The Interviewees
Interview with Gábor Fodor - June 2022
1- You graduated from the departments of Turkology and History of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. What was the title of your PhD?
The title of my dissertation was The Armenian Question in the Light of the Hungarian Sources, 1848-1939. The Life of the Ottoman Armenians in the 19-20th Century Through the Eyes of the Hungarians. In this work, I tried to collect all available Hungarian language sources of the so-called Armenian Question, including primary and secondary sources and the memoirs Hungarian travellers.
2- The recurring theme regarding the study of the Hungarian community seems to be the lack of memoirs and letters. Do you think a lot of your work has to be circumstantial in building up the life and times of the prominent members of this community?
It is true that the number of Hungarian language sources is limited as it regards the everyday life of the community in Istanbul, especially before the 19th century. However, with the arrival of the Hungarian refugees of 1848-1849 revolution, and later with the development of transportation means between the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire and with the spread of touristic journeys, Hungarians visitors arrived to Istanbul in greater numbers and later wrote their impressions in the form of memoirs, articles or short passages. These sources have been mostly neglected by Hungarian historians until now.
3- Your first book was entitled ‘Visit to the Ottoman Empire. Dr. Dezső Bozóky’s Photographs (1905-1916)’ published in 2019. Did this surgeon also practice his profession in the Empire and what was the purpose of his photography venture, was it commercial so to sell to an eager public back in Hungary or was he just intellectually curious?
First of all Dezső Bozóky was a naval doctor so he practiced his profession only on the deck of the Taurus, the station ship of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Later, when he was sent to China, Korea, and Japan, he worked with local people on a charitable basis, but we have no evidence that it had happened during his stay in the Ottoman Empire. Otherwise Bozóky earned some fame in Hungary with his memoirs entitled Two years in South Asia and with the photos that he took during his travels. So his intellectual curiosity and the way of self-expression through photography were well-known, but we had very limited information about his mission in the Ottoman Empire. My task was to learn as much as we can from different sources and identifying the 299 pictures that he took between 1905-1906, mostly in Istanbul, Bursa, and Izmir.
4- Your latest publication titled ‘Hungarian Science and Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire. The Story of the Hungarian Research Institute in Constantinople (1916-1918)’ (in Hungarian) seems to cast a very active role for this learned institution during war time years. Clearly Hungarians were part of the Austrian Empire and thus allied with the Ottomans but it still seems strange work such as archaeology could have been pursued in these times of strife. Was this time gap you selected caused by documentary survival or were war conditions actually beneficial for this scientific institution?
On one hand, the war conditions and the alliance between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire made the foundation of the Hungarian Science institute in Constantinople possible. It was operating only for two years (1916-1918), but it was the very first official, state-run Hungarian science institute abroad, thus marked also the foundation of the institutionalized Hungarian cultural diplomacy. On the other hand, the war times made absolutely impossible for the researchers to pursue their work that had been planned before, so instead of starting excavations in Cilicia they had to be satisfied with doing research on architecture and art history in Istanbul.
5- Ármin Vámbéry (1832-1913) seems to have been a very colourful character. By the age of twenty, Vámbéry had learned enough Ottoman Turkish to enable him to go, through the assistance of Baron Joseph Eötvös, to Istanbul and establish himself as a private tutor of European languages. He became a tutor in the house of Huseyin Daim Pasha, and, under the influence of his friend and instructor, Ahmet Efendi, became a full Osmanli, serving as secretary to Fuat Pasha. About this time he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in recognition of his translations of Ottoman historians. He wrote extensively of his travels in Iran and Central Asia but does his writings of his time in Istanbul also reveal anything significant of the make-up of the Hungarian colony at the time?
During his first travel to Istanbul, Ármin Vámbery was hosted by the Hungarian Society of Constantinople for a short period of time. Later his travels to the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Central Asia opened a new era in the Oriental Studies of Hungary, especially with the foundation of the Department of Turkology in University of Budapest. Though he played an important role in Ottoman-Hungarian diplomatic and scientific relations, his books, articles, and reports includes very limited information about the Hungarian community in Istanbul. Otherwise his reputation in the Ottoman Empire made possible for the Hungarians to start historical research both in the archives of the Sultans and in Tekirdağ (once called Rodosto), aiming at tracing Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II’s once existing Hungarian refugee colony’s legacy.
6- The demise of the first Hungarian club in Istanbul was brought about through the activity of the Austrian spies and agents and the conflicts within the Hungarian community itself and the society then suspended its activities. Was this turmoil connected with the Hungarian uprising of 1848 and no doubt the splits within the Austro-Hungarian community in Istanbul as well?
We have very limited information about the Hungarian colony in Istanbul before the 1848-49 Hungarian revolution, but it is clear that the frictions between the Austrians and Hungarians started with the outbreak of the freedom fight in Budapest. Up until the 1880s, the Hungarian Society followed a revolutionary attitude and described itself as an anti-Austrian, purely Hungarian entity. This of course made the diplomatic representatives of the Habsburg Empire in Istanbul angry and they used every tool to restrict or later to eliminate the activities of this hostile group of people. We also have to underline that due to the spying activities of the Austrians, the mistrust among the Hungarians was well perceptible, which caused, for example, some members of the Hungarian community to keep a distance even from Vámbéry as he was also considered as a spy.
7- In the 1880s with the establishment of the dual monarchy in Austro-Hungary the Hungarians in Istanbul were free from earlier pressures and the society flourished with the reopening of the club. Presumably most of the community were exiles for political reasons thus of modest means, so perhaps shop-keepers and restaurant, hotel owners or manual labourers as professions. Did some rise through ranks and enter the Levantine Pera society and inter-marry with the Western Europeans resident in the city or was the community mostly insular?
The profile of the members of the Hungarian Society radically changed after the 1880s. The society lost its revolutionary attitude and mostly started operating as an elite club with members such as chief firefighter Count Ödön Széchenyi Pasha or pianist Géza Hegyei, both married local Greek women. A very limited number of the Hungarians became a honoured members of Pera, or the city’s Levantine community, while some made military careers at the Ottoman Army that provided them with acceptance by the high society of Istanbul (such as Josef Kohlmann, i.e. Macar Feyzullah Efendi, or poetess NIgar hanim’s father, Osman Pasha). However many left the city or worked as servants or stableman at the households of wealthy Levantines or Turks.
8- The post WWI The Macar Cemiyeti Hayriyesi’s (The Hungarian Benevolent Society) mission was to help the workers in finding jobs, providing accommodation for the job seekers, and informing the Hungarians in Hungary about the potential opportunities or restrictions imposed on foreign workers in Turkey. How well were these archives preserved and when did this mission cease its operations? Do we have much information on Hungarian workers and businessmen operating in Republican Turkey outside Istanbul?
We have again very limited archival sources of the Hungarians in the Republican Era, especially workers, but the re-foundation of the society and its activities were reported by the Hungarian consulate and embassy. Otherwise we can find very detailed reports in Hungarian newspapers about the society’s activities, headquarters and members. It was also an important development that a new branch of the society was established in Ankara, the new capital, which hosted hundreds of qualified Hungarian experts, such as engineers, architects, or meteorologist. So it is not exaggeration to say that the Hungarian was the second most numerous community after the Turks in Ankara in the 1930s. We have also information about Hungarians who worked in Izmir (masons, water engineers), in Eskişehir (sugar factory) or in the south-eastern region of Turkey (railway constructions). As the number of archival materials are limited, the only way to reach further information about their life and activities in Turkey is only possible through personal archives. In the previous years we managed to reach some of the relatives of these people in both Turkey and Hungary, thus provided us with very valuable details.
9- Adolf Orosdi, a Hungarian army officer, who had found refuge in the Ottoman Empire, opened his first clothing store in Galata in 1855. With the Back family, equally of Jewish Austro-Hungarian descent, Orosdi and his sons began establishing similar stores elsewhere. In 1888, when their siège social was registered in Paris, they already had outlets in Philippopoli , Bucharest, Salonica, Izmir, Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta, and Tunis, as well as purchasing missions in industrial and commercial centres in Europe. They could be argued as pioneers of modern department stores. Was there a religious divide between Jewish and Christian Hungarians so they didn't mix much and the club remained mostly a Christian institution?
There were Jewish members in the club, especially after the 1880s, so it would be false to say that there was a religious divide between the members. It is also important to note that not the religion but the political attitude determined the membership of the society. For example the revolutionary attitude was mostly represented by Protestant Hungarians, while Catholics and Hungarians with Jewish origin were mostly Monarchist. For instance the famous Hungarian pianist, Géza Hegyei, who was of Jewish origin, played an important role in the cultural activities of the society before and during the Great War.
10- Another colourful character was Daniel Szilagyi who after the defeat of the war of Hungarian independence he was forced to flee with the Kossuth emigrants and eventually found his way to Istanbul, participated in the Crimean War, made some money to buy the antique bookstore where he had previously worked as an assistant, collected with passion collected Turkish and to a lesser degree Arabic and Persian manuscripts, which soon became an important source for the local Turkish readers, scholars as well as European researchers and was linked with close ties to several representatives of the Yeni Osmanlı movement. He made available for them the copies of the movement’s illegal periodicals, as the Hürriyet and the Muhbir and got acquainted with many of the personalities of the Ottoman reformers. Do you think Szilagyi through his contacts and excellent command of languages became an important linchpin, a kind of advocate and in particular a mediator between the Ottoman authorities and his fellow Hungarian emigrants?
Daniel Szilágyi played an extensive role in the Hungarian community until his death in 1885. However we cannot say that he was a mediator between the Turkish authorities and the Hungarian community. His role was rather limited to building up a valuable network among Turkish intellectuals and bureaucrats that – together with Vámbéry’s involvement - made possible the pursuing of the first Hungarian historical research in the Ottoman capital and he was also active in following the developments around the Ottoman archive at the Topkapı Palace. Particularly this made him extremely important in the eyes of some Hungarian politicians and decision makers. Otherwise Vámbery or Count Ödön Széchenyi had more important contacts to the Turkish elite, so in this sense their reputation meant more for Hungarian community in Constantinople.
11- There is a Hungarian section in the Ferikoy Protestant cemetery. How many tombs / burials are recorded there and which is the oldest burial and do we know much of the very earliest burials there?
The Feriköy Protestant cemetery was opened in 1859 and according to a Hungarian source that I have recently found, the Hungarian section was opened in the January of 1862. From that time until the recent past less than 100 Hungarians were buried at the cemetery. The oldest grave that we know is a revolutionary, János Kovács’s ledger from September 1862.
12- You were the editor of the recent booklet accompanying the exhibition on ‘Between Empires - Beyond Borders: The late Ottoman Empire and the early Republican era through the lens of the Kope family’, held at Salt Beyoğlu, 15 September 2020 - 13 March 2021. Clearly the archive of 3 generations of the Hungarian / Levantine Kope family resident in Istanbul from Tanzimat to the early republican times is a rare and rich resource to explore not only the evolving culture of this mixed Hungarian / French / Italian Levantine family through inter-marriage but also the Levantine world where nationality was clearly fluid and dynamic. Do you think yet more work can be done to explore this theme and perhaps with the potential to contact descendants of the side branch Tallibart and Marcopoli families to build up further on this insight in to this Levantine world of negotiating belonging in a turbulent environment where forces of national conformity would inevitably end this state of supra-nationality?
I think the “Köpe project” was a very successful example of cooperation between individual researchers, filmmakers, and institutions. I also have to emphasize that instigator of the whole research was the Turkish documentarian, Nefin Dinç who accidently came across the family archive of the descendants of the Köpe family in the USA. My involvement was so to say “accidental”, but it was an honour for me and for the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Istanbul that we could take part in the publishing and exhibition part of this project. Last year finally the documentary entitled Antoine, the fortunate was screened and some days earlier the filmmakers won a special prize with the film. In addition to acknowledging that further research of the family’s Levantine side would certainly enrich us with additional information, I think we did our very best to enlighten this turbulent period of the recent Turkish past through personal narratives, photos and videos with the documentary, the exhibition and the book publication.
13- What are you working on right now and can the LHF community help you in any way in continuing your research?
Beside our numerous cultural projects at the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Istanbul I am currently working on different articles relating the Hungarian presence in Istanbul and Turkey before the Great War but I am also doing my best to publish my book Hungarian Science and Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire. The Story of the Hungarian Research Institute in Constantinople (1916-1918) in Turkish or English. Any help in finding an English publisher would be appreciated.
Interview conducted by Craig Encer
