Description:
In the aftermath of World War I, international organizations descended upon the destitute children living in the rubble of Budapest and the city became a testing ground for how the West would handle the most vulnerable residents of a former enemy state.
Budapest's Children reconstructs how Budapest turned into a laboratory of transnational humanitarian intervention. Friederike Kind-Kovács explores the ways in which migration, hunger, and destitution affected children's lives, casting light on children's particular vulnerability in times of distress. Drawing on extensive archival research, Kind-Kovács reveals how Budapest's children, as iconic victims of the war's aftermath, were used to mobilize humanitarian sentiments and practices throughout Europe and the United States. With this research, Budapest's Children investigates the dynamic interplay between local Hungarian organizations, international humanitarian donors, and the child relief recipients.
In tracing transnational relief encounters, Budapest's Children reveals how intertwined postwar internationalism and nationalism were and how child relief reinforced revisionist claims and global inequalities that still reverberate today.
Review Quotes:
"An original contribution to the history of humanitarian relief, child-welfare work, and the social impact of the First World War in Central Europe. Richly detailed and deeply researched, Budapest's Children traces the dire effects of war and demise of Hapsburg rule on conditions in Hungary's capital city and examines the diversity and interaction of organizations and actors, foreign and domestic, concerned with aiding children and mothers. An insightful analysis of social conditions, relief work, and their representation, Budapest's Children elucidates the evolution and dynamics of interwar humanitarianism as well as the politics informing it."--Heide Fehrenbach, Board of Trustees Professor, Northern Illinois University
"Contemporaries referred to Budapest in the immediate postwar years as the 'capital of human misery.' Friederike Kind-Kovács's meticulously researched and original study provides a compelling, and tragically topical, analysis of the impact of war and social disintegration on children. It also examines the ways in which suffering was instrumentalized in humanitarian aid programs, and the relationship between philanthropy and national prestige. It is an important contribution both to the history of childhood, and to the social and cultural history of imperial collapse in the interwar decades."--Catriona Kelly, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK
"Budapest's Children is a compelling, deeply researched, and all too timely account of the dire humanitarian crisis that gripped Budapest after World War I and of the valiant efforts of local and international aid workers to care for refugee children displaced by the collapse of the Habsburg empire. Rich with insights about the interaction of nationalist and internationalist politics and about the power that images of children's suffering have to move consciences and inspire action, this book is a magnificent contribution to the growing literature on war and its aftermath in East-Central Europe."--Paul Hanebrink, Rutgers University
"Historians of childhood will benefit from this book just as much as scholars interested in the history of humanitarianism. On a more general level, it provides valuable insights into a European region otherwise neglected: Hungary."--Martina Winkler, H-Soz-Kult
"In Budapest's Children: Humanitarian Relief in the Aftermath of the Great War, Friederike Kind-Kovács deftly describes the dynamics between local Hungarian organizations and foreign humanitarian donors and explains how the suffering of Budapest's children was used to mobilize Americans (and Europeans)."--Emmanuel Destenay, Modern American History
"The familiar western and celebratory perspective of humanitarian history has left gaps in our understanding of the relationship between relief and welfare, which Budapest's Children offers an opportunity to explore."--Sara Silverstein, CEU Review of Books
"Budapest's Children is essential and not to be missed for anyone examining child welfare in post-war contexts or working on the local history of aid in central Europe. It is also essential reading for researchers who study the history and origins of international organizations and international aid. A great advantage of the book is that it provides, through the analysis of interviews, the voices of some of the children who had been helped, thus making understandable and perceptible the effort of international aid cooperation to bring to life individual, personal life journeys."--Gergely Kunt, University of Miskolc, Hungary, Slavic Studies
"Overall, this monograph is a significant thematic and methodological contribution to multiple scholarly strands: history of humanitarianism, history of childhood, history of the First World War, history of Hungary, among others. What is particularly poignant here, however, is Friederike Kind-Kovács's ability to develop a narrative that fundamentally challenges different asymmetries: between donors and givers in the process of aid; between adult decision-makers and children as war sufferers and objects of aid; and between West and East."--Doina Anca Cretu, University of Warwick, UK, First World War Studies
"This work makes valuable contributions to many fields, including the history of humanitarianism, medicine, eugenics, comparativenationalism, refugee and displacementhistory, inadditiontochildren's history, twentieth-century European and transnational history, and, of course, Hungarian history. It is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and readers generally interested in how, when, where, and why international aid movements can be successful."--Rebekah Klein-Pejsová, Purdue University, Cambridge University Press
"The book is well-written and should prove particularly useful for those interested in the First World War, the impact of the Treaty of Trianon, the rise of fascism, and the nature of humanitarianism. There are also some rich sections in the book on specific parts of Hungarian history, namely the revanchist longings for lost territory and the forced relocation of ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania and other regions to temporary dwellings in Budapest (in many cases, rail cars). In general, the book should be required reading for those seeking to understand international humanitarianism of the 1920s and the fate of central Europeans who "lost" the war."--Tammy M. Proctor, Utah State University, Canadian Slavonic Papers