Antisemitism and the Politics of Fear in Hungary during the First World War

This paper examines the erosion of social and political relations that characterized Central Europe in the last years of the First World War. In particular, it examines the city of Nagyvárad/Oradea, which before 1914 was one of the most economically dynamic and politically progressive cities in the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary. Nagyvárad/Oradea also had a large Jewish population, and in this paper I examine a number of seemingly unrelated episodes of wartime antisemitism. Viewed together, they demonstrate the many ways by which the war contributed both to the breakdown of social solidarity and the search for internal enemies. That total war destroyed a fragile social and political equilibrium that had existed before 1914 is perhaps not surprising; what stands out in this case study is the extent to which the local context shaped the expression and reception of antisemitism; the political uses to which antisemitism was put; and the ways in which antisemitism colored collective memories of the war and unsettled years that followed.