young Russians & 1917 Revolution

Andy Willimott wrote an excellent journal article on a generation of young Russians who embraced new ideals of socialist living. I have added my own family’s experience in this amazing era.

Communist Youth League/Komsomol, 

The youth were healthy, ideological and proud

1924 poster

The October Revolution, which started when the Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace on 25th Oct 1917, promised a new future. It became a radical break with the past of Tsarist aut­ocracy, exploitation and misery. Bolsheviks were later willing to use viol­ence in pursuit of their goals but import­antly, the Bol­sh­eviks galvanised hopes that had gained momentum during 1917. Socialist visions offered an attractive altern­at­ive to the horrid rest­r­ictions of tsarist autocracy, monarchy, nob­il­ity, Church, private ownership and worker exploitation.

The new social and political order of Oct 1917 offered an escape from the inherited world for the oppressed. This is why the Soviet Union continued to be held up as an alternative historic path throughout the C20th, even after its earliest ideals were later corrupt­ed. It offered an alternative to the injustices of the old imperial order, to the cruelties of modern capitalism.

As the Bolsheviks came to power, factory workers rejected the clearest symbol of exploitation: bosses. Awful managers were carted out of the factory doors and dumped. Some workers went on to form factory committees, replacing sym­bols of old authority and implem­enting workers control. At home and work, citizens of the newly formed Soviet republic drank tea and discussed social­ist enfran­chisement.

One section of society was most susceptible to the promise of a new future: youths belonged to the future and had the tend­ency to reject their parents’ old ways. Soviet youth literature prom­ot­ed the idea that life could be rationally redesigned to foster social­ism, reshaping culture and society, with Soviet youths in the vanguard.

My grandfather was a perfect example. Born in 1898 as the third last of a very large group of Russian siblings, he was 19 during the Russian Revolution. He and his siblings were mesmerised by the rise of socialism and the free­dom it offered their impoverished, working class, Jewish family who remembered the pogroms so clearly. He ded­icated the rest of his life to volunteerism, equality of all citizens, provis­ion of community services to ordinary families, and educational facilities for the Jewish community. In Australia he was a core member of the Labour Party.

The communes, in university dormitories or elsewhere, were res­id­ential spaces in which young radicals sought to establish living social­ism. All moneys were placed communally and shared; all possess­ions be­came shared agricultural property; and each inhabit­ant vow­ed to live in a comradely fashion. By the mid-1920s, many thousands of young activists were ins­p­ired to replicate communal living, mainly in the cities of central Eur­opean Russia. By the later 1920s Komsomol-Communist Youth League saw more and more youths becoming engaged in commune life, providing a space for act­ivist initiative. And for working in well designed factories.

The young socialists allocated rooms for collective events, and for leisure activities. Sexism in the alloc­at­ion of tasks had to end. Hence each commune also allocated the cleaning and cooking fairly between the sexes. Replacing private kitchens with mun­icipal canteens in every city and workplace provided better nutrit­ion, released women into the workforce and fostered a fairer social order.

The communes also discussed sexual equality. The issue of children was raised at the weekly discuss­ions, de­ciding that it was best to use contraception for the time being. It was agreed that if children were conceived, they should be afforded by the community. The biol­og­ical parents would have to place the children in shared pre-schools and schools, returning to their parents after work. But after a few months, the commune de­cided that relations between inhabitants should not be entered into lightly, lest personal divisions and animosity set in.

Striking women workers kick-started the Feb 1917 revolution. 

Then, after the Oct revolution, gained full legal equality.

1920 poster 

This was all part of a struggle for new morals which, across the 1920s, was being referred to as a Cultural Revolut­ion in the press. Leon Trotsky also drew attention to the con­cept of cultural revolution with his publication Questions of Everyday Life 1923; new standards of behaviour and social norms were crucial to the long-term health of the new revolut­ionary state.

The October Revol­ution stimulated a range of social and cultural act­iv­ism in the opening decade of the new Soviet state. The Prolet­ar­ian Cultural-Education Association was a movement of local groups and work­ers clubs that promoted artists & poets, as well as a new working-class aesth­etic in art more generally. The movement peaked in 1920. 

The revolution's emotional energy remained an important cornerstone of the Soviet state, bringing grand utopian visions to life. The best ex­­am­ple outside Russia was Israel's kibbutz movement. Those kibbutz­im founded in the 1920s tended to be larger and more Russian-oriented than those kibbutzim founded prior to WW1, so the issues the members debated were exactly those raised in Willimott’s journal article: shared factory or agricultural equipment, shared work clothing, who does the cooking, who does child care, volunteerism, army service etc. When I did my Gap Year in Israel in the mid 1960s, the kibbutz meetings each month were still discussing the same ideological debates that arose in the Russian communes after the 1917 Revolution.

Saving Jewish orphans Ochberg 1921

I was fascinated by Isaac Ochberg (1879–1938) who was born in Uman in Russia/now Ukraine. With thousands of other Russians, the Ochbergs went to South Africa in 1894 where Isaac became a successful Cape Town businessman.

Isaac Ochberg, March 1921

aish.com

After the old Czarist regime ended in 1917, rival armies were fighting for control. With law and order failing, transport for many thousands of demob'd soldiers ended. Plus vast armies of German ex-POWs tried to make their way home after the Soviets’ Peace Treaty at Brest-Litovsk.

The battles did not start out as particularly anti-Semitic. But owing to the oppression to which they had been exposed for gener­ations, the lives of the impoverished Jews worsened. With famine and typhoid epidemics, ancient horrors surfaced in the misery. Polish and other peasants joined forces with reactionary officers and troops, to kill Jews in pogroms.

Survivors begged their cousins in South Africa for help. A great surge of compassion swept the South African Jew­ish community who would try to save some of the victims, partic­ul­arly children. But would the Union Government create any difficulties in admitting them? 

Ochberg quickly met Gen Jan Smuts, prime minister between 1919–24, who gave the children entry visas. Smuts could have sunk the rescue plan in an instant, had he chosen to. His support was essential and warmly welcomed.

A South African Relief Fund for Jewish War Victims was already in place when Ochberg pro­p­osed that the Cape Jewish Orphanage take responsibility for the children. The Relief Fund had to raise £10,000, enough for 200 or­phans. [Sadly 400,000+ destitute Jewish orphans were eventually found]. By Jan 1921 the Un­ion Gov­ernment agreed to give pound for pound to the Pogrom Orphan Fund.

Someone had to go to Europe, so Ochberg made himself respon­sible in Mar 1921. He travelled to Ukraine for a few dangerous months, vis­iting lots of villages in the Polish Ukraine and Galic­ia. Och­berg proceeded from town to town, visiting Minsk, Pinsk, Lodz, Lemberg, Stanislav and Wlodowa etc. When a letter came to him from Port Elizabeth's com­munal leaders, Ochberg answered and expressed his very great thanks for their boxes of second-hand clothing. The gen­er­os­ity displayed by South African Jewry made it possible to rescue the children. Otherwise they would surely have died of st­arvation, disease or Ukrainian pogrom wounds.

At first Pinsk was isolated by the fighting and Ochberg and helpers were thrown on their own resources. The 3 Jewish orph­an­ages in Pinsk had few beds, bedding and clothes - they used flour bags to sleep on. Typhus spread in the orphanage and shells were bursting in the streets. A notorious Ukrainian fanatic descended with his gangs and the pogroms raged for a week. The Federation of Ukrainian Jews did its best to assist but with civil war raging over large areas of Poland and elsewhere, and only a minimum of transport in operation, progress was slow. As order was restored, supplies began to arrive, first from Juedischer Hilfsverein in Berlin, and then from U.S Joint Distrib­ution Committee: cocoa, condensed milk, cooking oil and clothes.

One day the orphans heard that a "man from Africa was coming". He was going to take some of them away with him and give them a new, safe home. Nearly all the orphans had lost both par­ents, many in pogroms, on the Ukrainian border, at Minsk, Pinsk and other places. 

Group passport photo

The Observation Post

Confronting Ochberg was how to make his choice from the vast number of destitute children. He chose 8 children from each orphanage, making a total of 200 for whom he had funds. Since the South African Government had specified that the children must be in good health, of reasonable intel­lig­ence and willing to leave, the cream of each orphanage was selected.

Even though they were scared of being eaten by African tigers, the children were excited. And when Ochberg appeared, with his gingy hair and welcoming smile, the orphans called him Daddy.

The Polish authorities put many children trav­elling to Warsaw on cattle-trucks. Though their passports carried the usual Polish word Paszport with the Polish Eagle, there were no individual photos. Instead group photos app­eared, some with 30-40 small children sitting in rows.

They travelled in overcrowded, dirty trains to Warsaw, each child having a tiny package of clothing sent from overseas. In the middle of Warsaw was a restaurant, belonging to Pan­ya Engel, a kindly Jewish woman who the children adored. For several months the Ochberg orphans stayed in local schools, and Panya Engel and friends worked hard to protect them. Just as it seemed as if most of the difficulties had been overcome, there was a serious outbreak of eye trachoma which held up their departure.

From Warsaw, they travelled by river boat down the Vistula to Dan­zig. There, on the Baltic, they boarded a steamer bound for London, and the other kind people took charge of the orphans. A few of them were again taken ill, and spent the time in London in hospital.

Warm reception awaited the orphans

who came ashore in Cape Town, late 1921.

Observation Post

There was a warm reception when they finally landed in Cape Town in Sept, with huge crowds waiting on the quay for them. So large was the group of children that Cape Jewish Orphanage could no longer house them all, and some went to Arcadia Johan­nes­burg Orphanage instead.

In South Africa, the once-pathetic, poorly dressed children clearly profited from the kindness and instruction they received. There were numerous invit­ations to Jewish homes, and some of the children were adopted. Special English language classes were organised.

Nicholas Winton saved far more children from murder before WW2 and took them to Britain. But Ochberg set the model for humanitarian heroism in taking c190 Jewish pogrom orphans from the Ukraine and Poland to South Africa after WWI. See the honours he received and the formal dedication that was made in 2011.

Read Ochberg Orphans and the horrors from whence they came, David Solly Sandler, 2014

Feodor Ruckert Faberge silver, cloisonné enamel

Ruckert, coloured tea service, 1887-96, Alamy

Early medieval Russian silver often included calm niello work and ornamental lines with black enamel. But under Tsar Peter the Great (1682-1725), who west­ernised the Russ­ian Empire, local silversm­iths began explor­ing modern forms. The Imperial family and weal­thy cl­asses dined from fash­ionable, solid-silver Baroque, Rococo, then Neoclassic-style gob­lets, plat­ters, caviar dishes and bas­kets. Showy gilt-silver cigar­ette cas­es, cigar cas­es and tankards sat on shelves. Silver mirrors, per­fume bott­l­es, powder boxes and jewel­l­ery caskets went onto ladies dressers.

Cloisonné: an enamelling technique made from soldering de­licate metal strips bent to the outline of a des­ign, and filling the result­ing cellular compartments with vitreous enam­el paste. The ob­j­ect then was fired, ground smooth & polished. The strips were made from gold, brass or silver. Eventually bright co­lourful clois­onné-enamel florals were popular. Many ob­jects featured bolder champlevé-enamel des­ig­ns, the recesses fil­led with vitreous enamel before firing.

The Late Imperial Era saw prolific prod­uction. Friedrich Ruckert (1840-1917) was born in South Germ­any. At 14 he emigrated to Russia to work for a princely family, now re­named Feodor Ruckert. He spent most of his life in his bel­oved Moscow, where he had his art work­sh­ops. Eventually he had 14 craftsmen working for him, having full control over the creat­ive and prod­uct­ion proc­esses.

Ruckert, by Alamy 

                                                                              

Rückert was the most talented craftsman of enamelled silver objects in Imperial Russia. In Moscow, the cen­t­re of Russ­ian silver prod­uc­tion, he became an enamel master in 1886, working with every enamelling tech­n­ique (cloisonné, champlevé, en plein, guilloche and plique-à-jour).

Fol­lowing the Russian Revival style in the arts, Ruckert started producing traditional Russian des­igns, incorpor­ating foliage in de­l­icately shaded hues. Gradually his exper­im­ents with a more mod­ern colour palette and more intricate design el­ements develop­ed into a recognis­ab­le original style, while still tradit­ionally Slavic.

Rückert collaborated with some of the most resp­ected firms of his time. In 1886 he opened his own, new work­shop in Mos­cow and in 1887 he signed a cont­ract with Fab­ergé. In fact for 30 years Ruckert was the main supp­lier of clois­onné enamel for Fab­er­gé. Still, Ruck­ert supplied ot­h­­er important Rus­s­ian retailers eg Bolin.

Unlike other Europeans, Imperial Russians drank their tea at home and not in public tearooms. So the samovar was placed in the cent­re of the dining table and the accompanying tea sets had to be at­tractive. The tea sets included caddies, tea glass holders, sugar-cube boxes and cr­eam jugs. And to save the expense of sugar, some tea sets included a jam basket.

Rückert’s silver-gilt and cloisonné enamel tea service, Moscow, 1899-1908 a teapot, tea caddy and cr­eamer  with tiers of lobed teardrop panels with varicoloured stylised flowers and foliage (35,000 - 45,000 GBP Sotheby’s)

See Ruck­ert’s solid silver and cloisonné enamel salt, decorated with foliate enamels on gilded matted ground, set with cab­o­ch­­on emeralds. Moscow, 1908-17.

Enameled sugar bowl

Invaluable

Craftsmen in Moscow, especially those supervised by master Feodor Rück­ert, became known for their work in the pan-Slavic or neo-Russian style, referring back to C17th motifs of folk art. See, for example, silver-gilt and enamel kovshs-wine ladles retailed by Faber­gé, which inc­or­­porated enamel reproductions by Russ­ian artists.

The opulent lifestyle of Russia’s upper classes ended with the political upheavals of the early C20th. Heaps of pre­cious silver pieces seized from silversmiths, jewellers, weal­thy merch­ants, aristocrats and the Russian Imperial Family were melt­ed. Some were sold internationally for cash, or smug­gled out by westerners. Of­­ten on con­vent­­ional shapes, Rückert and his silver­sm­iths created an explos­ion of col­our, attained through the historic use of cl­oisonné enamel in which tiny metal lines were soldered to the surface then filled with glass powders in various colours and fired to a high gl­oss fin­ish. The result was a sp­ectacular ev­ocation of the C17th or­ig­inals. But far from mere copies, Rück­erts designs employed natural­is­t­ic or abst­r­act motifs in a modern adaptation of an earlier era.

Until 1908, Rückert’s work drew on Russian historical design preced­ents especially C17th Russian ornament. But after 1908 his work re­f­lected the influence of the emerging Neo-Russian style, which combin­ed Art Nouveau with Russian vernacular forms. Promoted by Stroganov Institute Design School, this Russian visual voc­­abulary spread across the decorative arts. He often com­bin­ed min­iatures based on Russian history th­emes with new arab­esque motifs.

Rückert’s designs were rooted in the C19th fas­­cination with national identity and culminating in the 1913 anniversary celeb­rat­ions of the Romanov Dyn­asty. But when WWI started in 1914, the Rückert family was being persecuted as a Foreign Enemy. Although the family st­rongly split from Germany and wrote to Nicholas II pl­eading for protection, they were treated as prison­ers of war and exiled. From 1915 any mention of Rüc­k­ert’s workshop in the Mos­cow Dir­­­­ec­t­­ory of Trade ended. Rückert died in Moscow in 1917.

 silver and cloisonné enamel bowl with bear heads handles, Moscow, 1908-17. 

Invaluable

Modern Russia
The 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and then the rise of a weal­thy oligarchy inspired growing national­ism, an interest in art his­tory and a new generation of col­l­ectors. Fortunately Rückert’s timeless, Neo-Russian style withstood the chaos of the Russian Revol­ution and his works remained popular in the mod­ern mark­et. A record was established Nov 2018: an enamelled kovsh, £490,000.

Kovsh by Rückert, 1899–1908,

Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World

And see the parcel-gilt silver and cloisonné enamel bowl (above), cast with handles shaped as bear heads Moscow. It sold for $43,750.

Great Ocean Rd - tourist pleasures

 

Before the Great Ocean Rd was built in Victoria, travel between the coastal settlements along Southern Victoria was rugged. In the 1870s, a trip from Lorne to Geelong was ard­uous via a rough coach track through dense bush to Win­chelsea’s railway.

Great Ocean Rd and the Apostles

 

Early Plans for an ocean road emerged in the 1880s but only gained real impetus towards the end of WWI. The chairman of the Country Roads Board, W Calder, contacted the State War Council with a prop­osal that funds be provided for repatriation and re-employment of returned soldiers on roads in sparsely populated areas. Calder sub­mitted a plan he described as the South Coast Rd which suggested a starting at Barwon Heads, fol­l­owing the coast around Cape Otway and ending near Warrnambool.

Great Ocean Rd became a permanent memorial to Australian soldiers who died fighting in WW1. Built post-war by returned ex-servicemen, it wound around the rugged south­­ern coast and was a huge engineering feat that ended isolation for Lorne and other Victorian coastal communities.

Geelong Mayor Howard Hitchcock compl­eted the plans. He formed the Gr­eat Ocean Rd Trust, to raise money to fi­nance the pro­ject. He saw it as a way of employing ret­urn­ed soldiers AND of cr­eat­ing a last­ing monument to those who’d died. And he totally und­erstood its worth as a tourist attraction, pro­claim­ing it better for its ocean, mountain, river and fern gully scenery than the Riv­iera in France. Survey work began in Aug 1918 and thou­sands of re­turned sold­iers des­c­en­d­ed south to start work. It was back-breaking work with no heavy mach­in­ery to help, only picks and horse-n-carts. The first stage linking Lorne and Eastern View was comp­l­e­ted in early 1922. Over another decade, the Trust continued its work on the Great Ocean Rd linking Lorne with Cape Patton and Angl­esea, while the Country Roads Board completed Cape Patton-Apollo Bay.

memorial archway and sculpture

In Nov 1932 the road was opened by Lt Gov Sir Will­iam Irvine, with fans lining the route. Travellers during the ear­ly years paid a toll at gates at Eastern View, where a Mem­orial Arch was erected. Dr­iv­ers paid 2s 6p, and passengers less. The toll was abolished when the Trust handed over the road as a gift to the State Govern­ment in Oct 1936.  Memorial Arch is now a tribute to the 60,000 Australian soldiers killed and the 160,000 wounded in WWI. The bronze Diggers sculpture by Julie Squires was added in 2007.

Cape Otway Lightstation

Now tourists can see a rich art, culture and heritage of the Great Ocean Rd reg­ion, from Aboriginal Dreamtime to maritime museums, lighthouses and shipwr­ecks. Discover the tragic shipwreck history of the coast, examine local lore at the Flagstaff Hill Mar­itime Village and visit historic light-houses. Learn the tragedy of the Loch Ard Gorge near Port Campbell in 1878, an infamous Victor­ian shipwreck. 

Spend time exploring the Aust­ral­ian National Surfing Museum in Vic­t­oria's surf capital of Torquay.  Then visit Narana Aboriginal Cultural Centre where educational programmes are delivered by experts on the wonders of Australia’s Indigenous Culture,

Narana Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Torquay

narana.com

The Great Ocean Rd spans 243 ks along the stunning coastline of Vict­or­ia's SW. Take in the panoramic views as the road winds along cliff tops, up to great headlands, down onto the edge of beaches, across river estuaries and through lush rainforests. The stretch between Lorne and Apollo Bay is considered by many to be the most picturesque section of the Great Ocean Road. The highway is carved into sheer cliffs that drop away into the ocean, offering spect­acular views of the waves from Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean crashing onto the rocks and beaches below.

Great Otway National Park

Visit Victoria

  

Outside Apollo Bay the road winds through the centre of the Great Otway National Park with its beautiful untouched rainforests, before returning to hug the coast for the entire length of the Port Campbell National Park. This is the most famous section of the Great Ocean Rd featuring an amazing collection of rock formations known as the 12 Apostles which have been carved out of the headland by the fierce waves of the Southern Ocean. Witness the rugged splendour of the fam­ous 12 Apostles, magnif­ic­ent rock stacks that rise up majestically from the Southern Ocean on the dramatic coastline. [There were 30 different lime­stone masses stretched along the coast. However the only visible ones from the view­ing areas are the 8 survival apostles. Due to the continuation of the stack’s erosion, eventually the coastal shore will reduce.

Erosion of the mainland coast's limestone cliffs began 10-20 mill years ago, with the stormy Southern Ocean and blasting winds gradually wearing away the softer limestone to form caves in the cliffs. The caves event­ually became arches, and when these collapsed, rock stacks of 45 ms high were left isolated from the shore, resulting in the iconic 12 Apostles.

View the 12 Apostles at sunrise or sunset as they change from a brill­iant sandy colour under a full sun to appearing dark in shadow. The Apostles are located 275 ks west of Melbourne, c4 hours drive along the Great Ocean Road.

In the 12 Apostles Helicopters that fly beyond London Bridge marvel at the diversity of one of Australia's most visited coast­line. As sandstone cliffs give way to limestone, the visitor will be able to contrast the to­wering 12 Apostles to the intricate Bay of Islands, a cluster of smal­l­er stacks that appear to float in the ocean. Other sights include Pet­er­borough, The Grotto and The Bay of Martyrs. On this flight, high­lights include the Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge, Bak­ers Oven, Sentinel Rock, Port Campbell, two Mile Bay, The Arch, London Bridge, The Grotto, Schom­berg Reef, Bay of Martyrs and Bay of Islands. The 90 k round tour takes c25 minutes.

Or drive one of the world's most iconic scenic touring routes, each tour going with a spec­ial­ised group.

Port Fairy Museum

Stroll through historic towns, where arts and culture are insp­ir­ed by dramatic coastal scenery or the fascinating lo­c­al mus­eums. Eg The Port Fairy Museum and Archives Centre is ma­na­g­ed by Port Fairy Historical Society and sited at Old Court House in Gipps St, class­ified by the National Trust. The Mus­eum exhibitions cover the past including these themes: early pion­eers of the dist­rict, whal­ing hi­story, local sh­ipping, coastal wrecks and other documentary mater­ials related to Port Fairy history.

Apollo Bay Museum

When the Old Cable Station officially opened in April 1936, it was the Victorian end of the first submarine telephone cable linking Tasmania to the mainland. Today the Apollo Bay Museum is housed in the buildings from which the undersea cable connected Tasmania to the mainland and is operated by the Apollo Bay Historical Society. The museum displays relics from some of the shipwrecks and ship that were essentially the primary means of access before the Great Ocean Road and of the life of what was an extremely isolated community.

Best We Forget: WW1 for White Australia

Best We Forget: War for White Australia, 1914–18 was the title chosen by author Peter Cochrane. "Lest we forget" was a phrase commonly used in WW1 memorial services in British countries. “Best we forget” is a sad but clever pun.

White Australia music: march of the great white policy

composed by W. E. Naunton, 1910

 National Library of Australia

The publishers’ summarised the book itself. “In the half-century pre­c­eding WW1 there was a dramatic shift in the mindset of Australia’s pol­itical leaders, from a profound sense of safety in the Empire’s em­brace to a deep anxiety about abandonment by Britain. Coll­ective mem­ory now recalls a rallying to the cause in 1914, a total id­entific­at­ion with British interests and the need to defeat Germany. But there is an underside to this story: the belief that the newly fed­­erated nat­­ion’s security, and its race purity, must be bought with blood. Be­fore WW1, each Federal government was concerned not with European enem­ies in Europe but with Pacific perils. Fearful of an Awak­ening Asia and worried by opposition to the White Australia pol­icy, they prepared for defence against Japan”. It was almost too worrying for me, an Australian, to continue.

Austral­ia's WW1 stories have always concentrated on the heroics of the ANZAC legend. So mixing the terms White Australia and Anzac seemed senseless. Yes, most Aus­t­ral­ians were per­­fectly aw­are of the horrible, racist treat­ment of aborig­in­als in our history, but that had noth­ing to do with WW1 against Germany. The book ripped away the lay­ers of myth to show that for Aus­tralian leaders, WW1 was a White ra­cial str­uggle, with fear of Japan and distrust of Brit­ain, as much as loath­ing of Ger­many at its core.

Being from non-Christian, non-English speaking Europeans who came to Australia to escape oppression, I did not believe Cochrane could est­ab­lish the important motive for sending our lads to WW1 was to pres­erve White Australia from Asian contamin­at­ion. Despite any other crit­icism of this young nat­ion’s his­t­ory, I still believed most Aust­ral­ians rallied to the war cause in 1914, TOT­ALLY identifying with Brit­ish interests and the need to defeat Germany.

Soon after Australia Federated in Jan 1901, the 2nd prime min­is­­ter/P.M Alfred Deakin introduced legisl­at­ion called the Immig­rat­ion Restrict­ion Act aka White Australia Policy. This was a set of historical rac­ial policies that prevented people of non-European ethnic origin from immigrating to Australia. And from staying here.

Cochrane acknowledged that there was no place in the national hist­ory today for 1] Australia’s obsession for race purity or 2] the fear of Japan that drove the national lead­ers’ strategies, before and during WW1. Yet the defence of White Australia was at the core of their an­xieties and politics. The author started with the first official and most influential war historian C.E.W Bean. Bean was as steeped in race fear as were Australia’s second P.M Alfred Deakin; wartime P.M William Hugh­es; deputy P.M George Pearce; P.M  and other Common­weal­th leaders.

Peter Cochrane's book, 

with PM Billy Hughes' portrait on the cover

Bean believed that Austral­ia’s destiny would be played out in the Pac­if­ic. He believed that a formidable challenge facing Australia was the racial challenge i.e the threat of Japan to the survival of White Aus­tralia. And that Australia was the Last Land open to the White man, the last bastion of pure Anglo-Saxon blood. This was a problem for Bean who was well aware that fear of Japan was the strategic motive behind Australia’s preparation pre-war, 1902-14, and its commitment throughout WW1. Yet Japan was a loyal ally, so Bean was cautious writ­ing about safeguarding Australia against race pollution from Japan.

Andrew Fisher, three times P.M between 1908-15, was deeply disturbed by Japan’s expansionist activities in the Pacific, by the diplomatic pressure for trade concessions, by fear of British acquies­cence to Japan, by the recurring worry that Japan might switch sides, and by the weight of that nation’s leverage in London.

Having deep anxiety about abandonment by the Motherland (Britain) was like no longer trusting beloved parents. The Australian government was hugely frustrated by Japan’s rise to power under the aegis of Bri­t­­ain and by London’s lack of understanding of Australia’s peril.

One of the concerns behind the talk of Japanese invasion or British betrayal was the surge of anxieties about the Pacific. There was a rum­­our about the 1915 Anglo–Japanese talks re ren­ewing their Treaty. Renunciation would free the Japanese of oblig­ation to the British Emp­ire, perhaps freeing them to support Germany instead. In fact the prime minister publicly spoke of the issue in 1916, urging his able-bodied country men before his vital conscription referendum: “I bid you go and fight for White Australia in France”.

Racist, anti-German conscription poster, 1916

Pro-British conscription poster, 1916

So commitment to WW1 was driven by White Aust­ral­ia's sense of vulner­ability locally; leaders feared nightmare scenarios in which Australia could be left to fend for itself, unaided by Britain. So when the war arrived in 1914, the strategy was thus: by prom­is­ing tot­al support for the Motherland, the Aust­r­alians hoped to secure Brit­ain's unequ­iv­oc­al sup­p­ort for a safe, White Australia in return.

The last question was why did Australia’s leaders’ obsession with Japan and race purity, stretching from colonial times (i.e pre-Federation) to the Paris Peace Conf­er­ence of 1919-20, disappear from our history books? Simple! No-one wanted to expose and acknowledge the uncomfort­able rac­ial truth at the heart of Australia’s role before/in WW1.

Illuminated address from returned soldiers in Brisbane, presented to P.M Hughes in 1919, 

thanking him for his work for the preservation of a White Australia.

The Armenian Genocide: 1915–16

The Kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in the C4th, loyal to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenian Christ­ians were just one of many ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire. But in the late 1880s, some polit­ical organisations seeking greater autonomy for Armenians, reinforcing Ot­to­man doubts about the loyalty of the wider Armenian comm­unity inside its borders. By 1914, c2 mill Armenians lived in Anatolia, in a total population of 16 mill.

armenie-historique

 
The Armenian minority in Ottoman Turkey had been subject to episodic torment over the centuries. In 1894-96, these were stepped up with more violent pers­ecutions. The massacres began in the SE and E pro­v­inces of Anatolia and the Caucasus as early as Aug 1914, several months before the Otto­mans entered WW1, on the side of the Central Powers. But the worst of the Armen­ian cat­astrophe in the Ottoman Empire started in early 1915 when Otto­man authorities, sup­ported by aux­il­iary troops and some civ­ilians, per­pet­rated mass killing. The Otto­man govern­ment, cont­rolled by the Committee of Union and Progress-CUP/aka Young Tur­ks, aimed to solid­ify Muslim Turk­ish dom­in­ance in the cent­ral and eastern regions of Anatolia, by elim­in­ating the sizeable Armenian presence.

From 1915, inspired by rabid nationalism, secret gov­ernment ord­ers and WW1 fever, the Young Turk government drove Armenians from their hom­es and massac­red them in greater num­bers. The Young Turk Regime rounded up thousands of Armen­ians and hanged many in the streets of Is­tanbul. Then they began a genocidal deportat­ion of most of the Ar­menian population to the southern desert. This meant they were murd­ered en route to the desert or died when they reached there. Alth­ough fig­ur­e­s on the death toll were uncertain, hist­or­ians believed 800,000-1 mil­lion people were killed, often in unsp­eakably cruel ways. Unknown num­bers of others survived by converting to Islam, lost to Armenian cult­ure.

Called the First C20th Genocide, the Armen­ian genocide referred to the annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from 1915-16. There were c1.5 million Armenians living in the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. c1 million died in the gen­ocide, either in mass­ac­res, from ill treatment, exposure or starvation.

Mass atrocities were often perpetrated within the con­text of war, so the timing of the Armenians genocide was inevitably linked to WW1. Fear­ing that invading enemy troops would induce Armen­ians to join them, the Ottoman government began the deport­at­ion of the Armenian population from its N.E border regions in 1915. In the following months, the Otto­mans expanded deport­ations from almost all pro­v­inces, regardless of distance from combat zones.

Victims of the Armenian genocide included people killed in local mass­acres that began in 1915; others who died in deportations, from starvation, dehydration, exposure and disease; and Ar­m­enians who died in the desert regions of the southern Empire [today: Nth and E Syria, Nth Saudi Arabia and Iraq]. Plus tens of thousands of Armenian children were forcibly removed from their families and conv­ert­ed to Islam.

Were there any locally written reports and photos? In 1917 John Elder, a divinity student from Pennsylvania, joined the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief Team that was aid­ing refugees. For 2 years, Elder did volunteer work with Armenian orphans when he photog­raphed re­fugees and conditions at camps. Arm­in Wegner ser­ved as a nurse with the German Sanitary Corps. In 1915 and 1916, Weg­ner travelled throughout the Ottoman Emp­ire and documented at­rocit­ies carried out against the Armenians, including children lying dead in the street.

And some influential foreigners spoke out against these atrocit­ies eg British Prof of International History Arnold Toynbee. But how is it that other Christian countries didn’t intervene? Or at least take those Armenians who survived as refugees? US Ambassador to Cons­tantinople Henry Morgen­thau Sr (1856-1946) was deeply tr­oubled by the atrocities com­mitted against the Armenians and was one who sought to stir the U.S’s conscience in resp­on­se. The plight of the Armenians triggered a gen­er­ous public re­s­ponse, involving President Woodrow Wilson and thousands of or­d­inary Am­erican citizens who volunteered both at home and abroad, and raised $110+ million to assist Armenian orphans.

This genocide almost ended 2,000+ years of Armenian civilis­ation in east­ern Anatolia. The First Republic of Armenia (1918–20) was the first modern establishment of an Armenian nation. And it enabled an eth­no­-nationalist Turkish state, Republic of Turkey in 1923, as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire. Note that the Turkish gov­ernment always maintained that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action, and therefore was never genocide.

The word genocide wasn’t formally coined until 1944, although the or­igin of the term and its codification in intern­at­ional law had their roots in the 1915–16 Armenian massacre. Lawyer Raph­ael Lemkin, himself a Polish Jewish refugee, was the man behind the first UN human rights treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. He repeat­edly stated that early exposure to the Otto­man Armen­ian genocide in newspaper was key to the need for legal protec­t­ion of groups, the core element in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. In any case, it has only been since the 1970s that scholars have offered close at­t­­ention to this human catastrophe.

 

Refugee camp

Bodies in a field, a common in Armenian provinces in 1915 .

Britannica

Ottoman military forces march Armenians to an execution site

Holocaust Encyclopaedia

Armenian-Syrian refugees Red Cross camp, 

Jerusalem, 1917-19

Wall St Journal

The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 with the dis­s­olution of the Soviet Union. Most Armenians today are Christians (97%) and are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Lise Meitner - a great female scientist .. guest post

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was the Vienna-born daughter of a large Jew­ish family. Because girls weren’t allowed tertiary education, the family gave Lise a private tutor at 14. She entered the Uni of Vienna in 1901, study­ing physics under Ludwig Boltzmann. Later she received her doct­or­ate in 1906, only the second woman to receive one from Vienna Uni.

She left for Berlin in 1907 with family support, to attend Dr Max Planck’s lectures and to do rad­io-activity research with chemist Dr Otto Hahn. After a year, she became his Hahn’s as­s­istant and worked with him, wanted to discover isotopes. In 1913 phys­ic­ist Meitner and chemist Hahn collaborated at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Berlin.   

Drs Meitner and Hahn in their laboratory, 1913

German History Intersections

 

Meitner supported the Austrian army as a medical X-ray technician ­in WWI, returning to Berlin in 1917 when she and Hahn disc­ov­ered the radioactive chemical el­em­ent pro­tact­in­ium. Meitner was awarded the 1917 Leibniz Medal.

Having isolated the is­o­t­ope prot­ac­t­inium, Meitner and Hahn stud­ied nuclear is­omerism and beta decay. In 1926 she became the fir­st female Professor of Physics in Ger­many, heading up the Phys­ics Dept at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Research at the time was theoretical, but many scientists knew about the honour of the Nobel Prize waiting for the winner who dis­covered it. She worked with Hahn for 30 years, collaborating cl­osely, st­udying radio­activity, with her physics skills and his chemistry skills.

In the 1930s with the German physical chemist Dr Fritz Strass­mann, she inv­estigated neutron bombardment of uranium. Strassmann was not Jewish but he refused to join the Nazi Party, so both their res­earch efforts were interr­upt­ed as the Nazis gained power. She stayed in Germany longer than most because of her Austrian citizen­ship, but because she was Jew­ish, her physicist friends had to help sneak her over the border when Austria was annexed by Germ­any in 1938. Then she worked in Sweden at the Nob­el Institute for Exper­imental Physics, then continued her laborat­ory work at Stock­holm’s Manne Siegbahn Instit­ute, developing a working relationship with Niels Bohr.

Physicist Dr Otto Frisch (1904–79) was the Austrian-born first cousin of Lise Meit­ner. He first measured the magnetic moment of the proton and together they advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fis­sion and first detected the fission by-products.

While working together, Otto Frisch and Lise Meitner received the news that Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann had discovered that the collision of a neutron with a uranium nucleus produced the element barium as one of its by-products. Frisch and Meitner both hypothesised that the uranium nucleus had split in two, coining the term nuc­l­ear fission to describe the proc­ess. After Hahn and Strassmann showed that barium appeared in neutron-bombarded uran­ium, it was Meitner and Frisch who explain­ed the ph­ys­ical charact­eristics of this division.

L->R Niels Bohr, Werner Heisen­berg, Wolfgang Pauli, Otto Stern, Meitner, Rudolf Ladenburg and ?

conference in 1937, Wiki

In Feb 1939, Meit­ner published the physical expl­an­ation for the ob­serv­ations. Meitner, Frisch and colleag­ues found that uranium atoms split when bombarded with neutrons, rel­easing a large amount of energy. Nuc­l­ear fission process was later used in nuclear power plants and bombs.

Hahn had isol­ated evidence for nuclear fission, but Meitner and Frisch were the first to clarify how the process occ­urred. Yet in 1944 Hahn al­one re­ceived the Chemistry Nobel Prize regarding nuc­lear fis­sion, giv­en that he ignored Meitner’s research af­ter she left Ger­many. He should have argued that Meitner merited the Nobel Prize as well.

After WW2 Meitner continued working in Sweden, then travelled and lect­ured across the USA. Her recognition of the explosive potent­ial of the process was what motivated Dr Albert Eins­tein to cont­act Pres Roosevelt, lead­ing to the establishment of the Manhattan Project. She was then in­vited to work on the Project at Los Alamo but Meitner opp­os­ed the atomic bomb and refused to work there at all.

On a visit to the U.S in 1946 she was welcomed by her siblings, and given total Americ­an press celeb­rity treatment, including being named Woman of the Year by the Women's National Press Club, DC. She had dinner with Pres Harry Truman who mistak­en­ly thought that she worked on the atomic bomb but Lise Meitner refused to work on a bomb.

Her Swedish colleagues planned to get her a proper position. In 1947, Meitner moved to Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology to establish a new facility for atomic research, with researchers to help. Appropriately she received in the Max Planck Medal, honouring her old mentor in Berlin.

Lise Meitner, Life in Physics,

(California Studies in the History of Science,

by Ruth Lewin Sime, 1997, Amazon

But the Nobel nastiness wasn’t even partly rect­if­ied until 1966, when Hahn, Meitner and Strassman won the En­rico Fermi Award, for their joint re­search that led to the discovery of uran­ium fis­sion. What a long wait!

The physicist who never lost her human­ity died in Camb­ridge in Oct 1968. In 1992, element 109 was named Meitnerium in her honour. Like many others, I believe she was the most significant woman scientist of the 20th century!

By Dr Joe

Melbourne 

Arthur Streeton's landscapes: 1930s.

Geelong lad Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) studied at the Nat­ional Gallery School of Art in Melbourne from 1884-7. In summer 1886 he painted with Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts in Mentone. In 1887 he camped and painted with Louis Abrahams, Tom Roberts and Frederick Mc­Cub­bin on a rural property in Heidelberg. Thus The Heidelberg School of Art name.

Golden Summer Eaglemont, 1889

N.G.A

Timing for the Heidelberg landscape artists was perfect. With growing nation­alism and a push towards Federation, Australia was rapidly moving away from its colonial history. Artists and writers were searching for colours, landscapes, char­act­ers and weather that were uniquely Aust­ral­ian. Golden Summer, Eaglemont 1889 was painted during a hot leisurely summer, an epic work with gum trees.

Federation was not formally proclaimed in Australia until 1/1/1901, but the seductive lure of London and Paris was already calling artists “home” to Europe’s cultural capitals. In 1897 Streeton sailed for London where was a huge excitement in living in London & Paris, but there was also a cost. Australian artists in Europe were out of contact with the land that had inspired them for 20 years and the cities that had nurtured them. As beautiful as the Normandy coast might have been, for example, it was not the Grampians and it was not Sydney Harbour.

So Streeton returned to Australia several times from 1906 on and re-en­gaged with the Aus­tralian landscape. During WW1 Streeton joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and worked at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth. He ret­urned permanently to Aus­tr­alia in 1920.

Geelong Gallery showed the Land of the Golden Fleece; Arthur Streeton in the Western District. It was a major exhibition of 30 land­scapes in Victoria’s Western District and in those coastal areas he freq­uented eg Lorne. In his works Streeton painted outside in a count­ry rich in earth and sky, a land of possibility. Even after WW1 Streeton still regarded the Australian land as a symbol of national pride,

prosperity and identity.

A Southern View Olinda, 1933  

artnet

When Streeton bought 5 acres of land at Olinda in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges in 1921, he probably didn’t know how important it would become in his life and art. He built Longacres in 1924, with ex­tensive flower gardens and surr­ounding hills. Olinda became the set­ting for Streeton to consol­idate his impressionist skills with colour and light, and to find ways of representing the Australian landscape.

Over a decade, the Streetons travelled between The Grange in suburban Toorak and Longacres in rural Olinda. Afternoon Sky at Ol­in­da c1934 was painted in Longacres, surrounded by hillsides and long vistas. The painting’s smallish size sugg­ested he wanted a close-up section of the left-hand side of his largest Dand­en­ong Range subjects, A Southern View Olinda 1933. The painting show­ed how warm, late sunlight played over the landscape, a painting he successfully exhib­ited at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Gallery in Aug 1933.

Menzies said Streeton was a master of record­ing the intersection between land and sky, and the visual effects cr­eat­ed by passing cl­ouds. In Afternoon Sky, he focused on a small land­scape, the incline of a cleared, sunny, open field, contrast­ed with a ver­tical rectangular section of puffy clouds. In his work, nature was benign, finding parallels in the famous series of cloud studies by Eng­lish painter John Constable (1776–1837). From 1821, Constable produced a remark­able group of en-plein-air oil studies of the cloud form­at­ions, recording the weather conditions at different times of day. Const­ab­le’s Cloud Study 1821, at Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven, provided a direct model for Street­on. Note the ephemeral nature and structure of a cloud form­ation, with just a fraction of detail at the base of the  painting to anchor sky to earth. 

Afternoon Sky at Ol­in­da c1934 

artnet

However in other paintings from the mid–1930s, eg Storm over Maced­on 1936, Streeton conveyed the vigorous drama of a lightning strike as it un­leashed its pent-up energy. Streeton said his strong dramatic canvas was inspired by Shelley’s poem The Cloud 1820.

While the modern viewer may not be rapt in clouds, he/she can now understand the devast­ating destruction of native trees, fields and forests in Melbourne’s hilly outer suburbs.

Streeton was knighted for his services to art in 1937, retired to the rural outer suburb of Olinda in 1938 and stopped painting. He died at Olinda in 1943.

Storm over Macedon, 1936 

Etsy

Arts & Crafts Tassie: Markree House 1926

Cecil William Baldwin (1887–1961) was born in Melbourne and trained at the Burnley School of Horticulture, working as a landscape gar­d­ener until the outbreak of WW1. Cecil enlisted in the 40th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Forces and served as a lieutenant in France and Belgium. He was wounded and repatriated home in 1918.

Following the end of the war, Cecil Baldwin worked in the Repatriat­ion Department in Hobart where he was the officer in charge of voc­at­ional training. He also became active in community associations est­ablished for the welfare of ex-servicemen, and became president of the 40th Battalion Association. Objects from Cecil Baldwin's military service and work with returned soldiers are on exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Cecil married Ruth Maning (1878–1969) in 1918 at St George’s Church, Battery Point.

Front of the house

Markree stands on part of the c1820 Heathfield Estate located in Battery Point in inner city Hobart; the land and its sandstone wall were not sub­divided until the 1920s. Fortunately the sub­division created a small enclave of finely detailed houses and one of them, Markree, was built in 1926 for Cecil and Ruth Baldwin. It was designed by Bernard Ridley Walker in the Arts and Crafts style. [The firm Hutchison and Walker were prominent Tasmanian architects who were also responsible for other important structures around town. Walker had spent 1911–13 in London and was particularly influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement].

Many years earlier, when the Arts & Crafts Society of Tasmania was founded in 1903, young Ruth Maning had gone to evening classes to study wood carving. Three of the pieces she created herself - an Art Nouveau bookcase, a blackwood desk carved with gum nuts and a picture frame carved with stylised firewheel tree branches can be seen in Markree's sitting room. Other pieces of furniture came from Ruth’s parents. The furniture is the finest part of the entire home and garden complex.

    Furniture made by Ruth Maning Baldwin

Hallway

Dining room

Photo credits: the Markree House Museum and Garden

Markree has 4 bedrooms including a nursery. It is set on 3 levels with a broken back tiled roof and prominent eaves with exposed timber panelling underneath. The roof has 2 tall simple brick chimneys with terracotta pots. It has timber double hung sash windows and painted timber louvred shutters. The front entrance is enclosed in a brick portico with a wide, detailed brick arch and wide doorway. The interior is in near original condition with 3 ms high ceilings, and features such as the original picture rails, original brass hardware on doors and windows, solid doors, timber detailing and intact original wallpapers. There are portraits and family heirlooms from Ruth Baldwin’s ancestors who had come to Hobart in the 1820s as merchants and professionals. The nursery holds many of Henry Baldwin’s original toys.

Some of the objects were not originally from the family. There are ceramics, wooden carved furniture and silverware of the period that have been brought in to the house since eg the 1920s Tasmanian oak and blackwood furniture was made by local cabinet-makers Coogan and Vallance & Co.

There were a few changes over the decades. The Baldwins had a small room added and enclosed the open balcony on the ground floor in the mid 1930s. Son Henry installed new carpets, lights, curtains and wallpaper. However the dining and sitting rooms have been restored to their 1920s decoration through a grant from the Copland Foundation e.g the original 1926 wallpaper, a damask paper with an Art Deco leaf border, has been copied from a surviving panel. 

Their Arts and Crafts garden

The garden also reflects the Arts & Crafts influence. It was laid out by Cecil Baldwin himself. The leading Australian garden designer, Edna Walling, had studied at Burnley at the same time as Cecil, so it is possible that the two of them had worked on projects together. Today the garden is long and narrow with a central gravel path that leads from the house to the bottom of the garden. The elements typical of Arts and Crafts gardens are the roses, ponds, low stone walls, winding pathways and naturalistic plantings. There was no rigidly planned formality in this garden!

Cecil and Ruth Baldwin lived at Markree until their deaths when the property passed to their unmarried son, Henry Baldwin (1919-2007). It was Henry who bequeathed the house, contents and an endow­ment to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. This was one of the largest single bequests ever received by an Australian gallery.

Because of its design, location, original condition, history and ability to show the pattern of urban infill that occurred in Hobart in the first half of the C20th, Markree has been provisionally entered in the Tasmanian Heritage Register a couple of years ago and was permanently registered in 2023.

The house and gardens are open Saturdays (Oct-April) from 10am to 4:30pm. On the other days, visitors must pre-book at the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery; the guided tours start at 10:30 am and 2:30 pm.

The Baldwin family

Facebook

Many thanks to Lynne Merrett for sending this material.

Coffee and culture in Budapest’s N.Y Cafe

In 1894, during Budapest's golden fin-de-siècle era, a grandiose fa­cility was built in the city centre. Al­­­ajos Hauszmann was comm­is­s­ioned to plan the design and along with Flóris Korb and Kálmán Gier­gl, he created a lavish, 4 st­or­ey­ed palace with a ground-floor café. The New York Café soon be­came the centre of Hung­ar­ian cultural his­t­ory, the favourite meeting place of art­ists, writers and poets. 

         

Front of NY Cafe, Pinterest
 

Tables surrounded by marbled columns, ceiling frescoes and crystal chandeliers.

The site’s history, closely entwined with lit­er­ature, lived through different eras and his­torical ch­anges, always providing com­fort for artists. There is no literature without a Café, said C20th writer Sándor Márai who frequented this historical building for in­s­piration.

There has always been live gypsy music in N.Y Café, but since 1995 the musicians have played every day until 5 PM. Mus­ic accomp­an­ies the del­ights of a good coffee, delic­ious food and atmosphere. The Lugosi Salon Gipsy Band’s huge repertoire means they can play many pieces by heart, clas­sical as well as modern music, with traditional Hun­garian gypsy instr­u­ments. The band interprets Hung­arian folk and gypsy music, plus music by Brahms, Kodály, Bartók or Liszt.

When it comes to an elegant event venue in Budapest, NY Coffee House is unbeatable. Its his­tory and heritage, this “most beautiful coffee house in the world” greatly raises its prestige and makes it more ap­pealing for guests. The building will dazzle all its guests as soon as they arrive in the street, the exclusive interior and the spec­ial­ly qualified staff ensures that formal events go through with no complications.

The opulent, roomy interior has en­joyed the spotlight since the early years of the building. The interior spaces are separated by spiralled marble columns. The ornamental brass statues on the Café's exterior are the 14 sinister fauns, created by Károly Senyei, as the symbols of sensuality and mockery. The figure of El Asmodai can also be found here, as the representation of the spirit of coffee and thinking, so as to provide inspiration for the artists dropping in. 

Full decoration continues around the stairs

The presence of history can be felt when entering the building. Several famous Hungarian writers and poets spent their time here. The iconic Hungarian work of “Pál utcai fiúk” was also written in the Café by Zsigmond Móricz.

The site was the gathering place of many famous Hungarian writers of distinction, such as Mihály Babits, Géza Gárdonyi, Frigyes Karinthy, Dezső Kosztolányi, Gyula Illyes and Sándor Weöres. No wonder, since the central placement of the building and the mentality that promoted arts provided the young artists with an atmosphere in which they could exert their creative potential to the fullest. Back then, the not so well-known and often poor writers could get access to the Writers’ Bowl at a small expense, thanks to the innovation of the Harsányi brothers.

The Nyugat Bar upstairs, with its dim light, is one of the cosiest places in the cafe. It offers a view of the Salon Restaurant and the lobby of the hotel while sipping coffee and enjoying the piano music

Nyugat Bar upstairs

Originally the building was the head office of the N.Y Life Insur­an­ce Company, but it soon became an important public venue. The café was estab­lish­ed on the ground floor, and the Company offices were on the first floor.

The cultural scene needed a central venue. The fact that the ceremonial opening in Oct 1894 was attended by the best literary and art stars proves how real this need was. Without advertising, the N.Y became a literary café.

While other cafés were established in existing buildings, it was not a secret that the aim was to create a venue that could represent the Insurance Company appropriately and could fascinate whoever enters the building. This is why the N.Y Café was extraordinarily ornate and polish­ed, and the café became the main attraction of the build­ing: it wanted to captivate visitors and demonstrate the Com­pany’s unlimited wealth. First-hand accounts about the opening event talked in superlatives about the grand interiors.

In 1918, Miksa Aczél and Co. took over the café. Not all the remodelling was univers­ally liked, especially critical were the artists and members of the press. In the Deepwater Room, the bill­iard room was turned into a restaurant, and the rooms behind the up­per balcony were con­v­erted into a bar. But a few years later, af­ter more remodelling, the cosy space was called Mahogany Bar, much loved

In 1927, the restaurant was ex­panded in major reconstr­uction. Immed­iately the locals and famous guests loved the Mahogany Bar: built sym­metrically to the marble hall over the door­way. Guests were thr­illed ab­out the hid­­den lights and the alabaster columns that emitted a delicate opals­cent light. Built in Renaiss­ance/Art Nouveau style, with marble columns, sparkling chandeliers, stuccoed angels, amazing frescoes and gilding, the cafe takes visitors back to another era. The exclusive bar soon bec­ame the centre of Budapest nightlife. A few years later, Budapest artists were given desks and furniture.

Lugosi Salon Gipsy Band

The café suffered very badly during WW1 and WW2, and the N.Y Café was briefly turned into a sports goods store in the 1950s. But it rose from its ashes in 1954, and was renamed Hungária Café. The real revival came in 2006 when a major renovation allowed the New York Café to regain its former gilded glamour. The café is open Mon–Sun 8 AM–midnight.

New York Cafe is just a short walk from the popular Jewish District where my in-laws once lived, and Andrassy Ave. 

Thank you to New York Cafe for the history and photos.