• 1 Nicolas Beaupré, Écrire en guerre, écrire la guerre. France, Allemagne, 1914-1920, Paris, CNRS, 200 (...)

2In WWI, the considerable decrease in autonomy due to the reversing of the art rules1 went hand-in-hand with a closely related phenomenon described by Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites like this:

• 3 The intellectuals’ war culture was a system of representations originating from the war, with a spe (...)

3However, rather than a total abandonment of foreign inspirations, we could claim that every belligerent nation was trying to reevaluate its foreign inspirations of the prewar period to such an extent that–at least at the beginning of the conflict–the perception of foreign cultures became mainly or exclusively geopolitical, related to the polarity between friend and foe. During the first mobilization years (1914-1915), the enemy’s culture was generally devalued or ignored while allies’ culture was over-valued in the national cultural selfdefinition. Likewise, in Hungary, the interpretation of foreign cultures and literatures took place in a more or less exclusive geopolitical frame at the beginning of the conflict and French culture and literature became part of this geopolitical re-evaluation process.3 However, as Michel Espagne and Michael Werner point out, political changes may have a more or less important influence on cultural exchanges, but they interfere with other impacts too. WWI is a good example where geopolitical arguing was often mixed up with reviving old antagonisms and stereotypes defined by political as well as intellectual trends in the past. Espagne and Werner also emphasize the importance of individuals and groups in transferring ideas, representations and cultural objects. Due to the total character of WWI and the closing of the borders, the number of persons to pass through the frontiers decreased significantly; some mobility, as one important element of any cultural exchange, remained, however, but – at least at the beginning– only towards allied countries and, to some extent, towards neutral ones. Ideas and objects could also cross the borders with difficulty.

• 4 Christophe Prochasson, Az értelmiség és Európa a 19-20. században [Intellectuals and Europe, 19th- (...)
• 5 Art critic Zoltán Felvinczi Takács stressed for example that, “since we Hungarians have been belon- (...)

4In addition, there was a general paradox related to cultural antagonism during WWI: while the significant decrease in cultural exchanges marked a profound disintegration process of an intellectual and cultural Europe in the making since the 1880s,4 writers and intellectuals, thinking in terms of “civilization” against “barbarism” (all wanted to defend ‘civilization’ against the perceived ‘barbarity’ of the enemy), claimed for themselves a leading or a more important role than they had had before on the cultural scene in Europe. Accordingly, when criticizing France during 1914-1915, many Hungarian writers and intellectuals also thought (explicitly or implicitly) in terms of a French-German Kulturwar to take over the leadership of Europe in intellectual and cultural matters and where Hungarians could find a new, less marginal position than they thought had before the conflict.5

• 6 Nevertheless, there already exists considerable literature on atrocities against Serbian civilians (...)
• 7 On internments in France and in Hungary, see a general presentation by László Somogyi. Magyar állam (...)

5The Hungarian mass press and public opinion were dominated by antiSerbian sentiments during the first months of WWI and even in the following period, along with anti-Russian ones for obvious political and military reasons. Anti-French or anti-British sentiments, due to the lack of common battlefields, were of secondary importance for the majority of Hungarians. Accordingly, there were great differences regarding hatred and atrocities against enemy civilians on Hungarian soil.6 Since the assassination of the archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Serbians and Romanians had changed place, moving to the top of the list of Hungary’s enemies,7 and the Serbian population in Hungarian territory had been harassed in various ways, officially and non-officially. Although the rights of French or British citizens were restricted, they were not, unlike Serbians, harassed in the streets, and they were significantly much less interned, too.7

• 8 Zsófia Bán, “Augusztusi láz – ‘Hát végre!’” [The Fever of August 1914 – “Finally!”], Magyar Lettre (...)
• 9 Boldizsár Vörös, “Nemzeti Park, Vilmos Császár út és a Hősök tere. Háborús névadások Budapesten 19 (...)
• 10 Ibid.

• 11 Hungary means in every case the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

• 12 See for example Roland N. Stromberg, Redemption by War. The Intellectuals and 1914, Lawrence, The R (...)

6Along with the dominant hatred of Serbs in the public sphere, some anti-French sentiments were also expressed in scenes of urban culture at the beginning of the war: on the 18-19th of August 1914, the Jardin d’Hiver and the Jardin de Paris, two Orpheums in Budapest performing cabaret, were renamed to Téli Kert and Berlini Kert – direct Hungarian translation or transformation of the former French names.8 Many retailers, more particularly fashion shops or restaurants, as well as the Parisiana movie theater in Budapest were renamed too.9 Even menus got new Hungarian appellations in the Budapest Ritz.10 These practices – concerning not only French, but also English appellations in Hungary11 – were in harmony with similar renaming all over in Europe.12 So there was a division of labor in the hatred of the enemy: while the Hungarian mass press and public opinion were dominated by anti-Russian and anti-Serbian sentiments, writers and intellectuals were concerned with adapting a new geopolitical approach to France and French culture in their journals.

• 13 See more on this discourse in Hungary: Eszter Balázs, “‘War Stares At Us Like an Ominous Sphynx’. H (...)
• 14 One of the major polemics in the most important pedagogical review, Népművelés (Cultivation of Peo (...)
• 15 Világ reported already in October 1914 that the French were no longer hated in Berlin. Artúr Bárdos (...)

7One could suppose that anti-French reactions on the part of literary and intellectual press close to the political authorities were obvious from the very beginning due to their strong loyalty to the national cause and war effort. Nevertheless, by taking a closer look at the journals, a more nuanced and perhaps surprising picture can be drawn. In Magyar Figyelő (Hungarian Observer), the major proestablishment intellectual review (characterized by an inclusive version of nationalism before the conflict), hatred towards the enemy was never excessive (not even at the beginning). Apart from some early writings by the novelist Ferenc Herczeg, the journal’s editor-in-chief and personal friend of Prime Minister István Tisza, the journal did not want to arouse passions to the maximum. Until March 1915, when the great Carpathian battles began against the Russians on the Eastern front, it rather emphasized the heroism of Hungarians and appreciated the allies, more particularly the Germans, and did not criticize the enemies excessively. This low-profile was well suited to the discourse on a defensive war based on dismissing the accusations of “barbarism” plaguing Germany from the beginning of the conflict, since the violation of Belgium’s neutrality in early August 1914 arousing a significant anti-German campaign in the entente and neutral press.13 Using this political strategy of rejecting (excessive) hatred of the enemy, they thought they could differentiate themselves just from these very enemies: in other words, being moderates, they could appear “civilized,” while their enemies, sunk in hatred, appeared automatically as “barbarians.” This discourse particularly fitted with the self-image of central powers willing to represent themselves as true civilians in comparison with France and Britain, whose prevailing popular image, unlike that of Russia, was just of the “leader of civilized nations.”14 (German low profile facing France was further remarked in autumn 1914 by Hungarians,15 but did not mitigate hatred towards France in Hungary in a general way. Hungarian writers close to the authorities seem to have adapted best to this low profile strategy.)

• 16 Jean-Jacques Becker, Gerd Krumeich, la Grande Guerre. Une histoire franco-allemande, Paris, Talland (...)

8Another reason for the liberal-conservative writers’ moderation was that, while in the authoritarian and semi-constitutional Germany, mainly writers and intellectuals (who formed the sole group accustomed to having political discussions and debates) created a war culture to express war hatred (the mass press was not very keen on it),16 in the Hungarian part of the Monarchy – where liberty of expression was an established custom since 1867 – the mass press also took part in the creation of a war culture, along with writers and intellectuals. So the latter – whether close to the establishment or not – did not feel alone, unlike their German counterparts, in forming a general war culture, and consequently could express more or less divergent opinions. Similarly to the German establishment, by doing this pro-establishment writers and intellectuals wanted to avoid democratic “consequences” of any excessive agitation of the people, too.

• 17 Új Idők was a literary journal close to the Tisza government thanks to its editor-in-chief, the Fe (...)
• 18 Anonymous, “Közkedvelt regények” [Toplisted Books], Új Idők, No. 19, 2 May 1915, p. 483.; Eds., “A (...)
• 19 Francisque Sarcey, Páris ostroma. Benyomások és élmények, 1^st and 2^nd editions (1914); 3^rd edition (...)
• 20 László Remete (szerk.), A Fővárosi Szabó Ervin könyvtár története [History of FSZEK Library], Buda (...)
• 21 Advertisement, No. 9, 27 Sept. 1914, Új Idők. The anniversary of Sedan – victory of the Germans ov (...)
• 22 Advertisement, No. 9, 27 Sept. 1914, Új Idők.

• 23 Eds., “A kiadóhivatal üzenetei,” art. cit.

• 24 See ads of Magyar Figyelő, No. 3, 1915.


9Many other publications, however, revealed ambivalences regarding new assessment of France and French culture at the beginning of WWI: Új Idők (Modern Times), another liberal-conservative (literary) journal,17 also kept publishing translations from French literature for its mostly female readers despite its patriotic stance–such as works by the aged Georges Ohnet or the already old-fashioned François Coppée–by arguing that they analyzed the “French spirit, ” which was necessary in time of crisis. Új Idők republished Panin Sergius during the conflict and even offered a discount to its subscribers.18 During the first year of the conflict, the greatest French book success in Hungary was undoubtedly the Assault of Paris by Francisque Sarcey (first published in French in 1871); it was published three times by Singer and Wolfner (twice in 1914) and sold three thousand copies in September-October 1914 alone.19 According to an advertisement from 20 September 1914, Sarcey’s novel was “the most topical, the most interesting, the most clever and the newest book” in the Hungarian book market.21 However, its success was only relative because of the very bad conditions of the Hungarian book market since the outbreak of the conflict and because, initially, the Hungarian war literature was very poor. According to this same advertisement, the events of the war in 1870-1871 as described in Sarcey’s novel would be repeated,22 which was very telling about early war expectations in Hungary. In early 1915, Sarcey’s novel was even claimed to be one of the greatest book success in the Hungarian book market since the beginning of WWI; at the least it was among the five most important works on the current conflict according to Új Idők23 and published in the freshly launched series: A nagy háború könyvei (The books of the Great War).24

• 25 Ed., “Olvasókedv a háború alatt” [Reading customs during the war], Könyvtári Szemle, July-Dec. 1914 (...)
• 26 István Bárczy, “Irodalom és főváros” [Literature and the Capital of Hungary], Magyar Figyelő, No. (...)
• 27 l.szl. remete (szerk.), A Főv.rosi Szab. Ervin k.nyvt.r t.rt.nete [History of Fszek library], Budap (...)
• 28 Ibid, p. 158.

• 29 Ibid., p. 171-172.


10Thanks to surveys by the review Könyvtári Szemle (Library Observatory) we know about the Budapest public’s reading choices during the first months, including choices of foreign novels.25 Authors include Hugo, Croker, Daudet, Doyle, Ohnet, Wells, Tolstoy and Zola. On one hand, due to a lack of war literature in Hungarian at the beginning of the conflict, Budapest people turned to foreign authors on the subject. On the other, WWI could not alter reading habits overnight, on account of several circumstances: the national publishing industry came to a halt (until late 1914 it was dying), transportation from abroad significantly decreased, and readers were short of money to buy books.26 Libraries’ book acquisitions completely stopped from the Entente countries. Acquisitions by the Central Library of Budapest were German books and periodicals at the beginning of the conflict,27 but later on it got in touch with the Dutch book merchant Martinus Nijhoff and the Swiss-Italian company Olschki, in order to continue to procure French and English books and reviews. However, censorship of these publications would only be stopped by the Prime Minister himself, István Tisza, during the first months of 1915.28 Via these new channels, journals and publications from Entente countries or from occupied Belgium could reach the country, including Les Débris de la guerre de Mæterlinck and Parmi les cendres de Verhaeren.29 So while an important part of the Hungarian literary press was aroused in cultural hatred and very often in anti-French sentiments, at least at the beginning of the conflict, readers in the capital spheres kept their own preferences for reading foreign novels, including French ones, at their home or in libraries, about war or not.

• 30 Diary of Géza Laczkó, Holmi, No. 11, 2014, p. 1314.
• 31 Lajos Barta, “A körülzárt Paris” [Encircled Paris], Nyugat, No. 18, 16 Sept. 1916, p. 428-430.

11The theme of Paris under assault was a quite popular subject at the very beginning of the war, not only in books but also in journals. Géza Laczkó, describing himself as a neophyte patriot who confessed to his diary having had before the conflict a “French soul full of hatred of the Germans,”30 translated letters by Gustave Flaubert from the period of 1870-1871 in the modernist review Nyugat (on Nyugat see below) because he found that the situation of the French then and now to be – mutatis mutandis – quite similar, and Flaubert’s letters shed light on current events as well. The subject of the encircled French capital did not disappear totally after the first years of the war: even in September 1916, the writer Lajos Barta reviewed in Nyugat a German booklet on the siege of Paris in 1870-1871 (Paris 1870-1871. Stimmen aus der belagerten Stadt, Berlin, Verlag Ullstein & Co., 1916), collecting excerpts from various French novels describing the siege of Paris in 1870-1871.31

• 32 Albert Apponyi, “A mi háborunk” [Our War], Magyar Kultúra, No. 13, 5 Sept. 1914, p. 4-8; Ernő Marg (...)

12While periodicals close to the political establishment tried to appear moderate regarding the enemy, or at least regarding Western enemies and their culture for obvious political reasons, harsh attacks–not surprisingly–came from the Catholic cultural press. Similarly to many European Catholic journals, this one was traditionally hostile to French republicanism and democracy and blamed them for modern lifestyles, materialism and individualism. The ultraconservative congregational monthy Magyar Kultúra (Hungarian Culture), founded by the Jesuit priest Béla Bagha, and the literary weekly Élet (Life) laid great emphasis on new values created by the war. Both journals wrote about a modern “crusade,” where Germany and its allies must fight in the West and the East against ‘the spirit of religion turned into superstition’ and the “godlessness that diverts from Christianity.” Obviously, the first criticism concerned Russia; the second France.32

• 33 János Anka, “Világtörténet” [World History], Élet, No. 34, 23 August 1914, p. 1041.
• 34 Anonymous, “Francia erkölcs” [French Morals], Élet, No. 32, 9 August 1914, p. 1014.

13These journals devoted many pages to describing the Kulturwar between the two enemy camps, and made frequent references to French “low morals.” In their eyes, France had been subversive both in political and cultural terms since before the war. A number of anti-values were listed since August 1914: promiscuity, immorality, pornography, frivolity and so forth. Verbal abuse used by these journals was typical of anti-modernist and anti-feminist discourses. According to the Catholic novelist János Anka, war was a struggle between cultures and morals: German impeccable religious morals were fighting “the worms of culture.” “The paint of decadent French culture peeled off from us in these times of earthquake so we could take clothes of iron,” he said.33 Elsewhere, France was compared to “an aging, washed-out lady, whose silken dress is covered with mud.”34 Anti-French sentiments were closely related to the aesthetics of violence in these journals.

• 35 Péter Nagy, “A Magyar Könyvtár újabb fejezetei” [The newest chapters of the series ‘Hungarian Libra (...)
• 36 Maupassant was named, for example, “poet of the rotten Gallic spirit.” (-k. [Ernő Császár], Brande (...)

14Another typical means for ultraconservative Catholics to criticize French culture was linking French products, both intellectual and popular, to so-called “low culture” in order to depreciate them; this was, at the time, a widely popular elitist technique among conservatives and ultraconservatives in the whole Western world. Addressing booksellers, the critic Péter Nagy called in Magyar Kultúra for a boycott on “French outmoded literary delicacies” on the pattern of a planned boycott of French commercial products by Hungarian merchants.35 He condemned fashion, theatre, arts and low reproduction rate as immoral and suggested a “guerrilla combat” to defend Hungary against all these evils. While the journal disdained French modernist writers, at the same time, in October 1914, French Catholic provincial writers such as Frédéric Mistral were still praised.36

• 37 Both had to make a complete withdrawal since they had been entirely anti-war till WWI broke out.
• 38 For the Hungarian case: see Eszter Balázs, “Szó és cselekvés kettőssége, értelmiségellenesség, ért (...)

16The autonomous literary review Nyugat (West) and the progressive daily Világ37 (World) were very active during the August fever and the following months in creating their war culture via a specific cultural critical discourse which became popular among intellectuals all over in Europe: the discourse opposing “words” and “deeds.”38 Many of their contributors, writers and intellectuals, were thirsty for action; however, this fervor stirred by the war was blended with doubts and fears. They also hoped that the force of the war would revitalize artistic activity and the relationship of war and literature became a burning topic. Many of them also expressed serious dilemmas regarding France and French culture. Their discourse on France was the most complex discourse on hatred in the whole Hungarian intellectual life.

• 39 Maria Delapierre, Antoine Marès (eds.), “Paris ‘capitale culturelle’ de l’Europe centrale?” les Éch (...)
• 40 Ed., “Budapest és Páris” [Budapest and Paris], Világ, No. 181, 1 August 1914, p. 10.
• 41 According to the author, French authors were most read at private homes and more and more Hungarian (...)
• 42 Ed., “Előre” [Ahead!], Budapesti Hírlap, No. 189, 9 August 1914, p. 1.
• 43 Diary of Laura Lengyel (19 August, 2 Sept., 5 Sept. 1914), op. cit., p. 1306, 1309, 1311.

17Universalist Francophiles turned their back on France and French culture because they anticipated a short war and a rapid victory of the Germans on the Western front, and they wanted to prevent any possible accusations of being a Francophile when their country was at war with France. Like many writers and artists from a Central European background, numerous Hungarian writers and intellectuals (and not only universalist Francophiles) had visited the “cultural Mecca” since the end of the 19th century.39 It is clear that, for many of them, it was complicated to express their opinion on France or French culture when WWI broke out. So many of these writers adopted the voice of the betrayed lover, but once the August fever ended, they preferred to fall silent about France. The progressive daily Világ even published an editorial during the first days of August expressing disappointment in Paris in the voice of the betrayed lover: “Causing a harmful depression [...] France is alien to us,” however “it had led the true culture for centuries.”40 The anonymous author (probably Lajos Purjesz, editor-in-chief) said goodbye on behalf of an entire generation who ‘had turned to Paris with its entire soul’.41 But this link was broken in the storm of the war and the next generations of artists and fans would look at more at Berlin than at Paris since the Parisian culture fashion was over: “We are crying for the Paris we have just lost.” To have an idea of nuances, let us quote Budapesti Hírlap, a conservative daily that also welcomed the changing position of the French capital for Hungarians but by using a different rhetoric: “Paris had always been the Eldorado of desires that we, non-objective Hungarians, preferred to see as the world capital,” and it is still a goal in the war but no longer of Hungarians’ journeys to see human achievements, but rather of German soldiers to “teach a panicky people having lost its morals to honor justice and humanity.”42 The conservative Budapesti Hírlap (and other major papers) also joined the Catholic press in condemnation of Republicanism (that was supposed to destroy France) and in praise of the monarchy. However, not all of their journalists agreed with that: Laura Lengyel refused such a one-sided explanation lacking reason and fairness regarding France in her diary and expressed her fear of the “Junker spirit.”43

• 44 Ignotus, “Búcsú” [Farwell], Világ, No. 189, 9 August 1914, p. 5-8. Ilona Bölöni was disappointed by (...)
• 45 Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914. Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany, Cambridge, Cambri (...)
• 46 Anonymous, “Francia áruk bojkottja” [The boycott of French products], Világ, No. 189, 9 August 1914 (...)
• 47 Ignotus, “Szabadságharc” [War of Liberation], Világ, No. 187, 7 August 1914, p. 1-2. Ignotus, “A cá (...)

18Farewell to Paris was an important topic in Világ: in the same tone as the editor-in-chief in Világ, Ignotus, a great critic and publicist of his time and editor-in-chief of the modernist review Nyugat, said goodbye to all the enemy capitals a couple of days later in Világ in his regular column on 9 August.44 The day before, the author of the editorial had justified the Germans’ war as a “cultural force” and a “cultural responsibility” after the German victory at Liège.45 At the same time, Világ also reported on the Hungarian merchants’ plan to boycott French products.46 However, in the following weeks, Ignotus (along with other authors) criticized Russia much more than France and stressed in many articles a justified war against its despotism in the name of democracy and liberalism, which was a typical argument of Hungarian liberal and leftist authors in the first years of WWI.47

• 48 Marco [László Márkus], “Följegyzések” [Notes], Új Nemzedék, No. 35, 23 August 1914, p. 3.
• 49 Ed., “Még egyszer a véres tollról” [Once again on the Bloody Pen], Új Nemzedék, No. 22, 3 June 1917 (...)
• 50 Gyöngyvér Czere, Világ (1910-1926). Repertórium (1913-1914), Budapest, PIM, 1988, p. 283-297.

19This withdrawal of universalist Francophiles did not remain unnoticed by contemporaries. In the political and literary weekly Új Nemzedék (New Generation) – a partisan of universal suffrage, but very eclectic, including anti-Semite sentiments–the critic László Márkus asked ironically if “several illustrious personages of our literature seriously believe that Rodin, Anatole France, Paul Claudel, Rostand or [Henry] Bataille truly play an important role in French brutalities.”48 He had the answer ready on the basis of nationalism and anti-Semitism: those blaming France now used to praise French culture along with Jewish culture before the conflict, so they are only turncoats who want to hide their real identity behind the mask of the national self-awareness (he also named specifically the publishing house Singer and Wolfner, run by assimilated Jews and publisher of the already-mentioned liberal-conservative pro-war weekly Új Idők). This article was one of the very few to prove that anti-French and anti-Semitic sentiments could merge together in Hungary during WWI. In 1917, István Milotay, editor-in-chief of Új Nemzedék, confronted Világ with its early anti-French sentiments.49 It was noted that anti-Romanian and anti-Serbian sentiments had been missing completely in Világ, proving its anti-patriotism – but such a remark was nothing short of a projection of the 1917 image of the enemy to the period of August 1914. At that time, Világ was equally characterized by Anti-French and anti-Russian sentiments, but anti-British and anti-Serbian sentiments nevertheless came in second.50 Romanians, as I have already mentioned, were not yet a war enemy of Hungarians in 1914.

• 51 György Bölöni, “Jaurès”, Világ, No. 182, 2 August 1914, p. 9-10.

• 52 Diary of Itóka Bölöni (1 August 1914), op. cit., p. 1298.


20Despite the lack of a rigorous censorship until 1916, it became increasingly difficult to express disapproval of conformist views. Self-censorship became widespread among intellectuals, particularly during the first months. Those who tried to defend France and French culture on a democratic and liberal basis during the first months were more low-key and raised their voice, not without ambivalence, in Nyugat, the autonomous literary review, and, to a lesser extent, in the daily Világ. Some of these voices tended to articulate a moderate criticism of political France in order to come to the defense of French intellectual culture. György Bölöni, senior fellow at Világ and art critic, presented France – by calling it “the teacher of human thinking”51 and “an awakener of the human consciousness of Europe” – as the victim “of tetchy politicians.” Thanks to the diary of his wife, Ilona Bölöni – journalist and translator – we know that the assassination of Jean Jaurès tormented him, revealing that he more particularly condemned the nationalist turn of French politics.52 Mrs. Bölöni herself was devastated to hear about the brutalities of the French authorities against Austro-Hungarian citizens on French soil:

• 54 See for example Ibid., (12 and 14 August 1914), p. 1302-1303.
• 55 On 3 Sept. 1914, the Bölönis wrote a letter full of sadness and fidelity to Anatole France: “quoiqu (...)

21Her diary notes clearly reveal the extremely delicate situation of universalist Francophiles at the beginning of WWI. While supporting the war goals of their country,54 the Bölöni couple – Ilona in her diary, György in his articles and both of them in their correspondence with Anatole France (whose Ilona was a secretary before WWI), expressed a “moving testimony of the fact that (intellectual) connections were dropped because of the war”55–manifesting explicitly or implicitly a still existing admiration of universalist France and Anatole France, the incarnation of the latter.

• 56 Ignotus, “Háború és béke” [War and Peace], Világ, No. 213, 2 Sept. 1914, p. 1.

• 57 Miksa Fenyő, “1914”, Nyugat, No. 18-19, 16 Sept.-1 Oct. 1914, p. 321.

• 58 Endre Ady, “Vigasztaló Anatole France” [The consoling A. France], Nyugat, No. 16-17, 16 August-1 Se (...)
• 59 Endre Ady, “Levelek Madame Prétérite-höz” [Letters to Mme Prétérite], Nyugat, No. 22, 16 Nov. 1914, (...)
• 60 Endre Ady, “Kis párizsi emlékezés. Levél Szép Ernőnek” [A little memory from Paris. Letter to Erno (...)
• 61 Lajos Kassák, “Egy csavargó noteszkönyvéből. (A német és francia csavargó-világ)” [From the Notebo (...)
• 62 Id., “Egy csavargó noteszkönyvéből II” [From the Notebook of a Vagabond], Új Nemzedék, No. 47, 15 (...)
• 63 Zoltán Ambrus, “Háborús jegyzetek. Mi lesz a háború után?” [War Notes. What’s going to happen after (...)

22Opposing great French (intellectual) culture to low French politics was a typical technique of Hungarian universalist Francophiles to explicitly blame French nationalism and at the same time stress their still intact cultural Francophilia at the beginning of WWI, revealing their authors’ old feelings for Paris. (Ignotus also used in Világ the same technique in one of his articles separating political Russia and modern Russian literature by claiming that the latter had to be preserved.56) In September 1914, in the literary review Nyugat, Miksa Fenyő, writer and co-founder of Nyugat, paradoxically declared his love for France and French culture.57 The poet Endre Ady, a Francophile and a partisan of universalism whose name epitomized poetic modernism, warned against condemning France unconditionally in the conflict: fed by the Dreyfusard tradition, Ady contrasted the “ugliness and idiocy” of France to the “French genius” embodied in his eyes by Anatole France, the writer most quoted in Nyugat before the war.58 In November, he described Paris as “a mundane lady strangled by her pimp,” and reappraised it as a “female” city and the “New Athens,” embodying universalism, in a France that had resigned its universal purpose.59 In May 1915, Paris meant for him surviving the war.60 So Ady chose to create an antagonism between the country and its capital to preserve his love for French culture seen as universalist, but his articles did not end in controversies (in September 1914 he assured Ignotus that he understood why he had buried Paris). In November 1914 in Új Nemzedék, Lajos Kassák – founder of the first Hungarian avant-garde journal a year later, which became energetically antimilitarist–recalled his trips before 1914 to France and Germany by claiming explicitly that “the nicer memory was Germany.”61 He described Germany as an empire complemented by “citizen socialism” and where the whole country is a huge united family. Similarly to Ady, he contrasted Paris as a center of literature and arts with the French countryside where, according to him, people remained excessively ignorant, a fact which was long hidden from Hungarian “Paris-lovers”–he stressed. However, he emphasized that Paris–open to all nations – received them “loudly, with a big hug.”62 Less than one year later, in July 1915, another writer of Nyugat, Zoltán Ambrus, already saw that the conflict would freeze Franco-Hungarian cultural relations in the long run: “it is over for a long time that we visit Paris every now and then.”63

• 64 Eds., “Diadalok útján” [On the Road of Triumphs], Világ, No. 202, 22 August 1914, p. 1-2 (quotation (...)
• 65 Gerő Ödön, “Vérvirágok” [Bloody flowers], Világ, No. 217, 6 Sept. 1914, p. 1-2 (quotation: p. 2).
• 66 Ignotus, “A német” [The German], Világ, No. 217, 6 Sept. 1914, p. 1-3.


23More particularly in Világ (and in many other press and periodicals, too), several ways of describing the French-German Kulturwar were perceptible. A typical means of reformulating French-German antagonism was to contrast German “science” (rationality and force)–corresponding to Kultur–to French “literature” and “arts” (imagination) – corresponding to Civilization.64 The journalist Ödön Gerő of Világ stressed, by referring to Kant, the Germans’ sense of duty that distinguished them from the French, victims of their own imagination, instincts and impressions.65 A similar argument appeared in German descriptions of French civilization in WWI. Ignotus stressed the antagonism of a young Germany where knowledge is shared by members of the society more than in France. Germans were typically organized, ready for action and prepared to make sacrifices, which looked much more important in war than literature, arts and so forth.66 A very similar argument appeared in the liberal-conservative literary weekly Új Idők, too. Zoltán Szász, a liberal journalist and writer at the daily Pesti Hírlap and an occasional contributor to Új Idők, published several essays on Germany. However, the first reveals Szász’s old feelings on France in his praise of the complementary nature of the relationship between Germans and Hungarians, who could find mutual benefits:

• 68 Anne Rasmussen, Christophe Prochasson, Au nom de la patrie. Les intellectuels et la Première Guerre (...)
• 69 For the meaning of Kultur see for example Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 191 (...)
• 70 See for example Michel Espagne, le Paradigme de l’étranger. Les chaires de littérature étrangère au (...)
• 71 Rasmussen, Prochasson, Au nom de la patrie, op. cit., p. 134-135.
• 72 See for example: “Sombart válaszol Shaw-nak” [Sombart’s response to Shaw], Világ, No. 221, 10 Sept. (...)

24Szász’s words were paradoxically close to those of French intellectuals on German Kultur. According to a widespread generalization in France, German Kultur was “fertile in the material realm [but] fruitless in the intellectual order.”68 This commonplace appearing in energetically pro-war press goes back to early 19th century French-German debates and was reinterpreted in the context of WWI.69 Szász, who, as a pre-war Francophile, spoke French, returned to French clichés on Kultur dating back to Mme de Staël’s famous writings on the appreciation of “Northern culture” and of Germany.70 These rather sophisticated views were recycled in an oversimplified and reversed form by the French in WWI to contrast the “French genius” to “Teutonic pedantries” (with the more or less latent intention to prove that Kultur was at the root of German atrocities).71 Szász combined these views with the “1914 ideas,” developed by German thinkers like Werner Sombart during WWI and massively transferred into Hungary.72 Interestingly, as Szász summed up the differences between the Germans and the Hungarians, in the above comparison he actually replaced the French with Hungarians as the creative genius–a gesture that revealed his own ties with France. Szász’s case proves that even praise for German culture during WWI could turn out to be a telltale sign of implicit attachment to French culture.

• 74 Ignotus, “Páris előtt” [At the gates of Paris], Világ, No. 221, 10 Sept. 1914, p. 1-2.

• 75 Pity for A. France was a widespread topic in the German war press in the first months. (See anonymo (...)
• 76 See for example Eszter Balázs, “War Stares at Us like an Ominous Sphynx”, op. cit., p. 99-100.

• 77 Ibid., p. 100-102.

• 78 Martha Hanna, The Mobilization of Intellect. French Scholars and Writers during the Great War, Camb (...)
• 79 See for example: Ignotus, “Jegyzetek a nagy napokból” [Notes from the Great Days], Világ, No. 210, (...)

26As a reaction to German advances in France, in an article on 10 September 1914 entitled “At the gates of Paris,” Ignotus literally begged for the preservation of French culture, now in bad hands, and proposed to patronize it like a child.74 On the model of the German war press, he claimed that contrary to the total destruction of Russians and the humiliation of the English, which were war goals of Germany and its allies, the French only needed to be taught a lesson.75 He also hoped that France could return to the top of the European continent where “it is geographically destined.” Paradoxically, the more Paris fell, the more the idea of a Federation of European Empires was realistic since the German occupation of Paris would make peace. Such a claim for moral ownership would be quite frequent during the first years by Hungarian writers, scientists and intellectuals with the intention to dismiss the accusations of “barbarism” plaguing Hungary and their allies and to implicitly help their own Francophilia or Anglophilia survive.76 In Hungary, a similar moral ownership was claimed for Shakespeare too,77 and similar techniques can be noticed also with some French intellectuals claiming moral ownership of Kant and Goethe.78 Evidently, this sort of argument was published alongside explicitly aggressive ones arousing the hatred of enemy countries.79

• 80 Dezső Kosztolányi, “A méhek” [Bees], Világ, No. 208, 28 August 1914, p. 1.

• 81 A világháború képes krónikája [The Illustrated Chronicle of the World War], Vol. 10, 13 Dec. 1914.
• 82 Prochasson, “Intellectuals and Writers”, in: John Horne (ed.), A Companion to World War I, WileyBla (...)
• 83 See footnote no. 72, in this paper.

27Another widespread technique was gendering the French-German antagonism. The writer of Aesthetic style Dezső Kosztolányi, in his article on Maurice Mæterlinck, both feminized France and Belgium and masculinized Germany.80 This explicit gender approach to the French-German antagonism was rooted more particularly in the German “1914 ideas”, the new war nationalism and its values of manhood and strength as represented by a young German culture. The same Dezső Kosztolányi would translate and publish in December 1914 the poem Hassgesang gegen England by Ernst Lissauer referring to this very same young German culture and hatred in war.81 Gendering of the French-German Kulturwar also appeared in Catholic and liberal-conservative journals; some articles in Magyar Figyelő emphasized, for example, French weakness and femininity in comparison to “young and masculine” Germans on the model of the “1914 ideas” – “a vaguely defined set of cultural assertions about German wartime identity.”82 These ideas rejected the heritage of 1789 and emphasized idealism, self-sacrifice and community. The “1914 ideas” were transmitted to Hungary mainly via the thoughts and works of Werner Sombart, including Händler und Helden83.

• 84 Anonymous, untitled, A Hét, No. 35, 30 August 1914, p. 545.

• 85 Diary of Laura Lengyel (1 Sept.1914), op. cit., p. 1308.


28More particularly literary journals, where articles combined Francophilia with nationalism before the conflict, as WWI broke out, felt obliged to manifest their turn away from French culture by emphasizing its low-class character in a racist way. According to Új Idők, French civilization unmasked itself in the conflict as “barbarian” by using colonial troops: it “showed itself as a Central African savage only listening to his instincts” – a reference on the basis of racism to barbaric colonial France, a proof of its inferiority in comparison with German Kultur. Similarly to Új Idők, another previously Francophile literary journal, A Hét (The Weekly) also accused French soldiers of cowardice at the beginning for hiding behind their colonial soldiers.84 Sometimes, diaries could reveal an altering opinion: the general hatred in Hungarian press against colored people (in the enemy camp)–colonial soldiers as well as Japanese for example–was noticed with consternation in her diary by the journalist Laura Lengyel, contributor to the conservative daily Budapesti Hírlap (Journal of Budapest), close to the establishment.85

• 87 Ibid.
• 88 Ibid., p. 510.

30Ernő Lengyel, contributor to A Hét explained this by the still “Catholic, conservative and imperial” character of France and argued that Hungary fooled itself by creating a very different image of France, as “the works of antimilitarist poets used to be recited not in Paris, but in Budapest, Bucharest and Moscow.” Entering the war on the side of Russia is “betraying humanity,” a “grimace to Europe.”87 France is defeated by the “diabolism, frivolity and corruption” of its sons.88 So in A Hét, France was accused at the very beginning of betraying its democratic ideals by forming an alliance with the despot Tsarist power, and this remained the common denominator of the publication’s articles for years. Condemning Russia because of its despotism was widely shared by Central Powers’ leftist press as well as by all sorts of Jewish press.

• 89 See for example Zoltán Felvinczi Takács, “Új csataképek” [New Battlefield Paintings], Nyugat, No. 1 (...)

31In the eyes of a minority devoted to German culture and literature in Hungarian intellectual life, a war lead by Germany was only the next step, if not a logical one in the recent development process characterizing Germany’s modernization efforts. Articles praising Germany and the Germans were significantly more numerous everywhere, including Nyugat where they only began to decrease from early 1915 on.89

• 90 Béla Balázs, Napló, 1914-1922 [Journal, 1914-1922], Vol. 2, Budapest, Magvető, 1982, p. 9-10.
• 91 See on The Gallic Danger: Eszter Balázs, “La référence française dans le discours sur les ‘lettres’ (...)
• 92 Mario D. Fenyo, “Literature and Political Change: Budapest, 1908-1918,” The American Philosophical (...)
• 93 Béla Balázs, Napló, 1914-1922, op. cit., p. 23. As early as in 1912, he had contrasted German “disc (...)
• 94 Rasmussen, Prochasson, Au nom de la patrie, op. cit., p. 132.
• 95 After a more general and homogeneous Francophilia that had characterized all types of Hungarian eli (...)
• 96 Michel Espagne, “Problèmes d’histoire interculturelle”, Revue germanique internationale, No. 4, 199 (...)

32Béla Balázs was one of these few cultural Germanophiles among modernist writers before WWI.90 Along with György Lukács, he attended the seminars of sociologist Georg Simmel in Germany. In the literary debates preceding the war, he was often criticized for his so-called “German” (incomprehensible) style. With György Lukács, he thought that German philosophy and literature had a regenerating force for Hungarian literature and culture, and that was why they attacked even Nyugat by condemning its l’art pour l’art and the “impressionism” of French style; in 1912 Lukács even wrote a pamphlet with the telling title “The Gallic Danger.”91 When WWI broke out, unlike his friend Lukács who stayed in Germany and avoided conscription,92 Balázs had a short-lived military career; he enlisted as a volunteer during the first weeks of WWI and was soon wounded and demobilized in 1915. An early piece by him (August 1914 in Nyugat) was instrumental in initiating a polarization between “Germany” and “France” akin to an intellectual war culture. In his diary, he considered his own essay as a “declaration of war by an old ally of the Germans who had been attacked for years for writing like a German.”93 In Balázs’s view, Weimar stood for “German culture” whereas Paris epitomized ‘Latin culture’ and they were struggling for European cultural hegemony. (The Franco-German cultural and intellectual rivalry was more particularly noticed by many European writers and intellectuals from the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, when Germany made a great breakthrough in various intellectual and cultural domains.94) According to Balázs, “Paris was the first great [war] dead” in Hungary, where war had destroyed both political and cultural Francophilia.95 Balázs’s article was in line with his pre-war passion for German culture, in which he saw a rejuvenating force for Hungarian culture. However, he did not reject French culture as a whole, but only its “Latin” part. He praised certain French writers, like those around the NRF who represented, in his view, the German part of French culture. The NRF writers had been genuinely interested in German literature and philosophy, and since they not only enriched but even structured their reflection thanks to German intellectual trends, they can be considered as mediators of an “auto-construction of France by Germany.”96 Therefore this interest for Germany by NRF writers was noticed by Hungarian Béla Balázs who put it in a new frame, namely the Kulturwar frame during WWI.

• 97 Michael Werner, “Histoire littéraire contre Literaturgeschichte. La genèse d’une vision historienne (...)

33According to Balázs, the German option should be all the more obvious for Hungarian writers because the “German book fair became the stock exchange of world literature” thanks to the Germans’ cultural interest in other cultures. This idea of German Kultur’s universalist ambition was rooted in 19th century German literary historians’ ideas: Friedrich Schlegel and others over-valued literature (in the absence of a solid German political system) and, because of that, some of them, like Karl Rosenkranz, even developed the idea that German poetry was profound enough not to lose its individual character while absorbing foreign literatures.97 This image of a literature strong enough not lose its specific character when absorbing foreign influences was also strongly widespread in Hungary and suited well the inclusivist model of nation statehood prevalent until WWI.

• 98 After January 1915, Nyugat refused to continue releasing Balázs’s bellicose war notes.

34We also possess Balázs’s diary notes of 2 August 1914, which were certainly the basis of the abovementioned publication, and thanks to that differences with his essay published by Nyugat can be identified.98 A major difference is that, in the diary, he claimed to choose between Berlin and Paris (so he offered a political and not a cultural choice), and also made clear that, by choosing Berlin, he would opt for “internationalism” since there is hope for the Monarchy to transform itself from a multiethnic empire into socialist states. In this sense, Paris – culture of the shallow–represented “nationalism,” while Berlin–culture of the profound – a hope for internationalism; in other words, pre-war culture vs. culture of the future:

• 100 B. K. [Károly Burján], “Nyugatosok zavaros tépelődései” [Peniseveness of Nyugat Writers], 
Magyar (...)
• 101 “Edmond Rostand, La cathédrale,” Nyugat, No. 21, 1 Nov. 1914, p. 440. 


36Sometimes, judging the French war nationalism could be in the subject of polemics between different writers’ and intellectuals’ camps. In May 1915, Károly Burján, a caustic pen in the Catholic Magyar Kultúra, instead of taking sides when Reims cathedral was destroyed in October 1914 (which could indeed have been a difficult task for a Hungarian Catholic as it was about the destruction of a French church), accused Nyugat of hypocrisy for shedding crocodile tears for Reims a couple of months before.100 In his view, it was hypocritical on the part of the “cosmopolitan” Nyugat to condemn the destruction of a Christian cathedral, as the journal itself took part in the destruction of Christian culture before the war. In reality, Ignotus had published the poem La cathédrale by Edmond Rostand in Nyugat, adding a footnote that criticized precisely French intellectuals’ war culture. Rostand was compared by Ignotus to Tyrteus, a war poet of Ancient Greek times who became a symbol of the war-monger intellectual in Hungary and in other European countries during WWI.101 So neither Catholic nor autonomist writers in Nyugat condemned the destruction of the cathedral of Reims – a French church and a famous European monument – by the Germans. Instead, Catholics interpreted the publication of this poem by Rostand as a betrayal of the Hungarian patriotic cause by writers of Nyugat, while, in reality, the latter condemned Rostand for his war culture in making Reims a symbol of French martyrdom.

• 102 See on Szabó and Laczkó’s activities during the ‘golden age’ of College Eötvös: Imre Szabics, 
“Az (...)
• 103 Géza Laczkó, “A francia lélek keresztmetszete” [The Cross-Section of the French Soul], Nyugat, No. (...)
• 104 He first mentioned in August 1914 that his friend ‘Dadi’ was detained as a prisoner of war in Franc (...)

37The only genuine controversy about presumed cultural roots of French war culture took place in Nyugat between two pre-war Francophiles who had attended the College Eötvös, a calque of the École normale supérieure.102 In January 1915, Nyugat published an article entitled “The cross-section of the French soul” by Géza Laczkó, who condemned the French and French mentalité in an offensive tone.103 Although his discourse was not rooted in any Germanophilia, it was quite similar to points made by the German press railing against French and English individualism. Laczkó portrayed the French as selfish in essence, placing individual interests above the community. Unlike Balázs, he did not seek to distinguish a “Latin” part from a “German” one that could be saved, thus expressing a radical dismissal of the culture that once used to inspire his thoughts. One of the reasons why Laczkó, a pre-war Francophile, turned against France was that he was horrified at the internment of his friend, the writer Aladár Kuncz, on French soil (noted in his diary).104 His diary attests how he was gradually radicalized during autumn and winter 1914 – just before publishing his infamous essay.

• 105 Dezső Szabó, “A francia lélek keresztmetszete” [The Cross-Section of the French Soul], Nyugat, No. (...)
• 106 Dezső Szabó, “A francia pszichéhez” [To the French Psyché], Huszadik Század, No.1, Jan. 1915, p. 3 (...)

38The modernist writer Dezső Szabó – whose anti-Semite turn happened only a couple of years later, expressed in Elsodort falu (1918) [Village swept away] –responded to his friend’s article in the column ‘Disputa’ of Nyugat by accusing Laczkó of portraying France in a way that was biased and a betrayal of their own youth.105 At the end of his response he claimed that, rather than killing enemies, one must kill the possibility to have enemies. Very soon he got back to the question of “French soul” in Huszadik Század, the leftist intellectual review where–similarly to Laczkó–he gave an analysis of French mentalité but using more sophisticated descriptions of French classicism and raison (seen as essential characteristics of French culture), in the manner of many French scholars and artists of the Great War.106 He claimed that the individualism, and more particularly German individualism, that “preceded the 420 millimeter mortars” during the current world war, had been fatal to the concentrated and reasonably built French culture. “Individualistic democracy” also weakened France, causing the “decadence of the community,” while individualism changed Germany for the better. These words led to his break with individualism in his next writings in Nyugat. However, still in his response to the reproach of Laczkó, he stressed that France had always been “the laboratory of ideas” and still was, with a powerful force to teach other peoples.

• 107 Eszter Balázs, “En tête des intellectuels” : les écrivains hongrois et la question de la liberté et (...)

40During the pre-war years in Hungary, Anatole France had been the most popular contemporary French writer: thanks to his philosophy and style, he was particularly popular with modernist and progressive writers and intellectuals who saw him as an incarnation of liberalism, humanism and rational skepticism.107 As an important first publication on in late August 1914 in Világ, Ignotus described France, who remained silent, as taking part–on the wrong side this time – in the new Dreyfus affair the war represented. (Comparing WWI to the Dreyfus affair was widespread in France.) Once a Socialist, now a nationalist, his case proves “the fortunate automatism of the intellect” according to Ignotus:

• 109 Anonymous, “Anatol (!) France szomorú,” Világ, No. 246, 4 Oct. 1914, p. 1-2.
• 110 See for example: anonymous, “Anatole France katonának ajánlkozik” [Anatole France voluntee-ring], B (...)
• 111 Anonymous, “Nyílt level Anatole France-hoz” [Open letter to Anatole France], Pesti Napló, No. 273, (...)

41However, as early as October 1914 – when Anatole France was attacked by the French patriot press for his open letter advocating moderation and humanity for the Germans – the same Világ dedicated an editorial to celebrating his faithfulness to humanist values. He was described as a rebel against impartiality, “a small island in French bias.”109 A couple of days later the same journal reported without any comments that France wanted to join the army and stop writing. France’s volunteering in the French army in October 1914 as an aged man and a famous writer was widely covered by the European press as a public manifestation of support for the French war effort.110 In order to update Anatole France’s image in Hungary on the German model, the daily Pesti Napló even translated and published a letter by an anonymous German writer to Anatole France accusing the “French intellectual aristocracy”, including France himself, of remaining silent while the French press was full of hatred of Germany.111

• 112 Eszter Balázs, “En tête des intellectuels,” op. cit., p. 194. 

• 113 Ambrus Zoltán, “Háborús jegyzetek. Írók a háborúról” [War Notes. Writers on the War], art. cit., 
p (...)
• 114 Tibor Vadnay, “Háború és Béke” [War and Peace], Magyar Figyelő, No. 23, 1 Dec. 1914, p. 379-380; G (...)
• 115 -k. [Ernő Császár], “Anatole France,” Magyar Kultúra, No. 18, 20 Nov. 1914, p. 365.

42He could become a target even in Nyugat, where he had been the most quoted foreign author before the world war broke out112: in January 1915, Zoltán Ambrus, a novelist celebrated for his “French style” before the conflict, complained that the French writer, despite being an excellent novelist, lacked objectivity.113 As we can see, his image was, however, complex among Nyugat writers thanks to Ady, for example, who continued to admire him. On the other hand, the economist Tibor Vadnay stressed in the liberal-conservative Magyar Figyelő that France, who used to be known for his compassion and humanism, had disdained French glory before the conflict and spread decadence.114 For the Catholic Magyar Kultúra, he was the embodiment of the perfect antivalues: a decadent, a Frenchman and a “Freemason writer”.115 This labeling successfully linked the inner and the exterior enemies for the Catholic monthly as, since its beginnings in 1913, Freemasons had been its main target (until 1916, anti-Semitism had been less exposed than the hatred of Freemasons).

• 116 See, for example, Tibor Vadnay, “Háború és béke” [War and Peace], art. cit., p. 370, 380; anonymous (...)
• 117 Rainer Taub, A szellemek háborúja [War of Spirits], in: Stephan Burgdorff, Klaus Wiegrefe (eds.), A (...)

43Nevertheless, during the first months it was quite frequent to quote enemy writers even in the energetically pro-war periodicals, close to the inner circles of the government. In a period of scarce information – news from the battlefield was strictly censored – quoting them was an attempt to understand the mechanism of war and predict how the current conflict would continue. Contemporaries also hoped that these enemy writers involuntarily unmasked the true nature of their own nation in their writings.116 Quoting Anatole France, Rudyard Kipling or Arthur Conan Doyle for this purpose was also – paradoxically – a way of acknowledging these writers as intellectual beacons in war descriptions, despite the fact that they all publicly supported the war effort of their respective country.117

• 118 Occidentalis [?], Anatole France az orosz-francia szövetségről [A. France on the French-Russian Al (...)
• 119 Anonymous, “Anatole France egykor – és most” [Anatole France now – and before], Budapesti Hírlap, N (...)
• 120 Ilona Gyalui, “Háborús francia irodalom” [French war literature], Budapesti Hírlap, No. 235, 24 Aug (...)
• 121 “Conference of Károly Sebestyén,” Budapesti Hírlap, No. 36, 5 Feb. 1916, p. 588. 

• 122 Mária Szende Lukácsné, “A háborús Anatole France” [A. France in war], Huszadik Század, No. 3, March (...)
• 123 ml. [László Márkus], “A magyarok könyvei” [Hungarians’ Books], Új Nemzedék, No. 48-49, 3 December 1 (...)
• 124 See a rough presentation of Tibor Frank: “Romain Rolland és magyar fogadtatása az I. világháborúban (...)

44So in almost every literary journal and many dailies of 1914-1915, regardless of their political or intellectual agenda, Anatole France remained a key figure of French literature. His war representations varied more according to individuals than to journals and his image also changed in the course of the war. In the liberal-conservative review Magyar Figyelő in May 1915, he was also quoted as opposing the war as well as the French-Russian alliance in the past.118 Nevertheless, Hungarian writers and journalists were aware of the fact that Anatole France contributed patriotic pieces for Le Petit Parisien during the Great War and contrasted the courageous French soldiers with the German “barbarians.”119 In the conservative daily Budapesti Hírlap, the journalist Ilona Gyulai attempted to rehabilitate him in summer 1915 (The French War Literature),120 while early 1916 the same journal reported Károly Sebestyén’s words still criticizing him for arousing hatred against Germany.121 Mária Szende reviewed France’s Sur la voie glorieuse (1915)–the volume where his anti-German sentiments were exhibited–in the progressive sociologist periodical Huszadik Század, stressing her disappointment as to the weakness of French political liberty, illustrated by the writer’s very ideas and comportment.122 His ambivalent reception did not impede his popularity among the larger Hungarian readership: the caustic pen of the eclectic Új Nemzedék, László Márkus, even noticed a popular breakthrough of A. France’s novels in Hungary by 1917, raising the example of his own maid, whose bedside reading was one of these novels.123 In comparison with Anatole France, Romain Rolland had a more balanced and significantly more positive image during WWI: the Hungarian press discovered him after summer 1915 mainly as a target of the French warmonger press and literary critique. On the logic of “the critic of my enemy is my friend,” he soon became the most popular French writer in the Hungarian literary and mass press, worthy of a separate study.124

• 125 Catherine Horel, “L’Europe centrale dans le ‘concert européen’,” Actes du colloque franco-hongrois (...)
• 126 Kálmán Csathó, “A legyőzhetetlen franciák” [The invincible French], Magyar Figyelő, No. 14, 16 Ju (...)
• 127 Béla Petrich, “Jegyzetek a franciák háborújához” [Notes for the French’s war], Katolikus Szemle, 19 (...)

45Emergence of contradictory images of Anatole France and even his partial rehabilitation as well as the complex but generally positive representations of Romain Rolland illustrated greater changes as well: finally, in the course of the war, anti-French sentiments in the literary press and in the mass press were replaced, on one hand, by new targets of hatred and, on the other, by new interpretations of France and the French. In Nyugat in particular and in other periodicals, proponents of the democratization of the country, after an eruption of an ambivalent hate campaign against France and French culture in August 1914 and during the following weeks and months, there were far fewer writers and intellectuals who continued discussing France and its cultural life within the war culture frame. After summer 1915, many contributors to Nyugat expressed only empathy for soldiers and, with a few exceptions, no longer aroused hatred of the enemy. This also proves that, despite a considerable loss of its autonomy and liberty of speech, the most important modernist literary magazine did not become a proper intellectual platform for the national war cause. Moreover, because of the perseverance of the French on the Western Front and because of the enormous cruelty of the war experienced by every nation involved in WWI, more and more Hungarian writers and intellectuals preferred to take a more detached position. There were moments, however, when a new wave of patriotic enthusiasm appeared in the literary press. But these moments were also moments of new hatred. After Italy joined WWI on the side of the Entente in May 1915, bringing a Central European character125 to the conflict (at least in the Eastern part of the European war theatre), the instrumentalization of French culture and literature for geopolitical purposes decreased significantly. At the moment of the Verdun battles in summer 1916, French front heroism was even praised but articles stressed at the same time that the French had no choice but to surrender: the writer Kálmán Csathó, in the liberal-conservative Magyar Figyelő, claimed that anybody for whom the French culture was important was watching their efforts with compassion but also added that French were still characterized by the fantasy they could defeat the Germans.126 Moreover, a Catholic French language teacher noted, regarding Verdun, that again “one can talk about our enemies, if not with the same old sympathy as before the war, at least with the same old objectivity.”127

• 128 Eds. [Herczeg Ferenc], Erdély [Transylvania], Magyar Figyelő, 1916, Vol. 3, p. 465.
• 129 Sz.[József Andor], “A franciák” [The French], Élet, No. 41, 8 Oct. 1916, p. 359. 

• 130 See the review of his article in Irodalomtörténet, No. 1-2, 1916, p. 306-307. 


46The hatred against French culture could be directly shifted to other enemy cultures, too. Another crucial moment was when, in autumn 1916, Romania entered the war supporting the Entente and attacking Transylvania. In Magyar Figyelő, the writer Ferenc Herczeg claimed that the time of hatred had come for “the good Hungarians who never could hate.”128 The fact that Hungarian borders were at risk made authors of the Catholic weekly Élet, an anti-French warmonger from the beginning of WWI, turn away from France explicitly towards new enemies (Romanians and Hungarian Jews). Moreover, editor-in-chief József Andor described the French as “the nicest of our enemies who know the purpose they fight for.”129 By recognizing the achievements of French patriotism (bravery and heroism) and new religious fervor, the Catholic author also hoped that the war would bring about “a Christian France” since the war was started by French Freemasons, but fought finally by the French “popular spirit.” At the same time, however, the social democratic writer József Diner-Dénes published an article in the Austrian Arbeiter-Zeitung entitled Deutsche Kultur – ungarische Kulture and noted that not even the current war could change “the French character of modern Hungarian literature.”130