As part of my research on Hungarian colonies in South America, I’m digitizing parts of the archival collection of the Julian teacher, writer and poet Ferenc Kordás (1911–1993) held at the Déri Museum in Debrecen. In my work, I’m looking at his Brazilian sociographies, diaries, notes and poems about the tropical experience and Hungarian settler colonists during his stay there between 1936 and 1942. The unique materials of Kordás form a niche of unpublished documents about the everyday lives of even the remotest Hungarian colonies in the interwar era. Kordás was forced to leave Brazil due to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Brazil joined the Allies and Hungarian diplomatic relations diminished.
For more information on this topic, see my conference presentation Colonia Hungaria: Hungarian Settlers and Colonial Imaginaries in Latin America.
Zoltán Ginelli 