Hungarian Americans (Hungarian: Amerikai magyarok, pronounced[ˈɒmɛrikɒjiˈmɒɟɒrok]) are Americans of Hungarian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated that there are approximately 1.396 million Americans of Hungarian descent as of 2018. The total number of people with ethnic Hungarian background is estimated to be around 4 million.[3] The largest concentration is in the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area in NortheastOhio. At one time, the presence of Hungarians withinCleveland proper was so great that the city was known as the "American Debrecen," with one of the highest concentrations of Hungarians in the world.[4]
History
In 1583, Hungarian poet Stephanus Parmenius joined Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to North America with the intention of writing a chronicle of the voyage and its discoveries. Parmenius reached Newfoundland, likely becoming the first Hungarian in the New World.
Hungarians have long settled in the New World, such as Michael de Kovats, the founder of United States Cavalry, active in the American Revolution. Hungarians have maintained a constant state of emigration to the United States since then; however, they are best known for three principal waves of emigration.
Agoston Haraszthy, who settled in Wisconsin in 1840, was the first Hungarian to settle permanently in the United States[5] and the second Hungarian to write a book about the United States in his native language.[6] After he moved to California in the Gold Rush of 1849, Haraszthy founded the Buena Vista Vineyards in Sonoma (now Buena Vista Carneros) and imported more than 100,000 European vine cuttings for the use of California winemakers. He is widely remembered today as the "Father of California Viticulture" or the "Father of Modern Winemaking in California."[7]
The first large wave of emigration from Hungary to the United States occurred in 1849–1850, when the so-called "Forty-Eighters" fled from retribution by Austrian authorities after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Lajos Kossuth gave a seven-month speaking tour of the U.S. in 1851 and 1852 to great acclaim as a champion of liberty, thereby unleashing a brief outburst of pro-Hungarian emotions. He left embittered because his refusal to oppose slavery alienated his natural constituency, and his long-term impact was minimal.[8] By 1860, 2,710 Hungarians lived in the U.S., and at least 99 of them fought in the Civil War. Their motivations were not so much antislavery as a belief in democracy, a taste for adventure, validation of their military credentials, and solidarity with their American neighbors.[9]
An increase of immigration from Hungary was also observed after World War II and The Holocaust, a significant percentage of whom were Jewish.
Andrew Grove (1936–2016), one of the three founders of Intel Corporation summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs:
By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.[10]
In 1956, Hungary was again under the power of a foreign state, this time the Soviet Union, and again, Hungarians rose up in revolution. Like the 1848 revolution, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 failed and led to the emigration of 200,000 "56-ers" fleeing persecution after the revolution, 40,000 of whom found their way to the United States.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 1,563,081[11] persons of Hungarian ancestry in the United States as of 2006, with − according to 2000 census data − 1,398,724 of them indicating Hungarian as their first ancestry.[12] Estimates of the number of Hungarian Americans in the United States exceed 4 million, but also include the large number of ethnic Hungarian immigrants, most of whom have emigrated from Romania, the former Czechoslovakia, or the former Yugoslavia.
The states with the largest Hungarian American populations include:[13][14]
A plurality of Hungarian Americans within the United States reside on both the East and West Sides of the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area.[4] It has often been said that Metropolitan Cleveland has the most Hungarians outside of Hungary itself.[4] Once known as "Little Hungary," the Buckeye–Shaker neighborhood on the East Side of Cleveland proper was a cultural enclave for Hungarians and Hungarian Americans in the early to mid-twentieth century before many left for nearby suburbs, such as Shaker Heights. In their place arrived African Americans and other groups in the 1960s. Remnants of Hungarian culture can still be seen in the Buckeye Road area today, namely in street names, restaurants and shops as well as occasionally hearing Hungarian on the streets as spoken by older residents who have never left the area. Other cities which include a significant Hungarian American presence include metropolitan New York City, Buffalo, New York, Chicago, Illinois, Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas and Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Actress Ilona Massey was frequently billed as "the new Dietrich" and famously played the role of a femme fatale in Love Happy. Sex symbol Zsa Zsa Gabor was perhaps better known for her status as a socialite and nine marriages than her stint as an actress.[citation needed] Her younger sister Eva Gabor was known for her role on the television show Green Acres, and her older sister Magda Gabor famously helped save the lives of 240 Jewish families during the World War II because of her relationship with a Portugueseambassador. Harry Houdini, considered by many to be the greatest magician of all time, was an expert escapologist, introducing it as an art form. He was also a major critic and investigator of Spiritualists.
In art, Bauhaus artist Marcel Breuer became known as one of the first modernists for his modular construction and simple forms. Another Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, highly influenced by Russianconstructivism, helped introduce the movement to the United States; he was a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts. Lajos Markos was a significant portrait artist, having created portraits for iconic celebrities such as John Wayne. Photographer Sylvia Plachy published several photobooks detailing her personal history in Central Europe.
American Hungarian language use has been studied by several Hungarian linguists, including Elemér Bakó, Endre Vázsonyi, Miklós Kontra (in South Bend, Indiana), Csilla Bartha (in Detroit, Michigan), and Anna Fenyvesi (in McKeesport, Pennsylvania).[25]
Lisa Douglas (née Gronyitz), immigrant Hungarian wife of Oliver Wendell Douglas, protagonist of 1960s CBS situation comedy series Green Acres.
Three of the four main characters in Jim Jarmusch's award-winning 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise were Hungarian-Americans (one was a recent Hungarian emigre).
Karchy Jonas and his father Istvan are Hungarian immigrants to the United States in the 1997 movie Telling Lies in America.
Scot Harvath, the protagonist in many works by best-selling author Brad Thor.
Hannah Horvath, protagonist of the contemporary HBO comedy-drama series Girls.
The characters Helga Pataki, Robert (Bob) Pataki and Olga Pataki from the cartoon Hey Arnold! are believed to be of Hungarian descent due to their surnames.
Kelsey Pokoly, an adventurous eight-year-old girl, and her widowed father, Neil Pokoly, from the cartoon Craig of the Creek are of Hungarian-Jewish descent.
Phyllis "Pizzazz" Gabor, lead singer of the Misfits and Jem's enemy, and her industrialist father, Harvey Gabor, from the cartoon Jem.
Katalin Hunya, a character in the musical Chicago who does not speak English.
Arkosh Kovash ("Ákos Kovács"), a Hungarian mobster in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects.
The Átmeneti are a people who live in a post-apocalyptic Budapest in Fenn Thornbot's Now. Then. To Come.[26]
Gallery
Hungarian immigrants celebrating the sunflower harvest in Cleveland, 1913.
^Brian McGinty, Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy (Stanford University Press, 1998), 1.
^Útazás Éjszakamerikáában (Travels in North America), Pest, 1846, 2d ed., Pest, 1850; McGinty, Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy, 101.
^Pinney, Thomas, A History of Wine in America (University of California Press, 1989), 269; McGinty, Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy, 1.
^Steven Béla Vardy, "Lajos Kossuth and the Slavery Question in America," East European Quarterly (2005) 39#4 pp 449-464.
^Istvn Korn'l Vida, Hungarian Emigres in the American Civil War: A History and Biographical Dictionary (2011) excerpt and text search
^Grove, Andrew S. Swimming Across: a Memoir, Hachette Book Group (2001) Prologue.
^Fenyvesi, Anna. 2005. Hungarian in the United States. In: Fenyvesi, Anna, ed. Hungarian language contact outside Hungary: Studies on Hungarian as a minority language. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 265–318.
Fenyvesi, Anna. Hungarian in the United States. In: Fenyvesi, Anna, ed. 2005. Hungarian language contact outside Hungary: Studies on Hungarian as a minority language. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 265–318.
Frank, Tibor. Double Exile: Migration of Jewish-Hungarian Professionals Through Germany to the United States, 1919–1945 (2009)
Frank, Tibor. Genius in Exile: Professional Immigration from Interwar Hungary to the United States (2006).
Lengyel, Emil. Americans from Hungary (Lippincott, 1948).
McGuire, James Patrick. The Hungarian Texans (San Antonio: University of Texas, Institute of Texan Culture, 1993).
Puskas, Julianna. Ties That Bind, Ties That Divide. One Hundred Years of Hungarian Experience in the United States (Holmes and Meier, 2000), 465 pp.
Várdy, Steven Béla, and Thomas Szendrey. "Hungarian Americans." Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, edited by Thomas Riggs, (3rd ed., vol. 2, Gale, 2014), pp. 373–386. Online
Várdy, Steven Béla and Agnes Huszar Vardy, eds. Hungarian Americans in the Current of History (2010), essays by scholars; online review
Vida, István Kornél. Hungarian Émigrés in the American Civil War: A History and Biographical Dictionary (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012) 256 pp.