Interview with István Deák, Seth Low Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on April 29, 2009.István Deák has written several books on topics ranging from Weimar Germany to the 1848 Revolution in Hungary to the Habsburg Army’s officer corps to Hitler’s Europe. It is difficult to exaggerate the contribution he has made to the field of East-Central European History. There are two notable indicators of that influence, one is the Deák Chair established at Columbia in his honor, and the other the many students of his who now populate the field.
Interview Themes
Intersections between Deák's life and work, experiences in Hungary (01:08)
WWII and the Holocaust in Hungary and how Deák experienced them (03:30)
Deák's views on Hungarians' current relationship to their past (9:30)
Is there such a thing as a Hungarian Sonderweg? (14:50)
Deák on the experience of being an émigré historian (22:25)
Deák on his proudest achievement as an historian and public intellectual (27:53)
Advice to young historians/scholars working on the region (31:17)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/12881
