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William Juhasz (August 30, 1899, Budapest - September 29, 1967, New York) was a Hungarian-American author, editor, cultural and religious historian, journalist, Roman Catholic lay intellectual, literary translator, university professor, lecturer, commentator, Cold War operative. Research topic: the comparative religious history of pre-Christian times. == Early life to World War II == William Juhasz came from a family of industrialists, financiers and land owners. Many members of this family were also involved in the world of arts and letters, among whom the most important and prominent was the composer Franz Schrecker. Juhasz’s early interests and eventual career were a departure from his immediate family’s involvement in finance and industry. Influenced by some of his secondary school teachers who were recognized leading intellectuals as well as some of his classmates and school mates who became leading intellectuals of the period between the two World Wars. He went on to become a leading intellectual of that period. Secondary education was at the Markó Street Gymnasium in Budapest. His home room teacher, Marcell Benedek, as well as his class and school mates were formative influences in his life and work. Among his youthful friends were some of the leading lights of the Hungarian intelligentsia between the Wars; including: Bence Szabolcsi, György Sárközi, Márta Sárközi, Márta Vágó, Zoltán Horvát, and the monks László and Dénes Szedő. Like many in his milieu, William came from a Jewish family, and, again, like many in his milieu he became a convert to Roman Catholicism. Two of his closest friends, and associates, the Szedő brothers, also from Jewish families, became cloistered Carthusian monks in Italy. His conversion was a milestone in his personal and professional development. Mary Christianus, his future wife, was yet another major influence on his spiritual and professional development. Having decided not to follow the family line of finance and industry, he embarked upon studies at the University with the aim of becoming a scholar. He dropped out after the second year and did not receive a degree, and embarked upon an intellectual career not based on higher educational attainments. It was shortly after abandoning his university studies that he married Mary Christianus. Mary’s background and educational career was quite different from his own although they were members of the same emerging intellectual elite between the wars. Her family background was more in the trades and manufacturing than in finance and industry. She never attended classical academic secondary school. Her family was not primarily Jewish and she had been raised Roman Catholic. William and Mary met in their early 20’s in the turmoil of post-WWI Budapest, as it found itself a capital of a minor European country after being a co-capital of one of the world’s major powers. Mary Juhasz, was a life-long collaborator both in the thought process as well as the actual writing of his published works. As is not uncommon, she did not receive formal recognition as a collaborator. Nonetheless there was nothing that he published that he did not or, more accurately, they did not discuss in depth and come to consensus on. One of the members of his circle, Bence Szabolcsi’s father-in-law Győző Andor, who was the proprietor of an eponymous respected publishing house, provided William with the opportunity to edit several encyclopedias as well as the writing of numerous entries in these. The entries in Encyclopedia of the Theater (Szinészeti lexikon) dealing with the ancient history of dance and drama in which he developed his ideas regarding symbolism in performance art, received very favorable notice not merely in Hungary but elsewhere in the world as well. With this, his career as a non-university educated intellectual was under way. William Juhasz was passionate for many different branches of the humanities, the social sciences and the arts; he read widely and his career spanned an unusually wide swath of human learning and performance. For example, as a young man he participated in the archaeological work of Nádor Fettich, he wrote a science fiction novel, he wrote poetry (unpublished), he did editorial work for several publishers. In effect he became something of a Renaissance man, a polyhistor, someone who can synthesize and distill important information and lines of thought with originality and purpose. His work in comparative religious history encompasses original research, and in some ways he was extraordinarily proud of having been able to do that in addition to his other labors. During the 1937-1938 period as the anti-intellectual, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic climate in Europe increasingly darkens the landscape, William and Mary give serious consideration to emigration to Canada, along with some of their close circle. In fact, they do not emigrate at this time and, by 1939, the window of opportunity for emigration had closed. His encyclopedic knowledge made him a natural choice for editing encyclopedias (or writing entries in them); his knowledge of languages and his fine Hungarian style made him a natural choice as translator from German and English to Hungarian; he wrote for periodicals, newspapers and reviews on many subjects of interest to him and he began a career of publishing works on history, travel, and cultural history in this period. By the time he was 40 years old he was a known quantity with a known readership in Hungary, and his name was to some measure a guarantee of quality and of success. Some of the more important work from this period are: *''Heroes, scientists, men: the last seventy years of history 1860-1930'' *''The world’s peoples and cultures,United States of America'' *''The prince vol II. Rákóczi Ferencz'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Juhasz」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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