Ferenc Fodor: A Hungarian Geographer in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Jobbitt, Steven and Győri, Róbert (2016) Ferenc Fodor: A Hungarian Geographer in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. In: Fodor Ferenc önéletírásai. ELTE Eötvös József Collegium, Budapest, pp. 39-77. ISBN 978-615-5371-62-2

Preview

Text Jobbitt & Győri (2016) Ferenc Fodor - A Hungarian Geographer in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.pdf Download (248kB) | Preview

Abstract

Born on March 5, 1887 into a modest village family in Tenke (today: Tinca, Romania), Ferenc Fodor was one of the most prolific Hungarian geographers of the first half of the twentieth century. Having published his first serious scholarly studies during World War I, Fodor was part of Pál Teleki’s inner circle for much of the interwar period, and made a name for himself as a scholar, educator, and editor in the 1920s and 1930s. Though he was essentially demoted in 1939 when he was sent to Pécs as a school district superintendent, Fodor nevertheless continued to write and publish scholarly works, and, despite being socially and politically marginalized after the war, he even tried to remain academically relevant during the communist period. His last book on Hungarian hydrological engineers and their work in the Tisza watershed, titled Magyar vízimérnököknek a Tisza-völgyben a kiegyezés koráig végzett felmérései, vízi munkálatai és azok eredményei [‘Hungarian Hydrological Engineers of the Tisza Valley: A Record of their Surveying and Hydrological Work to 1867’], was awarded a history of science prize from the Hungarian Academy of Science in 1954, and was published in 1957, just five years before his death at the age of seventy-five. Beyond being a prolific scholar who published numerous books and articles over the course of his long career, Fodor also left behind a very rich personal archive, complete with private letters, diaries, photo albums, scrapbooks, official correspondences, unpublished scholarly manuscripts, and a number of autobiographical narratives and fragments. These unpublished primary sources offer important insight into Fodor’s public and private life, and provide researchers with tools to better understand the lived experiences and historical context that shaped one of Hungary’s most important conservative-nationalist geographers.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item