2. Austro-Hungarian Immigration Aaron Vega

3. Austro-Hungarian union In 1867 a union was formed between Austria and Hungary. Most political power was held by emperor Franz Josef. Over 50 million people filled the 675,000 square kilometers of the empire. The ethnic groups that were most common were German and Hungarian, overall there were 15 different languages spoken in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Austria and Hungary shared the same currency, but other state functions rested with the national governments. Both states unelected upper houses and elected lower houses of parliament. In1879 Austria-Hungary and Germany formed a dual alliance. In 1882 this alliance expanded to Italy.

4. Austria and Hungary in WW1 In 1914, when WW1 just started Austria and Hungary both had there own standing armies. Austria had 40,000 soldiers and Hungary 30,000. there were also imperial and royal armies. In all 350,000 vowed there allegiance to emperor Franz Josef. Their commander, Franz Josef (by 1914) was 84 years old and chief of staff, though count Franz Conrad was in strict control of the armed forces. Conrad favored an aggressive foreign policy that used the military contract to solve the territorial disputes that were happening with Italy and Siberia.

5. Immigration to America Although most Hungarians who immigrated to the United States arrived between 1890 and the start of World War I in 1914, the most significant Hungarian immigration took place during the 1930 ’ s. The spread of fascism and Nazism in Europe forced thousands of highly educated scientists, scholars, artists, and musicians to leave Hungary and Central Europe to find safe haven in America. Although Hungarian presence in North America reaches back to 1583, when Stephen Parmenius of Buda reached American shores, the first significant Hungarian political immigration took place in the early 1850 ’ s. Following the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849, several thousand Hungarians found haven in the United States.

6. Most of them came with the intention of returning to Europe to resume their struggle against the Austrian Empire, but a new war of liberation never materialized. However, many é migr é s repatriated to Hungary after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which transformed the Austrian Empire into the dualistic state of Austria-Hungary. Before their repatriation, however, close to one thousand Hungarians — 25 percent of all Hungarians then in the United States — had served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Almost one hundred of them served as officers; among them were two major generals and five brigadier generals. Many other Hungarians never repatriated and instead joined the ranks of American professionals, businessmen, and diplomats. They were able to do so because over 90 percent of them came from the ranks of the upper nobility and the gentry, and were thus learned enough, with sufficient social and linguistic skills, to impress contemporary Americans.

7. The next significant wave of Hungarian immigrants were the turn-of-the-century “ economic immigrants. ” These were mostly peasants and unskilled workers who came in huge numbers, primarily as guest workers, to work in steel mills, coal mines, and factories. Of the nearly two million immigrants from Hungary during the four decades leading up to World War I, about 650,000 were true Hungarians, or Magyars. The remaining two-thirds were Ruysins, Slovaks, Romanians, Croats, Serbs, and Hungarian Germans. Of the 650,000 ethnic Magyars, close to 90 percent were peasants or unskilled workers who had recently emerged from the ranks of the peasantry. They were drawn to America by the work opportunities that did not exist at home.

8. Even though Hungary itself was then being urbanized and industrialized, its development was not sufficient to employ all the peasants who were being displaced from the countryside. In the course of time, about 75 percent of these “ guest workers ”— two-thirds of whom were young men of marriageable age — transformed themselves into permanent immigrants. They established families in the United States and became the founders of Hungarian churches, fraternal associations, and scores of local, regional, and national newspapers geared to their educational levels.

12. Websites I used http://immigrationtounitedstates.org/560-hungarian- immigrants.html http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWaustriaA.htm http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWinAustria.htm http://www.powayusd.com/online/usonline/worddoc/ellisislandsit e.htm

13. Thank you