Janos Gereben
- 1969
Fellowship Title:
- Social and Political Development in Eastern Europe
Fellowship Year:
- 1969
From The Moon to a Land Yet Stranger…
Lerchengasse 28/43 1080 Wien, Austria BELGRADE—Freedom is chaos. At least here, in East Europe. (And there are some people who feel that way even in America.) But there is no question about the chaotic qualities of freedom here, especially in comparison with the splendidly rigid discipline of East Germany or Bulgaria or Romania. Bucharest was OK for Nixon, “safe” as it could be—but Belgrade is not recommended. Even the astronauts were in a bit of jeopardy from the crowd. Yugoslavia is considered to be the freest of Communist countries (and there is a question in the mind of the visitor here if this is a Communist country at all) — an opinion which becomes visibly justified by an apparently complete lack of regimentation. Balkanic passions explode here freely, uninhibited by Party, social, or police discipline. The astronauts of Apollo 11 (here Oct. 18-20 on the 13th stop of their tour around the world) learned of these conditions as soon as they stepped down from Air Force One. They were surrounded immediately by officials, journalists,
Some Aspects of 18th Century Urban Problems
Nov., 1969 Lerchengasse 28/43, 1080 Wien VIENNA—“That’s it, Frau Dietrich,” the man screamed, “I will not be bothered by your whining anymore. Have you no respect for art?” “Out, Herr Doktor, out this instance,” the woman yelled back. “Nobody can sleep around here with that infernal noise you’re making and you haven’t paid the rent for months…” And so, Ludwig van Beethoven, noisemaker and occasional rent-payer, upped once again and moved—for the fifth time that year. Some call America the “mobile society.” Hah! With one or two address changes a year? What to call Vienna of the 18th and 19th centuries then, with her great musicians spending but a few weeks in their “homes” before moving or being thrown out? Vienna, often accused as “the city of musicians,” has always honored her artists once they were dead. As long as they were alive, however, they had nothing but trouble rent-wise what with mundane money matters and people complaining about the noise and a somewhat eccentric behavior. There must be twice as many “Beethoven lived here”
Hungarian Mass Media and its Cultural Emphasis – I
Lerchengasse 28/43,1080 Wien, Austria BUDAPEST—The number of television sets in Hungary (population: 10 million) has shot up from 16,000 in 1958 to over one million in 1966 and to 1.4 million by 1968. The 1966 figures indicate that there were about 100 TV sets in use for each 1,000 residents in Hungary—still considerably behind the 357 per thousand in the U.S., but ahead of the Soviet Union’s 67 and Yugoslavia’s 30, and just a few fractions ahead of the rate for Austria. More significant than these impressive figures is the fact that Hungarian TV is good, its programs more varied, engaging, entertaining, and experimental than just about any other nation’s (with the possible exception of the best of BBC). Although HTV’s growth is phenomenal, it is still a young and often weak enterprise. Program hours, for example, amounted to only 2,391 in 1968 and that compares unfavorably with Western TV output notwithstanding the fact that it represents a two-fold increase over 1960. Mondays are still without any program at all on Hungary’s only station
Report From North Vietnam
Oct. 1969 Lerchengasse 28/43 1080 Wien, Austria BUDAPEST—Nepszabadsag, the newspaper of the Hungarian Communist Party, has just concluded a series of eight articles from its correspondent in North Vietnam, Laszlo Rozsa. Entitled “Under Thundering Skies,” the series reports on the current situation in that country, an ally of Communist Hungary. Here are some excerpts from Rozsa’s articles. “I TRAVELED almost three thousand kilometers between Hanoi and the 17th parallel, the line artificially dividing Vietnam. I reached all the way to the north shore of the Ben Hai river, the most tragic symbol of the war, which is the milestone in this most painful and bloody conflict of current human history. During the nights spent in bamboo huts between trenches, I heard the ceaseless thundering of guns, the cracking of small arms; saw the bright lights of exploding bombs and rockets; and on the other side of the DMZ, the excited movements of the search lights from the American base at Con Tien sweeping the ground for the freedom fighters. I felt the trembling of this
Life Among the Natives or Scenes from the Hungarian Jungle sans Dorothy Lamour
(but Zsa Zsa may be substituted) Oct. 1969 Lerchengasse 28/43 1080 Wien, Austria BUDAPEST—Hungarians are all crazy. They really are. All right, we are. I mean it helps to have a name like “Janos” to make such a statement. It prevents any charges of prejudice or xenophobia. “Crazy,” the way it is used here, means more than “foolish” or “cute.” It also means neurotic, sick, and unreasonable. The proof of the pudding is in the Hungarian suicide rate, among the highest in the world, as well as in the world-wide spread of Hungarian greats, way out of proportion for a nation of 10 million, from nuclear scientists to opera tenors (and in these two extremes the evidence, indeed the need, of some kind of unbalance is obvious). In the category of lesser greats of damning Hungarian exports are a frightening number of malicious journalists. Impeccably courteous to foreign visitors, to the point of a national mania, which is constantly lampooned in their own press, Hungarians among themselves are rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.