Paris or Weimar? Hungarian Writers’ and Intellectuals’ Early Dilemmas in the Construction of their War Culture During WWI

In his famous “Paris or Weimar”, Béla Balázs broke off with Paris and the francophilie of his generation. He was not the only one to do it : in the literary journals known for their French orientation as A Hét or Nyugat, or in the daily Világ, authors unanimously announced this rupture with France. However, a more detailed analysis of these journals reveals more nuanced opinions, reflecting « disappointed love » or deep regret. Among conservative or Catholic writers, rejection of France was differently articulated at the beginning of WWI : the former generally kept a low-profile while the latter aroused in a violent Francophobia. Based on literary journals, a few dailies and correspondences and diaries, the article thus reveals the intellectual positions implicitly present in this discourse of complex rupture, and the specificities of the Francophilia rejected during these first years of mobilization

Art · Art history · Literature · Political science · Regret · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Classics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Hungarian Social, Economic and Educational Studies · Law · Political and Social Issues