Sunday, October 30, 2016
Friday, October 28, 2016
BELA LUGOSI AROUND THE CORNER NEAR THE CHURCH - ALL SOULS DAY
I met a man recently who was telling me that he was looking on the 1940 census and found out Bela Lugosi lived right around the corner from his present day church... I dared him to try and find out if the Hungarian was Catholic and if he might have gone to that church, which was in its humble mission church phase but is now a landmark. I thought it was a bit of a coincidence since I'd been looking for Bela Lugosi posters for this blog.
Walking my dog around the neighborhood, some of my neighbors have gone all out with decorations, because they expect trick-or-treaters, or because they are what I call Ghoul School, or because they work for the studios doing sets; one family has Halloween all year long with an evil looking cemetery out front which must save them having to water. One house in particular was really impressive. Out on their white wicker setae on the front porch are two loved up human-sized monsters, reminiscent of the couple, both with significant teeth. That one made me laugh.
But as I'm not at all into the violence and gore that has become part of the celebration that was rooted in spirituality and honoring the ancestors for so long, I refrain from entertainments that are not spiritual. The Celtic tradition of carving a turnip to hold a candle as symbolic of the soul - the flame of the spirit - in the body, moved to smiling carved pumpkins, and then to demonic ones. The church that's around the block from where Bela Lugosi once lived is having a special All Souls Day evening Mass, and I may just attend.
C 2016 All Rights Reserved Magyar-American Blogspot
Walking my dog around the neighborhood, some of my neighbors have gone all out with decorations, because they expect trick-or-treaters, or because they are what I call Ghoul School, or because they work for the studios doing sets; one family has Halloween all year long with an evil looking cemetery out front which must save them having to water. One house in particular was really impressive. Out on their white wicker setae on the front porch are two loved up human-sized monsters, reminiscent of the couple, both with significant teeth. That one made me laugh.
But as I'm not at all into the violence and gore that has become part of the celebration that was rooted in spirituality and honoring the ancestors for so long, I refrain from entertainments that are not spiritual. The Celtic tradition of carving a turnip to hold a candle as symbolic of the soul - the flame of the spirit - in the body, moved to smiling carved pumpkins, and then to demonic ones. The church that's around the block from where Bela Lugosi once lived is having a special All Souls Day evening Mass, and I may just attend.
C 2016 All Rights Reserved Magyar-American Blogspot
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Sunday, October 16, 2016
THE SILK ROAD by VALERIE HANSEN : MAGYAR AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW
A NEW HISTORY WITH DOCUMENTS
WITH COVERAGE OF THE MONGOLS and MARCO POLO
C2017 Oxford University Press
I confess, I saw that this book, which came from the history - genealogy department of my library, had pictures of artifacts (including clay monkeys from Yotkan that are sexually explicit and probably used to enhance fertility), a burial called the Niya coffin, in which a man who died of knife wounds and his smothered wife, dating 3rd or 4th century CE, were buried together and the garments they wore survive in color, an ancient Buddhist Stupa (that barely looks like Buddha), and other items that are from archeological digs, and I wanted to read it from cover to cover. It has translated poetry, letters, Hebrew prayers, and is also about religion, the spread of Buddhism for instance. There pictures of silk fabric fragments that help you understand the designs that people were able to produce hundreds of years ago.
I will probably have to order this book back in to do so; I found myself unable to concentrate and give it the time it deserves. I decided to focus on the routes called "the grasslands" . one of which went from Europe (Vienna) and seems to go through upper Hungary or lower Poland on today's map.
In college I took a literature course that focused on Crusades era travelers including Marco Polo, John of Plano (also called John Plano Carpini0, and other very early manuscripts (that were in translation to English). I was also aware that the travels of Marco Polo are suspect. There are a lot of maps in this book and on page 392 there are several routes on a grasslands map, including those used by William of Rubruck, Rabban Sauma, Ibn Buttuta (another person whose writing we read in the course), as well as Marco. Rabban left France, further west.
The grassland routes went through Eurasia into the Mongol empire that had been unified in 1206 by Genghis (Chinggis is his Mongolian name) and this way the travelers bypassed the mountains and the deserts to the south. (Sounds like the way to go to me.)
On page 394 it says that after Genghis died it was his son, Ogodei, who led armies to victory over Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Kiev, and Hungary, creating the largest continuous empire in world history. (Other Silk Road routes took travelers through India as well.) This expansion took place during the era of Christianity called the second crusades which began in 1100 when the pope called upon European Christians to travel to the Holy land to capture Jerusalem from the Islamic rulers. According to author Valerie Hansen, the Pope hoped an alliance with the Mongols would be helpful.
Now what surprised me was learning that THERE WERE ALREADY CHRISTIAN MONGOLS! "The East Syriac Christan Church, based in Iraq, had sent Uighur speaking missionaries into Mongol territories before 1200, and they had one converts, particularly among the Ongut tribe, and some Mongols from the Kereyit and Naiman tribes converted after 1206." Some of Ghengis' descendants married these Mongol Christians! "The Europeans also believed that a mythic Christian ruler named Prester John ruled somewhere in Asia..." (I've heard of Prester John before, and I believe that he remains a mystery and may have always been a myth.)
This was also the era in which SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI started the Franciscan order!
Somehow, knowing that brought the whole Mongol conquest and the founding of Hungary into historical perspective of me, and didn't seem so long ago anymore.
Pope Innocent IV sent John of Plano Carpini (Giovanni del Plan di Carpini) to the khans court in Mongolia, or tried to... Carpini carried a letter. I recall from my college class that this man was portly, his bones ached, he was about 60, and the trip was hard on him. He spoke Latin and French only, so he took along a man named Benedict who knew Russian and Polish... I suppose that must have helped for some of the trip! On the way the letter was translated at the camp of Batu, a Mongol prince.
The translation was from Latin to Russian, Russian to Persian, and Persian to Mongolian. (Page 396) Who knows how the communication had altered?
Carpini and his companion covered 3000 miles in three and a half months, and I don't want to ruin this rich story for you, but it would be some time before they were able to deliver that letter.
It wouldn't be called the Silk Road if there were not a lot of silk and other beautiful fabrics worn, made into tents, and used for trade. Gifts were expected. Gold and Silver were in abundance through plunder. The merchants they encountered included Austrians, Poles, Greeks... (So, while people back home feared the Mongols, the merchants apparently knew enough about their culture to be able to trade with them.)
I'll leave my brief version of just one of the amazing stories in this book here. Whenever I read about the Mongols and the Silk Road, the merchants moving along the routes, I often think about what we are learning about the migration of our DNA through thousands of years.
So, though I have yet to read this book cover to cover, I do recommend it highly!
C 2016 All Rights Reserved Magyar American Blogspot
WITH COVERAGE OF THE MONGOLS and MARCO POLO
C2017 Oxford University Press
I confess, I saw that this book, which came from the history - genealogy department of my library, had pictures of artifacts (including clay monkeys from Yotkan that are sexually explicit and probably used to enhance fertility), a burial called the Niya coffin, in which a man who died of knife wounds and his smothered wife, dating 3rd or 4th century CE, were buried together and the garments they wore survive in color, an ancient Buddhist Stupa (that barely looks like Buddha), and other items that are from archeological digs, and I wanted to read it from cover to cover. It has translated poetry, letters, Hebrew prayers, and is also about religion, the spread of Buddhism for instance. There pictures of silk fabric fragments that help you understand the designs that people were able to produce hundreds of years ago.
I will probably have to order this book back in to do so; I found myself unable to concentrate and give it the time it deserves. I decided to focus on the routes called "the grasslands" . one of which went from Europe (Vienna) and seems to go through upper Hungary or lower Poland on today's map.
In college I took a literature course that focused on Crusades era travelers including Marco Polo, John of Plano (also called John Plano Carpini0, and other very early manuscripts (that were in translation to English). I was also aware that the travels of Marco Polo are suspect. There are a lot of maps in this book and on page 392 there are several routes on a grasslands map, including those used by William of Rubruck, Rabban Sauma, Ibn Buttuta (another person whose writing we read in the course), as well as Marco. Rabban left France, further west.
The grassland routes went through Eurasia into the Mongol empire that had been unified in 1206 by Genghis (Chinggis is his Mongolian name) and this way the travelers bypassed the mountains and the deserts to the south. (Sounds like the way to go to me.)
On page 394 it says that after Genghis died it was his son, Ogodei, who led armies to victory over Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Kiev, and Hungary, creating the largest continuous empire in world history. (Other Silk Road routes took travelers through India as well.) This expansion took place during the era of Christianity called the second crusades which began in 1100 when the pope called upon European Christians to travel to the Holy land to capture Jerusalem from the Islamic rulers. According to author Valerie Hansen, the Pope hoped an alliance with the Mongols would be helpful.
Now what surprised me was learning that THERE WERE ALREADY CHRISTIAN MONGOLS! "The East Syriac Christan Church, based in Iraq, had sent Uighur speaking missionaries into Mongol territories before 1200, and they had one converts, particularly among the Ongut tribe, and some Mongols from the Kereyit and Naiman tribes converted after 1206." Some of Ghengis' descendants married these Mongol Christians! "The Europeans also believed that a mythic Christian ruler named Prester John ruled somewhere in Asia..." (I've heard of Prester John before, and I believe that he remains a mystery and may have always been a myth.)
This was also the era in which SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI started the Franciscan order!
Somehow, knowing that brought the whole Mongol conquest and the founding of Hungary into historical perspective of me, and didn't seem so long ago anymore.
Pope Innocent IV sent John of Plano Carpini (Giovanni del Plan di Carpini) to the khans court in Mongolia, or tried to... Carpini carried a letter. I recall from my college class that this man was portly, his bones ached, he was about 60, and the trip was hard on him. He spoke Latin and French only, so he took along a man named Benedict who knew Russian and Polish... I suppose that must have helped for some of the trip! On the way the letter was translated at the camp of Batu, a Mongol prince.
The translation was from Latin to Russian, Russian to Persian, and Persian to Mongolian. (Page 396) Who knows how the communication had altered?
Carpini and his companion covered 3000 miles in three and a half months, and I don't want to ruin this rich story for you, but it would be some time before they were able to deliver that letter.
It wouldn't be called the Silk Road if there were not a lot of silk and other beautiful fabrics worn, made into tents, and used for trade. Gifts were expected. Gold and Silver were in abundance through plunder. The merchants they encountered included Austrians, Poles, Greeks... (So, while people back home feared the Mongols, the merchants apparently knew enough about their culture to be able to trade with them.)
I'll leave my brief version of just one of the amazing stories in this book here. Whenever I read about the Mongols and the Silk Road, the merchants moving along the routes, I often think about what we are learning about the migration of our DNA through thousands of years.
So, though I have yet to read this book cover to cover, I do recommend it highly!
C 2016 All Rights Reserved Magyar American Blogspot
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
MAGYAR TORTENELEM - MAGYAR HISTORY
I thought this YouTube video was very well done, very dramatic music too. Iin this case the creator believes the Hungarians are related to the Sumarians - Nimrod
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Some ANCESTRY.COM DATABASES NEW and UPDATED FOR HUNGARIAN and GERMAN-ROMANIAN GENEALOGY
ANCESTRY.COM has SIBIU, ROMANIA MILITARY CONSCRIPTION 1689-1807 as well as SIBIU, TAX LISTS for periods beginning in 1701-1724 and 1787-1878 now, and has updated HUNGARIAN CIVIL REGISTRATION 1895-1978 as well as HAMBURG GERMANY PASSENGER LISTS.
I ran all the surnames in my own genealogy family, as well as some that I've researched for others into these databases to see what, if anything new would come up.
SIBIU is also known as SEBES. There were at least a dozen German villages in what is now Romania (or Rumania) and in these villages people kept to their German customs, such as cooking, home building, clothing, and language. Some of them came in the 1600's from German - in wagon trains (Yes, really!). However, as there were also Hungarians and other ethnicities in the country, many of them were multilingual and eventually, as they identified themselves as Hungarians, there were marriages between ethnicities. This is one of the ways that so many Hungarians married with Germans, before they ever came to the United States, but also the basis for the mythology that all Hungarians ARE Germans. I noted that individuals on the SIBIU DATABASES were coming up from Brasov, Muhlbach, Lebang, and Kerz (Cirta), so keep checking as I believe that the database intends to cover more than one settlement.
One of my ancestors had a Hungarianized German surname and is marked as coming from Sebes into Abauj on other documents. However I did check the surnames and variations in the databases as is and nothing came up. (Remember with Ancestry you can use the first three letters and an * to bring up names with various endings.)
For those of you who have an ancestor who came to the United States on a ship from the German Port of Hamburg, you may be aware that there is a passenger list upon docking (in New York, Castle Garden, or Ellis Island, but there were many other ports of entry.) You may also be aware that lists were made before the ship left port. Thus, if you have them on the passenger list when they got to the United States (or Canada, or wherever) and it says they left from Hamburg, you may want that document also. Now you might think, What's the point? Well, if the handwriting is much better on the German documents than the others you have tried to make out with magnifiers, you'll be rewarded.
Also, for those of you who had ancestors leaving the German ports, be aware that some people got off the ship in Southhampton, England and decided to be tourists for a few days or weeks, and then boarded another ship to New York or other American ports. It was about 2-3 days from the German port to the ports of Great Britain, and then about another week to the U.S. If your ancestor felt they needed some time on land before they crossed the Atlantic, then it's possible they will ALSO APPEAR on manifests originating in that country.
As for the Hungarian Civil Registration, this database seems to me to be very minimal, as I've tried to find how many counties it includes and so far I'd say there are many missing. But you never know until you try...
C 2016 Magyar American Blogspot
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.
I ran all the surnames in my own genealogy family, as well as some that I've researched for others into these databases to see what, if anything new would come up.
SIBIU is also known as SEBES. There were at least a dozen German villages in what is now Romania (or Rumania) and in these villages people kept to their German customs, such as cooking, home building, clothing, and language. Some of them came in the 1600's from German - in wagon trains (Yes, really!). However, as there were also Hungarians and other ethnicities in the country, many of them were multilingual and eventually, as they identified themselves as Hungarians, there were marriages between ethnicities. This is one of the ways that so many Hungarians married with Germans, before they ever came to the United States, but also the basis for the mythology that all Hungarians ARE Germans. I noted that individuals on the SIBIU DATABASES were coming up from Brasov, Muhlbach, Lebang, and Kerz (Cirta), so keep checking as I believe that the database intends to cover more than one settlement.
One of my ancestors had a Hungarianized German surname and is marked as coming from Sebes into Abauj on other documents. However I did check the surnames and variations in the databases as is and nothing came up. (Remember with Ancestry you can use the first three letters and an * to bring up names with various endings.)
For those of you who have an ancestor who came to the United States on a ship from the German Port of Hamburg, you may be aware that there is a passenger list upon docking (in New York, Castle Garden, or Ellis Island, but there were many other ports of entry.) You may also be aware that lists were made before the ship left port. Thus, if you have them on the passenger list when they got to the United States (or Canada, or wherever) and it says they left from Hamburg, you may want that document also. Now you might think, What's the point? Well, if the handwriting is much better on the German documents than the others you have tried to make out with magnifiers, you'll be rewarded.
Also, for those of you who had ancestors leaving the German ports, be aware that some people got off the ship in Southhampton, England and decided to be tourists for a few days or weeks, and then boarded another ship to New York or other American ports. It was about 2-3 days from the German port to the ports of Great Britain, and then about another week to the U.S. If your ancestor felt they needed some time on land before they crossed the Atlantic, then it's possible they will ALSO APPEAR on manifests originating in that country.
As for the Hungarian Civil Registration, this database seems to me to be very minimal, as I've tried to find how many counties it includes and so far I'd say there are many missing. But you never know until you try...
C 2016 Magyar American Blogspot
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Saturday, October 1, 2016
TOMMY RAMONE (TOMMY ERDELYI) HUNGARIAN AMERICAN PUNK ROCKER
GRAMMY MUSEUM - THE RAMONES EXHIBIT HEY HO LET'S GO THE RAMONES and the BIRTH OF PUNK
If you're in Los Angeles, this exhibit ends in February 2017, so you still have time. I went recently and loved the exhibit. Of course, this museum is one that I try to visit at least once a year. I have to say that my favorite things to look at are the clothes or costumes that the singers and musicians wore to perform, and handwritten lyrics. (I'm always looking to see if their handwriting looks like mine!)
"Co-curated by the GRAMMY Museum and the Queens Museum, in collaboration with Ramones Productions Inc., the exhibit commemorates the 40th anniversary of the release of the Ramones' 1976 self-titled debut album and contextualizes the band in the larger pantheon of music history and pop culture."
Event posters, equipment, personal photos, lots of music including in the cinema, their performance.
So I'm walking along reading the placards and I see that TOMMY was born in Budapest. A Hungarian- American!
EXCERPT from the link above; " The Ramones' place in rock & roll history was already assured by 1978 with their first three albums: Ramones, Leave Home, and Rocket To Russia, all made in the span of 18 months, between February 1976 and the fall of '77. When it was time to make records, Tommy said, "Our art was complete." The art was the combined product of four strangely aligned personalities — all living within shouting distance of each other in the conservative, middleclass enclave of Forest Hills, where their mutual needs as fledgling musicians and bored delinquents far outweighed the mess of differences and civil wars that could never quite bust them apart. Once a Ramone, always a Ramone." (TOMMY WAS THE ORIGINAL DRUMMER and with the band four years. He became a music producer.)
***
ALL FOUR ORIGINAL RAMONES have died.
From 1976
***
THE RAMONES OFFICIAL SITE - 40th ANNIVERSARY of FIRST ALBUM
***
A Later Interview. Tommy died in 2014.
***
If you're in Los Angeles, this exhibit ends in February 2017, so you still have time. I went recently and loved the exhibit. Of course, this museum is one that I try to visit at least once a year. I have to say that my favorite things to look at are the clothes or costumes that the singers and musicians wore to perform, and handwritten lyrics. (I'm always looking to see if their handwriting looks like mine!)
"Co-curated by the GRAMMY Museum and the Queens Museum, in collaboration with Ramones Productions Inc., the exhibit commemorates the 40th anniversary of the release of the Ramones' 1976 self-titled debut album and contextualizes the band in the larger pantheon of music history and pop culture."
Event posters, equipment, personal photos, lots of music including in the cinema, their performance.
So I'm walking along reading the placards and I see that TOMMY was born in Budapest. A Hungarian- American!
EXCERPT from the link above; " The Ramones' place in rock & roll history was already assured by 1978 with their first three albums: Ramones, Leave Home, and Rocket To Russia, all made in the span of 18 months, between February 1976 and the fall of '77. When it was time to make records, Tommy said, "Our art was complete." The art was the combined product of four strangely aligned personalities — all living within shouting distance of each other in the conservative, middleclass enclave of Forest Hills, where their mutual needs as fledgling musicians and bored delinquents far outweighed the mess of differences and civil wars that could never quite bust them apart. Once a Ramone, always a Ramone." (TOMMY WAS THE ORIGINAL DRUMMER and with the band four years. He became a music producer.)
***
ALL FOUR ORIGINAL RAMONES have died.
From 1976
***
THE RAMONES OFFICIAL SITE - 40th ANNIVERSARY of FIRST ALBUM
***
A Later Interview. Tommy died in 2014.
***