This is a social history of refugees escaping Hungary after the
Bolshevik-type revolution of 1919, the ensuing counterrevolution, and
the rise of anti-Semitism. Largely Jewish and German before World War I,
the Hungarian middle class was torn by the disastrous war, the
partitioning of Hungary in the Treaty of Trianon, and the numerus
clausus act XXV in 1920 that seriously curtailed the number of Jews
admitted to higher education. Hungary's outstanding future
professionals, whether Jewish, Liberal or Socialist, felt compelled to
leave the country and head to German-speaking universities in Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Germany. When Hitler came to power, these exiles
were to flee again, many on the fringes of the huge German emigration.
Emotionally prepared by their earlier threatening experiences in
Hungary, they were quick to recognize the need to uproot themselves
again. Many fled to the United States where their double exile catalyzed
the USA into an active enemy of Nazi Germany and stimulated the
transplantation of European modernism into American art and music. To
their surprise, the refugees also encountered anti-Semitism in the USA.
The book is based on extensive archival work in the USA and Germany.