A "magyar Schorske"? : Hanák Péter és a nyugati történettudomány = The "Hungarian Schorske"? : Péter Hanák and the Western Historical Scholarship

Csunderlik, Péter (2021) A "magyar Schorske"? : Hanák Péter és a nyugati történettudomány = The "Hungarian Schorske"? : Péter Hanák and the Western Historical Scholarship. TÖRTÉNELMI SZEMLE : A BÖLCSÉSZETTUDOMÁNYI KUTATÓKÖZPONT TÖRTÉNETTUDOMÁNYI INTÉZETÉNEK FOLYÓIRATA, 63 (4). pp. 711-726. ISSN 0040-9634 (nyomtatott); 2732-2408 (elektronikus)

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Abstract

As head of the Department of Early Modern History at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the historian Péter Hanák, born a hundred years ago (1921–1997), played a leading role in the reconstruction of the western connections of Hungarian historiography that had been broken in 1948–1949. For, after his temporary exile and removal from the university, the years of “quiet labour”, after 1956, not only the rehabilitation of Hanák, future founder of the History Department of the CEU, in the Hungarian historical scholarship, but also his international career was connected to the assessment of the 1867 Austro-Hungarian Compromise. Just as Hungary could become an actor in great power politics as member of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the results of Hungarian historiography, and thus the debate about the Compromise, could vindicate international attention as part of the Habsburg studies. This coincided with the popularity of the history of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after World War II, as the Western intelligentsia had been overcome by a kind of a nationalistic zeitgeist. Within western historiography, the greatest influence on Hanák was that of Carl E. Schorske. Although the American historian came to fame with his Pulitzer-Prize-winning paradigmatic book called Fin-de-Siécle Vienna, which was published in 1980, Hanák had been professionally in touch with the spiritus rector of the “Vienna vogue” since the late 1960, whose oeuvre was an inspiration to Hanák’s cultural historical writings published in 1988 in his memorable volume of A Kert és a Műhely. The present study examines the Western relations of Hanák, primarily on the basis of his correspondence and oral history interviews.

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