George Barany Papers

Professor George Barany was born in Budapest, Hungary on April 12, 1922, to father Erno Fried and mother Erna Duschnitz, and grew up in Miskolc, Hungary. In 1944 his college work was interrupted as he was called to labor service for the Hungarian Army, where as a Jewish man he was sheltered from deportation to Auschwitz. By 1956, Barany found himself in the United States where he earned MA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Colorado under the guidance of S. Harrison Thompson in 1958. From that time, he became known for his writing, teaching, and research. Over the course of his career, he became the foremost scholar in East Central European nationalism, the age of romanticism, and Habsburg and Hungarian history. Among his many writings, he is most known for his biography, Stephen Szechenyi and the Awakening of Hungarian Nationalism 1791-1841 (Princeton University Press, 1968). His other notable works are The Anglo-Russian Entente Cordiale of 1697-1698, as well as Humanism and Totalitarianism: The Strange Case of Raoul Wallenberg, about a famous Swedish savior of Jewish lives. Barany was the recipient of many awards and honors over his career and was the president of the American Association for the Study of Hungarian History in 1975-1976 and the Conference of Central and East European History in 1978. In 1963, he received his certificate of naturalization as an American citizen and in 1976, he was honored with an American By Choice award. He taught Russian, Soviet, Central and general European History from 1960-1992 at the University of Denver and was a University of Denver Lecturer from 1975-1976 during which time he spoke at several international conferences. On July 1, 1992, he become Professor Emeritus. In 1974, Barany lost his first wife Susan who had emigrated with him from Hungary in 1956. The loss of his wife inspired Barany to write many works of poetry in her memory. He married his second wife, Ernestine, in 1981. Professor Barany passed away on August 22, 2001 in Denver, Colorado.