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Legacy in Arts and Culture

American Hungarian Foundation maintains its roots in central New Jersey.

By Megan Sullivan
   THE Potter Needle Factory opened on Somerset Street in New Brunswick nearly 100 years ago, its employees among the thousands of immigrants from Hungary, Ireland and Poland who moved to the area for its local industry and labor opportunities.
   Today, the American Hungarian Foundation’s library, museum and archives are housed within the former factory, which closed in 1974. It’s fitting that a group so dedicated to preserving and sharing Hungarian culture would transform this building into its headquarters, a place where immigrants played an important role in building the city.
   The early group of Hungarian immigrants that settled in New Brunswick between 1880 and 1920 came with the intention of returning to Hungary after earning enough money to purchase farmland or to expand a home they already owned. Some returned to their homeland several times, but many stayed and established homes and families. A new wave of immigrants arrived following World War II and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution renewed emphasis on Hungarian culture and language. Many refugees of the Revolution came through Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, located just across the river from New Brunswick.
   The American Hungarian Studies Foundation was established in 1955 (later shortened to the American Hungarian Foundation) as a center to document achievements and contributions of American Hungarians. The Foundation moved to New Brunswick in 1959 when it funded the new Hungarian studies program at Rutgers University. The longest process for the Foundation was to reach its goal of building the museum, library and archives facility, which opened in 1989.
   The Foundation recently published a book, The Hungarian Legacy in America: The History of the American Hungarian Foundation ($69.95), to document how the organization came to be and what it has accomplished during its first 50 years. The book was written and edited by Fulbright Scholar Ilona Kovács, Foundation President August J. Molnar, designer Katherine Marothy Hames, Museum Curator Patricia L. Fazekas and Foundation Librarian Margaret Papai.
   The book has won two awards since its June release: the silver award for book design in the Creativity 37 Annual and the Scheufelen Award of Excellence. Ms. Hames has been creating the visual face of the Foundation for the majority of its materials for more than 20 years. “My heritage is actually Hungarian on both sides,” Ms. Hames says, “so this book was in many ways a labor of love.”
   In addition to chronicling the organization’s history, The Hungarian Legacy in America features profiles of different visionaries and Foundation builders and details its community support and social events like the annual Hungarian Festival or Festival of Trees (see box). The editors also decided to sprinkle quotes throughout from people who have been involved with the Foundation in some capacity over the course of its existence and who reflect upon its importance.
   The roots of the Foundation stem back to 1941, when Barnabas Dienes was named to head a newly established program of Hungarian studies at Elmhurst College in Illinois. The program provided a way for second-generation Hungarians to preserve their language and cultural heritage. Mr. Molnar, a former student of the program, accepted an invitation to return to his alma mater in 1952 to head the Hungarian studies teaching program.
   ”Soon I saw that we needed some other vehicle to do some of the things we were doing,” Mr. Molnar says, like raising funds for scholarships and expanding the Hungarian studies program to other colleges and universities. The Foundation was chartered in December of 1954 as a publicly supported non-profit foundation and the first board meeting was held in January of 1955. “We were on our way,” Mr. Molnar says. “The baby was born.”
   The 288-page coffee-table book — filled with archival photographs, correspondence, newspaper clippings, artwork and other images — also details the history of the Foundation’s museum, and a chronology of its exhibitions. “This is just a teaser as far as the collection is concerned,” Ms. Fazekas says. “What we show is the tip of the iceberg. We have 3,000 to 4,000 objects in the museum collection alone, a lot of which is textile pieces, embroideries and costumes, several hundred paintings and every kind of object related to Hungarian culture like furniture, ceramics, musical instruments, coins, stamps.”
   The first piece of art donated to the museum’s collection was “Green Stream” (in 1955), an oil on canvas by Charles Harsanyi, gift of the artist. Other noteworthy items include three 18th and 19th century Austro-Hungarian coins and a 10th century coin of King Stephan I and rare 13th and 14th century manuscripts. The Foundation’s paintings and drawings are by both notable Hungarian artists and American artists of Hungarian birth or descent.
   ”One of the main focal points of the museum collection is the work of artists who were born in Hungary and later had careers here in the United States,” Ms. Fazekas says.
   Readers also learn of the library’s extensive holdings — about 35,000 to 40,000 catalogued books and another 30,000 waiting to be catalogued. This includes rare publications from the 15th century to the present. One can also find documents of Camp Kilmer in the library’s archives and the papers donated by the United Nations Library, or a collection of newspaper clippings on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and emigration to the U.S., letters, manuscripts, photos, recordings, periodicals and more. “One of the great benefits of this book was that we got to go through everything,” says Ms. Papai, “things we didn’t know we had.”
   A lot of items people donated over the years, like photographs and correspondence, had been stored in different boxes at the Foundation waiting to be sorted through. “It was like Christmas, opening boxes and finding out what was in them,” Ms. Papai says. “And it was a learning process about the history of the Foundation.”
   Mr. Molnar also had boxes in his home office and basement filled with Elmhurst-related materials. Ms. Kovács, a retired librarian, began collecting letters and documents for the project, getting it in motion before returning to her homeland of Hungary.
   ”One of the things we hope this book will do is take the Foundation to other people who have not been able to get here,” Ms. Fazekas says, “and to give them some idea of what this institution is and what we do, what we have and what we’re looking forward to doing in the next 50 years.”
The Hungarian Legacy In America: The History of the American Hungarian Foundation costs $69.95 and is available at the Foundation’s headquarters, 300 Somerset St., New Brunswick; (732) 846-5777; info@ahfoundation.org