, doctors, lawyers, business men, economists, etc.[203]

The relief operation enjoyed a good deal of support in the United States, where the academic community was «terribly concerned about the situation in Germany» [204]. «I have a letter this morning from an old friend», wrote Abraham Flexner, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study to John von Neumann, «telling me unspeakable things about the way in which Hitler is ruining the German Educational Ministry and other cultural activities. The whole thing seems to me the act of mad men. I cannot believe that it will endure» [205]. In a few weeks he added:

The whole American nation is a unit as respects the crazy performances of the German Government. Göttingen has been absolutely ruined and the University students must all be mad. Nothing crazier has happened in human history since the days of the French Terror [206].

Acting through Benjamin Liebowitz, Szilard was instrumental in securing contributions from Franz Boas of Columbia University who played a leading role in marshalling support for the refugee cause [207]. Boas invited John Dewey, [probably Frank William] Taussig, Raymond Pearl, Walter Cannon and others (including even Ezra Pound) to serve on a board that coordinated the Academic Assistance Council and U.S. universities and scientists [208]. Other Hungarians who contributed toward launching the support project included John von Neumann and Theodore von Kármán who played an active role in relief operations. Von Neumann, then Professor of Mathematics in the Institute for Advanced Study, was asked to provide information about scientists in trouble in Germany. «It would be a good idea», Princeton mathematician Oswald Veblen wrote to John von Neumann, «to write me whatever you know in detail about the mathematicians and physicists who are in difficulties» [209]. Veblen also reported that «there are a number of attempts being made to raise money to provide relief in this country for the Jews and Liberals who are being dispossessed in Germany» [210]. Von Neumann himself supported the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland, both in terms of supplying money and information [211].
Another important group of Hungarians who were forced to leave Germany by the Nazi takeover were the filmmakers. The exodus of 1500 members of the German filmmaking community including a number of top producers, directors and performers during the Nazi era was a turning point in the history of the German film industry. Celebrities of the German screen along with film technicians and other artists left Germany after 1933 and moved to Vienna, Prague, Paris, London, Palestine, Mexico and the United States. Though we do not have a complete list of all the Hungarian casualties, the best-known filmmakers who left Germany for the U.S. after 1933 included Laslo (László) Benedek (the internationally celebrated hero of the psychopathic M), actor Peter Lorre, director Andrew (Endre) Marton, producer-director George Pal (Pál), producer-director Gabriel Pascal, actor S.Z. Sakall ("Szoke Szakál", b. Szakáll Gero Jeno), as well as director Steve Sekely (István Székely) [212]. Several of the émigré directors and producers continued working successfully in the United States, though most actors had to be satisfied with minor roles of "foreigners" in Hollywood productions [213].
Ultimately, some 6000 displaced scholars and professional persons from Europe applied to the New York-based Emergency Committee, out of which 335 were granted assistance [214]. Hungarians applying for (and eventually receiving) grants or fellowships either left Germany in 1933-34 (I), or left Hungary after anti-Semitic legislation was introduced there in 1938-39 (II) [215]. An incomplete list of indisputably Hungarian names includes:

I
Ladislaus (László) Farkas
Melchior (Menyhért) Pályi
Otto Szász mathematician
Gabriel (Gábor) Szego mathematician
Leo Szilárd physicist
Edward (Ede) Teller physicist
Paul (Pál) Neményi
Imre Weisz

II
Dezso Rapaport
Stephan Sárközi de Somogyi-Schill
Egon Wellesz
George Pólya
Nelly Szent-Györgyi
Ladislas (László) Tisza
Charles de Tolnay
Rusztem Vámbéry

The following Hungarians applied for aid to the Emergency Committee but were refused:

I
Willy (Vilmos) Fellner
A. B. Halasi
Friedrich (Frigyes) Antal

II
Elizabeth M. Hajós
Michael Erdélyi
Francis (Ferenc) de Korösy
Eugene (Jeno) Lukács
Elemér Balogh
Zoltán Fekete
Imre Ferenczi
Béla Frank

Altogether some 65 Hungarians appear on the lists of the Committee. They were almost exclusively Jewish-Hungarian and left the country, directly or indirectly, for the U.S., for that particular reason. The greater part of these left Hungary after the institution of the anti-Semitic laws between 1938-41. A sizable group had already left in, or right after 1933, by way of Germany. Even the small sample of people who turned to the Emergency Committee demonstrates that many who were registered as German when the 1933 exodus started were, in fact, immigrants to Germany from Hungary, including scientists Leo Szilard and Edward Teller as well as mathematicians Otto Szász and Gábor Szego [216].
Hungarians had a particular sensitivity to the emergency situation in Germany because of a strong sense of the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-foreignism. Moreover, the persecution and threat Nazis created in Germany was strongly reminiscent of the Hungarian ordeal of 1919-20. This sensitivity made some of the Hungarians in Germany extremely active and successful leaders of the rescue operations that saved the lives and careers of several thousand scientists and scholars in Germany.

Conclusion

The intention of this article is to show and document both the transit role of Germany and, particularly, Berlin in the history of Hungarian intellectual migrations and the role of Hungarians in the great exodus from Germany after the Nazi takeover.
Links between the two countries were anything but new: during much of her modern history, Hungary in some way formed a part of, or was strongly influenced by, the greater German cultural realm; indeed it developed on the fringes of the German civilization. The tendency to frequent German cultural and study centers was a natural for the Hungarian upper and upper-middle classes throughout the 18th, 19th and the early 20th centuries.
Most Hungarians who went to Germany after World War I were of Jewish origin. Many of them were forced to leave Hungary because they had been politically involved in the Hungarian revolutions of 1918-19 (in most cases the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919). Others became innocent victims of the anti-Semitic campaign and legislation that followed the aborted Bolshevik-type coup in 1919-20, the first of its kind in Europe. These groups typically spoke good German, were educated in the German cultural tradition, and had many earlier contacts with Germany and other German-speaking cultural and scientific centers of Central Europe. It seemed natural for them to seek what turned out to be temporary refuge in the intellectually flourishing and politically tolerant atmosphere of Weimar Germany.
Though the Hungarian government realized the potential loss the country would suffer from intellectual exile, most émigrés withstood official endeavors to lure them back to Hungary and chose to stay in Germany until Hitler took over as Chancellor in January 1933. Hungarian scientists, scholars, artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors and other professionals enjoyed high recognition and prestige in pre-Nazi Germany. This “German” reputation helped them rebuild their subsequent career in England and, particularly the United States, where, after 1933, most of these “German” Hungarians were headed.
The rise of anti-Semitism and the Nazi takeover reminded Jewish-Hungarians in Germany of their former experiences in Hungary and this historical déjà-vu often alerted them to act earlier than did many native Germans. Several Hungarians played an important role in rescuing the victims of Nazi Germany and soon became very active in anti-Nazi movements and instrumental in promoting Allied efforts to beat Germany and Japan in World War II.
Continuing research is needed to provide further statistical evidence about the actual number of immigrants in Weimar Germany, including the number of émigré Hungarians and their social composition. It would be important to learn more about social networking, bonding, and inter-group relations among the various émigré groups and individuals, including Hungarians, as well as the relationship between immigrants and the German population. Little is known of the politics of many of the immigrants: their voting patterns, their party affiliations, their political organizations remain to be investigated.
Individual immigrant groups had specific ways of thinking, communicating, and arguing. A comparison would well illuminate their cultural differences and their varied contributions to German civilization. A systematic study of the pre-Nazi German periodical literature may reveal even more of the achievement and contribution of Hungarians and other émigré intellectuals in Weimar Germany*.