András Kovács - Böcker

The Cinema of Bela Tarr is a critical analysis of the work of Hungary's most prominent and internationally best known film director, written by a scholar who has followed Bela Tarr's career through a close personal and professional relationship for more than twenty-five years. Andras Balint Kovacs traces the development of Tarr's themes, characters, and style, showing that almost all of his major stylistic and narrative innovations were already present in his early films and that through a conscious and meticulous recombination of and experimentation with these elements, Tarr arrived at his unique style. The significance of these films is that, beyond their aesthetic and historical value, they provide the most powerful vision of an entire region and its historical situation. Tarr's films express, in their universalistic language, the shared feelings of millions of Eastern Europeans.

The Cinema of Bela Tarr is a critical analysis of the work of Hungary's most prominent and internationally best known film director, written by a scholar who has followed Bela Tarr's career through a close personal and professional relationship for more than twenty-five years. Andras Balint Kovacs traces the development of Tarr's themes, characters, and style, showing that almost all of his major stylistic and narrative innovations were already present in his early films and that through a conscious and meticulous recombination of and experimentation with these elements, Tarr arrived at his unique style. The significance of these films is that, beyond their aesthetic and historical value, they provide the most powerful vision of an entire region and its historical situation. Tarr's films express, in their universalistic language, the shared feelings of millions of Eastern Europeans.

Unified Field Theory was an expression first used by Einstein in his attempt to unify general relativity with electromagnetism. Unified Field Theory and Occam's Razor attempts to provide real answers to foundational questions related to this unification and should be of high interest to innovative scientists. A diverse group of contributing authors approach an old problem with an open-mindedness that presents a new and fresh perspective. The following topics are discussed in detail in the hope of a fruitful dialogue with all who are interested in this subject:This highly original book brings together theoretical researchers and experimentalists specialized in the areas of mathematics and epistemology, theoretical and experimental physics, engineering, and technology. For years they have worked independently on topics related to the foundations and unity of physics and have had numerous overlapping ideas in terms of using Clifford algebra and spinors. Within the book, new technology applications are outlined and theoretical results are complemented by interpretations of experimental data.

In the last two decades a large amount of previously secret documents on Jewish issues emerged from the newly opened Communist archives. The selection of these papers published in the volume and stemming mostly from Hungarian archives will shed light on a period of Jewish history that is largely ignored because much of the current scholarship treats the Shoah as the end of Jewish history in the region. The documents introduced and commented by the editor of the volume, András Kovács, will give insight into the conditions and constraints under which the Jewish communities, first of all, the largest Jewish community of the region, the Hungarian one had to survive in the time of the post-Stalinist Communist dictatorship. They may shed light on the ways how “Jewish policy” of the Soviet bloc countries was coordinated and orchestrated from Moscow and by the single countries. The archival material will prove that the ruling communist parties were restlessly preoccupied with the “Jewish question.” This preoccupation, which kept the whole issue alive in the decades of communist rule, explains to a great extent its open reemergence in the time of transition and in the post-communist period.

In the last two decades a large amount of previously secret documents on Jewish issues emerged from the newly opened Communist archives. The selection of these papers published in the volume and stemming mostly from Hungarian archives will shed light on a period of Jewish history that is largely ignored because much of the current scholarship treats the Shoah as the end of Jewish history in the region. The documents introduced and commented by the editor of the volume, András Kovács, will give insight into the conditions and constraints under which the Jewish communities, first of all, the largest Jewish community of the region, the Hungarian one had to survive in the time of the post-Stalinist Communist dictatorship. They may shed light on the ways how “Jewish policy” of the Soviet bloc countries was coordinated and orchestrated from Moscow and by the single countries. The archival material will prove that the ruling communist parties were restlessly preoccupied with the “Jewish question.” This preoccupation, which kept the whole issue alive in the decades of communist rule, explains to a great extent its open reemergence in the time of transition and in the post-communist period.

In 2010 an extremist party with openly racist views, using barely concealed antisemitic language, received 17% of the votes in the parliamentary elections in Hungary. How can this awkward development in a newly established European democracy be explained? In this book the author examines antisemitism in post-communist Hungary in light of the empirical sociological studies of the past 20 years. The principal aim is to reconstruct the range, intensity and content of anti-Jewish prejudices as well as the factors affecting their change over time. The author also reveals the social background against which the newest political developments should be analyzed, and helps to determine whether in Hungary today antisemitism is only an ephemeral, temporary phenomenon or a gradually articulating, dynamic political ideology.

According to most historians, the Holocaust in Hungary represented a unique chapter in the singular history of what the Nazis termed as the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish question” in Europe. More than seventy years after the Shoah, the origins and prehistory as well as the implementation and aftermath of the genocide still provide ample ground for scholarship. In fact, Hungarian historians began to seriously deal with these questions only after the 1980s. Since then, however, a consistently active and productive debate has been waged about the history and interpretation of the Holocaust in Hungary and with the passage of time, more and more questions have been raised in connection with its memorialization. This volume includes twelve selected scholarly papers thematically organized under four headings: 1. The newest trends in the study of the Holocaust in Hungary. 2. The anti-Jewish policies of Hungary during the interwar period 3. The Holocaust era in Hungary 4. National and international aspects of Holocaust remembrance. The studies reflect on the anti-Jewish atmosphere in Hungary during the interwar period; analyze the decision-making process that led to the deportations, and the options left open to the Hungarian government. They also provide a detailed presentation of the Holocaust in Transylvania and describe the experience of Hungarian Jewish refugees in Austria after the end of the war.