Jews in the Hungarian Economy 1760-1945 [antikvár]

PrefaceAlthough the field of economic history has been recognized as an important desideratum of Jewish history ever since the inception of modern Jewish scholarship some one hundred and seventy years ago, the number of serious academic studies devoted to the topic has been disappointingly few. In the last two decades, however, as part of the remarkable expansion of Jewish studies in general, several important books and articles began to fill the lacuna. One of these was William O. McCagg's Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary published in 1972. McCagg's book was not only one of the first in the recent crop of studies in Jewish economic history, but also one of the first monographs on Hungarian Jewry to appear since World War II. While a handful of scholars pursued the study of Hungarian Jewry in Israel and the United States, until that time Hungarian historians under the Communist regime shied away from writing Jewish history. (The important exception was the research sponsored by the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest under supervision the late Alexander Scheiber.) On the other hand, the field of economic history received special impetus in communist Hungary for obvious reasons and made considerable strides. And even if these numerous articles and books did not always explicitly mention Jews as such, the prominent role played by Jews in Hungary's economy made it inevitable that these studies would enrich our historical knowledge of Hungarian Jewry.As liberalization proceeded apace in Hungary, occasional pieces on Hungarian Jewish history began to appear in respected academic joumals. Finally, in 1984, the first academic conference on the subject took place in Budapest on the fortieth anniversary of the Hungarian Holocaust, organized by the late György Ránki, the Director of the Institute of Historical Studies of the Hungarian Academy. The following year, a number of scholars gathered in Paris at the invitation of Victor Karády and Yehuda Don to discuss the social and economic history of Central European Jewry, with heavy emphasis on Hungary.When the newly founded Rosenfeld Project at the Hebrew University considered the idea of sponsoring a conference on Hungarian Jewry, it seemed only natural to concentrate on economic history in light of the extensive work already done in the field. The conference would provide the opportunity to explore in an explicit manner the economic activities of the Jews in Hungary, always a sensitive subject. A large contingent of Hungarian historians led by Iván T. Berend, the President of the Hungarian Academy and György Ránki,