Hungarian immigrants
Hungarian immigrants have a long history in the United States, with significant waves of migration occurring during the 19th and 20th centuries. The first notable influx began after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49, when thousands sought refuge following the defeat of their uprising. The most pronounced wave occurred in the early 1900s, driven by economic opportunities in the U.S. during a time of urbanization and industrialization in Hungary. Many of these early immigrants were peasants and unskilled workers, but they gradually established communities and contributed to various sectors of American society.
The 1930s heralded the "Great Intellectual Immigration," as political turmoil in Europe led many scholars, scientists, and artists to seek refuge in the U.S. This group included influential figures who would later contribute significantly to American advancements in science and technology, such as Edward Teller and John von Neumann. Following World War II and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, smaller waves of immigration continued, primarily comprising educated individuals fleeing Soviet control.
In recent years, with the fall of communism in Hungary, a new wave of migrants, often termed "Prosperity Immigrants," has sought economic opportunities in the U.S. Despite a decline in the visibility of traditional Hungarian institutions and communities, a significant number of Americans still claim Hungarian ancestry. Notable enclaves, particularly in the Midwest, continue to celebrate their heritage, though the numbers of speakers of the Hungarian language and active cultural institutions have diminished.
Hungarian immigrants
SIGNIFICANCE: Although most Hungarians who emigrated to the United States arrived between 1890 and the start of World War I in 1914, the most significant Hungarian immigration took place during the 1930s. The spread of fascism and Nazism in Europe forced thousands of highly educated scientists, scholars, artists, and musicians to leave Hungary and Central Europe to find safe haven in America.
Although Hungarian presence in North America reaches back to 1583, when Stephen Parmenius of Buda reached American shores, the first significant Hungarian political immigration took place in the early 1850s. Following the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–49, several thousand Hungarians found a haven in the United States. Most of them came with the intention of returning to Europe to resume their struggle against the Austrian Empire, but a new war of liberation never materialized. However, many émigrés repatriated to Hungary after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which transformed the Austrian Empire into the dualistic state of Austria-Hungary. Before their repatriation, however, close to one thousand Hungarians—25 percent of all Hungarians then in the United States—had served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Almost one hundred of them served as officers; among them were two major generals and five brigadier generals. Many other Hungarians never repatriated and instead joined the ranks of American professionals, businessmen, and diplomats. They were able to do so because over 90 percent of them came from the ranks of the upper nobility and the gentry and were thus learned enough, with sufficient social and linguistic skills, to impress contemporary Americans.
Early-Twentieth Century Arrivals
The next significant wave of Hungarian immigrants was the turn-of-the-century “economic immigrants.” These were mostly peasants and unskilled workers who came in huge numbers, primarily as guest workers, to work in steel mills, coal mines, and factories. Of the nearly two million immigrants from Hungary during the four decades leading up to World War I, about 650,000 were true Hungarians, or Magyars. The remaining two-thirds were Russians, Slovaks, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, and Hungarian Germans. Of the 650,000 ethnic Magyars, close to 90 percent were peasants or unskilled workers who had recently emerged from the ranks of the peasantry. They were drawn to America by the work opportunities that did not exist at home. Even though Hungary itself was then being urbanized and industrialized, its development was not sufficient to employ all the peasants who were being displaced from the countryside. In the course of time, about 75 percent of these “guest workers”—two-thirds of whom were young men of marriageable age—transformed themselves into permanent immigrants. They established families in the United States and became the founders of Hungarian churches, fraternal associations, and scores of local, regional, and national newspapers geared to their educational levels.
The mass European immigration that occurred during the four decades before the outbreak of World War I came to an end in 1914. Although it resumed at a slower pace after the war, the federal immigration quota laws of 1921, 1924, and 1927 put an end to this immigration, especially for those from southern and eastern Europe. This decline in immigration was furthered by the collapse of the stock market in 1929 and the resulting Great Depression. Consequently, fewer than thirty thousand Hungarians immigrated to the United States during the 1920s.
Great Intellectual Immigration and World War II
The next wave of immigrants, known as the “Great Intellectual Immigration,” appeared during the 1930s as a consequence of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933 and the resulting rapid increase of anti-Semitism and antiliberalism. Although only about fifteen thousand Hungarians immigrated during the 1930s, this period brought thousands of highly educated scientists, writers, artists, composers, and other professionals to the United States. Ethnic Magyars constituted only a small segment of this Intellectual Immigration, but their impact was so great and widespread that many people began to wonder about the “mystery” of Hungarian intellectual talent. The impact of this immigration on the United States was felt through the rest of the twentieth century. Several Hungarian scientists played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. One contributor to the Manhattan Project, the scientific effort which produced the atomic bomb, was Hungarian-born Edward Teller. He would later become a chief proponent and a designer of the even more powerful Hydrogen Bomb. Other Hungarians, such as John von Neumann, were later at the forefront of the birth of the computer, and several became Nobel laureates.
Cold War Era
The post-World War II period saw the coming of several smaller immigrant waves that may have brought as many as another 130,000 Hungarians to the United States. These immigrants included about 27,000 displaced persons who represented the cream of Hungary’s upper-middle-class society. Most of them left Hungary after the war for fear of the Soviet domination of their homeland. Postwar immigrants also included about 40,000 so-called Fifty-Sixers, or “Freedom Fighters,” who left Hungary after the suppression of the anti-Soviet and anti-communist Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
The next three decades saw a trickle of continuous immigration of about 60,000 immigrants who escaped from Eastern Europe. The collapse of communism and Soviet rule in 1989–90 altered the situation. With the freedom to emigrate restored and the attractive opportunities in the United States, many highly trained Hungarians came in quest of greater economic opportunities. One German scholar called these post-communist immigrants “Prosperity Immigrants”—people who during the Soviet era had lost much of the idealism and ethical values of their predecessors. What most of them wanted was primarily economic success. While searching for affluence in the United States, they contributed their know-how to American society, which valued and rewarded them accordingly.
By the early twenty-first century, the immigrant churches, fraternals, newspapers, and other institutions of immigrant life were in the process of disappearing. Few of the new Hungarian immigrants have shown an inclination to support the traditional institutions that were important to their predecessors. Given this reality and the unlikelihood that there would be another major immigration from Hungary, it seemed only a question of a few years before all of these institutions would vanish.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 1.4 million Americans claimed full or primary Hungarian descent. Of these, 118,000 (8.4 percent) still used Hungarian as a language of communication within their families. By contrast, 1.8 million claimed Hungarian ancestry in 1980, and 180,000 were still speaking Hungarian at home). According to the 2021 American Community Survey One-Year Estimates, 1,221,273 respondents claimed Hungarian ancestry.
Despite the diminishing numbers of those of Hungarian descent, scatterings of communities remain, primarily in the northern Midwest. The city of Cleveland is a particularly notable enclave. One Cleveland social group boasts that the Hungarian community in the city is the second largest in the world, trailing only that of Budapest.
In 2024, a Hungarian who prompted polarized American political viewpoints was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Among Democrats, Orban was an aspiring autocrat, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a man who seriously damaged Hungary's democracy. For Republican party members, Orban was an admirable figure, and a global champion of conservatism. Orban was a guest speaker at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.
Bibliography
“B04006. People Reporting Ancestry.” 2015 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. American FactFinder, United States Census Bureau, factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk. Accessed on 14 Oct. 2016.
Fermi, Laura. Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930-1941. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969.
"Hungarian Americans of Cleveland." Cleveland Memory.org, 2024, www.clevelandmemory.org/hungarian. Accessed 10 Sept. 2024.
Lengyel, Emil. Americans from Hungary. 1948. Westport, Greenwood Press, 1974.
Puskás, Julianna. Ties That Bind, Ties That Divide: One Hundred Years of Hungarian Experience in the United States. Translated by Zora Ludwig. New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000.
Smith, Patrick "Why Trump and the GOP Love Hungary’s Authoritarian Leader." NBC News, 4 Aug. 2022, www.nbcnews.com/news/world/viktor-orban-cpac-trump-gop-hungary-leader-rcna40199. Accessed 10 Sept. 2024.
Széplaki, Joseph. Hungarians in America, 1583-1974: A Chronology and Fact Book. Dobbs Ferry, Oceana, 1975.
“2021: ACS 1-Year Estimates Selected Population Profiles.” U.S. Census Bureau, 2021, data.census.gov/table?q=hungarian+ancestry. Accessed 16 Mar. 2023.
Várdy, Steven Béla. Historical Dictionary of Hungary. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1997.
Várdy, Steven Béla. The Hungarian Americans. Rev. ed. Safety Harbor, Fla.: Simon Publications, 2001.
Várdy, Steven Béla. The Hungarian Americans: The Hungarian Experience in North America. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. Short, heavily illustrated work.
Várdy, Steven Béla. Magyarok az òjvilágban. Budapest: Magyar Nyelv és Kultúra Nemzetkšzi Társasága, 2000.