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Authors:
Zsuzsa Daczo, Reference Librarian, Latin American, Caribbean and European Division
Created: November 7, 2024
Last Updated: November 7, 2024
This research guide from the European Reading Room at the Library of Congress recognizes the voices of Americans with Hungarian ancestry. The guide is intended as an introduction to the subject of Hungarians in the United States, be they immigrants born abroad or people of Hungarian descent born in the United States, regardless of whether they or their ancestors came from Hungary, or from its surrounding countries. The guide links collection items at the Library of Congress with reference links to complementary local cultural heritage institutions across the United States and in Hungary, to bring together information sources about Hungarian Americans.
This guide can help people who study aspects of ethnicity, educators who work with minority students, local governments, libraries, information specialists, as well as the business community find information about Hungarian Americans.
This guide includes information about Hungarian speaking Americans, and generally about Americans of Hungarian origin, including everyone who identifies as Hungarian American.
The Americas were discovered and colonized by other European countries, but people from landlocked Hungary also came to explore and to settle in various parts of the New Land throughout the history of the United States. Reviewing the many materials that they have produced, it is apparent that they were part of the many aspects of everyday life of the different centuries, the work done by everyday people, the many wars fought by Americans, the industrial innovations of the 19th century, the golden age of Hollywood, the scientific discoveries of the 20th century, and all areas of art. In most ways they were Americans, and in some ways they maintained elements of their own culture for example in music, religious life, and cooking. In the 21st century it has been easy for Hungarian Americans to be connected to both of their homelands. These days they use media and social media in both languages, and they maintain connections with people from two (or three countries), plus they have media presence through Hungarian-American groups that they create and maintain.
Hungarians came in the largest number toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. This was a period during which the population of the United States grew at a high rate thanks to the large influx of working age immigrants. Hungarians who came during these decades wanted to make money to buy land in the U.S. or at home. Some stayed, some left after a few years, some came to work here more than once. Generally they started out working in mines and in factories, the growth of which fueled industrial growth at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. These migrants were at first mostly young men, but were later joined by working women as well, and their children too. Those who came during this wave of mass migration were mostly landless peasants, as there was a population boom in Europe at a time when fewer hands were needed in agriculture. Many more people moved to towns within the Austro-Hungarian Empire than came to the United States, but hundreds of thousands crossed the Atlantic Ocean too. The number of Hungarian immigrants at any given time can only be estimated, because we do not have reliable data on the ethnicity of those who came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, moreover we do not have counts for return migration.
"Each wave of Hungarian immigrants had something special to contribute to the American heritage. The "48-ers" were excellent soldiers and fought in the Civil War. The flood of immigrants who came to America during the last decade of the nineteenth century were farmers and factory hands. Those who came prior to and after World War II middle-class intellectuals in the professions; they were doctors, lawyers, scientists, authors, actors, professors, etc. ... The "56-ers" were mostly young men, many of whom finished their last years of study in American universities. President D. Eisenhower provided transportation for the freedom fighters and made it possible for them to come to America independently of quota-regulations." Domjan pp 117-118.
The severe economic problems at the end of the1920s and in the early 1930s made it extremely difficult for Hungarian American communities to maintain their institutions. Accelerated Americanization was the answer offered by all parties, including the churches, which themselves became bilingual. Many of the Hungarian Americans were gravely affected by the Depression since they worked in the iron and steel industries. Tensions between the generations rose, and Hungary's history in the 20th century also pushed many second generation Hungarians to disown their past, and even change their names in their attempt to show that they were Americans.
Another wave of immigrants from Hungary came before, during, and after the Second World War, to escape political or ethnic persecution. A larger group of some 38,000 Hungarians were offered refuge after the 1956 revolution. Since then, no large waves have come, but a few thousand Hungarians have been arriving each year since 1990 to study, do research, or work in the United States. Some of these have returned to Hungary, while many have settled here and are raising second generation Hungarian-Americans.
The most comprehensive data on Hungarians in the U.S. come from Census surveys, though the methodology used for measuring race and ethnicity has changed over time. The latest Census data that asked about country of birth comes from 2000, at which time about 65,000 people living in the US were born in Hungary: Foreign born population data. That same year, the number of people who spoke Hungarian at home was higher at 86,000 possibly due to the fact that Hungarian is spoken by people born in other countries too, plus children born in the U.S might also speak Hungarian at home: Languages spoken at home. Data on the number of people claiming Hungarian ancestry has been collected in a different way since then. The latest available counts are from the 2020 Census, where data on ethnicities was collected within given racial categories. Of those who reported to be white, ca. 360,000 claimed Hungarian ancestry. The total number within any combination of race was ca. 1.36 million. Questions about languages spoken at home or about country of origin were no longer collected.
There is more information in this article about the 2000 Census data on Hungarian Americans. External
The Library of Congress has a couple of thousand books written by or about Hungarian Americans. In this guide we chose to list a selection of these books organized into various categories. We also have in our collections relevant periodicals published in the U.S. and in Canada. Other types of materials include: music scores, audio materials such as interviews and recorded radio shows, videos, photographs, archived websites, and manuscript collections of famous Hungarian Americans held by the Library of Congress. Where available, we provide links to materials available to researchers without having to come to the Library, such as digitized print materials, photos, websites, and databases.
A search for Hungarian Americans in the catalog brings more than 1,500 results that can be narrowed down by type of material, language of the publication, date of publication, and more using the 'Refine Your Search' option on the top of the page. There are also digital materials that can be used only onsite in a system called Stacks.
We are in the process of selecting older books related to Hungarian Americans for digitization. They will be made available in the Selected Digitized Books collection: Hungarian American publications. As far as newspapers are concerned, Amerikai Magyar Hirlap = American Magyar Journal is digitized and made available in Chronicling America, and many more are available on hungaricana.hu External from the American Hungarian Foundation Collection External.
Worthy of note are also the biographical files of the former Hungarian Reference Library (1937-1942) of New York containing 3,600 pages of data on 920 individuals. These files can also be an important source for studying the history of Hungarian-Americans in the early 20th century.
This guide explores and connects historical and contemporary resources that lift the voices of Americans with Serbian and Montenegrin heritage, describing materials from the Library of Congress collections and freely available digital sources.
This guide explores and connects historical and contemporary resources that lift the voices of Americans with Romanian heritage, describing materials from the Library of Congress collections and freely available digital sources.
This guide provides researchers information about geographic feature names in East Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Russia among the collections of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress.
This guide offers a selection of images from the Prints & Photographs Division about Ellis Island and immigration to the United States around the turn of the twentieth century.
This guide provides access to ethnographic resources documenting Hungarian expressive culture in Hungary and the United States in the collections of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Between 1892 and 1954, millions of immigrants came to the United States through the immigration station at Ellis Island. This guide provides access to materials related to "Ellis Island" in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers
This guide, prepared by the Law Library of Congress, includes links to free online resources regarding the country of Hungary, focusing on its constitution; executive, legislative and judicial branches; legal guides; and general sources.
This guide to Hungarian newspapers at the Library of Congress includes titles published within Hungary, regardless of language, as well as in Hungarian published abroad. it provides information about print, microfilm, and digitized issues.
Telephone and address directories are used by genealogists and historians to identify people and businesses from a particular place and era. This guide lists uncataloged directories from Hungary in the Library of Congress collection.
This guide provides indexes to the Library of Congress microfilm collections of formerly classified records from the military archives of Hungary, Poland and Romania. Also includes papers from the conference "Cold War Archives in the Decade of Openness"
One of the most popular and influential composers of the 19th century, Franz Liszt and his music are well represented in the Music Division's print, manuscript, and digital collections.
Created between 1335 and 1340, the Nekcsei Lipócz Bible is one of the world's most important illuminated manuscripts. This guide provides general information as well as related digital and print resources at the Library of Congress.