Contents: Fin-de-Siècle Budapest – The Hungarian Trauma: 1918-1920 – Berlin Junction – Second Expulsion, Double Trauma: 1933 – New York Asylum: Acceptance and Animosity – Problem Solving and the U.S. War Effort.
The Author: Tibor Frank, M.A., Dr.Univ., Ph.D., D.Litt. is Professor of History and Director of the School of English and American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. He has taught frequently at universities in the USA (UCSB, UCLA, Nevada-Reno, Columbia). In 2002 he won the prestigious German Humboldt Research Award and spent the academic year 2003-04 in the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. Professor Frank is a corresponding fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London.
«Tibor Frank is the world’s foremost expert on Hungarian scholars,
scientists, and artists who chose exile or were forced into exile
during the first half of the twentieth century. (...) Frank’s
description of the adventures of these extraordinary expatriates is
as fascinating as is, for instance, his analysis of how some among
them helped to develop the atomic and nuclear bombs as well as
computers, thereby literally changing the way we live and think
today.» (István Deák, Columbia University)
«This fascinating book goes far beyond Fermi’s and Bailyn/Fleming’s
accounts and presents the whole story in all its transatlantic
richness. (...) Finally, the individual profiles, most especially
of Leo Szilard, but also of Michael Polanyi, George Pólya, Theodore
von Kármán, and John von Neumann, give the collective story of so
many names in so many fields of the sciences and social sciences
its subjective and personal touches. At the end I was forced to
contemplate the historical contingency that without the Hungarian
‘gimnázium’ there might not have been an American atomic bomb...»
(Werner Sollors, Harvard University)
«The book to be read (...) is Frank’s masterly account of a greatly
gifted generation, most of the members of which had twice to begin
their lives anew in foreign lands.» (Lee Congdon, Hungarian Studies
Review)
«Frank covers an impressive range of issues and people, examining
with great care the Hungarian, Central European, German and
American layers of the émigré question, returning time and again to
the notion of the ‘Hungarian genius’ and the idea that emigration
studies should further differentiate national origins, so as to
become aware of the more intricate effects of specific cultural
traditions and educations. In doing so, Frank creates a
surprisingly pleasant, considering the subject, and at times
page-turning, narrative that provides access to a staggering amount
of data and source material about Hungarian-Jewish professionals
from 1919 up to the present.» (Ilse Josepha Maria Lazaroms,
European Review of History)
«Tibor Frank’s excellently written study introduces the reader to a
previously ignored part of history, an enlightening journey from
the ‘fin-de-siècle’ Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to interwar Berlin,
Weimar, New York, and beyond. The author’s logic is easy to follow,
never diverting from the main path, still providing a generous
number of examples, closing with individual case studies. [...] His
book is not only important from an American-Hungarian relations
research perspective but also contributes to the history and
philosophy of science as well as the understanding of immigration
policies and the scholarship of the receiving cultures.» (Tímea
Oláh, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies)
«The greatest strength of Tibor Frank’s ‘Double Exile’ is his
extensive archival research in North America and Europe. Frank’s
work is a great example of the potential of transnational history
to connect otherwise disconnected national historiographies. (...)
Above all, the book serves as a compelling guide for further
research.» (Matthew Lungerhausen, Austrian History Yearbook 43,
2012)
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