Nemes, Robert

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Nemes, Robert

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Pennsylvania, B.A.; Columbia University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Colgate University, 13 Oak Dr., 313 Alumni Hall, Hamilton, NY 13346. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, associate professor of history, 1999—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

American Council of Learned Societies fellowships; Whiting Fellowship; Fulbright grant; President's Fellowship, Columbia University.

WRITINGS:

The Once and Future Budapest, Northern Illinois University Press (DeKalb, IL), 2005.

Contributor to Culture Wars: Secular Catholic Conflicts in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2003. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Austrian History Yearbook, European History Quarterly, Journal of Women's History, and Slavic Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robert Nemes presents the history of two towns that grew to be a great metropolitan center and capital city in his book The Once and Future Budapest. The city that is now Budapest had its origins in two smaller towns: Buda and Pest, which were divided by the Danube River. The populations of both Buda and Pest were largely German-speaking, but they were also home to Magyars, Greeks, Serbs, Slovaks, and other ethnic groups. Buda had been named the capital of Hungary in 1361, but Hungary itself was taken over by the Turks and the Habsburg empire. At the end of the seventeenth century, Buda was freed from Turkish rule. A struggle for independence from the Habsburgs and Austrian rule began there in 1848, but was defeated. The twin cities of Buda and Pest were first united in 1849, when they shared a common administration. In 1867, the empire of Austria-Hungary was created, and in 1873, the towns of Buda, Pest, and Obuda were officially unified under the name of Budapest. The multiethnic, polyglot nature of the two towns was transformed. Budapest, now the capital of a dual monarchy, entered its Golden Age, quickly developing into a thriving center of finance, politics, and the arts. It was the center of the new Hungarian nationalism, and was on a par with Vienna, the other capital of Austria-Hungary. Population soared, and there were dramatic shifts in the social and cultural framework. In 1851, for example, the population of Buda and Pest was one-half German and only one-third Magyar (ethnic Hungarian); by the 1890s, Magyar was by far the dominant language, with only ten percent of citizens having German as their primary language.

The Once and Future Budapest explores the rapid, dramatic shifts in Budapest. The author is "remarkably evenhanded in his treatment of this development, which he considers neither inevitable nor unproblematic," noted Mary Gluck in the American Historical Review. Nemes's research found that the nationalization of Budapest was consciously sought by a small group of activists, who founded various publications, social clubs, arts centers, and economic associations that used the Magyar language and fostered a strong Hungarian identity. Yet, Nemes also found that nationalism had many variations, and could exist even with a citizenry that had multiple loyalties and ways of defining themselves. The author also takes in the larger story of European nationalism, for the growth of nationalism at that time was not confined to Hungary. He explores why the move for nationalism was more successful in Budapest than in other cities, such as Prague. He believes it is in part because Hungarian nationalism was more progressive than that of some other countries, and more welcoming of diversity within its ranks. Nemes's book is, Gluck concluded, "based on rich archival sources and an imaginative use of contemporary literature." She found The Once and Future Budapest to be "imaginative and carefully researched."

"Robert Nemes insists that nationalization was not only a strategy of Hungarian state building, an elitist nationalization effort, or a result of Hungarian lower-class immigration gaining momentum in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Written in a highly enjoyable style, Nemes's study shifts the focus of attention toward the broader field of urban culture and at times to the social and political order on which it rested," stated Susan Zimmermann in her review of The Once and Future Budapest for the Austrian History Yearbook. She noted that even though the author discusses nationalism extensively, he "de-nationalizes" the narrative by giving careful attention to the many players in the drama—men and women, Jews and Christians, native Magyars and other ethnic peoples. "He draws attention to the exclusionary, divisive, and repressive practices and consequences built into the long-term process of transforming Buda-Pest into a Hungarian city," Zimmermann said.

In various chapters, Nemes describes nationalization as it was expressed and fostered in fashion, art, and architecture. He analyzes policies of the Catholic Church that affected nationalization. He documents Budapest's drive to become a world-class city and a travel destination, on a par with Paris. His book "is a welcome addition to the field of Budapest histories," said Alexander Vari in a review for the Canadian Journal of History. "With its detailed and innovative focus on Magyarization as both an elite-led and a grassroots process, it highlights the importance of nineteenth-century nationalism in shaping the ethnic and semiotic landscape of central European capital cities."

J.-Guy Lalande, a contributor to the Urban History Review, found Nemes's book "well-crafted and well-written," a book that "will appeal equally to historians, architects, and urbanists." The Once and Future Budapest "is aesthetically pleasing from its book jacket to the prints and its fluid descriptions of the visual arts and the architectural aesthetic of a city under construction," wrote Alice Freifeld in a Historian review. "Nemes provides fascinating vignettes. His chapters are, to use his metaphor, a dance."