István Deák: A Historian Who Cared about the Jews

Abstract

This article will demonstrate how the Habsburg historian István Deák always paid significant attention in his scholarship to the role of Jews in Central European society. In his first book on left-wing intellectuals in Weimar Germany, his 1979 study of Louis Kossuth, the leader of the Hungarian revolution of 1848, his magnum opus on the Habsburg army officer corps (1990), and his later work on collaboration and resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe, Deák revealed much about both the assimilation of Jews into European society and their rejection by that society. In his book on Kossuth, Deák demonstrated the ambivalence of the revolutionaries, whose liberalism impelled them to emancipate the Jews at the same time as many thought them incapable of Magyarization. Ultimately, it was Jewish loyalty to the Hungarian cause that made the Hungarian revolutionaries extend equal rights to the Jews. In his book on the army officers, Deák clearly demonstrated how the late Habsburg army refused to allow anti-Jewish prejudice to flourish. Unfortunately, many Habsburg Jewish officers were deported to the death camps during World War II.