István Deák’s History of Hungary

I still have my notes from “History of Hungary, 1848 to the Present,” a course I took 30 years ago with Professor István Deák. After entering the PhD program at Columbia University, I had become fascinated with Hungary, which I first visited the summer before (just my second time in Europe). I had also begun studying Hungarian. So I had high expectations for this course.As the semester unfolded, I felt somewhat underwhelmed. True, István could rattle off from memory the names of all the ministers who served in Count Lajos Batthyány’s government in 1848. But one can applaud a long parade of names and dates for only so long; in my eyes, the teaching was solid but not spectacular, informative but not enthralling. Perhaps it was the room—a windowless, gloomy classroom in the depths of the International Affairs Building—or the late afternoon meeting time, or István’s health, which was not great that semester. Looking back, I can see how many misapprehensions I had at the time: about what constitutes good teaching, about the questions historians should ask, and (this last barely acknowledged) about whether I—with my limited horizons and rudimentary language skills—really belonged at Columbia. Today, paging through my class notes, I realize how mistaken I was, both about István’s gifts as a teacher and—due to his generosity and patience—my place in graduate school.István’s approach to Hungarian history was conventional in many respects. He told the story from the center and from above, with a strong emphasis on political, diplomatic, and military history. We spent a long time on the 1800s, which made sense, given that he had published The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848–1849 (1979) and Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918 (1990).1 Now I can spot the many places in the course where he confidently plunged into long-running historical debates, such as those surrounding the Hungarian declaration of independence of 1849 (was it a mistake?) and the 1867 settlement (“IT WORKED!,” shout my notes). István displayed his characteristic affinity for people and behaviors that defy simple categorization, such as the honvéd [Hungarian army] general Károly Leiningen-Westerburg, who came from an aristocratic German family, married a Hungarian noblewoman, had a brother and uncle who fought for the Habsburgs, and was executed at Arad in 1849. He also offered broader interpretations: the “gradual disappearance of the minorities is the most important transformation in E[astern] Europe,” I scrawled on the first day of class. A marginal note from the second meeting—“ethnicity not the 18th/19th century problem”—posed a riddle that I (and many others) would attempt to answer in the years to come (fig. 1).István presented the twentieth century in an even-handed manner. The insights that animated his pathbreaking New York Review of Books essays and his later Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during World War II (2015)2 were fully on display as his lectures carefully analyzed the dilemmas people faced in Nazi-dominated Europe: “Q[uestion] of resistance difficult in Vichy France, Hungary, Bulg[aria]—who were they fighting against? Germany or gov[ernmen]t.? Govt. at least maintained a semi-independent Hungary.” Yet my notes also show how deeply he understood the need for clarity and moral purpose in teaching this history: “The deportation of the Hungarian Jews. The greatest tragedy in the history of Hungary.” His treatment of communism and the 1956 Revolution was insightful and nuanced. When, on one of my papers, I mistakenly wrote “Rákosi” (the Hungarian Stalinist) when I meant to write “Rákóczi” (the eighteenth-century rebel leader), István simply corrected the mistake with an amused exclamation point. Only much later did it dawn on me that Rákosi had been one of the main reasons why he had left Hungary.In class, István spoke very little about how this difficult history had affected him, his family, and his friends. In one class, when he passed around an English-language book by the historian Joseph Held (another Hungarian exile), I noted the Hungarian-language dedication—Pistának, baráti szeretettel, Jóska [To Pista, in friendship, Jóska]—marveling at its economy and wondering at its layers of meaning (fig. 2). My class notes contain the cryptic remark, scrawled on the top of a page outlining the causes of the 1848 revolution, “Körösnagyharsány—town where Deák’s parents were exiled.” I know now that this refers to a small village on the Hungarian-Romanian border. But nothing in my notes or memories gives any indication of how this came up or what it meant to István. Only later would he begin to write and speak publicly about growing up in Hungary in the 1930s and 1940s.I would instead get to know him in other ways. When I plunged headfirst into Hungarian history and chose to write a dissertation about the Reform Era, he gave his full support and answered countless questions as I tried to get my bearings. Although he had cares and concerns of his own, he was always patient, kind, and funny—admirable skills in a dissertation advisor.These qualities were needed at the end of my graduate career, at my dissertation defense. István’s legs had been troubling him, and, as the date approached, it became clear that the defense would have to be held in his apartment. The morning of the defense, however, he called to say that he could not even get out of bed. My dissertation defense thus took place in his bedroom, with him propped up on pillows and the rest of the committee and I sitting in chairs around his bed. What might have been strange or awkward became—entirely because of István—a moment of friendship and humor (along with difficult questions about my dissertation). Sixteen years later, I read with pride and deep feeling the dedication he wrote in my copy of Europe on Trial: “To Robert Nemes, fellow Hungarian historian, in memory of our bedroom PhD defense. István Deák.”

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