FENYOENGLISH1

INTRODUCTION

Max Fenyo, my grandfather whom I knew in person till I was eight, did so much for
Hungarian society and intellectual culture at the beginning of the 20th Century in
Budapest and yet neither the history books nor the mass media appropriately reflect the
truth of his biographical record. Whatever the reason for this seeming oversight, my
grandfather’s role in forming modern Hungarian society, in inspiring deep intellectual
introspect in the minds of Hungarian-born Nobel prize winning scientists and other
artists, musicians and intellectuals, including such great individuals as Zoltan Kodaly,
Bela Bartok, Janos Neumann, Albert Szentgyorgyi, George Cukor, Endre Ady, Mihaly
Babits, Margit Kaffka, Hanna Szenes, Joseph Pulitzer, Leo Szilard, Denes Gabor,
Ferenc Chorin, Manfred Weiss, Victor Vasarely, Erno Rubix, Imre Kertesz, and
countless others is virtually ignored (until, perhaps, the time of this writing). Among his
most important endeavors and accomplishments was his key role in the launching,
financing, managing and editing of the NYUGAT (The WEST), Hungary’s most
important social and cultural periodical, which gave a voice to the most significant and
impressive of Hungarian writers in the first half of the 20th Century, including such
greats as Endre Ady, Mihaly Babits, Frigyes Karinthy, Erno Szep, Gyula Juhasz, Aladar
Schopflin, Margit Kaffka, Dezso Kosztolanyi, Milan Fust, and Arpad Toth, to mention a
few. Miksa Fenyo was instrumental to the survival of the NYUGAT in its early years,
what with his ability to keep the peace between the other founding editors of the
NYUGAT, between Hugo Ignotus and Erno Osvat. Furthermore, Miksa Fenyo’s
quintessential role in the early development and management of the Hungarian
Federation of Industrialist (GYOSZ) and his influence on Hungarian Customs practices
and methods, without which Hungary might not have developed a relatively
sophisticated and successful industrial economic basis, his daring 1934 criticism of
Hitler’s policy in Europe, making Fenyo one of the few Members of Parliament to openly
caution Hungary against making an alliance with the Nazis and for which Fenyo ended
up second after Raoul Wallenberg on Hitler’s “most wanted dead or alive” list, and his
close friendship and support of Endre Ady, perhaps the most important and deep of
Hungary’s poet laureates, a man of great depth of thought and advanced vision and a
poet-genius who foresaw Hungary’s future place in a united and civilized greater
Europe, make Miksa Fenyo more than worthy of being a potential role-model for young
Hungarians. In fact my grandfather’s invaluable and priceless donations and
contributions to Hungary’s Petofi Literary Museum have never yet been adequately
recognized by Hungarian society, and considering the losses Max Fenyo incurred, both
in terms of relatives and family members murdered in the Holocaust and the theft of his
villa and priceless collection of old and rare books the absence of any major recognition
or memorial makes his legacy even more unusual and controversial for the new
Hungary of today. His contemporaries considered my grandfather to be a very
responsible and relatively wise man, yet a man of great humility and of a high
gentlemanly caliber virtually non-existent in today’s rat race world. As a writer he had
the odd sense to concentrate on quality at the risk of not becoming a prolific writer, thus
there are only four or five major works authored by him. Still, it is more due to the fact
that two horrible and unspeakably inhuman world wars and several brutal armed
revolts, not to mention having to hide from the NAZI’s Gestapo, the Arrow Cross and
later having to go into exile against the risk of being sent to Siberia by the Stalinists,
robbed my grandfather of the time and means he would have needed to join the ranks
of Hungary’s great prolific writers, such as Zsigmond Moricz, one of the last most
significant editors of the NYUGAT. Then again, my grandfather’s wartime memoir, Az
Elsodort Orszag (The Swept Country), speaks tons of the kind of thoughts and
emotions that such a catastrophic tragedy gives rise to. Max Fenyo worked hard to
bridge the Hungarian Jewish community with the rest of Hungary and to dispel
ridiculous misperceptions, prejudice and fabricated lies about Jews and Judaism. True,
he himself had his own problems dealing with his Jewish identity and living up to his
rich cultural roots, but his attempt at assimilation, a failure in my estimation, was always
well intended, with the goal of social harmony and tolerance in mind, and was based on
his inner affinity to the best of many of his Jewish traditions. All the aforementioned is
clearly reflected by the fact that, while Max Fenyo is celebrated and commemorated in
such prestigious reference books as The Hungarian Jewish Lexicon and is the only
Fenyo mentioned in the Hungarian version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Max Fenyo
is also mentioned in the original English version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in its
reference article on Hungarian Literature), his brave criticism of Hitler and his
unwillingness to fully cooperate with the Horthy regime are not adequately mentioned or
highlighted in the history books and media. Max Fenyo was not a very prolific writer at
all, thus there are only five significant books to his name, most published by the
NYUGAT Publishing firm that he helped found and which published some 412 books,
many with uniquely beautiful covers that are treasured by today’s connoisseur book
collectors. Max Fenyo’s study on the life of Casanova, and another on the politics of
Hitler were prominent books published by the NYUGAT Publishing firm. His World War
Two diary, his memories and notes on the NYUGAT years and his travel book on Italy
were published elsewhere. What Fenyo lacked in quantity of books and volume of
pages written he well compensated for in the quality and style of his writing. I find his
writing to be spicy, humorous and thought provoking. My grandfather knew how to be
serious and yet politely playful and humorous. It is known that if he wanted to test the
trustworthiness of a new acquaintance and potential friend that he would invite them to
visit him in his private library and ask them how many of the famous French historian
Renan’s works had they read, deliberately pointing to a volume that was made to look
like another of Renan’s world history volumes. Some of the unsuspecting victims of my
grandfather’s test would proudly claim to have read all the volumes on that shelf,
including the fake one. In which case my grandfather would then ask his guest to take it
off the shelf and page through it, only for the ex-guest to be briskly escorted to the door
after having to explain all the blank pages. My grandfather did not have much time left
in his old age to spend conversing with me, and I was too young to engage him in
anything beyond the most simple talk, but I know that even when I was a little baby he
would whisper his wise Hungarian Jewish ideas into my head, leaving me to
subconsciously discover them years later, after I had learned the language. These and
other special memories connect me to my grandfather eternally. Since some of Max
Fenyo’s writing was risky he applied various pseudonyms such as Ferenc Dallos,
Mihaly Kuthy, Denes Egressy, Marton Pallya, Balassi Menyhart, and Remete Gaspar.
In the end, whatever future generations will be saying about my grandfather, Max Fenyo
was a man of great dignity, at times naïve in his love of Italy (he once donated to the
erection of a statue for Mussolini before the outbreak of the war, but regretted doing so
later on), but all in all a dedicated humanist and a gentleman with a sense of style and
substance worthy of being a role model for intellectuals to come.