My heart was beating

‘My heart was beating like some young student’s before the big exam. Was I going to be able to step out onto this land that I have been striving to reach for four years with so many sacrifices and struggles? And if so, shall I be able to do any useful work?’ This is from the diaries of Oscar Jászi, the much-admired Hungarian historian and politician known for his advocacy of liberal democracy and social reform. He was born 150 years ago today, and at the time of this diary entry was arriving for the first time in the United States, where he would soon join Oberlin College as a history professor.

Jászi was born on 2 March 1875 in Nagykároly (now Carei, Romania) to his physician father and his second wife. Unhappy with their Jewish origins, his father converted the family to Calvinism in 1881. Oscar studied political science at the University of Budapest, and although he had a low-paid and long-term job in the ministry of agriculture, he developed his interest in politics by studying the country’s agricultural policies. In 1900, he launched with friends the journal Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century), and, under a pseudonym, published combative articles about the countries social structures. A year later, Jászi and friends founded the Sociological Society, promoting liberal and democratic ideas. His research and writing focused on political sociology, nationalism, and the need for democratic governance.

During World War I, Jászi became increasingly involved in politics and was instrumental in the short-lived Hungarian Democratic Republic of 1918, serving as Minister for Nationalities in Mihály Károlyi’s government. He attempted to negotiate autonomy for Hungary’s ethnic minorities to prevent the disintegration of the country but was unsuccessful. Following the collapse of the republic and the rise of the communist regime under Béla Kun, followed by the right-wing counterrevolution, Jászi was forced into exile in 1919. First he went to Vienna where he worked to keep Hungarian democracy alive, and from whence he travelled extensively to meet with other emigres.

Jászi settled in the US in 1925, and was appointed a professor at Oberlin College in Ohio, continuing his academic work on nationalism and Eastern European politics. He remained a strong critic of authoritarianism in Hungary and the broader region, advocating for democratic federalism. He wrote several influential books, including Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary and The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. He died in 1957. Further information is available at Wikipedia and in the major biography A Twentieth Century Prophet: Oscar Jászi 1875-1957 by György Litván (CEU Press, 2006 - available to preview at Googlebooks). 

Jászi left behind half a life time of diaries - written from 1919 until his death - in 39 notebooks, now held by Columbia University Libraries. Litván discusses these diaries in his preface: ‘From the very first sentence [. . .] it is clear that he had been keeping a diary before then, and that this was broken off during the turbulent days of the 1918 revolution and was obviously lost or destroyed during the Second World War, along with so many other documents. The Hungarian-language segments of the diary, from between 1919 and 1923, was published in 2001 by the Institute of Political History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The remaining, predominantly English-language segments are as yet unpublished, and use has been made of them only in connection with a few details (e.g. the recital given by Bela Bartok at Oberlin College or Jaszi’s 1947 trip to Hungary). With its detailed daily record of the weather, his own mood, his reading matter, meetings, lectures, correspondence, the articles or other pieces of writing that had been completed, college and domestic business, there can be little doubt that Jászi did not intend his diary to be published. Of course it proved to be of incalculable assistance in putting together this biography - particularly in the case of events, episodes or periods for which no other source exists or is known. (Among these, for instance, are the negotiations or conversations that he conducted with Masaryk, Benes, Maniu and other politicians, the internal disputes with fellow exiles in Vienna and America, and various other, far from exclusively political matters.) Still, the very amplitude of the diary material imposed a heavy responsibility on the author when it came to deciding which items of information might be omitted and which could not.’

Elsewhere in the biography, Litván gives a few verbatim extracts from the diaries buried in his text, as in this extract here [italics are for clarity only). 

‘The diary preserved every aspect of the almost month-long voyage [to the US] in exhaustive detail. Jászi already decided on the first day that his companions were of no interest, most of the travelers being Jewish emigrants from the Ukraine, though he did also hear some words of Hungarian. The food was moderate. As the ship put out to sea, “after all the anxieties, I was seized by a blithe contentment - as if I had been freed from five years imprisonment.” He repeats that several more times during the voyage, but various anxieties also resurface. On August 6th they docked a Varna, on the 8th there was “a marvelous passage through the Bosporus,” on the 9th they were held up at Istanbul, but by the 11th they had arrived at Piraeus, the harbor for Athens, where the ship was moored for several days, so that Jászi, despite the heat, walked round the Acropolis, as he had not previously visited Greece (nor was he to do so again). By the 14th they had reached Patras, from where the next day, with many new passengers on board, they made their way, without putting into harbor again, down the Mediterranean, through the Strait of Messina, past Sardinia and then the Algerian coast, through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic Ocean.

They were on the approaches to the port of New York, according to the diary, on August 30th: “My heart was beating like some young student’s before the big exam. Was I going to be able to step out onto this land that I have been striving to reach for four years with so many sacrifices and struggles? And if so, shall I be able to do any useful work?”

He passed the immigration controls on Ellis Island without incident. Even while still on the boat Jászi had received a letter from banker and industrialist Robert Caldwell in which the latter informed him that he would be at his service if there was anything he needed. They finally docked on September 1st: “And when the ship passed in front of the Statue of Liberty to enter the city fired by feverish activity, I was so overcome by emotion that I burst into tears on the ship’s bridge.” ’